She heard voices behind her, and starting back into the courtyard, found herself looking into the eyes of Guy the Stallion. He carried a bloody sword over his shoulder, and some of the lowest curs from out of the city were at his heels.
“Hullo, my wench, what tricks have you been playing?”
He caught her by the bosom, and she humoured him, knowing Fulk’s peril and her own.
“Playing at hide and seek with the Knight of the Bloody Sword, O brave Sir Guy!”
She laughed in his face.
“Come. I hear the Princess is above. I have a desire to look on a Princess.”
“By cock, you shall. We’ll show her a comelier woman than herself.”
CHAPTER XXI
At Mile End Fulk Ferrers sat on his white horse, a little apart from his lords and gentlemen, who held together like desperate men expecting treachery. With the rich colours of their clothes and the glint of their harness they looked like some noble pile of plunder heaped up in the midst of a ploughed field, for the brown men of the soil in their thousands closed them in on every side.
Fulk had ridden forward thirty paces ahead of his company. He sat there on his white horse, with the peasants crowding round with their solemn, hairy faces. Imperturbable, stung to a tense audacity, he looked down at them with fearless eyes; sometimes he smiled; he knew himself their King.