So he came that night, without any retinue, and habited as a forester, with a horn swung about his neck, into the unlighted hut of Rigon the forester, and he found a woman there, though not the woman whom he had expected.
“Treachery, beau sire! Horrible treachery!” she wailed.
“I have encountered it before this,” the big man said.
“Presently will come to you not Blanch but Philippe, with many men to back him. And presently they will slay you. You have been trapped, beau sire. Ah, for the love of God, go! Go, while there is yet time!” Sire Edward reflected. Undoubtedly, to light on Edward Longshanks alone in a forest would appear to King Philippe, if properly attended, a tempting chance to settle divers difficulties, once for all; and Sire Edward knew the conscience of his old opponent to be invulnerable. The act would violate the core of hospitality and knighthood, no doubt, but its outcome would be a very definite gain to France, and for the rest, merely a dead body in a ditch. Not a monarch in Christendom, Sire Edward reflected, but feared and in consequence hated the Hammer of the Scots, and in further consequence would not lift a finger to avenge him; and not a being in the universe would rejoice more heartily at the success of Philippe’s treachery than would Sire Edward’s son and immediate successor, the young Prince Edward of Caernarvon. Taking matters by and large, Philippe had all the powers of common-sense to back him in contriving an assassination.
What Sire Edward said was, “Dame Blanch, then, knew of this?” But Meregrett’s pitiful eyes had already answered him, and he laughed a little.
“In that event, I have to-night enregistered my name among the goodly company of Love’s Lunatics,—as yokefellow with Dan Merlin in his thornbush, and with wise Salomon when he capered upon the high places of Chemosh, and with Duke Ares sheepishly agrin in the net of Mulciber. Rogues all, madame! fools all! yet always the flesh trammels us, and allures the soul to such sensual delights as bar its passage toward the eternal life wherein alone lies the empire and the heritage of the soul. And why does this carnal prison so impede the soul? Because Satan once ranked among the sons of God, and the Eternal Father, as I take it, has not yet forgotten the antique relationship,—and hence it is permitted even in our late time that always the flesh rebel against the spirit, and that always these so tiny and so thin-voiced tricksters, these highly tinted miracles of iniquity, so gracious in demeanor and so starry-eyed—”
Then he turned and pointed, no longer the orotund zealot but the expectant captain now. “Look, my Princess!” In the pathway from which he had recently emerged stood a man in full armor like a sentinel. “Mort de Dieu, we can but try to get out of this,” Sire Edward said.
“You should have tried without talking so much,” replied Meregrett. She followed him. And presently, in a big splash of moonlight, the armed man’s falchion glittered across their way. “Back,” he bade them, “for by the King’s orders, I can let no man pass.”
“It would be very easy now to strangle this herring,” Sire Edward reflected.
“But it is not easy to strangle a whole school of herring,” the fellow retorted. “Hoh, Messire d’Aquitaine, the bushes of Ermenoueîl are alive with my associates. The hut yonder, in effect, is girdled by them,—and we have our orders to let no man pass.”