"Boughs swaying in the wind, no more."
Yeoland enlightened him.
"Tush. There"s no wind moving. A glimmer of armour, yonder, up the slope."
"Holy Jude!"
"A flash, it has gone."
They held silent under the drooping boughs, listening, with noiseless breath. The breeze made mysterious murmurings with a vague unrest; now and again a twig cracked, or some forest sound floated down like a filmy moth on the quiet air. The trees were dumb and saturnine, as though resenting suspicion of their sable aisles.
Jaspar, peering over his shoulder, jerked out a word of warning.
Yeoland, catching the monosyllable from his lips, and following his stare, glanced back into the eternal shadows of the place.
"I see nothing," she said.
Jaspar answered her slowly, his eyes still at gaze.
"A shadow slipping from trunk to trunk."
"Where?"
"I see it no longer. The saints succour us!"
Yeoland"s face was dead white under her hair; her mouth gaped like a circle of jet. She listened constantly. Her head moved in stately fashion on her slim neck, as she shot glances. .h.i.ther and thither into the glooms, her eyes challenging the world. She felt peril, but was no craven in the matter--a contrast to Jaspar, who shook as with an ague.
The harper"s distress broke forth into petulant declaiming.
"Trapped," he said; "I could have guessed as much, with all this fooling. These skulkers are like crows round carrion. Shall we lose much, madame?"
"Gold, Jaspar, if they are content with such. What if they should be of Gambrevault!"
The harper gave a quivering whistle, a shrill breath between his teeth, eloquent of the unpleasant savour of such a chance. It was beyond him for the moment whether he preferred being held up by a footpad, to being bullied by some ruffian of a feudatory. He had a mere bodkin of a dagger in his belt, and little l.u.s.t for the letting of blood.
""Tis a chance, madame," he said, with a certain lame sententiousness, "that had not challenged my attention. Say nothing of Cambremont; one word would send us to the devil."
"Am I a fool? Since these gentlemen will not declare themselves, let us hold on and tempt their purpose."
Thinking to see the swirl of shadows under the trees, the glimmer of steel in the forest"s murk, they rode on at a lifeless trot. Nothing echoed to their thoughts. The woods stood impa.s.sive, steeped in solitude. There was a strange atmosphere of peace about the place that failed to harmonise their fears. Yet like a prophecy of wind there stole in persistently above the m.u.f.fled tramp of hoofs, a dull, characterless sound, touched with the crackling of rotten wood, that seemed to hint at movement in the shadows.
The pair pressed on vigilant and silent. Anon they came to a less mult.i.tudinous region, where the trees thinned, and a columned ride dwindled into infinite gloom. Betwixt the black stems of the trees flashed sudden a streak of scarlet, torchlike in the shadows. An armed rider in a red cloak, mounted on a sable horse, kept vigil silently between the boles of two great firs. He was immobile as rock, his spear set rigid on his thigh, his red plume sweeping the green fringes of the trees.
This solemn figure stood like a sanguinary challenge to Yeoland and the harper. Here at least was something tangible in the flesh, more than a mere shadow. The pair drew rein, questioning each other mutely with their eyes, finding no glimmer of hope on either face.
As they debated with their glances over the hazard, a voice came crying weirdly through the wood.
"Pa.s.s on," it said, "pa.s.s on. Pay ye the homage of the day."
This forest cry seemed to loosen the dilemma. Certainly it bore wisdom in its counsel, seeing that it advised the inevitable, and ordered action. Yeoland, bankrupt of resource, took the unseen herald at his word, and rode on slowly towards the knight on the black horse.
The man abode their coming like a statue, his red cloak shining sensuously under the sombre green of the boughs. A canopy of golden fire arched him in the west. He sat his horse with a certain splendid arrogance, that puzzled not a little the conjectures of Yeoland and the harper. This was neither the mood nor the equipment of a vagabond soul.
The fine spirit of the picture hinted briskly at Gambrevault.
