“Lording, what is good enough for you is good enough for your servant.”
Bertrand tore his cloak from his shoulders and threw it to her, peevishly.
“Take it; cover yourself up.”
“But, lording—”
“Cover yourself up, I say! Am I to let you catch your death cold because you are a little fool?”
Arletta took the cloak and wrapped it about her body. Bertrand began to pace the court, his steel clogs ringing on the stones, his sword slanting over his shoulder. And thus they passed the night together, Bertrand on guard, the girl sleeping upon the threshold.
VII
In the deeps of the forest of Broceliande stood a castle known in those parts as the Aspen Tower, from the trees that grew about the moat. The Lord of Tinteniac, who had held it long in fee, had surrendered it to the Sieur de Rohan in exchange for a manor near the western sea. The Sieur de Rohan had used the castle as a hunting-tower till some grim thing had happened in the place and a woman’s blood had dyed the flagstones of the chapel. The chattering aspens, the black moat, the rolling leagues of dark Broceliande had worked upon De Rohan’s conscience and smitten him with a dread of the lonely place. He had offered it to Stephen Raguenel, to whom he owed a certain favor. The Vicomte had taken it gladly, and garrisoned and regarnished the Aspen Tower when the Blois and Montfort wars began.
The aspen leaves were turning to gold, and their melancholy whisperings seemed to fill the valley, as though all the ghosts within Broceliande were flitting and shivering about the tower. The broad moat lay black and stagnant, reflecting the tall trees, streaked here and there with sunlight and dappled with showers of falling leaves. Though the sun was at noon, mists were hanging about the forest, a haze of faint gold dimming the red splendor of the beeches and the tawny magnificence of the oaks. A damp and melancholy stillness weighed upon the valley; even the trees seemed cold, as their gorgeous samites fluttered to decay.
There was something that suggested tragedy in the loneliness of the castle with its walls reflected in the black water and the woods rising like flame beyond its battlements. The spirit of autumn seemed to breathe in it, the spirit of sadness and of death, of mystery and of shadow. The gate was closed, the bridge up, the great grid, with its iron teeth, resting on the stones. No life stirred in the place. Nothing told that there were folk within save one thin plume of smoke that climbed feebly into the air.