“Worthy men! Where would you lodge her, Silvius?”
“There is that stone cot near Mountjoye, sir, with the croft below it. We could set up a cross there that would be seen from the road. If the maid can but work miracles here, people will flock to her; then gifts can be laid upon our altar.”
A sudden clangour of bells from the tower brought the almoner’s audience to an end. Reginald of Brecon rose, and laid aside his book.
“What does the woman say?” he asked, touching the core of Silvius’s conception.
“That, lord, must be discovered. If I have your grace in this——?”
“Go, Brother, and prosper.”
And Silvius went out noiselessly from the parlour, his hands hidden in the sleeves of his habit.
Though the may was whitening in the woods, and the blue bells spread an azure mist above the green, May was a harsh and rugged month that year, with north winds blowing, and the sky hard and grey. And Dom Silvius when he mounted a quiet saddle horse and trotted away followed by two servants, drew his thick cloak about him, and was glad of his gloves and his lamb’s-wool stockings.
Up in the beech wood above Goldspur the wind made a restless moan through the branches of the trees. Sometimes the sun struck through the racing clouds, and a wavering chequer of light and shadow fell on the thin forest grass. There was a shimmer of young green everywhere, yet the year seemed sad and plaintive as though chilled to heart by the north winds.
Denise, wrapped in her grey cloak, wandered that morning along the grass paths of her trampled garden, brooding over the wreck thereof. Here were her thyme and lavender bushes trodden under foot, or snapped and shredded by the browsing teeth of a horse. Crushed plants peered at her pathetically from the pits where hoofs had sunk into the soft soil; a bed of pansies seemed to scowl at her with their quaint and many-coloured faces, as though reviling her for having brought such barbarians to trample them. Almost the whole of the wattle fence had fallen, dragging down into the dirt the roses that had been trained to it.