“Thou art a good lad, and I trust thee”; and as he spoke, my Lord smiled.
True, as I swore fealty to my Lady, I little recked how soon ’t would be before I rode away behind her!
Just then the huntsman wound his horn, and we all rode out over the drawbridge and away into the bright sun and green fields a-hawking. We made a merry day of it. The hounds sped before, starting up many a creature that fled affrighted from us.
My Lady rode, not her own palfrey, which was a gentle animal but of little speed, but a chestnut mare, one specially cherished by Comte Gaston, even though she was a thought too light for his bulk.
For many a day the mare had been but exercised about the court, and being a high-mettled creature, soon grew fretted by the flapping of my Lady’s habit,—a thing to which she was ill-used.
We were pricking along at a good pace, my Lady having her hands full with holding down the mare, when suddenly from the grass at her very feet darted out a fallow deer, a little thing scarcely more than a month old. The mare started, threw up her head, and ere I knew what had befallen, had wheeled about and started off like the wind.
“Jehan,” I heard my Lady call; and turning my own horse about, I spurred him after the flying mare. On we sped; the others, passing through a copse, had missed seeing our plight.
“Hold fast, mistress,” shouted I, while I strove with whip and spur to get beside her.
Little by little we crept forward, my horse and I, and after that day I ever forbore to call him a poor thing. First his nose pressed the mare’s thigh, and then he came up with the saddle-cloth, and then a bit ahead of that, till I called,—
“Loose your foot from the stirrup, mistress.”