Under the shade of a thicket of pines Tristan halted at noon to rest his men. A spring played by the roadside, where the thirsty riders drank from their palms, and led their horses to drink at the pool. Meanwhile, Tristan and the Duchess went forward with the guide to a great rock that was perched upon the hillside, and whence the man promised them full view of St. Isidore’s Pass. Above the trees the mountains towered, crag on crag and cliff on cliff, till the mighty tops, aureoled with golden vapour, clove the canopy of the sky. Here and there a snow-capped peak gleamed and flashed against the cloudless blue. Black gulfs yawned everywhere, edged with a thousand glittering crags, hoarse with the thunder of a thousand streams.
Before them lay St. Isidore’s Gate, a colossal rent betwixt two mountains, full of gloom even under the noon sun. Tristan and the Duchess scanned the pass, while the peasant told them how the road ran. At one point it dwindled to a narrow track, on the one hand a precipice plunging down, on the other the bluff shoulder of the mountain rising straight towards the sky. A great rock half closed the narrow track, and the gap was known as St. Isidore’s Gate. It was a point that could be held, the peasant said, by twenty men against a thousand. Nor could they be outflanked save by one wild track that led over the mountains towards the east.
Blanche laid a hand on Tristan’s shoulder.
“Let us give to Bertrand, my best knight, some eight score men to keep this path over the mountains. You and I, Tristan, can hold the pass together.”
The man looked into her fearless eyes, at the face so strong and yet so tender. Once more he besought her to consider her safety, and to remain with Bertrand on the slopes above.
“You are of greater worth,” he argued, “than we rough men, whose business it is to make play with the sword.”
But in Blanche’s soul deeper thoughts were moving towards the coming crisis. She loved Tristan, and in that hour when death was spreading forth his wings she took less pains to dissemble the truth. In the half-wistful sacrifice of herself she lost none of the dignity of her heart. Her rare womanliness seemed to stand the higher, even because her love was a noble thing.
“Tristan,” she said to him, “am I better than my men? Think you they will be the worse for having a woman in their ranks?”
“God knows,” he answered her, looking in her eyes, “we shall fight the better if you are with us in the pass.”
“Therefore,” she said, smiling a little, “you argue against your own plea. Is it not a woman’s joy to stand fast by those whom she has loved?”
“Madame,” he answered her, colouring to the lips, “would we were worthy of so great love.”
That night, when the round moon stood full upon the mountains, a line of spears glittered on the road that threaded the pass. On high the great peaks shone amid the stars, splashed with the moonlight, ribbed with deep shadows. A hundred torrents foamed in the ravines, their massed thunder rising like the hoarse cries of a multitude. Above, the peaks seemed monuments of silence, sublime and tranquil as they communed with the stars. Far below on the northern slopes the moonlit forests beat like a sea upon the bases of the mountains.
Tristan and Blanche rode side by side, the peasant trudging before their horses, an oaken staff over his shoulder. There were deep lines of thought on the woman’s face; it seemed wreathed in shadows, though the moonlight played upon her eyes and on the silver stephanos in her hair. The sublimity of the scene had constrained them to silence. Man and his machinations seemed infinitely small under the grand calm of the towering peaks.
Tristan’s thoughts had flown to Rosamunde and all the turbulence of those short months since he had sailed from Purple Isle to seek his sister over the sea. Glimmerings of death seemed to steal on him that night; vague voices called from the bleak cliffs above; mystery encompassed him and the strange twilight of the unknown.
“Lady,” he said suddenly, turning towards her in the moonlight, “how these torrents thunder. Methinks I hear the voices of the dead crying among the mountains. ‘Brother,’ they call me. Never have I known this mood before.”
Blanche’s eyes were fixed upon his face. She saw no fear there, only some sadness round the dogged mouth, a vague melancholy in the deep-set eyes.
“Who would not remember the dead,” she answered him, “amid these great mountains under the moon? Yonder white peak I would name the Christ. Does he not shine on us out of the night?”
“Even strong men die.”
