“If I have suffered,” she said simply, “I have learnt what life is.”
“Self-martyrdom?”
His voice woke echoes that she strove to smother.
“It is God’s whim in me, perhaps, that I should prove myself. Marpasse and I will go together.”
Night had come and the glare of many fires lit the southern sky when they reached the edge of the woodland and saw the great downs black, and vague and ominous. The men were waiting under the woodshaw, and Marpasse stood rubbing the nose of her mule. She could hear voices, slow, suppressed, stricken into short, pregnant sentences like the disjointed fragments of a song struck from untuned lutes.
Denise had left her palfrey under a tree. She came out from the shadows, and taking Marpasse in her arms, kissed her.
“We go together, you and I,” she said. “No, no, say nothing to me, it is my heart’s desire.”
Marpasse held her, and was mute. She looked towards a shadowy figure on a shadowy horse, and Denise understood the look.
“I have told him, he will not hinder me in this.”
“Heart of mine, stay here in the woods. I can go alone, my carcase is of no account.”