‘Ah, good knight, you did well to follow me,’ turning to greet her, as her horse came panting up the steep hill.
‘A damsel lies imprisoned in that dark place, and it is foretold that only a knight with a white mantle and a white plume in his helm can deliver her. Now I think that you must be that knight, and if you have the courage to go down into that cavern as I went, you will get speech of her, as I did.’
‘I will go right willingly,’ answered Bradamante, and looked about her for some means of descending into the cavern. Near the mouth was a stout oak, and Bradamante cut off a branch with her sword and plunged it down the mouth of the cave. She gave Pinabello one end to hold fast, and lowered herself carefully into the darkness.
‘Can you jump?’ asked the count suddenly, with a laugh, and, giving the bough a push, it fell with Bradamante into the pit.
But the traitor triumphed without a cause. In the swift passage down the cave the branch struck the bottom first, and, though it broke in pieces, Bradamante was saved from being dashed against the floor, where she lay for a while bruised and shaken.
When she became used to the darkness, she stood up and looked around her. ‘There may be some way out, after all,’ thought she, noting that the cave was less gloomy than she had fancied, and felt round the walls with her hands. On one side there seemed to be a passage, and going cautiously down it she found that it ended in a sort of church, with a lamp hanging over the altar.
At this moment there opened a little gate, and through it came a lady, bare-footed, with streaming hair.
‘O Bradamante,’ she said, ‘long have I awaited you, for Merlin, who lies here, prophesied before he entered this living tomb that ages hence you would find your way hither. He bade me come from a far-distant land, and be with you at the hour when his spirit, though dead, should tell of the glories of the race that will spring from you and Roger.’
‘I am not worthy of such honour,’ answered Bradamante, casting down her eyes, though her heart beat with joy at the thought that though she and Roger might be parted now, yet in the end they would be united. ‘Let my lord speak, and I will hearken to him.’
At that a voice rose from the sepulchre where Merlin had lain buried for many hundreds of years.