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قراءة كتاب The King Behind the King
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class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">CHAPTER XXXIV
THE KING BEHIND THE KING
CHAPTER I
Fulk of the Forest had taken the way towards Witch’s Cross, with the full moon shining like a silver buckler behind him, to find himself standing at gaze among the yews of the Black Gill.
Straight before him stretched a black aisle pillared and arched with huge yews. The aisle ended, like the choir of a church, in a great woodland window where the full moon hung, one yellow rim touching a flurry of clouds. Fulk had drawn aside against the trunk of a tree, lean, alert, shadowy, conscious of something stirring away yonder in the glooms.
As he stood there watching, and straining his ears in the windless silence of the April night, he saw a figure move suddenly into the opening of this woodland window and remain there, outlined against the moon. The figure was wrapped in a loose cloak, and the peak and jagged edge of a hood showed up sharply. Moreover, a curved black line beside it betrayed the line of a strung bow.
Fulk’s sinews were as taut as lute cords. Here was a blessed chance sent after many nights of grim watching and waiting for certain elusive rascals who had been slaying my Lord of Lancaster’s deer. He began to move like a cat, slowly, sinuously, with a queer trailing action of the legs, slipping from tree to tree. The yews had dropped no dead wood; the turf was soft and sleek, and Fulk moved as silently as an owl flitting down a hedgerow.
The figure with the bow stood above him on a low bank where the yews ended and the fern and gorse began. It was motionless save for a slight turning of the head from side to side, and wholly intent upon scanning the heath beyond. Fulk drew a deep breath, gathered himself, and sprang.
The figure whipped round with a sharp cry. A wave of Fulk’s arm knocked aside the stabbing point of the horn end of the bow. The two black shapes grappled, one striving to break away, the other to hold its quarry. Someone’s foot slipped in a rabbit hole, and the two came down the bank in a tangle into the dense shade under the yews.
A cloud came over the moon, and out yonder a fat hart had risen and was galloping over the heath. Fulk, on top in the tussle, had a grip of a wrist whose hand had darted for a girdle knife. The figure under him ceased to struggle.
“Caught, you lousel!”
The voice that answered him had a fine edge of anger.
“Let me go, you clown. Have you no more wit than——”
Fulk sprang back and up.
“What!”
“Fool, let me but get my knife.”
“Blood of St. Thomas—a woman!”
CHAPTER II
A woman it was, and a very angry one at that: breathless, a little frightened, yet whole-heartedly defiant. 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 yews 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 slashed the woman’s figure and glimmered 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 shrugged laconically. “Seven deer lost in three weeks. The forest’s full of rogues and trailbastons, and folk who go out with bows by moonlight——”
She put the knife back into its sheath, and shook her hood back from her shoulders.
“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.”
Her touch was a little imperious, and it was hawk hovering against hawk.
“It is three miles to the White Lodge. The swainmote court is held after the next new moon.”
“My friend, I shall not be there.”
“Good lady, I judge you will.”
He saw her give an angry flirt of the head.
“By my troth, to be pulled down by a Sussex badger 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 mule, 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?”
“Oh—well, but not a gallant fool! You will let me go?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I said nay to you.”