A woman it was, and a very angry one at that: breathless, a little frightened, yet whole-heartedly defiant1. She sat up, feeling her throat that had felt the grip of Fulk’s fingers, and looking about her in the darkness for the bow she had dropped in the scuffle.
Fulk had his foot on it, and since it would bear witness against her at the swainmote, and might be dangerous if left too near an angry woman’s hand, he picked it up and broke it across his knee. Moreover, he was as angry as she was, but with the cold, dry anger of a man who could not wholly escape from feeling a fool. It was so dark under the yews2 that he could see next to nothing of the creature that he had captured, nor could he tell whether she was young or old, mean or gentle.
She half lay against the bank, making a little moaning sound, one hand clutching the hilt of the knife at her girdle. Her eyes were two great black circles, her lips thin with scorn and pain. Fulk stood and waited, wondering who the devil the woman might be and whether he had handled her very roughly.
She did not speak for awhile, but lay there like a snake in the grass, ready to strike at him with the naked steel. Neither of them moved. The moon came from behind a cloud, and a stroke of light slashed4 the woman’s figure and glimmered5 on the blade of the knife.
Fulk saw it, and for the moment it stabbed a half contemptuous pity into him.
“You can put away that bodkin. How was I to know?” he shrugged8 laconically9. “Seven deer lost in three weeks. The forest’s full of rogues10 and trailbastons, and folk who go out with bows by moonlight——”
“Your fingers bit like the teeth of a dog. For being a clown and a fool, you can let me go, just where I desire.”
“My friend, I shall not be there.”
“Good lady, I judge you will.”
“By my troth, to be pulled down by a Sussex badger16 and rolled on the grass! Pah! What manner of clown are you to stand there and talk of the swainmote?”
He grew the colder as she grew the more fierce.
“I am Lord of the Deer.”
She laughed and clapped her hands together.
“Listen to the lousel! Lord of the Deer! Lord of the Swine more likely. Now, Sir Legion, old Roger Ferrers is master of this forest, and you——”
He cut her short, chin in air.
“Roger Ferrers has gone with the duke to bargain with the Scots. Fulk Ferrers, the duke’s riding forester, lords it here. I am he. Come, let’s have no more scuffling—even with words.”
She sprang up suddenly.
“The riding forester! Messire Fulk Ferrers! Good, very good! Messire Fulk, I make you a curtsy. Maybe, you can tell the slot of a deer from the hoof-mark of a mule17, even if you cannot tell a man from a woman. Messire Fulk, since you are gentle born, I will dare to wish you good-night.”
“You can wish me with the devil, madam, but it will be good-morrow in the White Lodge over yonder. Am I a fool?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
He was challenged, despite his boyish shrewdness, by a laughing audacity21 in the woman’s voice. Her meek22 mood was no more than spilt milk. She walked beside him with a swinging motion and an air of provocative23 insolence24, and though her face was a mere6 grey blur25 he could imagine a curling of the lips and a gleaming of the eyes.
“I have said nay. Let it stand. As a matter of gossip I’ll ask you why I should let you go?”
“Only a fool would ask that!”
“Dub me a fool.”
“Because I am a woman—and I ask it.”
He laughed ironically, not looking at her but away over the heath.
“Put that in your girdle with your knife. A woman is no more than a man to me when I cherish the deer.”
She swung closer, and her voice changed to a mischievous26, pleading whisper.
“Ah, but Messire Fulk, listen a moment.”
“You may find the verderers more easily cozened when the swainmote meets.”
“Good sir, how young you are!”
“Younger than an old fool, perhaps.”
“Be careful. It is the young fools who boast.”
She became ominously27 mute and docile28 of a sudden, and, turning from him, walked out slowly from under the shadow of the yews. Fulk went with her, step for step. She paused where the heathland began, and even as she paused the moon began to disappear behind a black drift of clouds.
“Wretch—traitor moon! Look!”
Fulk looked at the sky when she had meant him to look at her.
“What’s amiss with the moon?”
She gave him a significant side-glance, lids half closed, eyes glimmering29.
“It is so dark again. Ah, Messire Fulk, you may not see me until to-morrow.”
“There is light enough for me to see you safe to the White Lodge.”
“Only the shadow of me. Look, now, am I young or old? Oh, come, be gallant!”
He stalked along beside her, lean, powerful, agile30, old for his age, which was two-and-twenty, very sure of himself, and more than a little mistrustful of women. A vast silence possessed31 the night, save for the occasional rustling32 of the wind in the withered33 fern. The horizon was the edge of an upturned silver bowl powdered with faint stars. Scattered34 clouds drifted. Down in the bottoms white mists had gathered, and the woods looked black and cold, and grim. Westwards, about a furlong away, the Ghost Oak stood out on the ridge35 of a hill, showing like the antlered head of some huge hart.
