Denise lifted her head and looked at him. A rose tendril had hooked a thorn in the cloth of her cloak. And to Silvius as he gazed down into the questioning brown of her eyes, that thorn seemed to point a moral.
“I come as a friend,” he said, hiding his curiosity behind smooth kindness. “Silvius the almoner of the Abbey of Battle.”
“I have heard of you, Father,” she answered him.
Silvius smiled, as though there were no such thing as spite and gossip in the world.
“May my grace fly as far as yours, Sister,” he said. “You are wondering why I have ridden hither? Well, I will tell you. It is because of the rumours of violence and of bloodshed that have come to us. Even here, I see that you have not been spared.”
He looked about him gravely, yet with no inquisitive, insinuating briskness. His eyes travelled slowly round the circle of the broken fence, and came to point at last upon Denise.
“I have come with brotherly greetings to you, Sister, from Lord Reginald our Abbot. All men know what a light has burnt here these many months upon the hills. It is a holy fire to be cherished by us, and all men would grieve to see it dimmed or quenched.”
After some such preamble he began to speak softly to Denise, for he was a good soul despite his shrewdness, and the woman’s face was like a face out of heaven. He put the simple truth before her, speaking with a devout fatherliness that betrayed no subtler motive. Peace should be hers, and a sure sanctuary, roof, clothes, bed, and garden, and a daily corrody from the Abbey. The times were full of violence, lust, and oppression, and Silvius feared for those far from the protecting shadow of some great lord or priest. At Battle she should enjoy all the sweetness of sanctity; she should have even her flowers there, and he waved a hand towards the ruinous garden.
Denise listened to him with a pale and unpersuaded face. Perhaps a flicker of distrust had leapt up at first into her eyes. But the monk’s simplicity seemed so sincere a thing that she put distrust out of her heart.
When he had ended, she looked towards the woods in silence for a while, and Silvius made no sound, as though he reverenced her silence, and understood its earnestness.