“When the thorns are white, and the larks sing
High in the blue sky over the fields.”
Heavens! how cracked and shrill her voice sounded! She stopped as though the sound of it frightened her, and threw the lute aside in mute disgust. Ah, that something would happen, that a storm would come, anything but this autumn mist, this silence, these dripping trees! Why should she not take Fate by the throat and go forth into the darkness of Broceliande? There were wolves in the forest, but were they more horrible than the Black Death? There were thieves—and footpads. Yes, but even a knife would be better than the pest’s slow torture.
She turned suddenly to a table of carved oak that bore a small basin of black marble. The bowl was half filled with water, water that reflected the colored hangings and the beams and plaster-work of the ceiling. Tiphaïne bent over the bowl and looked into the spirit mirror. She knew something of magic, and had dabbled her white hands in the mysteries of the age. Muttering certain words that had some deep meaning according to the strange old book the girl kept locked in the chest at the bottom of her bed, and shading the water with her hands, she looked into it till the pupils of her eyes were wide as in the dark. For a long time she stood there gazing into the bowl, while it remained pictureless, showing nothing but her white face and her weary eyes. At last she seemed to be blessed with a vision, for her features sharpened and she breathed more rapidly, like one troubled by some sudden warning. In the bowl Tiphaïne could see the image of men riding, the glimmer of their armor like moonlight upon the sea.
VIII
“Guicheaux, you have ridden Broceliande before; is not that a tower yonder, rising above the trees?”
Guicheaux, a lean fellow with a face like a hatchet, heeled his horse forward and followed the pointing of Bertrand’s spear.
“It looks like stone, lording,” he said.
“Well, and what then?”
“Why, lording, it will be something to crack a nut upon,” and Guicheaux chuckled, unconverted ribald that he was and the quipster of the party.