Merlin had had this bolt-hole guarded, and Fulk closed the shutter and went back into the gallery, where Isoult kept watch behind the two oak chests.
CHAPTER XXXVII
They brought a settle out from the solar, and setting it against the wall, made ready for a night’s vigil. Since the last torch had gone out the place was in utter darkness save for one patch of moonlight at the far end of the hall.
Fulk pulled off his right gauntlet, and felt for Isoult’s hand.
“Try to sleep. Why should two keep watch?”
“Then it is you who should sleep.”
“By my love, do you think that I could sleep to-night? There will be some devil’s work to be baffled.”
They sat close together like two children, listening for any sound, for the night had grown strangely silent, and silence told them nothing, save that there was danger near.
An hour passed before Fulk and Isoult heard a sound of stirring in the darkness. Voices spoke in undertones, and there was the crackling of brittle wood. There was movement down yonder in the hall, a kind of groping movement that came nearer and nearer. Fulk stood ready behind the barricade made of chests, thinking that Merlin’s men were crawling up the stairway, but it was a subtler attack that they were preparing.
A faggot was thrown down with a crash at the foot of the stairs. They heard men running. More faggots were carried in and piled in a heap that covered the dead men and the wrecked furniture. The darkness hid them at their work, though there was just one patch of moonlight where the doorway of the hall opened, and Fulk could see nothing more than the suggestion of shadows coming and going across this patch of moonlight.