They came to the door of their room, David still with them, for the place where he slept was at the end of this same passage.
“Bide here a while,” said Dick to him. “My master and I may have a word to say to you presently.”
Then they lit tapers from a little Roman lamp that burned all night in the passage and entered the room. Dick walked at once to the window-place, looked and laughed a little.
“The arrow has missed,” he said, “or rather,” he added doubtfully, “the target is gone.”
“What target?” asked Hugh wearily, for now he desired sleep more than he had ever done in all his life. Then he turned, the taper in his hand, and started back suddenly, pointing to something which hung upon his bed-post that stood opposite to the window.
“Who nails his helm upon my bed?” he said. “Is this a challenge from some knight of Venice?”
Dick stepped forward and looked.
“An omen, not a challenge, I think. Come and see for yourself,” he said.
This is what Hugh saw: Fixed to the post by a shaft which pierced it and the carved olivewood from side to side, was the helm that they had stripped from the body of Sir Pierre de la Roche; the helm of Sir Edmund Acour, which Sir Pierre had worn at Crecy and Dick had tumbled out of his sack in the presence of the Doge before Cattrina’s face. On his return to the house of Sir Geoffrey Carleon he had set it down in the centre of the open window-place and left it there when they went out to survey the ground where they must fight upon the morrow.
Having studied it for a moment, Dick went to the door and called to David.