“Ah,” she said, with a flash of the eye, “these valley folk are as children to me. I have no babe of my own, so the burden is honest.”
Tristan recalled such war lore as he had learnt from the rough mariners of Purple Isle. He would have served her more gladly with his sword than with his tongue. She had tempted his counsel; he bent his brows and played the philosopher.
“Madame,” he said, “I have heard men say that our fears are like hillocks seen through mist, bulking like mountains through the fog. I have found billows less big when I have breasted them. As for this land of yours, it is a maze of mountains and of woods. You can baulk your enemies, as King David baulked Saul.”
She plucked the strategy from the speech like a gem out of a casket, and played with it to her own good comfort.
“To leave our homes,” she said, “and take to the wilds. There is wisdom in the plan, and yet——”
Tristan attempted more stoical counsel.
“Better let your homes burn than your bodies,” he said. “Scattered and in hiding, you will provide no martyrs for these holy ravagers. They will return empty by their own tracks. Ten men are worth a hundred in the mountains.”
“Ah,” she said, with sudden passionate scorn, “if I could but trust my husband!”
“Trust yourself, madame,” quoth the man on the black horse.
“One staunch friend perhaps. What then?”