Denise was as dazed and as exhausted as though she had been wrecked, and washed ashore half dead by some lucky wave. Her face was bruised and bleeding, her clothes in tatters, her tunic torn open so that her bosom showed. She drew her ragged clothes about her, and went unsteadily down the road, with the cries of the women still following her as she went. Denise’s pride made a last brave spreading of its wings. It carried her beyond the sound of those voices, though her feet dragged, and her knees gave under her, and a kind of blindness filled her brain.
Perhaps she struggled on for a mile or more before she turned aside, and lay down under some hazels beside the road. And as she lay there, dull-eyed, grey-faced, and still half dazed, the power to think came back like the sense of reviving pain. Horror of herself and of the world took hold of her by the throat. It was as though those women had spat upon her soul, and made her revolt from herself as from something unclean. Those mocking faces symbolised the mercies of her sister women. All those who knew the truth would scoff, and draw away their skirts. She was an outcast, a thing whose name might broider a lewd tale.
Denise was no ignorant child, but a grown woman, yet she was weak and in pain, and her very weakness made her anguish the more poignant. She lay there a long while under the hazels, not noticing the cold, nor the sodden soil, for her heart seemed colder than the frost. Life held its helpless, upturned palms to the unknown. What use was there in living? God had deserted her, and had suffered her innocence to be put to shame. She was too weary, too miserable even for bitterness or for rebellion. Inert despair had her, body and soul.
Presently a boy came along the road towards Battle, driving an ass laden with paniers full of bread. Close to the spot where Denise lay under the hazels, the ass was taken with the sulks, and stood obstinately still. The boy tugged at the bridle, shouted, thwacked the beast with his stick, but make her budge he could not. Denise sat up and watched him, this piece of byplay thrusting a wedge between her and the apathy of despair.
The boy was a sturdy youngster, with brown face, brown smock, and brown legs splashed with mud. He rubbed his nose with a brown hand, and catching sight of Denise, took her to be a beggar, and perhaps a bit of a witch.
“Hi, there,” he shouted, “give over frightening the beast.”
“It is none of my doing,” she said, surprised somehow at the sound of her own voice.
“She stopped here, none of your tricks, old lady,” said the boy.
Denise put back her hood, and the youngster stared.
“Lord,” said he, “you have been fighting, and you are not old, neither!”