“Madame,” he said, letting his glances rove over her full bosom and splendid throat, “we of the Church hold you accused of treachery and treason to our Holy Father the Pope. You and your people have set his ordinances at defiance. For this reason were we bidden to gather the armed sons of the Church, and make war upon such heretics as blasphemed the Creed. Yet, madame, it is given us to promise mercy to those whose hearts remain not froward towards the truth. God has dealt hardly with you and your home to-night. There is yet time for Mother Church to receive you once more into her bosom.”
Tristan, rugged rebel, would have laughed at the priest’s words had the chance been less momentous. God’s justice, forsooth! Mercy from the intolerable tyranny of the Church! The stout sense in him jeered and mocked at the pharisaical verbiage. Straining from the pillar, peering over the shoulder of the man in front of him, he waited with a frown for Rosamunde’s answer. He was forewarned in his heart what her words would be. Her back was towards him, yet there shone clear defiance from every line of her tall frame.
“Priest,” she said at last, casting out her words so that they seemed to smite the wall, “do you blaspheme God by working iniquities in His name? Is it Christ’s ordinance to spill blood—to dishonour women? Out upon you, mummers and jugglers that you are! Burn me to-night if the deed suits your religion.”
Her words rang like the blows of a sword in Tristan’s brain. Heavens! she had courage! The man exulted even in the temerity of her scorn. He mouthed her words over to himself with a grim and strenuous relish. Here were home-thrusts for the gamblers with God. Bishop Jocelyn still stood behind the table, a sleek worldliness warming his shaven face.
“Madame,” he said slowly, “your tongue out-runs your reason.”
“And your charity perhaps,” she answered him.
Jocelyn spoke on.
“You have been unstrung by the terrors of the night,” he said. “Calm yourself, return to your room, wait for the day. Commune with faith; pray, pray that the Holy Virgin may cleanse the heresy from your heart. On the morrow, madame, you shall speak with me again.”
“Bishop,” she said, with face upturned, “words will not serve you to change my heart.”
“Let the future prove,” he answered, “your blood runs hot to-night. Let me counsel you to ponder your peril in solitude.”
“I have considered all,” she said.
“According to the poverty of your faith,” he retorted; “on the morrow, madame, we will sift your doubts together.”
He rang the bell, while his eyes remained fixed on Rosamunde’s face. The guards came forward to take her from the hall. Setting herself between them without a word, she turned and walked steady and erect towards the door. The tongues of those assembled seemed loosed on the instant. A babel of laughter echoed under the roof amid the swirling smoke of the flambeaux; a wave of colour swept along the painted shields. Above the uproar came the insistent tinkling of the Bishop’s bell.
Before the doorway, Rosamunde came to a sudden halt, like one smitten on the face. She had seen Tristan standing by the wall, and their eyes had met, flashed, held in one swift stare. Scorn was on the woman’s lips, a sudden pallor upon her forehead. Tristan read “traitor” in that glance of hers. The white cross seemed to burn his bosom, for even as he stood speechless she passed out and was gone.
CHAPTER X
Tristan, strong man that he was, blundered out from the hall much as Peter fled from before the face of Christ. The thrust was perhaps the more bitter seeing that he was innocent, nay, brimming with ardent faith. The night breeze played upon his face as he reached the terrace; the stars were bright in the heavens, the moon streaming up through mountainous clouds. Pools of gloom lay between the fields of silvery vapour. Houses were burning in the town below, a red haze of smoke and light pouring from the place as from a pit.
Tristan, stung with shame, hurried out through the bloodstained court to the gardens fathoms deep in gloom. A sudden frost seemed to have fallen upon his heart, though his face still burnt with the blaze of Rosamunde’s scorn. The last look from her eyes seemed colder to him than the glances of the stars. Great passionate boy that he was, the wrong stung him like the hatred of a lost friend. Had not Rosamunde kissed him on the forehead that very day? He threw himself down on a grass bank and wept, and the damp grass licked his face as he rolled restlessly from side to side.
