"Oh, they wouldn't. All our armor would be so perfectly tempered that nobody would be hurt. It would be like a tournament, and at the end, just as your senior uncle and I had unhorsed each other and were about to perish, mutually cloven to the chine, you would rush between us--in white, with your hair flowing like a thunder-cloud behind you--and say to each of us, 'Spare him for my sake.' And of course we should. And then there would be a banquet in the great hall at Caernarvon and clean rushes on the floor, and you and I and all our relations sitting in state on the dais, and you'd be wearing your gown of cloth of gold and your cloak of vair, and all your jewels--and I should have my furred gown and my great ring, and we should drink out of the big silver drinking-bowl--mead and strong ale--and feast our guests and their men-at-arms and all our own people on roast boars' heads and barons of beef, and all live happily ever afterward."
"I don't think she'd wear her ermine mantle. Wouldn't she wear the one of woven red, with your coat of arms embroidered on it, and the gold beads you brought her from the East when you went to the wars there?"
"Perhaps you would," he conceded. "I believe I could climb up to that doorway. I should like to--just to be sure there's really a well inside."
"No, don't," said she, "because you might find out that there wasn't; or that this isn't really the tower that has the underground passage leading to Caernarvon, and then we should know that we're not really remembering that other life when you carried her off, but only making it up."
"Of course we remember it. Do you remember whether you were angry with me for carrying you off."
"If she hadn't wanted to be carried off," she said, demurely, "she wouldn't have been. Or if she hadn't been able to help herself she'd have found a little knife, like the brown bride, or else something to put in your mead-cup, so that the first draught you had from her hand would have been the last. She wasn't the sort of woman to be taken against her will. Come away before you spoil the story with any more questions. I liked it best when we took the tale for granted--"
It was high up among the heather, with Charles safely tethered and the steep hillside dotted with hundreds and hundreds of sheep, that the talk grew earnest and dwelt not on dreams of old days, but the desire of new ones.