“Not so,” she said; “the great ones never die. There is life in death for such as live like men. Can knightliness and honour end in dust? Nay, for they stand like these great mountains, rare spirits fronting the evil of the world, standing for God until the judgment come.”
“True, true,” he answered her; “and should a man grudge his poor dust to the All-Father who has made us men?”
“Never would I mourn for one,” she cried, “who died in some fair battle for the truth. They are not dead these great ones who have stood like mighty sentinels upon the towers of heaven. Joy is the incense we should give to such, not empty weeping and rebellious grief.”
They had left their horses on the lower slopes, and by midnight had reached the summit of the pass, where the road narrowed rapidly under the shadow of the cliff. A great rock hung like a bartizan over the precipice, narrowing the track still further so that a natural gate gave passage betwixt two walls of stone. A storm-twisted pine, clinging to the cliff, cast a broad shadow over the path, while over the thin grass the blue gentians grew even to the edge of the great ravine.
A sudden cry topped the far thunder of the torrents. Tristan’s guide stood beyond the rock, his tall figure outlined by the moon. He was pointing with his staff towards the south, beckoning them on with eager gestures.
“The Saracens, the Saracens!”
Tristan sprang up beside him, his melancholy gone in the flash of an eye. To the south a broad valley stretched up betwixt the spurs of the mountains, flooded by the tranquil light of the moon. Crag upon crag fell away to the distant scene where torrents ran like strands of flax into forests that stood like early bracken. From the dim depths where the pass began amid rolling woods there came a sense of movement under the moon. Columns of steel like shining beetles crawled up the rugged slopes from the edge of the forest. Nearer still under the bluff shoulder of a cliff the mountain road lay clear before their eyes.
Tristan whistled and laid his hand on his sword, for there to the south in the pale moonlight came long lines of armed men toiling up the pass towards the Saint’s Gate. Buckler and lance caught the moonbeams from afar; white tunics splashed the sable rocks; glittering corselets were merged together till the long columns of moving men seemed like dragons of steel climbing the mountains. Above stood the calm and silent peaks steeped in the stillness of the heavens. Below, the many torrents muttered, as though they cheered on the advancing host.
CHAPTER XLIV
To the north of St. Isidore’s Gate the road expanded into a broad platform, capable of holding some hundred men. Many boulders were strewn around, with squared stones fallen from the ruined parapet that had once edged the sharp precipice. Tristan and his men were quickly at work, carrying stones towards the Gate, and piling a rampart from the rock to the cliff. The peasant who had served them as guide had swarmed up the stem of the great fir and was perched amid the branches, watching the Saracens as they climbed the pass. Meanwhile, Tristan had sent a messenger to warn Sir Bertrand on the heights above that Serjabil was upon them with his host.
Soon a broad bulwark, a Cyclopean wall, closed the mouth of St. Isidore’s Gate. Tristan stood under the shadow of the tree with Blanche the Bold at his side. The melancholy that had possessed the man but an hour before had passed with the stir of the coming battle. He was once more that Tristan of dogged will who had slain Ogier the giant in fair fight and trodden down Jocelyn into the dust.
He spread his shoulders and smiled at the moon as he stood with Blanche upon the rough stone wall. His nostrils
dilated with his deep breathing as he watched the columns climb the pass.
“But a day and a night,” he said, “and Lothaire should come. We could hold this wall for a week, I trow.”
“Even so,” she answered him; “yet before the moon climbs up again all my rough children from the north should tumble up to save their lady.”
“If only Bertrand holds the mountain path.”
“Bertrand will stand to the last sword.”
“And, by Heaven, we shall not fail him. God willing, I would hold the pass alone.”
The moon had passed behind one of the western peaks when Serjabil’s men came climbing up to where the fir tree grew by the Gate. A broad shadow was thrown athwart the pass, so that the road was plunged in gloom. Tristan had ordered his force into five companies, each numbering some fifty men. They were to reinforce each other from hour to hour, so that all could rest in turn. They lay quiet behind the wall, waiting calmly for Tristan’s orders.
