“The Prioress is named Ursula,” said Marpasse, “and she is a good woman, though that may be worth little. They may know something of leech-craft.”
Aymery mounted his horse, and Marpasse lifted Denise, and gave her into the man’s arms.
“While the torch flickers there is light, lording,” she said; “God grant that she may not die on the way.”
They set off through the April woods, Aymery with Denise lying in his arms, Marpasse walking beside the horse, a Marpasse who was solemn and pensive, and unlike her ribald self. Aymery hardly glanced at the woman who walked beside the horse, for his whole soul was with Denise, Denise so white and silent, with the death shadows under her eyes. Her hair lay tossed in a shining mass over Aymery’s neck and shoulder, and he held her very gently as though afraid of stifling those feebly drawn breaths. Sometimes he spoke to his horse, and the beast went very softly as though understanding Denise’s need.
They came out of the wood and found themselves on the edge of a valley, a green trough threaded by a stream running between meadows. Marpasse stood looking about her for some familiar tree or field or the outline of a hill. They saw smoke rising in a blue column from a stone chimney behind a knoll of trees. Marpasse’s eyes brightened. They had stumbled on the very place that she sought.
“The luck is with us, lording,” she said, “I will come with you as far as the gate. But a devil’s child may not set foot on so godly and proper a threshold.”
She spoke a little scornfully, and Aymery looked down at Marpasse as though he had hardly noticed her before. She had been a mere something that had moved, and exclaimed, and acted. Of a sudden he seemed to touch the humanism and the woman in her.
He bent over Denise, and then looked again at Marpasse.
“She is yet alive. How did you two come together?”
Marpasse had not discovered yet why Denise had used the knife, though Aymery had saved her from Gaillard’s men. But Marpasse had her suspicions.