“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, And the scent of her chamber was as the scent of May. “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 grumble 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 orchard a stew 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.” “Perhaps some of our old worthies will open the door.” 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 snarling mouths of furious men. Three old yew 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. “Consider, consider, I charge you. I shall bring you woe.” 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.” CHAPTER III With the air of one who shakes off all ultimate responsibility with a shrug of the shoulders, she followed Fulk through the gate in the palisade. “Oh, my good bachelor,” she said to herself, “you are likely to have your throat cut because of this, and someone will thrust a torch into yonder thatch. The dice cannot serve both players at one throw.”