CHAPTER II
A woman it was, and a very angry one at that: breathless, a little frightened, yet whole-heartedly defiant. She sat up, feeling her throat that had felt the grip of Fulk’s fingers, and looking about her in the darkness for the bow she had dropped in the scuffle.
Fulk had his foot on it, and since it would bear witness against her at the swainmote, and might be dangerous if left too near an angry woman’s hand, he picked it up and broke it across his knee. Moreover, he was as angry as she was, but with the cold, dry anger of a man who could not wholly escape from feeling a fool. It was so dark under the yews that he could see next to nothing of the creature that he had captured, nor could he tell whether she was young or old, mean or gentle.
She half lay against the bank, making a little moaning sound, one hand clutching the hilt of the knife at her girdle. Her eyes were two great black circles, her lips thin with scorn and pain. Fulk stood and waited, wondering who the devil the woman might be and whether he had handled her very roughly.
She did not speak for awhile, but lay there like a snake in the grass, ready to strike at him with the naked steel. Neither of them moved. The moon came from behind a cloud, and a stroke of light slashed the woman’s figure and glimmered on the blade of the knife.
Fulk saw it, and for the moment it stabbed a half contemptuous pity into him.
“You can put away that bodkin. How was I to know?” he shrugged laconically. “Seven deer lost in three weeks. The forest’s full of rogues and trailbastons, and folk who go out with bows by moonlight——”
She put the knife back into its sheath, and shook her hood back from her shoulders.
“Your fingers bit like the teeth of a dog. For being a clown and a fool, you can let me go, just where I desire.”
Her touch was a little imperious, and it was hawk hovering against hawk.