A halt was called under the edge of a crimson sunset that overtopped the black plumes of a forest of firs. Isoult left her horse with Guy the Stallion, and walked towards the spot where Merlin’s white mule was tethered, and where men were pitching a rough hide tent. Merlin came out to her and his eyes were enigmatical. “The lute and the voice and the eyes may serve,” he said; “and yet, Isoult, why should I trust you?” “Because my wrongs were great, and because I should be a worse enemy than friend.” “The falcon is hidden away over yonder. He shall have wine and meat, and a fair woman to sing to him.” “No spying upon us, Merlin. Let me play with him as I please.” She found Fulk in a green dell on the edge of the wood, nearly a furlong from the place where the men of Sussex were camped for the night. He was sitting amid the bracken under a fir tree, ankles and wrists lashed together, his face masked by the linen swathings. Two men with bows over their knees were squatting on the edge of the dell, their faces half hidden by scarlet hoods. Isoult guessed that Merlin had followed her, and, glancing back, she caught sight of his grey figure moving amid the trunks of the firs. He called to the two men on the edge of the dell, and they arose and left Fulk and Isoult alone together. “Good comrade, I am to sing to the King’s brother at Merlin’s desire, but not to a man muffled up like a leper.” She put her lute on the ground, and, kneeling behind him, unfastened the linen band that covered his face. “Wrists and ankles might also be free!” He answered her without turning his head. “I am not to be tempted.” She smiled from her vantage point, and, throwing the linen aside, sat down close to him among the bracken. A stone bottle of wine and a clean cloth full of bread and meat had been sent to Fulk by Father Merlin. “Let us eat and drink, comrade; and then I will sing to you.” He glanced at her as though he took her to be mocking him, and she remembered his helpless hands. “I must not untie you, or Merlin would be suspicious. The wood is full of eyes. But my hands can serve for both of us.” She fed him and gave him the wine to drink, and though she laughed over it a little, to Fulk it was a fool’s business, and he was shy of her eyes and hands. His grim face sought to hold her at arm’s length, though the redness of her mouth tormented him. Dusk was falling, and the fir wood behind them began to grow very black against the sky. The Sussex men were lighting fires in the valley, and making a great uproar like the noise of beasts at feeding time. Isoult’s eyes grew restless, and kept watching the darkening wood. “Fulk, shall I sing?” “You were sent to sing.” She reached for her lute, which lay between them. “Merlin is a grey ghost, ready to haunt us. I must sing, for he may be listening.” Her eyes had strangeness, mystery; they were eyes that whispered, and drew him aside into the intimate shadow of her plotting. “Listen, and live.”