“Everything—and nothing.”
“So! My hands fastened these thongs on you?”
“It may be.”
She bent over him with sudden vehement fierceness.
“Fulk Ferrers, look at me.”
Isoult’s face was so close to his that he could feel her warm breath upon his mouth. The daylight had gathered, and her hair was like a black cloud, her face the moon, and the red of her lips was the dawn. Moreover, her eyes held his as desire challenges desire, or as a sword presses upon a sword.
“Look at me. Am I a cut-throat jade, Merlin’s creature? By my maidenhood, I should not be here an I were. Listen. The truth may say that you are a bastard brother to the King, that you are as like as two apples, that you may serve as well as he. I say it may be so, else why should Merlin be so venomously wise? As for you, you say that you have chosen. Good. But I too have a choice to make; the hands you mistrust might unfasten the bonds that bind you!”
He looked up at her with a half-sullen fire in his eyes.
“Call me a bastard, and the mother who bore me a ——. No, by God, I’ll not put my lips to it! Let that truth stick in Merlin’s throat.”
She sat back and gazed at him.