Fulk could see nothing stirring on the heathlands, and he turned back to the White Lodge in the valley. The day had passed quietly, and he judged that the wagon had reached Lewes town in safety, and that on the morrow Peter of Pippinford and his men would be back at the White Lodge. A frail smoke spiral went up from the louvre of the hall, and the whole valley was very still save for the singing of the birds in the oak woods on either side of the meadow. The grassland itself was a sheet of gold, and the old thorns by the great ditch were white with flower, and wondrous fragrant.
Fulk passed just within the porch to watch an owl gliding along the edge of the wood; but it so happened that he saw more than an owl. A man in a brown smock came cautiously from behind the trunk of an oak, and stood looking towards the White Lodge, shading his eyes with his hand.
Fulk, motionless in the shadowy porch, called softly to the forester whom he had left on guard in the hall.
“John, bring me my bow.”
No one answered him, and he gave an impatient jerk of the head.
“Fool, are you there?”
There was a long silence—a silence that seemed to hint at a suppressed chuckle. Fulk turned and went in, searched the hall, the kitchen quarters, the store-room and upper chambers, but found no John. The fellow had sneaked off, and fled into the forest.
Fulk took his bow and a couple of arrows from the table and passed out again into the porch. The man in brown had disappeared from the edge of the oak wood, and in his place stood a figure in a grey frock and hood, the figure of a grey friar, still as a stone figure in a niche over a church door.
Fulk fingered his chin.
“So you are there, my friend. God’s mercy, but I have been bidden to wait for you, and I will wait with a naked sword. Let us see whether any ditch-mender will dare to put a foot over this threshold.”