But Gersonde shook her head. “That is all the light that is in the dark.... May I go now to look for Black Martin’s band where are Jeanne and the children? I thank you truly, Mother, for harbour and kindness.”
However they tried, no more was to be had from her, and so she was let to go. Blessed Thorn’s grey walls sank behind her.... She was tracing a circle, and before her, now not many leagues away, stood the bishop’s town where she had left Jeanne and the children.
The day was bright, the summer dressed in green and gold. She passed a grove of slender trees, a dog ran a little way beside her, far away and veiled she heard a crowing cook. The rays of light grew slant and golden. The footpath mounted, an old hound came to meet her, in a bare field beneath a thorn bush she found Gerbert the music-maker.
“Gersonde, I, too, was tired of the castle!”
“Now know I that it was music that I have been missing out of the world!”
They sat beneath the thorn, and Gersonde’s arms were about Gerbert and Gerbert’s arms about Gersonde.
The sun set. The music-maker had his cloak and the soothsayer hers. The grass was short and dry, the earth held summer warmth, the air was still. The field covered a rise of earth, islanded presently by faint streamers of mist. The moon pushed up round and golden, as though it rose above marsh, above a great river. The man and woman who had come so far lay asleep.
Morn came. They waked; he had bread in his scrip; they ate, then left the thorn tree and the islanded field. Their part of the earth turned full to the glory of the sun. They walked amid glories and splendours and blisses.... What they determined to do was to walk always thus together among glories and splendours and blisses.... When they came to consider the immediate pathway, that took them through wandering the earth together, earning and spending together. Jeanne and the children? Sooner or later they would find Jeanne and the children. Splendours and glories and blessedness....
It seemed wise, when they considered it, to keep on this road of France that led again to the bishop’s town. Rainulf the Red and the bishop were at war. It was a strong town. Rainulf was not likely to take it, though he might furiously plough and harrow the earth around. Nor could he reach two sparrows, flying there in the bishop’s shadow. It was not likely that Black Martin was still in this town. He would have moved on, going toward Paris. Yet was the town on the way to Jeanne and the children.
So Gersonde and Gerbert kept on to the bishop’s town.