“I choose.”
“Now,” cried Foulque, choking, “by the soul of our father, little lacks but I call Sicart and Jean and have you down into the dungeon! You are too untamed—you are too untamed!”
“In your dungeon,” said Garin, “I would think, ‘How like is this to abbey cell and cloister!’”
A silence fell. Only mistral whistled and eddied around the black tower. Then said Foulque tensely: “What has come to you? Two nights ago I saw you ready to put your hands in those of Holy Church—” He broke off, facing the man from the tower top, framed now in the great door.
“Horsemen, my masters!” cried the watchman; “horsemen at the two pines!”
Foulque flung up his arms. “He is coming! Mayhap he will work upon you—seeing that a brother cannot! Let me by—”
Garin stood at the window watching the abbot and the twenty with him—ecclesiastical great noble and his cowled following—stout lay brothers and abbey serfs well clad and fed—the abbot’s palfrey, sleek mules and horses—all mounting with a jingle of bits and creaking of leather, but with a suave lack of boisterous laughter, whoop, and shout, the grey zig-zag cut in the crag upon which was perched Castel-Noir. When they were immediately below the loophole window, he turned and, leaving the hall, went to the castle gate and stood beside Foulque.
When Abbot Arnaut and his palfrey reached them he sprang, squire-like, to the stirrup, gave his shoulder to the abbot’s gloved hand. When the great man was dismounted, he knelt with his brother for the lifted fingers and blessing. The abbot was marshalled across the court to the hall, followed by those two from Saint Pamphilius whom his nod indicated. Jean and Sicart disposed of the following. Foulque’s anxious drill bore fruits; everything went as if oiled.
Mistral still blew, high, cold and keen. “Have you a fire, kinsman?” cried Abbot Arnaut. “I am as cold as a merman in the sea!”
Foulque made haste. The torch was at hand—in a moment there sprang a blaze—the hangings from Genoa were all firelit and the great beams of the roof.