So said they all about the board, for the Duchess had given Tristan her signet ring as a token that he had her will in the war. Some spoke of marching straight for the south, braving the forest and all its perils. Others were for bearing towards the sea, where they might reach Agravale by the banks of the Gloire. But Tristan had nurtured more in his heart than a mere march through the forest with skirmishes by the way if Benedict of the Mountains stood to oppose them. Rosamunde, he knew, was in the madhouse in the mere, and therefore safe for him, moated from the woods. The winter had been dry, with but little rain, and for days a strong wind had blown from the north-west, and the dead wood and leaves were brittle as tinder. It was Tristan’s plan to fire the forest with a line of beacons carried south.
The nobles of the north were well content with some such strategy as this. They parted their host into three great companies, Lothaire taking one, Sir Didcart of the Hills another, Tristan and the Duchess keeping the third. After swearing troth over Samson’s grave, they marched south from the fords of the Lorient, prepared to follow Tristan’s plan.
As though to humour them, the wind freshened still further, and veered towards the north. Grey clouds raced in the sky overhead, and the tall trees moaned and swayed on the hills. Tristan saw that the hour had come. All day his men had laboured on the rim of the forest, hewing down trees, gathering brushwood and dead branches. They had built twelve great pyres each more than two furlongs apart, where the flames could strike at once into the forest. Lothaire and Sir Didcart were marching south, stacking up beacons as they went, ready for the signal from the north.
On the third night after the taking of the oath over Samson’s grave Tristan gave the word for the firing of the forest. He was posted with Blanche on the crest of a hill where they could watch the lighting of the beacons. The wind moaned over the trees, and a myriad black spires waved in the wind like sharp billows on a heavy sea. Clouds were scudding fast in the heavens, with a new moon peeping through and through.
Red streaks played about the outermost thickets where men with torches ran to and fro. Soon the red streaks lengthened into yellow spears while smoke billowed southwards with the wind. The flames smote upwards and licked at the trees, curling round trunk and waving top, spreading fans of flame from a thousand boughs. The pyres grew into pyramids of fire, great golden obelisks blazing to the sky. From the fords of the Lorient the message sped, leaping leagues into the night. Lothaire’s men saw the beacons gleam, and kindling their torches, linked the chain up.
Tristan and Blanche kept watch upon the hill, their knights round them in silent awe. The tall trees were wrapped in shrouds of flame, and the smoke of their burning hung like a thunder-cloud overhead. Onwards with the wind the fire rolled, bringing the giants of the forest to earth, till glowing rivers streamed towards the south to meet and merge into a sea of fire. It was as some vast second chaos devouring the world, a burning judgment hurled down from heaven.
Tristan stood leaning on his sword with the joy of a fanatic on his face.
“See how the south burns!” he cried, stretching out his hand. “Martyrs and innocents, behold your vengeance!”
A sudden thought seized him as he watched the spreading fire. Calling to the men who were gathered round him, he pealed his deep voice into their ears, for the cry of the forest was as the roar of the sea. Figures struggled forward out of the gloom, bearing the coffin that held Jocelyn of Agravale. The bands were unfastened and the priest lifted out, for he could scarcely use his cramped limbs. Cowering before Tristan, he blinked at the scene as though called from the grave to face his doom. The forest lay a great sea of fire, and southwards the flames ravaged the night, till the distant hills awoke and grew grey.
Tristan stood beside the priest and pointed to the forest with his sword.
“Behold your bishopric,” he said. “Here we may show ye the likeness of hell.”
CHAPTER XXXV
Rosamunde, walking within the madhouse garden, where cypresses and dusky laurels hid the grey stone wall, saw a haze of gold steal into the sky towards the north. It was towards twilight and a strong wind blew, ridging the lake with foam, tossing the cypress boughs, moaning over the house. Rosamunde, puzzled by the glow towards the north, called to Miriam, who had been spinning in the room above.
Either the Jewess was asleep or the wind drowned the cry, for no face showed at the narrow window. From the garden an outer stair built on stone pillars led to a postern opening into the women’s room. Rosamunde had been given the key of this door; for the garden had been surrendered to her by Jocelyn’s orders. The mad folk were never loosed from their vaults; there were two soldiers besides old Nicholas and his wife to keep watch and ward over the place.
