Yeoland's face was dead white under her hair; her mouth gaped like a circle of jet. She listened constantly. Her head moved in stately fashion on her slim neck, as she shot glances hither and thither into the glooms, her eyes challenging the world. She felt peril, but was no craven in the matter--a contrast to Jaspar, who shook as with an ague.
The harper's distress broke forth into petulant declaiming.
"Trapped," he said; "I could have guessed as much, with all this fooling. These skulkers are like crows round carrion. Shall we lose much, madame?"
"Gold, Jaspar, if they are content with such. What if they should be of Gambrevault!"
The harper gave a quivering whistle, a shrill breath between his teeth, eloquent of the unpleasant savour of such a chance. It was beyond him for the moment whether he preferred being held up by a footpad, to being bullied by some ruffian of a feudatory. He had a mere bodkin of a dagger in his belt, and little lust for the letting of blood.
"'Tis a chance, madame," he said, with a certain lame sententiousness, "that had not challenged my attention. Say nothing of Cambremont; one word would send us to the devil."
"Am I a fool? Since these gentlemen will not declare themselves, let us hold on and tempt their purpose."
Thinking to see the swirl of shadows under the trees, the glimmer of steel in the forest's murk, they rode on at a lifeless trot. Nothing echoed to their thoughts. The woods stood impassive, steeped in solitude. There was a strange atmosphere of peace about the place that failed to harmonise their fears. Yet like a prophecy of wind there stole in persistently above the muffled tramp of hoofs, a dull, characterless sound, touched with the crackling of rotten wood, that seemed to hint at movement in the shadows.
The pair pressed on vigilant and silent. Anon they came to a less multitudinous region, where the trees thinned, and a columned ride dwindled into infinite gloom. Betwixt the black stems of the trees flashed sudden a streak of scarlet, torchlike in the shadows. An armed rider in a red cloak, mounted on a sable horse, kept vigil silently between the boles of two great firs. He was immobile as rock, his spear set rigid on his thigh, his red plume sweeping the green fringes of the trees.
This solemn figure stood like a sanguinary challenge to Yeoland and the harper. Here at least was something tangible in the flesh, more than a mere shadow. The pair drew rein, questioning each other mutely with their eyes, finding no glimmer of hope on either face.