He saw Knollys’ eyes flash and harden.
“By the Three Leopards, speak out! How much do you know?”
Fulk told him the tale that Merlin had poured into his ears, and Robert Knollys listened, never moving his eyes from Fulk’s face. Their horses stood shoulder to shoulder, with the water washing under their bellies, while the armed men on the northern bank wondered why their captain tarried so long at the ford.
“The ruffian priest! And the woman saved ye, and lost her own life? That was bravely done. But look you, my friend; the truth’s writ on you in flesh and blood. You are as like the King as one bean is like another, save—this in your ear—you have something the King lacks. I judge a man by his eyes. How old are you?”
“Turned twenty.”
“And old at that. Let me think, let me think.”
He laid his right hand on Fulk’s shoulder, and, leaning forward, looked into his eyes.
“I loved the Black Prince, and I have lain across the door of his tent at night. In the French wars we were brothers in arms, and, by God! you have his eyes, the set of his head, the very turn of his shoulders. It’s damnable, marvellous!”
His grip tightened on Fulk’s shoulder.
“The King is but fifteen, and you some five years older, yet you might pass, before a crowd, for the King. That friar had quick wits! What a devil’s game, with half the country in a panic and the other half foaming like a dog gone mad. Lancaster in Scotland, Woodstock in Wales, half our best knights sailed or sailing for Spain! Fulk Ferrers, has no man ever whispered this tale to you before?”