Fulk de Lisle rode for a mile without troubling to glance back. He was in great good humor, and trying to raise some color in the face of the girl beside him. She looked dazed, beaten, her eyes empty of all light, her hands gripping the pommel of her saddle.
“Why so sad, sweet mistress? Am I not as good a man as any fellow yonder, and better than our friend the monk? I have won you on a fair field.”
Her eyes glanced at him with furtive dread.
“I know not who you are.”
He put up his vizor and she knew him by his eyes, bold, brown, and merciless.
“Ah!”
Her frank horror angered him, and he reached out and twisted his hand into her hair.
“What! Shall I have to tame you, teach you what manner of man I am? What others have had I will have also.”
“Beast!”
Her pride rose at his challenge.
“Let me go, or I will throw myself out of the saddle.”
“And be dragged by the hair, my shrew! No, no; such tricks will not serve. I have taken my prize, and this time I shall not be balked of it.”
She knew her own helplessness, and constrained herself to try other weapons.
“Let me go. You are hurting.”
“Is the fault mine? Smile at me, you jade, and look not so sick and passionless.”
She contrived to smile, hating him the more for it.
“That’s better—much better. Why, I have taught many women to love me, but love does not last, wench; that is why men should marry for a month and no more.”
He let her go, and glancing back over his shoulder, he reined in with sudden fierceness. The white horse, checked so roughly, swerved and showed temper.
“Stand still, you beast! Hallo! what have we here?”
Mellis saw what Fulk de Lisle saw, and her face flamed like a sunset. Martin Valliant had drawn up to within a quarter of a mile of them, but he was holding his horse in and following them with a certain grim leisureliness. This eastern part of Bracknell Plain was an utter wilderness; they had left victory and defeat far behind; nothing moved over the heather.
Fulk de Lisle caught a glimpse of Mellis’s face with its shining eyes and its rich rush of tenderness. The droop had gone out of her figure, and her throat had regained its pride.
He laughed with malicious insolence.
“What is this, my lady? A beggar in a black smock? I am in no temper to give alms to-day.”
He spurred on his horse, and jerked Mellis along with him. It was his spear that had broken itself in John Falconer’s body, and he felt to see that his sword was loose in its scabbard. Mellis noticed the act, and smiled strangely. Ahead of them towered the fir woods of Amber Holt, dark and silent, like a great green cloud across the blue. Dense gloom lay behind the tall straight trunks, and bracken foamed at their feet.
She glanced back over her shoulder, and realized that Martin had no harness. He had drawn nearer, and she could see that he carried some sort of weapon on his shoulder. Fear for him darkened her eyes. What chance had he, a naked man, against this steel-coated swashbuckler with his sword and dagger?
She hated Fulk de Lisle—hated him with such intensity that he turned his head sharply and met her eyes. Even his vanity could not misread the look in them.
“So! Madame has a tender heart? You white-bosomed jade!”
He drew the white horse in, hooked an arm around her neck, and forced her face close to his helmet.
“Look in my eyes, wench. Yes, our friend can see this pretty picture. If he meddles with me I shall kill him; somewhere over yonder in the fir woods. Then we shall be alone together, you and I, and you will give me all that I desire.”
She strained away from him.
“Beast! Be not so sure!”
He laughed.
“What—a fool of a monk with a club! I know that sort of clumsy savage. It will be mere murder.”
But she would not betray her fear.
“Have it so. Strange things happen—even to kings.”
Martin saw all this, and his wrath blew like a north wind. He had guessed the name of the red knight and knew the man with whom he had to deal. It would be no easy business, setting about this notable sworder and captain with nothing but a green holly stake, but somehow Martin had no doubts as to how the battle would end. His cold fury was so intense and so fanatical that it resembled a fate that was not to be stayed or turned back.
Fulk de Lisle and Mellis were nearing the fir woods, and Martin put his horse at a canter and drew up within fifty yards. De Lisle had no spear; that was something in Martin’s favor, though his long sword would be deadly enough in so strong and cunning a hand. Martin had a shrewd notion as to how he ought to fight the man; if he could dismount him and get to close grips De Lisle’s heavy armor would make him clumsy and slow.
The shadows of the firs swept over them, and they were in among the crowded trunks, riding down a narrow track that seemed to lose itself in the distant gloom. Martin drew closer, teeth set, his heavy truncheon ready on his shoulder.
Fulk de Lisle turned in the saddle and looked back at him. He had drawn his sword.
“My friend, be warned in time. Turn back, or I shall kill you.”
Martin said never a word, but drew closer, his eyes shining in a dead-white face.
De Lisle had every advantage, but there was a woman at his side, and he did not respect her courage or her hatred as he should have done. The white horse was close to his, and of a sudden Mellis twisted sideways, threw her arms about De Lisle’s body, and held to him desperately.
“Martin—Martin!”
Martin kicked his heels into his horse’s flanks, leaning forward and swinging his club. De Lisle had got an arm around Mellis’s body. He dragged her around on to his knees, struck her savagely in the breast with the pommel of his sword, and flung her down under her horse’s feet. He brought his horse around just as Martin charged him, and gave his enemy the point; but Martin had been waiting for such a trick, and slipping down under his horse’s flank, he let Fulk’s blade gash his shoulder.
