Simon made ready to knight him there in the church, but Aymery begged seven days to chasten himself, keep vigils, and be blessed with his sword and shield. Simon looked at him steadily, for he was a man after his own heart, grim, resourceful, dangerously quiet, and no boaster. He granted Aymery the seven days, telling him to come to Tonbridge whither the host went towards the siege of Dover.
“God first, man afterwards,” he said. “You have chosen as I would have you choose.”
So Aymery slept that night at Guildford before the altar of the church. When the dawn came he mounted his horse, and rode southwards, alone.
CHAPTER XVIII
A man’s chivalry must have a queen to crown it with the crown of a high purpose, and Aymery had no will to forget Denise, nor the mystical beauty of her womanhood. The thought of her drew him as the Holy City drew those who had taken the cross. Since he was to be made a knight, she should bless his arms for him, and serve as a Lady who looked at him out of Heaven. Thus Aymery went riding southwards in the July heat, saying his prayers devoutly at dawn and at sunset, bathing his body when he found clear water; and filling his soul with the thought of Denise. He had broken himself to the belief that she was lost to the world, though he was still troubled as to the happenings that had driven her from Goldspur. Denise’s silence seemed sacred to him, and her unapproachableness made his love the greater. Now, like a man who has found a good excuse, he returned again to win a glimpse of her face.
Late on the afternoon of the first day Aymery turned aside from the road under the shade of an oak tree to rest his horse. Below him stretched a deep valley with the road running through it like a white thread; the place seemed very desolate, while on the farther side of the valley the woods came down close to the road. The day was full of a shimmer of gold, and no mowers had come to mow the summer grass.
As Aymery sat there under the shade of the tree, he saw a man in a blue surcoat riding a grey horse along the road below. Aymery had hardly set eyes on him when he saw the man halt, and remain motionless under the July sun that glittered on him and showed that he was armed. A woman had come out from the woods close to the road, a woman with black hair and a scarlet tunic that shone up against the green. What was passing between them Aymery could not tell, but he saw the woman disappear into the woods and the man on the grey horse follow her.
Some time had passed, and Aymery’s thoughts had flown elsewhere, when a cry rose out of the summer silence, held a moment, and then died down. Presently he saw a grey horse and a rider in blue reappear out of the woods with another horse and rider beside him. The second man wore green, and carried a plain, black shield.
Aymery saw them ride away westwards into the golden light that covered the woods and the valley. The way they rode seemed strange to him, for the horses went shoulder to shoulder, and one arm of the man in green lay about the body of the rider in blue. He was puzzled moreover by the thought of the woman in the red tunic, and the cry that he had heard, and it crossed his mind that there had been foul play yonder.
When he had mounted and come down to the place where the blue knight had turned aside, Aymery turned aside also into the woods. A little way in, under the trees where a bank rose covered with bracken, he found a track that had been trampled leading to a place where someone seemed to have lain. But he saw nothing else beyond the tree boles, the cool green foliage, and the bracken splashed here and there with sunlight. When he called, no voice answered him, so he rode out of the wood and went his way. Yet there was more in the wood than he had seen, nor did he guess that he would meet again with the rider on the grey horse.