"She will ride straight to High March," she said. "I know her. My lord is there. If she finds not me, she will find him, and endanger his ease. I must be there first. She must follow the paths, however they wind, because she is mounted on a heavy horse. I shall go through the brakes by ways that I know. I shall easily outwit her in the forest."
"But you cannot walk, dearest. It is many days to High March."
"I shall ride."
"What will you ride, goose?"
"A forest pony, of course."
"Will you go as you are—like a boy, Isoult?"
Alice was aghast at the possibility; but Isoult, who had many reasons for it apart from her own safety (forgotten in the sight of Prosper's), was clear that she would. Prosper she knew was the guest of the Countess Isabel, a vaguely great and crowned lady; probably he was one of many guests. "And how shall I, a poor girl, come at him in the midst of such a company?" she asked herself. But if she went with a tale of being his page Roy he might admit her to some service, to hand his cup, or just to lie at his door of a night. The real Roy had done more than this; he would never refuse her so much. So she thought at least; and at the worst she would have space to tell her message.
At noon, the forest pony captured and haltered with a rope, she started. Alice was tearful, but Isoult, high in affairs, had no time to consider Alice. She gave her a kiss, stooping from the saddle, thanked her for what she had done on Prosper's account, and flew. She never looked back to wave a hand or watch a hand-waving; she was in a fever for action. Going, she calculated profoundly. There was a choice of ways. The great road from Wanmouth to High March skirted Marbery Down (where she had watched the stars and heard the sheep-bells many a still night), and then ran east by the forest edge to Worple. It only took in Worple by a wide divagation; after that it curved back to the forest, ran fairly clean to Market Basing, thence over ridges and coombs, but climbing mostly, it fetched up at High March. It was a military road. Well, she might follow Maulfry on this road till within a couple of days of the castle; it would ensure safety for her, and a good footing for her beast. On the other hand, if she rode due north over everything (as she knew she could), she would steal at least one more day. And could she afford to lose a clear day with Prosper? Ah, and it would give a margin against miscarriage of the news by any adverse fate on either of them. Before she framed the question she knew it answered. Her road then was to be dead north across the edge of Spurnt Heath (where her father's cottage was), past Martle Brush, stained with the black blood of Galors, then on to the parting of the ways, and by the right-hand road to High March. Thinking it over, she put her journey at three, and Maulfry's at four days. Maulfry's was actually rather less, as will appear.
If all this prove dull to the reader, I can only tell him that he had better know his way about Morgraunt than lose it, as I have very often done in the course of my hot-head excursions. There are so many trackless regions in it, so many great lakes of green with never an island of a name, that to me, at least, it is salvation to have solid verifiable spots upon which to put a finger and say—"Here is Waisford, here Tortsentier, here is the great river Wan, here by the grace of God and the Countess of Hauterive is Saint Giles of Holy Thorn." Of course to Isoult it was different. She had been a forester all her life. To her there were names (and names of dread) not to be known of any map. Deerleap, One Ash, the Wolves' Valley, the Place of the Withered Elm, the Charcoal-Burners', the Mossy Christ, the Birch-grove, the Brook under the Brow—and a hundred more. She steered by these, with all foresters. What she did not remember, or did not know, was that Maulfry had also lived in Morgraunt and knew the ways by heart. Still, she had a better mount than the Lady of Tortsentier, and Love for a link-boy.
However fast she rode for her mark, her way seemed long enough as she battled through that shadowed land, forded brooks, stole by the edge of wastes or swamps, crossed open rides in fear what either vista might set bare, climbed imperceptibly higher and higher towards the spikes of Hauterive, upon whose woody bluffs stands High March. Not upon one beast could she have done what she did; one took her a day and a night going at the pace she exacted. She knew by her instincts where the herds of ponies ran. It was easy to catch and halter any one she chose; no forest beast went in fear of her who had the wild-wood savour in her hair—but it meant more contriving and another stretch for her tense brain. For herself, she hardly dared stay at all. Prosper's breast under a dagger! If she had stayed she would not have slept. The fever and the fever only kept her up; for a slim and tender girl she went through incredible fatigues. But while the fever lasted so did she, alert, wise, discreet, incessantly active. Part of her journey—for the half of one day—she actually had Maulfry in full view; saw her riding easily on her great white Fleming, saw the glint of the golden armour, and Vincent ambling behind her on his cob, catching at the leaves as he went, for lack of something better. She was never made out by them,—at a time like this her wits were finer than her enemy's,—so she was able to learn how much time she had to spare. That night she slept for three hours. As for her food, we know that she could supply herself with that; and when the deer failed her, she scrupled nothing (she so abject with whom she loved!) to demand it of whomsoever she happened to meet. She grew as bold as a winter robin. One evening she sat by a gipsy fire with as shrewd a set of cut-throats as you would wish to hang. She never turned a hair. Another night she fell in with some shaggy drovers leading cattle from March into Waisford, and shared the cloak and pillow of one of them without a quiver. Having dozed and started half-a-dozen times in a couple of hours, she got up without disturbing her bed-fellow and took to the woods again. So she came to her last day, when she looked to see the High March towers and what they held.