The newly inspired chivalry sank before the spear of rebellious pride. As for Rosamunde, had he not served her well? Martyrs and saints! was he deserving of such infidelity at her hands? The woman was a fool, had no wit in her to read the true cunning of a man’s endeavours. She was fickle as moonlight, quick to mistrust at the first mutterings of doubt. Moreover, he had wept over the injustice, he, Tristan the iron-faced, who had never puled since he left the cradle. Ha! if this was gratitude and faith, he would think no more of Joyous Vale, and this proud-lipped dame who conceived all men to have been born her lackeys.
Full of such callow spite as this, Tristan floundered up, tightened his sword belt, brushed the moisture from his face, passed on towards the town. Soldiers were returning from the castle, cursing and shouting under the trees. Rough horseplay ruled the road. Men were riding on each other’s shoulders, singing, scuffling, quarrelling as they went. Tristan, shy of such company for the moment, kept to the dark and the paths through the thickets. He strode on morosely, eating his own heart, letting his temper rage with the uncontrolled sincerity of youth.
Entering the town by a narrow by-lane, he bore for the market-place, where the waves of riot ran high. The Papal troops were as wild beasts let loose in an arena, and mere human flesh seemed an insignificant sacrifice for their savage zeal. Men were even hewing down the houses with axe and hammer, as though to leave no stone or beam unbroken in the place. Children were tossed from the attic windows on the bristling spears beneath. The wild pirates from the old pagan north had never worked more savagely than these children of the Cross.
Tristan’s anger began to cool apace before he had gone far through the streets of the town. No such tortures had been known in Purple Isle as were perpetrated here under the benediction of the Church. Men put indiscriminately to the sword, women dishonoured, children thrown from the flaming houses. The streets were full of death and despair; the very town was a great slaughter-house. Horror descended like a cloud on Tristan’s brain. He was weak as a frightened child for the moment amid the devastation of the night. The anger oozed from him like wine from a cracked jar. Only a great and empty pity remained in its stead.
Coming to the market square, he stood as one dazed by the terrific action of a dream. The place was packed with drunken men, wearing indeed the livery of the Church, yet appearing with their flaming torches more as the acolytes of hell. Great stakes had been set in the midst of the square, faggots and the timbering of ravaged houses piled around. Even as Tristan watched from under the low eaves of a house, a knot of soldiers passed him, bearing on their shoulders the figure of a man. He was so swathed in cordage as to look like an encased mummy. Setting the victim against a stake, they chained him there, buffeting and spitting in his face, as he had been the Christ. Torches licked at the faggots, and deep ululations ran through the square with the strident psalming of the monks for an underchant. The flames writhed like golden snakes; smoke blackened out the faces of the stars. Tristan saw the figure chained to the post jerk and strain from the rising flames. The man’s hands came free. He clutched the beam above his head, strove with great throes of agony to climb above the fire. Soon the smoke throttled him; the flames played the part of a shroud.
Tristan, sick with the sight, turned back down the street with his brain a-swimming. Would they set Dame Rosamunde in the market square and burn her there as they had burnt the smith? A great faintness gathered round; the reek of charred wood was in his nostrils. The flare of the flames died over the houses and the din and clamour grew less and less. Stumbling on, he reached the outskirts of the town, where the me
adows ran white under the moon. The clean breath of the night beat on his face, and the scent of the pine woods rolled down from the hills.
A limb of the lake gleamed in the meadows. Tristan went down to the water’s brim, knelt in the weeds, and drank from his palms. He dashed up water in his face, let it run down his chest, cold and clean, rose up again with his heart more steady. The town still flickered and yelped under the stars. He turned his back on it and made towards the woods.
The scenes in Ronan’s town still played on his thoughts. Had he been zealous in the pay of the Church, his faith would have quailed before the deeds done that night. Moloch could have hungered for no bloodier work than this. Tristan remembered Ronan’s town as he had first seen it from the hills, glimmering peacefully in silver and green. He remembered the children playing in its streets, the red, comely women drawing water at its wells, the sturdy peasants labouring in the fields. If such a brutal doom as this had fallen upon Purple Isle? His sire slain, his mother—God forbid the thought. He grew grim and savage as his courage kindled; the petulant weakness of an hour had passed.