Rosamunde, climbing up the stone stair, found Miriam asleep on her bed in the corner. She did not trouble to wake the Jewess, but turned to the near window and looked out over the water. Twilight was descending, and the towering woods were steeped in the hoarse mystery of a winter’s eve. The crags in the west were edged with gold, and a luminous mist poured up towards the clouds. Above the black spires of the waving trees the sky was lurid, yet not with the sunset. Purple masses of vapour played over the forest, and there was a hot, parched perfume on the wind.
Rosamunde, troubled by the strange face of the sky, turned and woke Miriam from her sleep. Together they stood on the landing at the top of the stone steps and watched the red glow increase in the heavens. There was some huge power striding over the woods; its sound swelled the piping of the wind, a far roar as of the voice of a rising sea.
Miriam clung to Rosamunde’s shoulder.
“A wild sunset,” she said, not guessing the truth. “Pah! what a strange scent on the wind. How black the woods seem. We shall have a storm in the night.”
Rosamunde looked out on the scene in silence, with Miriam’s breath upon her cheek.
“It is no sunset,” she said at last; “it is not the full west, and there is no break in the clouds.”
“What means, then, the light in the sky, sister?”
“A forest fire,” said Rosamunde slowly.
“My God, we shall burn.”
“The water is broad enough to hold us safe.”
A sudden cry pealed out over the mere, where old Nicholas was standing in his boat, poling back towards the island. He lifted a hand, pointed to the sky, bent to his work, and brought the boat over with foam at the prow. Voices answered him from the landing stage, where his old wife and two soldiers were watching the sky. They entered the court when Nicholas had moored his boat and clapped to the gate.
Rosamunde and Miriam leant against the stone balustrading of the stairway, watching the distant fire. The increasing grandeur of the scene reacted differently upon the two, inspiring fear in the Jewess and an unconscious calm in the Lady of Joyous Vale. A broad glare now hung as a curtain above the trees, and against it rose a thousand moving things. The sky grew full of screaming birds sweeping in terror from the breath of the fire, their wings whirring and panting towards the south. Some swooped for the island, settled on the roof and walls, or plunged, chattering, into the garden beneath. A great raven perched on the tiles overhead, and sat there croaking like a messenger of death.
Above the contrasted blackness of the forest foreground rose the aureole of the approaching fire. Pennons of flame tongued towards the heavens, while vast masses of smoke merged into the clouds. The glare began to play upon the surface of the mere, splashing the waves with ruddy gold, gleaming on the foam as it swept from the west. The distant peaks caught the earthly lightning from afar; the roar of the great furnace gathered and grew.
Even as the two women watched in silent awe, the meadow lands edging the lake seemed alive with hurrying shadows. The gloom teemed with desperate life. The wild beasts of the wood came panting out, herding and struggling towards the water. The wolf and the hare were flying together; the boar and the stag galloped side by side. Droves of wild pigs broke out in black masses, while above, wit
h a perpetual whirr of wings, birds pinioned with the wind from the drifting smoke.
The live things were soon fighting in the shallows, trampling each other, bellowing and howling. The water grew alive with struggling beasts where a pack of wolves had taken to the mere and headed for the island. They crawled ashore by the stage, trotted hither and thither, their ululations making the night more terrible.
Ever the fire came nearer, beating up to heaven, rolling southwards with palpitating splendour. A vast canopy of smoke had overspread the valley. Soon the deep gloom of the near thickets grew streaked with light as with the gleaming through of some rich sunset in scarlet and gold. Trees were falling in the forest, and the wind blew as from a furnace.
Rosamunde and Miriam stood still at the top of the stone stair. The terror of the night stupefied the senses, numbed even fear by the chaos of its splendour. It was as the end of all things upon earth, when the myriad wings of angels should dome the heavens, and the universe should elapse in fire.
A thousand demoniac voices seemed to answer the howling of the wolves. All about the island the beasts padded, casting up their snouts, giving tongue to swell the midnight chorus. The voices of the madhouse were as the voices of hell.
