CHAPTER XXXI
Dawn came and Fulk awoke, to see through the arch of the doorway where the steps went down into the hall, the rays of light striking in through the narrow windows. Everything was very still. He arose noiselessly, and going down into the hall, went out through the great doorway into the garden.
A curtain of mist covered the mere, though the tops of the willows were glimmering in the sunlight. The roses were laden with dew, and the grass about the sun-dial was a carpet of silver grey.
The delight of the dawn stirred in his blood, the still, stealthy freshness of it all, the mystery, the moist perfumes. He went down to the mere’s edge, where the water lay black and still under the mist. The lure of the still water drew him. He stripped, hanging his clothes on a willow, and climbing into the stern of the barge, took his plunge thence, and came up in the thick of a ring of ripples.
Isoult had heard Fulk stirring. She dressed, and came out with her hair hanging about her, to find his sword lying beside the bed he had made himself outside her door. She picked it up, and pressed the blade to her lips.
“Keep troth—ever.”
She, too, passed out into the garden, and saw the waters of the mere troubled by some strong thing that delighted in its strength. Fulk had circled the island thrice, and a beam of sunlight broke through the mist and shone on his head and shoulders as he came swimming round the willows.
Isoult stood there, holding his sword, her black hair hanging about her like smoke. And as he came near she began to sing.
“Wine and bread and honey sweet;
Sticks for the bakehouse, spits for the meat,
Spices and cakes and cups of gold,
And good ypocrasse to keep out the cold!”
He turned on one flank, and saw her in the thick of the white mist.
“Isoult!”
“My hawk can swim as well as fly! I, too, can swim—perhaps as fast as you, friend Fulk.”
“Perhaps faster. How didst sleep?”
“With good dreams. And now I am thinking that my lord will have a hunger.”
“As big as my love.”
“I must see to it.”
She returned to the house, and Fulk climbed out, dried himself by rubbing his limbs and body with his hands, and put on his clothes. He heard Isoult singing.
“I took my man a cup of wine,
For he is gay, and he is mine,
Sing, birds, sing;
The dawn is in,
With dew upon the heather.”
Her voice stirred the deeps in him, and he stood motionless by the water’s edge, watching the mist-blurred sun heaving up over the edge of the world.
They were boy and girl together that day, playing at life with laughter holding the hands of love. There was bread to be baked, a fat fowl to be chased and caught in the yard, herbs to be gathered, a fire to be lit under the great brick bake-oven. Fulk carried in faggots and lit a fire, both under the oven and under the black pot that hung on the chain in the cook’s chimney. He left Isoult dabbling her hands in flour, and went to water and feed the horses, turning them out afterwards into the orchard where the hoar apple trees wriggled their boughs against the blue. In a loft over the stable he found a couple of bows and a sheaf of arrows, and he took them back with him into the kitchen.
Isoult was putting her bread into the oven, handling the long iron shovel that bakers use.
“Woodman, more faggots. I will teach you to shoot—when I have shown you how to bake.”
He laughed, and thrust in more wood.
“I caught you once with a bow, Isoult!”
“Ah! I have not had vengeance for that! I can ride with you, swim with you, shoot with you. Not too high in the stirrups, my friend.”
“I will shoot you a match for love.”
“The boy with the bow is blind!”
Fulk went across in the boat that afternoon and set up an old smock he had found in the stable, on a stake thrust into the bank. He and Isoult stood by the sun-dial, and shot at the mark in turn. Isoult’s first arrow flew over and stuck in the grass. Fulk’s struck the stake and broke.
She turned and laughed.
“Now your head is in the air! I will shoot the smock off the stake before you will.”
He watched her bend her bow, her face intent, her eyes steady. The bow string sang. He saw the arrow strike the smock and jerk it off the stake as though a hand had snatched it away.
Her dark eyes teased him.
“That was a brave shot.”
He laughed with her and for her, his pride of love mounting.
“What a mate for a man! When we go adventuring you shall carry the bow.”
Towards evening they put out in the boat, Isoult with her lute, Fulk sitting in the prow and handling the pole. He let the boat drift, giving an occasional thrust with the pole, so that they moved from the willow shadows into the sunlight, and from the sunlight into the shadows. Sometimes Isoult sang, but more often they were silent, knowing that their eyes could say all that their lips could have uttered.
Neither of them saw a grey thing crawling through the long grass towards one of the thickets that touched the very edge of the mere. The crawling figure reached the tangle of hazels and hollies, wriggled through, and, rising on its knees, peered cautiously over the water.
The boat had drifted close to the willows that grew on the farther bank. Fulk was leaning forward over the pole, Isoult touching the strings of the lute. The evening sunlight played upon the water, dappling it with gold between the network of shadows.
Merlin’s hand went to the knife at his girdle.
“Fools, have you forgotten me?”
He knelt there among the hazels, biting his nails, black jealousy in his blood.
“I bide my time, Master Fulk; I bide my time.”
And that night Fulk again slept across Isoult’s door, his naked sword beside him. But no one crossed the water. The moon shone on it, and there was not a ripple.