As for Rosamunde, her proud face was above him once again, clear as the moon, overtopping his manhood. The passionate spite had melted away, for he comprehended now the scorn in her heart. She was wiser, older, less selfish than he. Rosamunde had forecasted the savage zeal that had scorched the valley and those whom she loved, while his imagined falseness had embittered the truth. Tristan cursed his own hot wrath. What was he that he should resent her doubts! How else could she have read the cross on his breast?
The woods descended upon the meadows and the hills seemed to stretch their great arms to him out of the night. Tristan, full of a simple devotion, a sudden strong passion of chivalrous pity, knelt down under a tree and tore the white cross from his breast. The moonlight played upon his face as he knelt with arms folded, and made his short prayer openly in the eyes of Heaven.
“Great God and Father,” ran the words, “Thou who avengest all things, strengthen Thou my heart. Let honour prevail against those who blaspheme Thy mercy. Thou who didst gird King David against the pagans, give to Thy servant a strong arm and an unblunted sword. Here—now—I pledge my faith to these two women, even to Rosamunde and to Columbe my sister. Holy Jesu, shine Thou upon my shield.”
Even as Tristan prayed the stars seemed to brighten in the heavens, as at the touch of some high seraph’s hand. The man knelt a long while in the grass, thinking of Rosamunde, how she believed him a traitor. His heart was strengthened against her fate. He swore that night that he would prove his faith to her, even though it brought him to the gate of death.
CHAPTER XI
Rosamunde, standing at her window high in the tower of Joyous Vale, watched the dawn cleanse the sombre east. Over the hills the golden chariots flew. In the valleys, the shadows, like giant snakes, writhed and darted from the rush of the dawn. The heavens had taken the colour of June. Gold, azure, and rose were woven together as by the might of invisible hands.
Rosamunde, with dark shadows under her eyes, watched the burnt town rise out of the gloom. No glimmering casements flashed up to the dawn, no spirelets glittered, no red roofs shone. Smoke veiled the air beyond the gardens and the sleek green meadows, where tottering walls shook like palsied patriarchs, shaking their heads over this deed of shame. Charred beams stood black beneath the sky. The reeking ruin of the place rose up to Rosamunde from the dewy love-lap of the dawn.
On the lake the great ships lay at anchor, their white wings folded, standards and streamers afloat from their masts. Their prows were blazoned with many shields. The water, a silver sheet, lay spread about them, calm and clear. In the meadows the host had pitched camp for the night, and there were many pavilions ranged over the grass, red and purple, white and blue. A grove of spears stood round Benedict’s tent, with many shields swinging to the breeze. Horses were picketed on the outskirts of the woods. A company of men-at-arms stood to their lances without the great gate of the castle.
Rosamunde, leaning on the sill, put back her hair from off her forehead, and met the truth with a bitter calm. The burnt town betrayed the terrors of the night. A great silence covered the ruins; only the meadows spoke of life. From the tower she could look into the market square, where the charred posts still stood amid the steaming ashes.
Her loneliness grew the more apparent as Rosamunde looked out over the lake and the hills rising purple against the blue. Yesterday, necessity had stirred her courage and peopled a province with her cares. Her quick sympathies had created comrades. To-day all was changed. Death had claimed the allegiance of her people. Outlanders held her home, fed within her hall, lounged and jested in her courts. They had even taken the woman Isabel from her for the night, for the Bishop had ordained that she should be left alone with her own soul.
As she stood at the window, she thought of Tristan, traitor, as she believed. If she had ever trusted a man, she had trusted him, with his blunt tongue and his ugly face. None the less, his eyes must have lied to her again and again. Truly, he had played his part with a cunning mask of ingenuous passion. He had let the Pope’s men in. Spy and hireling that he was, he had blinded her well as to what should follow.
She hated Tristan with an immoderate hate as she stood at her window that golden day in June, for the burnt town seemed to stand as a grim witness to his dishonour. Why had he saved Samson from the sword? That he might blind her the more with professions of faith. She had trusted her heart in his great hands, and he had stood to mock her before them all.
