“Break not, fail not. Keep troth, rust never.”
She gave him the sword again, and Aymery kissed it, and knelt awhile with bowed head, as though in prayer. Then he rose up out of the grass, holding the cross of the sword before his eyes.
“I would keep my vigil here,” he said. “Yonder where there is a thicket of young oaks. Before dawn, I shall be gone.”
Denise’s face was still transfigured. The realisation of her earthliness had not returned as yet.
“God guard you in the wars,” she said to him.
Aymery lifted his head, and for a moment they looked into each other’s eyes. Then he turned from her as though his own heart bade him go. And it seemed to each that they had snatched a moment of joy from that half-closed hand of life that holds more pain than gladness.
There were some children standing staring at his horse when Aymery came out from the wicket in the hedge of thorns. He paid no heed to them however, and taking his horse by the bridle, led him to the oak thicket on the hillside below Virgin’s Croft. The children ran away into the town, and told their mothers that they had seen a knight come out of St. Denise’s gate with a naked sword over his shoulder. The children’s tale-bearing caused some tattle in the Abbey town, and the Abbey servants heard it.
Thus these two, soldier and saint, passed the night within call of one another; Aymery kneeling bareheaded under the stars, with sword and shield before him; Denise pitiably wakeful in her cell, conscious of the darkness, and of that shadow of darkness that grew each day more heavy about her heart. She prayed for Aymery that night, prayed for herself, and against the future that she dreaded. They were so near to each other, and yet so utterly apart. It seemed to Denise that night that she had fled to this place of refuge, only to meet the greater bitterness and shame.
At last the dawn came, and with it the sound of a horse moving over the grass. She heard Aymery come riding up to the hedge of thorns. She saw his sword flash out against the dawn as he stood in the stirrups and called her name.
“Denise, Denise!”