“You are yourself again, lording.”
Bertrand kissed her, thinking of Tiphaïne, and swearing stoutly in his heart that he was beyond her scorn and pity. Arletta, red and happy, started up, and began to pile leaves and bracken into a bed beneath the tree. She made a pillow by rolling leaves up in an old tunic, and threw more wood upon the fire.
“There, lording, I have made a bed.”
She took him by the hands and dragged him playfully from the tree.
The free companions were rolling themselves in their cloaks about their fire and half burying their bodies in the litter of bracken. Only one man stood to his arms, to take his watch while the others slept. One by one the voices died down and surrendered to the silence of the forest. The clouds had broken overhead, and a young moon was shining through and through, a patch of celestial silver above the black and half-leafless branches of the trees. The sentinel, after yawning for an hour, and rubbing his heavy eyes with his knuckles, looked cautiously at Bertrand, and slunk from his post to crawl into the bracken about the fire. Under the beech-trees there was naught but a tangle of bodies, arms, legs, and snoring faces crowded close about the flames. Broceliande’s stillness was supreme. Like some forest of dreams, she seemed to hold these sleepers in her magic power.
Three hours or more had passed when Arletta started awake with a low cry and sat up in terror, her hands on Bertrand’s chest. She had been dreaming, and had thought that in her sleep strange shapes had been crowding round her in the dark. She shivered, and crouched rigid and motionless, staring as though bewitched into the depths of the gloom about the fire.
“Bertrand, lording, wake—wake!”
She tugged in terror at Bertrand’s arms as he lay beside her on the leaves and bracken. The horses were whinnying, stamping, and snorting under the trees where the men had tethered them. Arletta’s eyes were fixed on two dots of light that stared eerily at her out of the dark.
Bertrand awoke, grumbling and yawning, and clutching at Arletta with his arms.
“What, the dawn already?”