If he had any curiosity as to his companion’s age, looks, name, and degree, Fulk hid that curiosity very creditably. Her voice was neither the voice of an old woman nor of a mere strolling wench, and he noticed that she was slim, and that she held herself like a young girl who had never laboured nor carried burdens nor borne a child. But his hardihood did not flatter her by betraying any consciousness of the eternal mystery of the creature that walked at his side.
“How monstrous37 solemn for one so young! Good Master Fulk, you take life and yourself and the deer most seriously. Now, supposing you catechise me. Who am I? Whence have I come? Whither shall I go? Or am I a mere she-ass to be led at the end of a rope?”
His face remained a profile to her.
“Who are you?”
“Ah—we advance! I am neither an abbess nor a great lady, nor a dragonfly nor a windhover. I am something of everything. I can shoot with the bow, dance, sing, play the lute38, stab a man for insolence, tell lies, laugh, run like a boy. Guess!”
“I am not good at guessing. Tell the plain truth, or wait till the morning.”
She looked at him, and then at the sky where the edge of the moon was swimming clear of a cloud. She smiled to herself, and then touched Fulk’s elbow.
“See, the moon is coming out. You can see the shine in my eyes.”
Pausing abruptly39, she put her hood well back, and stood as though determined40 to provoke him into taking her challenge. Fulk swung round as the moon cleared the cloud, and saw her white face claiming him as a regarder. Her hair, black as charcoal41, was fastened up in a net of some silvery stuff that shone like gossamer42 on a hedgerow. It was a face of ivory—clear, keen, with eyes that glimmered under straight, black eyebrows43. The mouth was long, mobile, audacious. The nose, slightly curved at the bridge, had proud, fine-spirited nostrils44. It was a face that could be fierce, contemptuous, yet passionately45 eager, heroic, wicked, adorable by turns. She held herself as though she could hold the whole world at her service, and had never found herself in a mood to be mastered by any man.
Fulk stared—beyond his expectations. Something flashed a subtle provocation46 before him, menacingly, temptingly. The chin in air was railing and audacious. The dark eyes glittered at his grave face.
“Am I young or old?”
“I can see no wrinkles by this light.”
“Fair to behold47 and beholden to no man. I have made fools of them by the score—yes, I! Isoult of the Rose. I go where I please and when I please, and no man has my heart. I am desired—and I desire not. I ask, and am obeyed. Go to, now; you will grant me my desire?”
“To go where you please?”
“Even so.”
He looked at her steadily48, as though holding his manhood to the flame of her audacious comeliness49.
“It is to be where—I please.”
“So you say.”
“And so I mean.”
Her eyes pressed his as one sword presses on another.
“So! The boy is not to be cozened?”
“I have been very patient.”
She laughed, scanned his face with some quickening of her audacity, and drew her hood forward again, consenting to realise that he would abide51 by his words. Her resignation was frank and confident, the resignation of a fearless spirit whose blood flowed too hotly for little malicious52 and peevish53 impulses to live in it. She had a shrewd instinct for the worth of a man’s word, seeing that life and her own heart had taught her the saying, “There is no man whom I cannot fool.”
“Let us see the White Lodge, Messire Fulk. I am growing hungry.”
She caught the rapid side-glance he gave her as they moved on together over the heath. Her sudden surrender had made him suspicious, so that he held his head high and nosed the air like a stag to get wind of an ambuscado.
“I play fair,” she said; “the game is yours—to-night.”
“There may be more than one jay in the wood.”
“There was but one to-night; but to-morrow, or the next day——”
She broke off with suggestive abruptness55, and walked on at his side with a casual complaisance56, holding her head high, and watching him at her leisure. She marked the set of his shoulders, and the way he carried his head, as though he lived a hawk’s life, looking ever into the distance, alert, part of the wild. He swung along with sweeping strides, the action of a man who could run like a deer, not the busy strut57 of the townsman. Now and again his profile was sharply outlined for her—a straight, stark58 profile with firm lips and a thrustful chin.
Presently she began to murmur59 a song, and the murmur grew into idle, irresponsible singing. She sang in an inward, dreamy voice, the notes flowing out smoothly60 like water from a marble conduit. It was a rich voice, capable of a delicious flux61 of sound, subtle, promising62 many emotions. Fulk kept his guard, though she sang as though it was as natural for her to sing as to breathe. This voice of hers might bring him adventures, brisk blows, and a sore head.
“Sing,” said he; “sing as you please. But if you sing any rascal63 within reach of this short sword of mine he’ll not bless your music.”
