As yet Aymery had not spoken a word, but Silvius read his thoughts by the puzzled frown and the alert eyes.
“Ah, my son,” he went on, beginning to sneer, “you are wondering what has become of our saint.”
Aymery looked from Silvius to the flames that were leaping through the wood.
“Has death been here?”
Silvius’s eyes were netted round with cynical wrinkles.
“Assuredly your saint is both dead and alive,” he said. “Some of you gentlemen have slain the saint in her. I will not ask you, my son, whether the guilt of the sacrilege is yours.”
His sly, sneering face made Aymery’s manhood grow hot in him. He was in no temper for sardonic subtleties. Silvius saw a look in his eyes that betrayed a lust to take someone by the throat. And Silvius kept the fire between him and the man of the sword, nodding to the two servants, and hinting without deceit that they should be ready with their staves.
“My son,” he said, licking his lips; “we are burning the unclean relics of an unclean woman. If you ask me for reasons, I send you to my lord, Reginald, at the Abbey. His word is law here. I am but a humble servant in God’s house.”
Aymery looked Silvius in the eyes, and then turned on his heel, with a face like ice. He mounted his horse, and went up Mountjoye Hill at a canter, choosing to gallop at the core of the truth rather than suffer Dom Silvius to lick his lips and sneer. Nor had horse and rider disappeared below the sky line before Silvius called the two servants to him, gave them their orders, and sent them away into the town. He himself tarried there awhile, warming his hands at the fire that consumed those relics of an unsaintly saint.
When Aymery came out from the presence of Reginald of Brecon that day his face had the frozen bleakness of a winter land. He walked stiffly, almost rigidly, with nostrils that twitched, and hungered for air. The Abbey servants fell back before him as he mounted his horse at the gate. Here was a man who was not to be meddled with. His face sobered them more than the face of a leper.