“I doubt whether it will ever reach the poor clown’s pocket.”
Which was true, for Jeremy Marvel lay dead on Bracknell Plain.
Before they sallied Mellis took some linen from the press for the dressing of Martin’s wounds. Moreover, a loaf of bread was useful plunder, though Martin had found bread and meat and half a spiced cake in Fulk de Lisle’s saddle-bag. Mellis also insisted on his taking the pitcher.
“Sling it to your saddle. We may bless it to-night.”
The sun was low in the west when they struck the Rondel flowing between two broad stretches of wild grassland—grassland that was all white with ox-eyed daisies. They had to follow the river for a while, searching for a ford where ruffled water marked the shallows. Mellis’s eyes were watching for a cairn of stones that had been built by a hermit a century ago to show the depth of the river in winter.
She pointed it out at last.
“I thought that I had not strayed.”
The stretch of sand below the bank was smooth and unscarred; no one had crossed by that ford for many days, and Mellis uttered a cry of relief.
“This is the nearest way to Gawdy Town, and we are the first over. We shall be there before the news of Bracknell Plain. That comes of being bred in these parts.”
They splashed across, and let their horses drink before climbing the farther bank. The grassland south of the river rose in great green sweeps to touch the wild woods east of Bloody Rood. A soft breeze sent patches of wavering green moving over the silver of the feathered grass tops and the flowers. Here and there a lark rose from its nest, or a plover went wheeling and complaining.