The Seven Streams Page 2

  “God helps him who helps himself,” he said, with a certain quaint sententiousness, running his fingers through the long black mane.

  Being imbued, despite his strenuous vigour, with some hard-headedness of discretion, he ignored the blood-spilling in the valley, content to shepherd the prize to his own good cause. Turning back into the woods, he rode southwards from the place, keeping diligent watch, however, lest any hot-handed gentleman should be following on his heels. Seemingly they were busied with the purging of their own pastures, for Tristan saw no more of them that day.

  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.

  “The holy saints defend you, messire,” he said. “It is long since a Christian took pity on my soul.”

  Tristan, ignorant of all leprous lore, and the unsavoury nature of such a wanderer, questioned him concerning La Vallée Joyeuse, and the length of the road that led that way. This Lazarus was very human under his thickened skin. Alms alone did not dazzle his vision. The sick are ever hungry for sympathy, the instinctive pity that shines from the soul. The leper had as long a tongue as most men, though the weapon had grown rusty for lack of use.

  “I tread the road towards La Vallée Joyeuse,” he said, rising from before the cross; “if a friend will suffer my infirmities, I can play the guide for a league or more.”

  Tristan climbed from the horse with a smile on his face. There was no reflective pride within his heart.

  “Mount up, friend,” he said; “my legs are lustier than yours, I wager.”

  Scorning debate in his masterful way, he held the stirrup and heeled the man up. The black horse snorted and tossed his mane, as though despising so ragged a burden. Tristan ruled him with hand and voice. If the master chose chivalry, the beast could obey.

  In this fashion they set out together, the leper straddling the soldier’s horse, Tristan walking like a groom at his side. They were soon accorded in spirit and speech, for a smile on the lips makes the whole world kin. The leper had lived as a merchant in his day, till disease had beggared him and left him an outcast. He had turned pilgrim, so he said, to visit a certain holy well, whose waters were magical to recover the sick. The shrine lay by the northern seas. Many great miracles had been wrought at this well, and pious folk cleansed of many a malady. Of the Land of the Seven Streams the leper had much to tell; he had gathered shrewd gossip, as he travelled north.

  “Good friend,” he said, when Tristan questioned him, “I know neither the temper nor the colour of your sword. If you carry a white heart and travel for peace, I would pray you to beware of La Vallée Joyeuse.”

  Tristan, frank soul, unfolded without fear the purpose of his quest. He told the man of Columbe his sister, and of the vow he had sworn to recover her body.

  “Where the waves run white,” he said, “there may the voyager find the wrecked ones who have fallen in stormy waters. If this same valley is a perilous region, who knows but that I may win some news of my quest.”

  “Friend,” said the leper, with his hand on his bell, “you misread the riddle. Listen, and I will explain.”

  With honest despatch he uncovered to Tristan the tone and temper of the Seven Streams. As he told his tale that green spring day, his hoarse raven’s croak made the theme more sombre, prophetic of the clouds that shadowed the land.

  “You have given me courtesy, messire,” he said; “I return you good counsel, a rare commodity when properly handled. The lords and peasant folk of this same land have denied their faith to our Great Father the Pope. They have taken heresy into their hearts; have denied in the Sacrameant the flesh and blood of our Lord. Even in his wrath, the Pope was merciful, deeming them ignorant and seduced by pride. He sent out his legate and his missionaries into the land, but the rude folk here would have none of their preaching. So a crusade has been called against the province, and swords are shining in the Southern Marches.”

  Tristan, rebel at heart, questioned the justice of such a crusade.

  “By God’s light,” he said, “these priests are over meddlesome with the souls of others. Tell it not in Gath, my friend, but I have no great love for men in petticoats.”

  The leper grimaced at him with his misshapen mouth.

  “Heresy or no heresy, messire,” he said, “they have spilt holy blood here. I had the news on this road this morning. The deed was done but yesterday.”

  “Ha!” quoth Tristan, staring in the man’s face.

  �
��They have slain the Pope’s legate. God have mercy on them, for the Church knows little of that virtue.”

  Tristan remembered the wild cry in the woods, the fight by the bridge, the slain man whose horse he had taken. There was new significance in the scene to him. He questioned the leper as to the churchman’s end.

