In the full sunlight at the opening of a glade a woman stood washing herself at a forest pool. The woman’s figure gleamed like snow against the sombre trunks of the trees. Her hair blazed about her naked body like flames licking a white tower. As yet she had not seen that line of armed men winding along the hillside not a hundred paces from where she stood.
Gaillard reined in, and held up a hand for his men to halt. He looked from the woman to the hunchback who held his stirrup strap.
“Hallo, what have we here?”
The cripple crossed himself, cur that he was.
“It is Denise of the Forest, lording,” he said. “They call her their Lady of Healing in these parts. She has a cell yonder, in the wood. She can work miracles, so they say.”
The rough faces behind Gaillard were all agog. A short, yapping laugh came from some man in the rear. Gaillard turned in the saddle, and looked for the man who had made the noise.
“Enough of that, sirs,” he said. “Shall we laugh because a saint happens not to cherish vermin.”
Perhaps curiosity pricked Gaillard, perhaps something still more human. At all events he pushed his horse forward and rode alone up the stretch of green turf that sloped towards the beech wood. The men grinned like apes so soon as his back was turned. Messire Gaillard might be a great captain, but assuredly he was no saint.
Gaillard was laughing to himself with a coarse spirit of mischief, being inquisitive as to what this woman would do when she discovered that she was no longer alone. He carried his chin high in the air, his hard eyes gleaming like the eyes of a man who has drunk strong wine. But Denise made her womanhood a thing of pride and splendour that spring morning. Her tunic was still open at the bosom when the Gascon’s horse threw a shadow on the grass close to the pool.
Denise looked Gaillard straight in the eyes, and yet not at him, but past him, as though he were so much vapour. Gaillard, Gascon that he was, had not a word to say for himself, though he boasted himself so debonair with women. Denise took her hair with her hands, put it behind her shoulders, and picking up the clean cloth that she had brought, turned and walked away into the wood.