Those on the bank jumped down to drag him out, though it was but to save a dead man from drowning! Merlin stood scanning the windows of the manor house, and calling to his gentry to mark them and shoot at anything that showed. And then a second arrow came flying and stuck in Merlin’s grey frock.
The barb rasped his skin, nothing more; but it had flown near enough to chasten his courage. He shook his fist at the house, and took cover in the nearest thicket, having the wit to know that Isoult owed him no mercy.
Fulk went in and found her in the loft over the kitchen, where a window overlooked the mere. She was standing well back in the room, an arrow ready on the string, her hair cast back and knotted over her neck.
“What a woman for tempting death!”
He drew her aside to where no arrow flying in at the window could touch her.
“I gave Merlin a fright. And there was the man who swam for the boat, and another after Merlin had jumped into the bushes. That makes two to my own bow.”
He held her close, looking down at her from under his raised vizor.
“God, what a mate for a man! But no more playing with death. I’ll take a bow and drive these gentry to cover.”
CHAPTER XXXV
Fulk went down to bar and barricade the door that opened from the passage leading to the kitchen quarters from the yard. He dragged all the lumber he could find in the kitchen and offices, tables, casks, flour bins, stools, and benches, and piled them in the passage way. All this gear, jammed together behind the door, would give Merlin’s men some trouble if they tried to break in on that side. Fulk remembered that he had seen a ladder hanging on brackets under the stable eaves. He went out by the hall door, and with an axe broke the ladder in pieces.