His own horse blundered into De Lisle’s and staggered the other beast. Martin slipped clear, and got in a blow that made the swashbuckler reel in the saddle. De Lisle struck back at him, and Martin, guarding, had his staff cut clean in two. He sprang in and up, got a grip of Fulk’s swordbelt and wrist, and dragged him out of the saddle.
De Lisle’s sword flew out of his hand, and the two men lay struggling like wild beasts under the horses’ hoofs. De Lisle’s harness bit into Martin’s flesh, his spurs gashed him, but Martin felt no pain. The fight was for the swashbuckler’s poniard, already half drawn from its sheath. Martin came uppermost, one hand gripping De Lisle’s wrist, the other thrust under the vizor of his helmet. De Lisle struck at him furiously with his gadded glove, and then tried to tear Martin’s hand away from his eyes.
But Martin was too strong for him; he had lived a cleaner life, and his muscles won in the tense balance of such a struggle. Neither man seemed to move for half a minute, both bodies rigid, straining against each other. Then De Lisle’s hand was jerked from the handle of his poniard, and Martin had clutched it and drawn it from its sheath.
Fulk de Lisle knew what was coming. He rolled to and fro, lashed out with his mailed fists, tore at Martin with his spurs; but his heavy harness cumbered him, and his breath was gone. Martin struck three times at the man’s gorget before the plates gave, and the poniard drove deep into the swashbuckler’s throat.
Two more such blows, and Fulk de Lisle twitched, gave a wet cry, and lay still.
Martin struggled up, panting, battered, running with blood. He looked around for Mellis. She had been leaning against a tree trunk, her hands clasping her bruised bosom, watching that death struggle with eyes that saw love and life fighting for her and for her honor. Her man was wounded. He would need her now.
She ran to him, eyes full of soft lights and shadows, pitying his wounds, and not shrinking from his bloodiness.
“Martin! Oh, brave heart!”
She caught his face between her hands and kissed him.
“Mellis!”
“Was there ever so fine a man as mine? And your wounds, your poor shoulder! Now it is that my hands can be of use.”
She made him lie down at the foot of a tree, spreading her own cloak for him. Her horse carried saddle-bags, so did Fulk de Lisle’s, and the two beasts were nosing each other as though to protest that a man’s quarrel was not theirs. Mellis took them by the bridles and tied them to a tree, unstrapped the bags, and laid them on the grass. In her own she found some clean linen, in Fulk de Lisle’s a bottle of wine.
Martin Valliant lay on his back, white and faint, his eyes staring dreamily at the flickering sunlight in the fir boughs overhead. A great lassitude had fallen on him—a sweet indolence. His manhood surrendered itself into the hands of a woman.
She came and knelt by him.
“Now—your shoulder. That must be mended.”
She had drawn the wooden spigot out of the stone bottle.
“Wine is clean and good. Lie still.”
The wound was washed with red Bordeaux, wiped clean, and swathed in the bandages torn from her piece of linen. Then she raised Martin’s head and made him drink, looking at him with eyes that glimmered mystery.
He caught a strand of her hair and laid it against his lips.
“What more could a man ask of life?”
She smiled, and brushed her cheek against his hand.
Presently Martin sat up and looked about him, at the dead man, the horses, his own ragged cassock, and his spur-torn legs. They were burning as though he had fallen into the fire, and he knew that his face had been cut by the gads on De Lisle’s gloves. A pretty object he must look to her, and yet her love was like a soft light around him.
“A swim in the Rondel would not come amiss.”
“To-night, perhaps.”
He took the wine and the rest of the linen from her, and rising, went away among the trees. He bathed his face with the wine, swathed his legs with the linen, and put his hands ruefully through the rents in his cassock. It seemed to be hanging by shreds, and his skin showed in a dozen places.
“Martin!”
He rejoined her, looking very solemn, but she was holding up a rich red cloak that she had unstrapped from De Lisle’s saddle.
“This will serve.”
She tossed it to him, and he flung it over his shoulders and tied the laces.
“A new color.”
“And no ill color either.”
Mellis picked up her own green cloak and fastened it so that it made her look more of a woman. She blushed, and gave Martin a shy, laughing glance.
“This man’s gear does not please me. I shall have to thieve or borrow. And, alas! all the world has gone against us.”
De Lisle’s red figure lying there stark and still made them remember the peril that threatened them. The Red Rose was in the dust; the Forest was but a hunting ground for my Lord of Troy and his riders; the gallows at Troy Castle would bear deadly fruit.
Mellis’s eyes darkened, and her face lost some of its soft, rounded light.
“God help us! This has been an ill day for the Forest. And yet—they were my enemies!”
She stole a glance at Fulk’s body.
“Let us go, dear comrade. We have no friends now—save each other. How dark this wood is!”
“Where would you go?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Ah! what a question! Where? Into the deep woods with the wild things, and so somewhere where our faces are not known. I would live a little while yet, Martin, for life can be sweet—now.”
He looked at her strangely.
“Yes; you are too beautiful to die.”
The horse that Martin had ridden had wandered off into the wood, but Fulk de Lisle’s was at his service. Moreover, the dead man’s sword and dagger might have their uses, and for the better carrying of them Martin took Fulk’s belt and buckled it about him.
“I like it not,” he said; “but necessity is our master.”
He helped Mellis to her saddle, unfastened the horses, and mounted Fulk de Lisle’s. Then he hesitated, looking into Mellis’s eyes, for he knew not where to turn.
“Which way?”
“On through the wood. Thanks be to God, I was born in the Forest.”