Rosamunde and the Jewess drew back from the stairway into the room, stood shivering at the door, listening to the uproar beneath. They heard a sound as of splintered wood, yells of exultation, old Nicholas’s voice fierce yet faint, the terse cracking of his whip. Rosamunde, white and fearful, seized Miriam’s arm, spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“The mad folk have broken loose.”
“Loose!”
“Listen to their cries. They will slay old Nicholas. Quick, we must keep them out.”
They clapped to the door, locked and bolted it, dragged up the beds and benches, piled them against it. As they laboured, panting with fear, a great bird flapped in by the open window, beat blindly about from wall to wall. Rosamunde ran and closed the casement frame, casting a rapid glance at the burning forest. Smoke and a myriad ruddy stars were flying athwart the heavens. The flames had rolled to the rim of the meadowland, and the valley seemed edged with a wall of fire.
In the court below a grim fight had begun. The madmen who had broken loose from their vaults had fallen upon old Nicholas and the two soldiers, penned them in a corner by the gate. The three were overpowered by the furious many, beaten down, trampled, torn limb from limb. Then, in the unreasoning madness of their triumph, the mob had broken down the great gate, and opened the house to the beasts of the forest.
In a moment the wolves, scenting blood, came padding in, leaping on each other in the narrow entry. A hundred red-eyed things surged into the court, foam dropping from their white-fanged snouts. The place became as a pagan amphitheatre, full of death and immeasurable horror. While the fire devoured the trees of the forest, the madman and the wolf rent and slew each other.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Through the black and ruined land came Tristan and his men, marching where the rivers ran, that they might not tread ankle deep in ashes, nor be choked and blinded by the dust and smoke. Ruin was everywhere, black, saturnine, and solemn. A strange silence hung upon the world, where the charred trees still stood with their hands outstretched to the rainless sky. Many lay fallen like the dead upon a battlefield. The wind had passed, the storm blasts moaned no more.
As Tristan rode through the desolate woods, he bowed down his head, and was heavy of heart. He had loved these children of the forest, these scorched martyrs stricken in the rising of the sap. No more would their banners blow with the march of spring. And yet the dead trees were but outlined against the deeper gold of memory, a melancholy afterglow, weird yet tender. The savage in him was inert awhile. Childhood and youth came back, his mother’s face and Rosamunde’s sad eyes, the golden glimmer of his sister’s hair. Rosamunde, Rosamunde! What of the red rose plucked from the snowy towers of Joyous Vale? For the moment he forgot the grim, grinding present, the ten thousand iron men who drove clouds of dust from the ashes under their horses’ feet.
Towards evening they saw a river gleaming below them in a valley, shining like silver set in ebony, as it coursed through the blackened country. Tristan, drawing rein with the Duchess upon the brow of a hill, hardly knew the valley, so great was the change the flames had worked. The river parted about an island, foaming over the rocks that thrust their black snouts above the surface. The island itself was green and untouched, girded by the water from the dead wild around.
Tristan pointed Blanche and his captains to it with his sword. There was a strange light upon his face, even as the light upon the face of a crusader who beheld the Holy City shining under the blue arch of heaven.
“Behold Jocelyn’s hermitage,” he said to them. “Columbe my sister lies buried under yonder cedar.”
Blanche, weary despite the strength of her strenuous soul, strove to calm for the moment the passion of a man who had lived as in a furnace those many months.
“Tristan,” she answered him, with a hand on his bridle, “is it not enough that you have conquered? Shall not your sister rest in peace?”
The expression of the man’s face changed again as suddenly as the surface of a darkened mirror. The old fanatical and sullen gloom rushed back.
“What is victory,” he said, “but the power to punish, to crush the adder under the heel. My sister shall rest in no hidden grave. By my soul, I have sworn it; in Agravale I will build her tomb.”
There could be no debate with such a man as this, whose spirit flamed like a torch in a wind. Tristan dismounted on the brow of the hill, bade them bring forward the wooden coffin that had carried Jocelyn from the town of Marvail. The blazoned banner covered the shell. Tristan, with his own hands, flung the “Golden Keys” aside, ungirded the lid, bade his men lift the Bishop out.
