“Lies fathoms deep in the lake,” he said.
“Ah, Tristan, you have served me well.”
“I should have served you better, madame,” he said simply, “if I had been in Ronan’s tower before the Bishop.”
She mouthed a sudden “hist” into his ear, her arms tightening so that he could feel the rising and falling of her bosom. The warm perfume of her breath rose about his face. Half a score of mounted men had rounded the angle of the road. They sighted Tristan and Rosamunde on the rim of the wood, saw the deserted litter, the dead men in the road. They were at full gallop instanter over the grass, swords agleam, lances pricking the blue, while the hot babel of their tongueing echoed through the valley. Tristan, with a grim twist of the mouth, heeled on his horse and took to the woods.
The great trees overarched the pair, and beams of gold came slanting through. The grass was a deep green under the purple shadows. Through the silence came the dull thunder of hoofs, as the men racketed on, swerving and blundering through the trees. They rode faster than Tristan with his delectable burden, and the distance dwindled betwixt the pack and the chase.
Rosamunde was looking back over her shoulder, her hair shimmering and leaping with the breeze. The black boughs hurried over her head; the trunks seemed to gallop in the gloom. She could see steel flashing through the wood, like meteorites plunging through a cloud. Her fear was for Tristan as they threaded on, and she tightened her arms round him, spoke in his ear.
“Tristan,” she said, with her chin on his shoulder.
He hardly so much as turned his head, for his eyes were piercing the shadows before him.
“Tristan, set me down,” she said. “They will take us both; better one than two.”
“Hold fast, or you will fall,” was all he retorted.