Tristan crouched behind a boulder, his shield on his arm, his sword in his hand. Around him were stretched the motionless figures of his men, like leopards crouching for the spring. The stars were very bright in the sky, since the moon had sunk behind the peak.
Then above the distant roar of the streams came the sound of voices, the jingling of steel, the dull padding of a thousand feet. Tristan, peering round a rock, saw a man on a white mule turn an angle of the cliff with a long line of lances at his back. White robes showed in shadows as the men marched up, recking nothing of what would follow. When they were within twenty yards of the Gate, the emir on the white mule drew rein in the road, and looked ahead into the darkness. Tristan could see a broad turban wreathing a dusky oval face. It was plain that the man had marked the barrier before him, and was debating its nature and what lay behind.
He spoke some words to his men, and pointed them towards the tree and the rock overhanging the precipice. Then figures sprang forward, came running up the road towards the wall across the Gate. Tristan heard them muttering one to another as they clambered up the rough pile of stones; a turbaned head showed above the summit; another followed it, and yet another.
Tristan sprang up with a great shout.
“God and the Cross!”
Fifty shields heaved up around him. There was the shrill whistle of whirling blades, the sound of strokes that went heavily home. Several white-robed bodies rolled back from the rampart, and the first blood had been shed for the Cross.
Down the pass under the moonlight the long columns could be seen to waver and halt as the trumpets screamed amid the mountains, the echoes tonguing from crag to crag. The emir on the white mule rode back among his men, pointing them towards the Gate with his naked scimitar. The advance guard raised a great shout, and came pouring up with bucklers forward, calling on Allah and Mohammed the Prophet. Lithe, dusky warriors in quilted tunics and shirts of mail came clambering up the rude stone rampart, to take the spear-thrusts in their faces and meet the swing of the pitiless swords. Not a single man of them could top the parapet. Soon white-clad figures lay piled against the wall, like snow driven there by the wind.
These light-armed folk gave back by their emir’s orders to make way for Serjabil’s guard, the choice troops of the Caliph’s provinces, harnessed in chain mail and finely armed. They came up the road in a long column, their bucklers blinking at the moon, to be eclipsed in the shadows athwart the Gate. Like foam they dashed against the wall, with its ranks of shields and spears above. Vain was their fatalistic valour, the courage that claimed an eastern paradise. Time after time they clambered up to melt away before the wall. The dead were piled in the narrow road with cloven bucklers and broken spears. Many a man grudged not his blood that night for the languorous glances of the black-eyed girls.
When dawn came they rolled back baffled from St. Isidore’s Gate. Serjabil himself rode forward on a mule; his keen black eyes took in the truth, the rugged hazards of that narrow way. It seemed to him that he had spent the night in throwing snow against a rock. With the dawn he embraced a subtler means, ordered his men to bend their bows and shoot their arrows high in the air. Moreover, he sent a thousand men to climb the path that wound over the mountain where Sir Bertrand lay.
So the fight went on that day, with the whistling of arrows over the wall, where Tristan and his men lay low. From the heavens the shafts came rattling down, dancing upon the upreared shields, taking a life from time to time. There were many skirmishes upon the wall, and single combats, wherein Tristan slew seven tall Saracens born of one mother. It was Serjabil’s plan to wear the Christians out, to hold them in play while his thousand men forced the path that crossed the mountain.
Towards sunset Tristan stood under the shelter of the great rock, leaning upon his sword. He had come down from the wall to rest after the long day’s fighting in the sun. The shield that hung about his neck had been battered deviceless by the Saracen spears. A scarf was knotted round his right thigh, where an arrow had gored him, but had not sped deep.
Blanche the Bold stood at Tristan’s side. She had tended the wounded, and they had been many, under the shadow of the rock that day. Now her eyes searched Tristan’s face for foreshadowings of defeat, or wounds within. She saw no weakening of the dogged mouth, no bowing down of the massive head.
