A sunny morning, with white clouds banding the blue of the autumn sky, Broceliande, a sea of gold, glimmering over the silent hills. A sparkle of frost in the air, rime on the grass, brown leaves falling everywhere, the aspen leaves murmuring feebly about the black waters of the moat.
Grimness and horror still lingered about the place, despite the blue sky and the golden woods. Even the water in the moat seemed to hide within its depths dim visions of death that would make the eyes that gazed thereon dilate and harden. Memories haunted the Aspen Tower—memories of men hunting one another through dark passage-ways and chambers. Every black squint and window seemed to gape and whisper as though trying to tell of what had passed within.
Fires were burning in the aspen wood, horses cropping the grass, men building rude huts with boughs cut from the forest. Southward of the moat, in a hollow, where thorn-trees grew, three fellows, stripped half naked, were shovelling earth back into a long and shallow trench. Ever and again there was a splashing of something into the moat and a rush of water from the stone shoots draining the hall and tower. The guard-room door was barred, and two men with grounded spears were standing on duty under the arch of the gate. In the court lay piles of broken or blood-stained furniture, scraps of armor, trampled rushes. Men were going to and fro, carrying buckets which they filled at the moat.
Water in a miniature cascade was running down the stairway leading to the lord’s solar, to be sluiced about the hall with mops and brooms and swept out again into the court. In the solar itself, Bertrand, barelegged, his tunic turned up over his belt, was throwing water against the walls and swilling the floor. The whole place had a damp and sodden smell, like a house that has lain empty long after the masons and plasterers have done their work. From the gallery and the lesser solar above the gate came the sound of voices, the plash of water, the swishing of brooms.
Perched on the bed, that had been dragged into the middle of the room and stripped of coverlet and sheets, sat Arletta watching Bertrand with her restless eyes. She had her cloak over her shoulders, because of the cold, and her fingers were picking at the gaudy embroidery on her gown, as though she were brooding over some hidden grievance. There was something forlorn and pathetic in the bright colors of her clothes, the reds and greens, their superficial brilliancy. She was very miserable, was Arletta. Her heart ached as dully as her head, and her hands were blue and numb with cold. Bertrand paid no heed to her presence as he used his broom, strange weapon for his hands, and took the buckets Guicheaux and Hopart brought him.
He sluiced the last ripple of water down the stairs, stood up and stretched himself, as though cramped in the back. A strip of blood-stained linen was wrapped round his left forearm. Beside Arletta, on the bed, lay piled his armor, his shield, sword, and surcoat hanging from a peg near to the window.
Arletta opened her mouth and yawned.
“Lording,” she said.
She spoke almost in a whisper, her face pinched, her teeth ready to chatter.
“Lording!”