The pair came to a halt under the two firs. The man towered above them on his horse, grim and gigantic, a great statue in black and burnished steel. His salade with beaver lowered shone ruddy in the sun. His saddle was of scarlet leather, bossed with bra.s.s and fringed with sable cord. Gules flamed on his shield, devoid of all device, a strong wedge of colour, bare and brave.
The girl caught the gleam of the man"s eyes through the grid of his vizor. He appeared to be considering her much at his leisure with a keen silence, that was not wholly comforting. Palpably he was in no mood for haste, or for such casual courtesies that might have ebbed from his soundless strength.
Full two minutes pa.s.sed before a deep voice rolled sonorously from the cavern of the casque.
"Madame," it said, "be good enough to consider yourself my prisoner.
Rest a.s.sured that I bring you no peril save the peril of an empty purse."
There was a certain powerful complacency in the voice, pealing with the deep clamour of a bell through the silence of the woods. The man seemed less ponderous and sinister, giant that he was. The girl"s eyes fenced with him fearlessly under the trees.
"Presumably," she said to him, "you are a notorious fellow; I have the misfortune to be ignorant of these parts and their possessors. Be so courteous as to unhelm to me."
Her tone did not stir the man from his reserve of gravity. Her words were indeed like so many ripples breaking against a rock. The voice retorted to her calmly from the helmet.
"Madame, leave matters to my discretion."
She smiled in his face despite herself, a smile half of petulance, half of relish.
"You pretend to wisdom, sir."
"Forethought, madame."
"Am I your prisoner?"
"No new thing, madame; I have possessed you since you ventured into these shadows."
He made a gesture with his spear, holding it at arm"s length above his head, where it quivered like a reed in his staunch grip. A sound like the moving of a distant wind arose. The dark alleys of the wood grew silvered with a circlet of steel. The shafts of the sunset flickered on pike and ba.s.sinet, gleaming amid the verdured glooms. Again the man"s spear shook, again the noise as of a wind, and the girdle of steel melted into the shadows.
"Madame is satisfied?"
She sucked in her breath through her red lips, and was mute.
"Leave matters to my discretion. You there, in the brown smock, fall back twenty paces. Madame, I wait for you. Let us go cheek by jowl."
The man wheeled his horse, shook his spear, hurled a glance backward over his shoulder into the woods. There was no gainsaying him for the moment. Yeoland, bending to necessity, sent Jaspar loitering, while she flanked the black destrier with her brown jennet. She debated keenly within herself whither this adventure could be leading her, as she rode on with this unknown rider into the wilds.
The man in the red cloak was wondrous mute at first, an iron pillar of silence gleaming under the trees. The girl knew that he was watching her from behind his salade, for she caught often the white glimmer of his stare. He bulked largely in the descending gloom, a big man deep of chest, with shoulders like the broad ledges of some sea-washed rock. He was richly appointed both as to his armour and his trappings; to Yeoland his shield showed a blank face, and he carried no crest or token in his helmet.
They had ridden two furlongs or more before the man stepped from his pedestal of silence. He had been studying the girl with the mood of a philosopher, had seen her stark, strained look, the woe in her eyes, the firm closure of her lips. The strong pride of grief in her had pleased him; moreover he had had good leisure to determine the character of her courage. His first words were neither very welcome to the girl"s ears nor productive of great comfort, so far as her apprehensions were concerned. Bluntly came the calm challenge from the casque.
"Daughter of Rual of Cambremont, you have changed little these five years."
Yeoland gave the man a stare. Seeing that his features were screened by his helmet, the glance won her little satisfaction. She knew that he was watching her to his own profit, and her discovery, for the reflex look she had flashed at him, must have told him all he desired, if he had any claim to being considered observant. There was that also in the tone and tenor of his words that implied that he had ventured no mere tentative statement, but had spoken to a.s.sure her that her name and person were not unknown to him. Acting on the impression, she tacitly confessed to the justice of his charge.
"Palpably," she said, "my face is known to you."