“Come,” said the man called Guy, “if there be life left in her, we must hasten to Sir Peter before it be extinct.”
“I leave ye here,” said the little old man. “My part of the business is done.”
And so he sat watching them until they had disappeared in the forest toward the castle of Colfax.
Then he rode back to the scene of the encounter where lay the five knights of Sir John de Stutevill. Three were already dead, the other two, sorely but not mortally wounded, lay groaning by the roadside.
The little grim, gray man dismounted as he came abreast of them and, with his long sword, silently finished the two wounded men. Then, drawing his dagger, he made a mark upon the dead foreheads of each of the five, and mounting, rode rapidly toward Torn.
“And if one fact be not enough,” he muttered, “that mark upon the dead will quite effectually stop further intercourse between the houses of Torn and Leicester.”
Henry de Montfort, son of Simon, rode fast and furious at the head of a dozen of his father’s knights on the road to Stutevill.
Bertrade de Montfort was so long overdue that the Earl and Princess Eleanor, his wife, filled with grave apprehensions, had posted their oldest son off to the castle of John de Stutevill to fetch her home.
With the wind and rain at their backs, the little party rode rapidly along the muddy road, until late in the afternoon they came upon a white palfrey standing huddled beneath a great oak, his arched back toward the driving storm.
“By God,” cried De Montfort, “tis my sister’s own Abdul. There be something wrong here indeed.” But a rapid search of the vicinity, and loud calls brought no further evidence of the girl’s whereabouts, so they pressed on toward Stutevill.