The muffled beat of hoofs ceased by the wood where stood the lodge built of faggots. The snow was virgin about it, and the man turned his horse towards the wood, swung out of the saddle, and began kicking the snow aside as though to give the beast a chance of cropping the grass. Taking wine and meat from a saddlebag, he brushed the snow from a log that lay outside the lodge, and sat down to make a meal.
And as he sat there in the sun he talked to his horse, and gave the beast some of the bread from his own breakfast. The horse nosed against him like a dog, its breath steaming up into the frosty air, its eyes the colour of sapphires seen against the snow. And there were no sounds save the man’s voice, the breathing of his horse, and the dripping from the boughs as the snow thawed in the sun.
In due course the man remounted, and rode off down the road with the morning sunlight upon his face. Cowering on the bracken in the lodge Denise lay dazed, and weary, hands and feet numb with the cold. She had prayed to God that the man might not enter the place, and find her there on her bed of bracken. He had been so near to her that she had been able to hear the sound of his breathing, and even the breaking of the crust of the bread.
Beside her on the bracken lay a white thing that neither moved nor uttered a cry. Denise lay and stared at it, half with dread and mute wonder, half with a passion of primeval tenderness that was too deep for tears. And as Aymery rode away from her into the morning, she kept her vigil beside that innocent thing that did not whimper and did not move. The snow and the secret silence thereof seemed part of her life that morning, and the eyes of the world were full of a questioning mist of tears.
CHAPTER XXIII
Aymery went riding southwards over the snow, a cloak of furs over his harness, and the leather flaps of his steel cap turned down to cover cheeks and ears. He rode alone, for though the gilt spurs were at his heels, his purse saw little of the colour of gold, and his horse and his arms were all that he had.
There was peace in the land that January, for men had put up their swords, and delivered their quarrel into the hands of the King of France. It was the month of the Mise of Amiens, when Louis, Saint and King, sat to judge between Henry of England and his people. Men trusted in that Holy Heart, that Flame of Sacred Chivalry, that had brought peace to France, and given God martyrs on Egyptian sands. But Louis was a King judging between a King and turbulent towns and still more turbulent barons. Nor was it strange, therefore, that a saint, from whose mouth should have sprouted an olive branch, hurled back over the sea a two-edged sword.
A truce had been called, and with the sheathing of his sword, Aymery had seized the chance and the time to ride southwards into Sussex. Goldspur manor house was a black ruin, but the manor folk were there, with Grimbald to see that an absent lord was not forgotten. No forfeiture had been proclaimed, and Aymery had saddled his horse Necessity, and ridden to see whether his villeins and cottars were honest men. Aymery had left no steward over them, but Grimbald was more to be trusted than any steward; no one would play him any tricks.
Aymery’s road ran a devious way that January morning, the road of a man who galloped ten miles out of his path for the glimpse of a woman’s face. And Aymery rode wilfully towards Battle, though Goldspur lay over and away beyond the white hills in the west.
About noon Aymery let his horse take his own pace up the hill from Watlingtun. The slope of Mountjoye seemed one sweep of virgin snow, and Aymery, looking for Denise’s cell, marked it out above the thicket of oaks where he had kept his vigil that summer night. When he came to the place where the path should turn aside from the road, he saw a muddy and much trampled track leading over the snow towards the cell with its hedge of thorns. It looked to Aymery as though the whole countryside had made a pilgrimage to Denise of the Hill. He followed the path in turn, giving Denise her glory with the sadness of a man who cherishes an impossible desire.