The man on the black horse had beaten Gaillard’s fellow out of the saddle. He slid down his horse’s belly, a dishevelled figure with limp arms and fallen sword. One foot had caught in the stirrup, and the horse took fright, and cantered off through the wood, dragging the body after it.
The knight watched the body go sliding over the grass, tossing its arms as though in grotesque terror. He turned his horse, and rode back slowly towards the two women, and they saw that he carried a hawk’s claw in gold upon a sable shield. His surcoat was a dull green, a colour that was not too crude and conspicuous for forest tracks. The great helmet, with its eye cleft in the shape of a cross, hid his face completely.
Marpasse, impetuous wench, ran forward and kissed the black muzzle of his horse.
“Lording, good luck to you,” and her blue eyes laughed in her brown face, “never were distressed damsels in greater need. King Arthur’s gentlemen were never more welcome.”
The man did not look at Marpasse, but at Denise. She was leaning against the tree trunk, her hair hanging about her shoulders like red light, her face a dead white by contrast. Her brown eyes had a feverish look, and she still held Marpasse’s knife in her right hand.
The man on the black horse waved Marpasse aside with his sword. And there was something about the silent, massive figure with its iron mask that made Marpasse move back.
“Go yonder, and watch,” he said, pointing towards the outskirts of the wood.
“But, lording——?”
“Go. Is my blood the blood of that dead thing yonder!”
And Marpasse, who had obeyed very few people in her life, obeyed him without a word.