  “The old tale,” he said. “The priest trifled with a certain knight’s daughter, whose tower stands westwards towards the sea. There was quick vengeance afoot. The knight and his men followed fast after the legate’s company, ambuscaded them, and put the whole rout to the sword.”

  “By God,” said Tristan, smiling in his eyes, “they were well served for the deed. I would have slain the Pope for a less dishonour.”

  They had passed a league or more in company, and were crossing a heath open and bleak to wind and sky. The leper reined in the horse on a sudden, climbed from the saddle, gave the bridle into Tristan’s hand. He drew his cowl down over his distorted face, and trudged on wearily, like one whose feet were weighted with despair.

  “Therefore, messire,” he said, “you may gather that there is like to be fire and sword in La Vallée Joyeuse. As for me, my lamp burns dim; I must cherish it that the good God may trim the flame at St. Ursuline’s Well. Pray for one, messire, who is often sad and heavy of heart.”

  “Friend,” said Tristan, “my prayers are yours for what they are worth. Doubt not that if strength could cleanse you, you should be fresh and clean as a new-budded rose.”

  They had come to the rim of the sandy heath, where the ground broke abruptly into rocky slopes, plunging downwards under thickets of arbutus and of pine. Four roads crossed at a spot where a great wooden crucifix stretched out its painted arms athwart the sky. The leper climbed a little knoll rising from a pool of golden broom, and pointed Tristan southwards over the scene.

  At their feet lay a great valley, a broad bowl brimming with golden light. Its depths were chequered with woods and meadows, pools set like lapis lazuli in an emerald throne. A lake lay under the shadow of the hills. Heights girded the valley on every hand, save where a river like a giant’s sword clove a deep defile through the hills.

  Tristan stood silent in the sun, and gazed at the valley under his hand. It was as a new world to him; this rich cup of the earth, brimming with the wine of beauty, sparkled with many colours in the hand of Romance. The tall heights, the blown cloud banners overhead, the dusky woods smiling and frowning alternate under the sun, these were as strange music to him, melting with many tones into the purple distance of the south.

  The leper stood at his side in silence. He had been watching Tristan’s face, with the bloom of youth thereon, pondering the while on the misery of his own hard lot. The world and the splendour thereof mocked his shrivelled and repulsive skin. As for Tristan, he seemed like a young god destined to trample down fate with the serene calm of a fearless fortune. The leper turned from the warm south with the bitterness of a man who beholds life’s pathway curling towards the grave.

  “Yonder, messire, is La Vallée Joyeuse,” he said. “The saints defend you. As for me, I wander on towards death.”

  They took leave of each other there; the leper hobbling away with eyes down-turned, his bell jangling at his thigh. Tristan, full of a great-hearted pity, watched him with a smile upon his mouth. He felt his own hale body warm to the wind, his face fresh as dew-washed grass. The man with his sores and his lonely despair loomed like a dark cloud over the sun.

  Tristan cast a last glance at him over his shoulder as he descended the road. The leper had drawn to the great cross where it towered solitary under the open sky. He had fallen on his knees at the foot thereof, and clasped the beam with his arms. He was kneeling thus when Tristan left him, clinging like a wrecked voyager to the feet of the Christ.

  CHAPTER IV

  Tristan rode on down the sandy road, pondering what the leper had told him that morning concerning Joyous Vale, how the valley lay in peril of the sword. These priests, he vowed in his own heart, were too given to meddling with the souls of others. For a few subtilties twisted from a theologian’s tongue, they would let war loose upon an innocent province, and teach with violence what they could not teach with truth. Tristan was not a man who needed the superfluous unction of a priest’s pardon.

  Rounding a great rock that overhung the road, he saw Sir Ronan’s hold smile up at him from beside the lake. About the walls and terraces rose many roofs, the ruddy hoods of many houses gathered about their giant sire. The place looked peaceful as a child asleep, bowered round with green, touched by the waters of the lake. Pastures pillared with poplars and aspens stretched towards the darker confines of the woods.

  Tristan, glad in his heart of the beauty of it all, followed the road where it plunged abruptly into a thicket of pines. There was a patient gloom under the sweeper boughs. Squirrels ran ruddy-coated up the trees, peering black-eyed at him as he passed, and gorse ringed the dark aisles with gold.

