Where was then the gentleman?”
They howled these words in the villages, along the roads, and over the heaths and commons. The French Jacquerie seemed to have come again with its gibbering fury, its wild lust and blood spilling; and many a woman trembled for her honour, and many a gentleman dreamt of his bloody head dancing upon a pike.
Father Merlin knew what he knew. The runners came to him carrying news, and one May morning he sought Isoult. She had taken herself to one of the empty forest lodges where two sheep and their lambs fed in the deserted orchard and a cow came to the byre gate to be milked.
It was so cold that Isoult had brought in wood and kindled a fire, and Merlin found her in the dark, black oak hall, sitting on a stool, and staring at the flames. A loose shutter banged to and fro in the wind, and the twittering of the sparrows in the thatch sounded cold and thin.
Merlin’s eyes shone out from under the shadow of his cowl. He pulled up a stool, and, spreading his hands to the blaze, spoke of the roughness of the weather.
“And yet our Rose blooms,” said he; “and the young man of the quarry, is he as cold as the wind out of the north?”
She did not look at Merlin, but her eyes were dark and set steadily towards some inward thought.
“He is—what he is.”
“Does the scent of the rose count for nothing in June? Come now, what have you seen, my daughter?”
She answered him slowly, almost grudgingly.