“I sing to please myself, good sir. Listen:
“The bed cover was of purple cloth,
All powdered with golden lilies.
The maid’s hair was the colour of gold
And violets and roses were strewn around.
The windows were of finest glass,
Painted with red hearts and silver crowns,
“Good words, Master Fulk—hey?”
“Why sing about maids with golden hair? And roses and violets don’t bloom together. Make a song about a hawk, or a bow, or a sword.”
“Some day, if it please you, I will sing of the sword, and perhaps of a broomstick. Raw apples should not grumble66 at sugar.”
Below them in a little valley between oak woods the White Lodge showed up under the moon. It was a great, low house of black beams and white plaster, thatched so thickly with heather that the shaggy eaves were two feet thick. The White Lodge lay in the lap of a narrow meadow, with stables, barns, and outbuildings clustered behind it, their steep roofs, black ridged, looking like the roofs of a little town. The oak woods made a dark shelter about the silver sheen of the meadowland. By the orchard67 a stew68 pond blinked at the moon. Stout palisades of rough timber shut in the house, outbuildings, courtyard, and garden.
Isoult of the Rose stood at gaze.
“I see the cage,” said she. “Tell me, will you let the bird go—or cage it?”
“The caged thrush sings on a sunny morning.”
“But a wild bird mopes.”
As they went on down into the valley the moon popped once more behind a cloud, and Isoult’s face seemed to grow dark and brooding. She moved beside Fulk of the Forest, mute, solemn, distraught, her eyes looking into the distance where the great downs lay like faint shadows against the sky. A mood of mystery held her, the sadness of foreseeing dolour and pain and blood and the snarling70 mouths of furious men.
Three old yew3 trees grew by the gate in the meadow fence, and Isoult paused there and gripped Fulk’s arm. Her white face looked into his, and he could see a gleaming inward light shining from her eyes.
He smiled in her eyes.
“A witch’s trick; an old woman’s warning!”
“If you and I were old I might have no pity. I give you your choice.”
“You chose for me when you came a-hunting,” he said laconically. “I am the friend of the deer.”
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1
defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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yews
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| n.紫杉( yew的名词复数 ) | |
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yew
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| n.紫杉属树木 | |
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slashed
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| v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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glimmered
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| v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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7
shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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8
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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9
laconically
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| adv.简短地，简洁地 | |
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10
rogues
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| n.流氓( rogue的名词复数 )；无赖；调皮捣蛋的人；离群的野兽 | |
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11
hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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12
hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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13
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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14
lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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15
flirt
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| v.调情，挑逗，调戏；n.调情者，卖俏者 | |
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16
badger
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| v.一再烦扰，一再要求，纠缠 | |
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17
mule
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| n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人 | |
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18
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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19
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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20
repented
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| 对（自己的所为）感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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21
audacity
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| n.大胆，卤莽，无礼 | |
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22
meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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23
provocative
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| adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的 | |
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24
insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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25
blur
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| n.模糊不清的事物；vt.使模糊，使看不清楚 | |
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26
mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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27
ominously
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| adv.恶兆地，不吉利地；预示地 | |
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28
docile
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| adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的 | |
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29
glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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30
agile
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| adj.敏捷的，灵活的 | |
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31
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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32
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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33
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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34
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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35
ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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36
piqued
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| v.伤害…的自尊心( pique的过去式和过去分词 )；激起（好奇心） | |
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37
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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38
lute
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| n.琵琶，鲁特琴 | |
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39
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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40
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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41
charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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42
gossamer
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| n.薄纱，游丝 | |
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43
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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44
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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45
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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46
provocation
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| n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因 | |
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47
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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48
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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49
comeliness
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| n. 清秀, 美丽, 合宜 | |
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50
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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51
abide
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| vi.遵守；坚持；vt.忍受 | |
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52
malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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53
peevish
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| adj.易怒的，坏脾气的 | |
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54
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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55
abruptness
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| n. 突然，唐突 | |
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56
complaisance
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| n.彬彬有礼，殷勤，柔顺 | |
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57
strut
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| v.肿胀，鼓起；大摇大摆地走；炫耀；支撑；撑开；n.高视阔步；支柱，撑杆 | |
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58
stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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59
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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60
smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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61
flux
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| n.流动；不断的改变 | |
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62
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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63
rascal
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| n.流氓；不诚实的人 | |
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64
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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65
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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66
grumble
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| vi.抱怨；咕哝；n.抱怨，牢骚；咕哝，隆隆声 | |
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67
orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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68
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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69
worthies
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| 应得某事物( worthy的名词复数 )； 值得做某事； 可尊敬的； 有（某人或事物）的典型特征 | |
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70
snarling
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的现在分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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71
woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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