“They are safe in the woods by now. Have you had view of Peter’s gentry?”
Aymery turned his horse, and shaded his eyes with his hand.
“They left the priest’s house under Bright Ling—at dawn. Waleran tried a trick there, but the dogs smelt the smoke. I saw their spears coming down the hill as I crossed the valley.”
Aymery looked towards the beech wood on the hill, his eyes flashing back the morning sunlight. The muscles of his jaw were hard and tense.
“We must bide our time, and watch them,” he said; “they are coming to make a bonfire here. They can burn every stick of the place so long as they have not meddled with Denise.”
Grimbald shifted his axe from one shoulder to the other. If ever a man had cause to be jealous of a woman, that man was Grimbald. But his heart was too warm and too well tilled to harbour such a weed. He thanked God for the good he found in the world, and did not quarrel with it because it was not part of his own halo.
“She cannot be left yonder,” he said.
Aymery still looked at the beech wood, head thrown back, grey eyes a-glitter.
“We must take cover and watch. They will be here soon, and we shall see. To-night, I will take her away.”
A gleam of spears showed in the valley, and Aymery rode off to the nearest wood with Grimbald holding to his stirrups. They saw Gaillard and his men come over the fields to Goldspur village, and Denise was not with them. Aymery’s eyes made sure of that. The Gascon found nothing but the empty hovels, the untroubled sparrows, and a black cock crowing and scratching on a dunghill. One of Gaillard’s men fitted an arrow to the string, shot the black cock through the body, and laughed at the way the bird tumbled and flapped in the death agony.