“I judge,” he said to her, leaning on his sword, “that we have lost this day some hundred men. These cursed archers have smitten us often.”
Blanche stood silent, as though her thoughts sped to the hamlets of the north, where women and children would grieve for the dead.
“Whether we live or die,” she said, “we stand here for a noble cause. Nor shall we flinch from the last blow.”
“Amen,” quoth Tristan, a smile on his mouth. “We can fight for another night and a day, if Bertrand can keep the path above.”
“By then Lothaire and the host will be here.”
“If Bertrand holds the path above.”
There was a prophetic spirit in these words, for hardly had they passed from Tristan’s lips than there came sound as of thunder from the cliffs above. Tristan looked up, rapped out an oath, pressed Blanche back against the wall. A great rock came hurtling down, scattering stones from the rugged slope. It leapt out from the last ledge, flew spinning over the narrow road, to disappear into the depths beneath. Tristan’s hand was on Blanche’s wrist. Above the mutterings of the streams they heard the great rock crash below into the branches of the trees.
“By God,” said Tristan, “they have forced the path!”
“On the mountain.”
“Bertrand has been beaten back. They are rolling the rocks on us, curse their souls!”
He set his arm about Blanche’s body and almost bore her to the foot of the cliff, where there was a shallow hollowing of the stone. They could hear the shouts of Serjabil’s men, who cheered when they saw that the heights were won. Tristan’s men were huddling up under the shelter of the cliff; they could face these Saracens on the wall, but not the rocks that smoked from the mountains.
Blanche lay back against the cliff and looked long into Tristan’s face.
“There is yet time,” she said to him suddenly.
“Ha?”
“To fly down the pass into the woods.”
He darted a look at her and threw back his head, his mouth firm, his eyes fearless.
“As for me,” he said, “I stay at the Gate. Take the rest with you and meet Lothaire on the road. Tell him and Didcart how I died.”
She spread out her arms against the cliffs, as though crucified by her own courage.
“Not so,” she said; “I will not go.”
“But——”
“Make no pleading with me, Tristan,” she said, “for my heart is fixed concerning this.”
He laid a hand upon her shoulder.
“For my sake, go, madame,” he said.
“For your sake,” she answered, “I will not stir hence.”
They stood looking for full half a minut
e into each other’s eyes, as though Tristan sought to read the truth that was shining on him out of her soul. Unconscious of the gesture, he laid his right hand over his forehead, for he understood of a sudden in that hour that Blanche loved him, even to the death.
“Madame,” he cried hoarsely, “what can I say to you?”
“Nothing, Tristan,” she said, with a strange smile.
Tristan was almost fearful of looking in her face. What were mere words to her but mocking symbols? Did she not know of his full love for Rosamunde? It was only at death’s gate that she had betrayed the truth.
A shower of stones came rattling down the cliff, dancing like huge hailstones on the rugged road. A great rock crashed down upon the wall, slew five men there among those who held the Gate. The rest cowered back under the cliff, while the Saracen arrows sped from the pass, dealing out death in the crowded space.
Tristan saw that it would be but slow slaughter, and that twenty men were as good as a hundred, now that the platform was swept by the stones. He stood forward and shouted to the men.
“Brothers,” he said, “I crave but a score of you to stand beside me, to hold the Gate to the bitter end. Let the rest make for the road to Agravale and tell Lothaire of how we stand.”
The men crowding under the cliff heard him in silence, half ashamed of their own fears. First one stood out and then another, till twenty were mustered at Tristan’s side. He bade the rest make haste to depart lest they should be caught in the pass and cut off from Agravale. Thus he was left with but twenty swords to hold the Saint’s Gate against the Saracens.
Again the moon rose on the snowy peaks and on the solemn foreheads of the mountains. Clouds passed slowly over its surface, building caverns and deep forests of silver in the magic silence of the sky. Ever and anon the Saracen trumpets screamed exultantly on the heights above. The mountains awoke to the roar of the rocks forced from their sleep on the wind-swept slope to thunder down into the depths beneath.
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