Soon, however, Gaillard grew very silent, save for a sudden and spasmodic oath. To Denise there seemed nothing in the world but two strong men lashing at each other from the backs of two ever moving and circling horses. Then in the thick of the clangour, and the heavy breathing, she heard Gaillard give a sharp, fierce cry, the cry of a strong man cut beneath his harness. A horse swerved, stumbled, and rolled over. Whose, Denise could not tell for the moment, in the whirl of the tussle, and the darkness.
It was Gaillard’s horse, but he was free of the beast, up, and no longer the complacent sworder, but a man fighting with the valour of a beast that fights to live. He blundered against the other’s horse, grappled a leg, and twisted Aymery out of the saddle. They were on foot now, still close to her, dodging, striking, circling round and round. Denise could hear the sound of their breathing above the rattle of blows, and the dull rustling of feet.
Then she saw a man stumble, jerk forward, and recover though cut across the shoulders with a sword. A head was bare, the great helmet had fallen, and a white face showed in its stead. Denise knew Gaillard by his greater height. His shield was up, sure as a pent-house at the foot of a wall, and Denise would have crushed that shield had the power of a Greek goddess been hers that moment.
Gaillard had blood on his face, she saw the dark smirch thereof above the eyes and down one cheek. A broken shield was thrown aside, Aymery’s, and fell like a dead crow with flapping wings into the grass. Gaillard sprang on him. There was a meeting of swords, a moment’s locking of the blades, a swift up-thrust by the one that first broke free. Again Denise heard that great cry of Gaillard’s with more of the roar of the wild beast in it than before.
He rolled from side to side as though drunk, and then throwing aside his shield, made a blind and blundering charge with an upheave of the sword. Aymery sprang to the right with a twist of the body, using that swing of the body for the sweep of the counter-blow. Gaillard sprawled, spun round, caught Aymery’s ankle, and dragged him to earth. For a while there was a confused struggle in the grass. Denise heard a man groaning, and straining like a giant trying to lift a rock that is crushing him into the ground. Then there was the sharp sound of steel wrenching its way through steel. The end had come, and one of the men lay still.
Why the horror of the thing should take possession of her as it did Denise did not consider. She saw the wood, dark, cool, and still, before her, and fled into it, seeing nothing but hearing ever Gaillard’s cry. And though she fell often, stumbling against the great trees in the darkness, she ran like one without reason, not noticing whether anyone followed, and that the silence of the place closed on her like water over a stone.
CHAPTER XLII
From a chance word that Marpasse let fall while they were burying Isoult, Grimbald discovered all that she knew concerning Aymery and Denise, and he made her tell the story. Marpasse had been breaking up the ground with a sword, and Grimbald using a shield for a shovel, scooped a shallow trough for the body wrapped in its scarlet surcoat. That labour together over the grave, and the way Grimbald made her talk of herself and Denise, brought Marpasse and the parish priest to a sudden sense of comradeship.
With Isoult laid to rest they trudged off together to Lewes town, but could gain no sure news of Aymery there, though Grimbald found a Sussex man, Geoffrey de St. Leger, who swore that the Knight of the Hawk’s Claw had ridden in that last charge against Prince Edward’s company. Grimbald and Marpasse had already searched the ground in the dusk without coming upon Denise’s grey gown. A truce had been called, and torches were moving to and fro over the battlefield like corpse candles in the darkness.
The parish priest and the bona-roba watched the night out under a hedge, and Marpasse fell asleep while Grimbald watched. They were up before dawn, however, and breaking bread as they went, they searched the scarred track along which Simon’s knights had ridden in pursuit of the flying royalists. Grimbald bent over many a body in the twilight, and though there were women lying dead and stiff upon the grass, Denise was not among them, nor did they find Aymery among the slain.