  As Tristan rode through the pine wood that day, he heard the sound of singing coming down to him upon the breeze. It was a woman’s voice that sounded through the woods, so richly that the tall trees listened and smiled under the noon sun. Tristan drew rein on the grass by the road. He had never heard such a voice before, a voice that set the welkin quivering as with vibrations of tremulous light.

  Riding on again with a smile on his face, he saw the woodland break away before the meadows of the town. The sky grew broad above the trees, and still the rich voice sounded through, now hushed, now rising like a lark towards the clouds. Tristan could catch the words of the song as he walked his horse over the spongy turf.

  Rounding a bank of furze in bloom, he saw under the shade of a cedar tree a ruined shrine grown round with thorns. Many flowers were a-bloom in the grass, and a rivulet went splashing down towards the great lake in the valley. A gradual slope heaved away from the wood, and by the shrine in the long grass a woman sat on a fallen stone, with her face turned towards the town.

  Tristan dismounted, and, having tethered his horse, he stood under cover of the bank of furze and watched the woman by the shrine. She had ceased her singing, like one whose thoughts were too deep and solemn for further song. She was sitting with her chin upon her palms, staring into the distant south. Tristan saw the curve of her neck, white and clear as the moon’s rim, the amber of her netted hair, the rich folds of her green gown.

  Now Tristan was not a woman’s man, and in Purple Isle his ugly face had won him little favour among the girls. He remembered how Grizzel, the fishwife’s child, black of eye and red of face, had mocked and taunted him on the moors, with her bare-legged wenches at her back. He remembered how he had wished them men for the sake of the clods they had thrown at his head. Yet though the woman by the shrine was as none of these, he wavered a moment behind the bank, as though half in awe of her because she was fair.

  Hearing his footsteps in the grass, she turned—and saw him, and rose up from the stone. She was as tall as Tristan, and older than he was both in face and years and in knowledge of life. Her golden hair was knotted up in a caul, her green gown dusted with violets and bordered with blue.

  She seemed to shake the thoughts out of her heart as she rose up and looked Tristan over. Yet there was no aloofness in her eyes, nay, her very soul seemed to shine therein as she stood considering his face. She smiled a little as she saw the bronzed, uncomely countenance somewhat abashed and sullen before her.

  “Would you speak with me?” she asked.

  Tristan was mute for the moment, like one whose words stumbled one against each other.

  “We are strangers,” she added, still smiling at him out of her great eyes; “is my speech foreign to your ears?”

  Perhaps it was her complete fearlessness of manner that smote Tristan from the first moment that she spoke to him. An atmosphere of stateliness seemed to surround her, an intangible magic that held him despite his strength. Though he could crush the brow of an ox with his fist, he seemed half in awe of the wom
an whose face, with all its fairness, showed no fear.

  “Madame,” he said, squaring his shoulders, “though a stranger here, your words are my words. Tristan le Sauvage is my name, and I have come from Purple Isle, over the sea. For the rest, I have a quest upon me, and I carry a sword.”

  There was a species of defiance in his voice, as though he viewed the subtler sex with a boy’s suspicions. Nor was the meaning of his mood lost upon the woman.

  Matching frankness with simplicity, she gave him welcome to the Land of the Seven Streams.

  “Friend,” she said, very openly, “welcome to Joyous Vale, you and your sword. I, Rosamunde, am the lady of this valley; you may see my husband’s tower yonder, amid the trees. Our guest table waits for strangers—who would tarry for a season.”

  Tristan thanked her, and turned towards his horse.

  “I am beholden to you,” he said, with that rough shyness which gave to his face a certain charm, “for in the Seven Streams I know no man and am known of none.”

  So, when he had taken his horse, and joined her by the ruined shrine, they passed down together over the meadows towards the town.

  CHAPTER V

  Tristan grew the more bewitched by the woman’s face as they passed on towards the lake together. The lips were thin, tinged slightly with scorn, yet very tender when she smiled. The eyes were large and of a greenish blue. There was a rich, round beauty, upon the face, the rose tint of the skin warm and sensuous as the bloom upon fruit. She was very slim where the girdle ran, but big of bosom and long of limb.

  Nor was it the beauty alone that made Tristan marvel. A sadness hovered there, a hidden meaning, that his unlettered senses failed to fathom. Mystery! Such the impress she gave to his mind, like the tragic tone of some antique woe. She seemed a woman to whom life should prove sweet. Yet she had tasted of bitterness, so Tristan thought.