Jocelyn stood there, a lean, cringing figure, with the pride gone from his hollow-cheeked face. His eyes roved over the blackened country, the sepulchral trees, the brown, scorched grass. He seemed dizzy in the sun, looking more like some starved ascetic than the plump prelate who had ruled Agravale. Tristan ordered wine to be brought, and Jocelyn drank greedily from the flask, his head shaking as with an old man’s palsy. The red wine ran down his chin, stained his tunic, soaked the dead grass at his feet.
Tristan stood above him with drawn sword.
“Seest thou yonder island?” he said.
Jocelyn followed with his eyes the pointing sword.
“Yonder,” said the knight, “yonder is your forest hermitage, Bishop, where Pandart kept house for those whom you cherished. Stir your wits, man; is your memory so slow?”
Jocelyn winced; his lip quivered; there was a moist mist over his eyes.
“God judge me, I know not the place,” he said. “Your words are meaningless, sinner that I am.”
Again Tristan’s sword touched the Bishop’s shoulder; the man squirmed under it like a frightened dog.
“Ogier is no name to you? Come, priest, look into my eyes.”
“Ogier, by God’s light, I know no such name.”
“Nor Rosamunde, Lady of Joyous Vale, nor even Columbe whom ye did to death? Lie not to me, Jocelyn of Agravale, for you know my face; I am that Tristan who served in your guard. It was I who slew Ogier in yonder woods, and set the Lady Rosamunde safe in Holy Guard. It is my sister who lies dead under yonder cedar. Tell me, by God, whether you deserve not death.”
Jocelyn bowed his shoulders beneath the words as a slave stoops from the hissing lash. He clutched his bosom, choked, fell prone, grovelled at Tristan’s feet. But in Tristan’s heart there was no glimmer of pity.
“Strip him, sirs,” were his words to his men. “When ye have scourged him down to the island, set him in his priest’s robes by my sister’s grave. Guard him there till I shall come.”
Samson’s old followers broke their ranks, stripped Jocelyn naked, unbuckled their belts, and drove him down towards the river. Whimpering, grovelling, he took his chastisement, spu
rned and scorned, the creature of Fate. They dragged him over the rocks in the bed of the river, robed him in the state robes they had taken from his tent, and bound him to the cedar tree in the garden. Such was the pilgrimage he made that day to the grave of Columbe, Tristan’s sister.
Not till evening had come did Tristan enter upon the fulfilling of the vow that he had sworn before Rosamunde over Columbe’s grave. His men were camped about the island and under the branches of the spectral trees. The west was an open gate of gold, the dead forest wreathed in rivers of mist. The island, with the dark foliage of its trees and shrubs, lay like some dusky emerald sewn on the bosom of a sable robe.
Blanche the Duchess’s pavilion had been pitched on the stretch of grass before the house. Tristan had sought solitude in the room where Rosamunde had been lodged in the summer months that were gone. He passed an hour alone in that chamber, pacing from wall to wall, thinking of the task that lay before him. Never did his heart flinch more than from that ordeal of death, the opening of his sister’s grave. He had searched the room, and had discovered in a cupboard an old robe of Rosamunde’s, even the very one she had worn the night the Papists ravaged Ronan’s town. Tristan took it, pressed the hem to his lips. The robe should cover Columbe’s body, love’s robe for a lost love.
Night came, and torches were kindled. Tristan, stern and white of face, knelt down and prayed, and passed out from the house. In her pavilion he found Blanche seated in state, her coronet circling her silvery hair, her knights round her as for some solemn council. The garden was thronged with armed men, their helmets gleaming in the light of the torches.
Tristan stood alone before the Duchess’s tent, and bent the knee to her as one who serves.
“Madame,” he said, in the hearing of all, “I go to uncover my sister’s grave.”
“Sir Tristan,” she answered him with steady voice, “God comfort you in this your hour of trial. We would not gape nor gaze on your grief. Sirs, stand by me; let no man move save Sir Tristan gives him word.”
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