The bar was withdrawn suddenly from her door, and the woman Isabel thrust into the room by those without. There was a clanging to and fro of harness in the galleries. Isabel had orders to prepare her lady for a second meeting with the Bishop. Rosamunde suffered the woman’s prattle with the listless silence of one whose thoughts flow deep. The army was to march southwards along the lake, so ran the report. Holy Chrysostom! the night had been red with blood! Would madame wear her grey gown with the blue sleeves? Yes. ’Twas very comely. And the girdle of beaten steel, with the poniard fastened thereto? Ah, yes, they had searched the place, and taken away the knife. Bishop Jocelyn was a courtly prelate, so men said. One of his servants was bringing up wine and meat on a silver tray. What? Madame had no taste for food? One must live, though men made war.
Rosamunde broke in upon her patter, desirous of hearing other news.
“Have they taken Samson?” she asked.
Isabel shook her head.
“Thank the Lord, no.”
“What of Tristan?”
“Madame, I have not seen the man.”
Rosamunde kept her countenance under the woman’s stare, and though her face felt hot she did not colour.
“The fellow had a hot heart and too ready a hand. He is slain, perhaps. God rest his soul.”
Rosamunde told nothing of the imagined truth, and of the beginning of her hate. Isabel had not seen Tristan in the hall.
Anon, robed, and fed by the Bishop’s clemency, she was taken by Christopher the Canon past the iron-coated sentry at the door. As a prisoner she passed through her own home, where the galleries were empty, the chambers void. The Bishop’s men had looted the place; they were carrying the plunder to the ships. The champion of the Church was worthy of his hire; many a cherished relic saluted Rosamunde’s eyes no more. The hall itself seemed grey and empty despite the streaming sunlight through the narrow windows set high up in the wall.
Bishop Jocelyn awaited her, sleek, polished, buxom of face, a most creditable sympathy pervading his mood. The heretic pleased, if the heresy offended. He bade Canon Christopher set Rosamunde a stool, thrust a silver mug aside with his hand, spread his tablets, crossed himself, and began.
“Madame,” he said, “I have given you audience alone, that we may talk the better. Mark you—how the sun shines, and that June is with us. The blood of the earth runs brisk and warm. It is my purpose here to persuade you to live.”
There was a suggestive
comfort on the complacent face. The man’s philosophy smacked of compromise. That he was not unloth to pardon her, Rosamunde could see full well, yet she mistrusted his voice, strident with sanctimony, his soft, mobile mouth, his glittering eyes.
“Whether it is better to lie than to die,” she answered him, “out of the abundance of your righteousness, you can tell me, Lord Bishop.”
“Daughter,” he said, mouthing his words with an air of relish, “surely it is better to procrastinate for a month, than to be damned instantly and for ever.”
“Your charity foredooms me—thus.”
“Madame, St. Peter has the keys of heaven, and we are St. Peter’s ministers.”
The retort was such a one as Samson the Heretic would have rent with the splendid sincerity of his scorn. To Rosamunde, numb and lonely as she was, there yet appeared a grim pharisaical humour in the perfumed piety of this complacent prelate, decreeing the eternal fate of God-given souls. Could this lapwing, this piping swan, so far deceive himself and others as to claim the power of final pardon or of endless punishment? Rosamunde awoke at the thought with an echo of Samson’s strenuous eloquence in her memory.
“Priest,” she said very calmly, “we of La Vallée Joyeuse have been taught that a man’s soul speaks face to face with the Living God. Here we have hired no spiritual chapmen to trade and barter with our prayers. I claim my daughtership before Christ our Lord. Sure am I, that even as Mary of Bethany sat before God’s face, so may I serve Him without bribing the hirelings of a degenerate Church.”
Bishop Jocelyn set his finger tips together, elevated his eyebrows, suffered a slight smile to play upon his lips.
“Madame,” he said to her, “it is easy for me to know that you have been deceived by plausible and disastrous doctrines. It is easy to impose on women, seeing that they catch the reflection of any bold man’s mind. They answer men, as tides the moon.”
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