“Such a woman as you, my lady, should not be rash in refusing courtesies. Now, if I ask you to open yonder door?”
She tried to outstare him, but his eyes seemed to look her innocence through and through.
“Say what you please,” she said. “Men fled through the wood here before you came. But I have not meddled in your affairs.”
He tossed his head back suddenly and laughed, so that Denise saw the red roof of his mouth above his smooth, strong, shining chin.
“Sister, do they write of such things in heaven? Clerks tell us a tale that whenever a cock crowed, St. Peter was seized with a spasm of coughing. Who is it that you are hiding, yonder?”
Denise stood dumb before him. The man’s face mocked her like the face of a mocking Faun.
“I have no answer for you, messire,” she said. “Go back to those who sent you, and to your horns and your dogs.”
She turned slowly, meaning to reach the cell and bar the door, hoping the last hope that these people would ride on and leave her in peace. But Gaillard was too shrewd to be cheated thus. He struck his horse with the spurs, set him at the low fence, cleared it, and trampling the garden under foot, put himself between Denise and the cell.
“A capture, a capture!”
He laughed down in Denise’s face, as he waved his sword to those who were waiting on the fringes of the beech wood.