The Seven Streams

For a night and a day Tristan le Sauvage had watched his arms before the high altar of the chapel of Purple Isle. For a night and a day he had seen the long tapers glimmering to...

The tall hills of a strange land rose athwart the deepening azure of the second dawn. Spears of light fell streaming towards the sea, glittering upon the ever-tumbling waves tha...

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. Th...

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...

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....

Many a year had passed since the rough folk of the Seven Streams had first murmured against the sleek and masterful priests whose god seemed the god of wine-bibbing and of greed...

Seven days had passed, and Tristan was still lodged under Rosamunde’s roof. Of his sister Columbe he had won no word, yet he tarried in Joyous Vale in Rosamunde’s service. The w...

Rosamunde, pale and silent, rode through the thickets that clothed the castle hill. Not a word had she spoken either to Tristan or to Isabel since she had parted with Samson in...

Tristan, made his way back to the boat, poled out from the island, keeping its black shadows betwixt him and the nearest galley. He rowed eastwards into the open cavern of the n...

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 innocen...

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 shadow...

The Bishop’s men had plucked up their tents from about the blackened ruins of Ronan’s town, and marched southwards from La Vallée Joyeuse, burning and plundering as they went. T...

Under the shade of a beech tree on the slope of a hill a man sat with a bare sword laid across his knees. On the hill-top above, half-hidden by pines, the walls of a ruined hous...

Tristan and the Heretic rode south-west towards the sea with their hundred lances aslant under the summer sky. They were as men challenging a kingdom with their swords, and they...

The ducal city of Agravale queened it in the south amid the gloom of her ilex woods and the perfumes of her pines. The city stood on the verge of a great precipice that plunged...

It was but two days after his breaking of Sir Percival, that Tristan, idling through Agravale, saw before him the open door of the great church St. Pelinore. From the gloom with...

When Tristan returned to the Bishop’s palace, he found two horses standing saddled and bridled in the inner court. One of them was Tristan’s, a raw-boned roan with one white foo...

Tristan faced Ogier for the moment as though more than tempted to hold him in defiance. He remembered, however, that the giant was worth more to him as a friend than as an enemy...

Tristan and Ogier sallied at dawn, old Nicholas ferrying them over the mere one by one. The man had recovered his wits, if not his good will, and his small eyes darted furtive g...

The first thing Tristan did after he had wiped his sword on a grass tussock and set it in his sheath was to look to the wound Ogier had dealt his horse. The animal was standing...

A stout and ungainly being appeared round a thicket of bay trees, like some stout god Pan footing it in Arcady. It was the figure of a little man with a toad-like face, protrudi...

Evening descended, and the green valley was full of golden light. Afar on the hills the great trees dreamed, dome on dome, touching the transient scarlet of the west. Ilex and c...

Tristan was astir early with the coming of the day. He passed over the stream, saddled and bridled the horses for the morning’s sally. The grass was drenched with dew; the woods...

Tristan passed back, found her asleep under the tree. He stood beside her, gazed on the sleeping face. There was silent faith in that slumber; trust in the man who guarded her h...

The fifth day towards evening Tristan and Rosamunde saw the sea, a wild streak of troubled gold under the kindling cressets of the west. Beneath them lay a valley full of tangle...

Tristan rode through the woods from Holy Guard that autumntide fierce of heart and grim of face. He held northwards for Tor’s Tower by the rugged coast that closed the western s...

In Agravale there was much blowing of trumpets, much burnishing of arms. The women of the city had drawn forth all their gay stuffs, their gold tissues and fripperies, and much...

Holy Guard towered on its great headland as on an island, fronting the surges of the sea. The abbey held the last outjutting of the coast on the side of the province of the Seve...

The night before the southern troops marched for the north, Agravale gave herself up to riot and revelry. Though it was winter, the days were warm, the townsfolk held a carnival...

It is the common fate of reformers that they inspire the enmity both of the ignorant and the self-seeking, and hence the larger portion of humanity is arrayed against them. Ruff...

Sea spray was blown upon the rocks of Holy Guard, the grey sky raved, the trees rocked and moaned upon the hills. Rain whirled with the wind. The towers and walls shook; doors c...

At Sanguelac the Tower of the Dead was lit with many cressets. Pierced with a hundred ruddy stars, it lifted its grey parapet to the sky, while the bells clashed in the belfry n...

Samson the Heretic’s death had cast Tristan into savage gloom. He had loved the man, and had learnt to lean on him as on a spiritual father, by whose warm eloquence the heavens...

Over the madhouse in the mere the noon sun had travelled, drawing the grey mists up from the meadows, glistening upon the pinnacles of the wooded hills. No wind was moving—the w...

While Rosamunde was held a prisoner in the madhouse in the mere, Tristan and the Duchess had turned back from the west and marched again on Marvail and the fords of the Lorient....

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...

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 a...

When Tristan had kept the vow he had sworn in the past over Columbe’s grave, he was as a man who had battled at night through a stormy sea, to behold once more the calm and broa...

A strange yet beautiful timidity had fallen upon Rosamunde when Tristan next darkened the doorway of the room. He had left her to Miriam’s care, and, after sending in wine and f...

The Duchess Lilias, white sinner that she was, had fled from Agravale and taken horse for the East Lands with all her men. Great fear had seized upon those in the city when the...

About the White Palace far south of the Great Mountains were pitched a thousand tents, some under the shadows of the wooded heights, others on the banks of a broad river. The pa...

Tristan was still at Agravale with some two hundred men, when a mob of peasant folk came into the city, bringing with them a lean, half-starved southron who had fled to Agravale...

Like a proud star, Rosamunde of Joyous Vale had set in the far west, over the wilds and the deep woods that stretched towards the sea. Lilias’s forsaken barge had borne her away...

All that day and the next Tristan and the Duchess rode south from St. Geneviève’s shrine, through the woods and meadows, rich with the magic of many flowers. The tall grass seem...

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 fro...

Such were the shouts that set the wild cliffs echoing as hundreds of painted shields came up the pass to meet the dawn. Above, Sir Didcart with three thousand men had fallen upo...

They bore Tristan from the shrine of St. Geneviève northwards towards Agravale and the waters of the Gloire. All one day and a night they were on the road, riding slowly, since...

It was sunset at Holy Guard, and a strong wind blew from over the sea, where the tide was low, and the sands were purpled with the shadows of the clouds. The breakers were white...

A night and a day had passed, and Tristan lived on, though the blood still flowed from his wounded side. Blanche and Rosamunde had dressed the wound with oil and wine and divers...

Bearing the casket with the veil and phial therein, Rosamunde passed out of the chapel of Holy Guard, down many a gallery and winding stair, to the room where Tristan slept. The...

Up the great stairway climbed Blanche the Duchess, with a purple cloak thrown over her shoulders and a small silver cross held in one hand. Solemnity dwelt on her face, as thoug...