She plucked the strategy from the speech like a gem out of a casket, and played with it to her own good comfort.
“To leave our homes,” she said, “and take to the wilds. There is wisdom in the plan, and yet——”
“Better let your homes burn than your bodies,” he said. “Scattered and in hiding, you will provide no martyrs for these holy ravagers. They will return empty by their own tracks. Ten men are worth a hundred in the mountains.”
“Ah,” she said, with sudden passionate scorn, “if I could but trust my husband!”
“Trust yourself, madame,” quoth the man on the black horse.
Tristan, full of the ready zeal of youth, set forth his faith to her with a gesture of the hand. He went red under his black brows, as though half ashamed of such an outburst of passion.
“Madame,” he said to her, “here is one sword more. I am young—you smile, by God—I have the strength of three. No man in Joyous Vale shall laugh twice in my face.”
“Ah, Tristan,” she said with deepened colour, “I trust you well. Why should I burden you with another’s yoke? What is Joyous Vale to you?”
“Madame,” he said very simply, “my shoulders are broad; try them.”
“To-day, I trust you,” she retorted slowly. “We meet Samson in yonder wood.”
Lines ran across Tristan’s broad forehead; his mouth hardened. He was as a man who felt himself outfaced, disarmed. There was no guile towards him in the woman’s heart, and yet his youth recoiled from her with jealous spleen.
“Madame,” he said half sullenly, looking no longer on her face, “I have promised faith to you. It is enough.”
Before them rose a great barrier of trees, a larch wood set upon the green bosom of a hill, whose slopes fell away towards a vague wilderness of pines. Many flowers and herbs were in bloom upon the hillside. Tristan, sullen of face, drew apart from Rosamunde as they mounted the slope and entered the alleys of the deepening wood. The sun poured through, streaking and ribbing the gloom with gold. Rosamunde’s green gown gleamed richly above her palfrey’s white flanks.
Deeper and deeper they threaded the shade, the grass track growing less green, dusted with cones and the fallen wind wrack of the trees. Whortleberry and heather grew there, with great pools of gorse. The silence increased, hanging like a purple pall, the sunlight plashing fitfully over the multitudinous boughs.