"You will not go with us," she said. "If we fail, we shall count the fault yours; if we quarrel and turn our swords upon one another, the sin is yours; if our armies lose heart, and are scattered and hewn in pieces, their blood will be on your head. But if we win," she said at the last, drawing herself to her height, "the honour of our deeds shall be ours alone, not yours."
She had raised the curtain, and it fell behind her as she spoke the last word, leaving the abbot no possibility of a retort. But she had missed her intention, for he was not a man to be threatened from the right he had planned. When she was gone, his face grew sad, and calm, and weary again, and presently, musing, he took up the pen that lay beside the half-written page.
But she went on through the outer hall to the vestibule, drawing her thin dark mantle about her, her lips set and her eyes cruel, for she had been disappointed. Beneath the idle wish to hear Bernard speak, behind the strong conviction that he must follow the army to the East if it was to be victorious, there had been the unconscious longing for a return of that brave emotion under which, in the afternoon, she had taken the Cross with her ladies. And a woman disappointed of strong feeling, hoped for and desired, is less kind than a strong man defeated of expectation.
She was alone. Of all women, she hated most to be followed by attendants and watched by inferiors when she chose solitude. Reliant on herself and unaffectedly courageous, she often wondered whether it were not a more pleasant thing to be a man than to be even the fairest of womankind, as she was. She stood still a moment in the vestibule, drawing the hood of her cloak over her head and half across her face. The outer door was half open; the single lamp, filled with olive-oil and hanging from the middle of the vault, cast its ray out into the night. As Eleanor stood arranging her headdress and almost unconsciously looking toward the darkness, a gleam of colour and steel flashed softly in the gloom. It disappeared and flashed again, for a man was waiting without and slowly walking up and down before the door. The Queen had chosen to come alone, but had no reason for concealing herself; she made two steps to the threshold and looked out, opening wide one half of the door.
The man stood still and turned his head without haste as the fuller light fell upon him. It was Gilbert, and as his eyes turned to the Queen's face, dark against the brightness within, she started a little, as if she would have drawn back, and she spoke nervously, in a low voice, hardly knowing what she said.
"What is it?" she asked. "Why did you come here?"
"Because I knew your Grace was here," he answered quietly.
"You knew that I was here? How?"
"I saw you—I followed."
Under her hood, the Queen felt the warm blood in her cheeks. Gilbert was very good to see as he stood just outside the door, in the bright lamplight. He was pale, but not wan like Bernard; he was thin with the leanness of vigorous youth, not with fasting and vigils; he was grave, not sad; energetic, not inspired; and his face was handsome rather than beautiful. Eleanor looked at him for a few moments before she spoke again.