Why the horror of the thing should take possession of her as it did Denise did not consider. She saw the wood, dark, cool, and still, before her, and fled into it, seeing nothing but hearing ever Gaillard’s cry. And though she fell often, stumbling against the great trees in the darkness, she ran like one without reason, not noticing whether anyone followed, and that the silence of the place closed on her like water over a stone. CHAPTER XLII From a chance word that Marpasse let fall while they were burying Isoult, Grimbald discovered all that she knew concerning Aymery and Denise, and he made her tell the story. Marpasse had been breaking up the ground with a sword, and Grimbald using a shield for a shovel, scooped a shallow trough for the body wrapped in its scarlet surcoat. That labour together over the grave, and the way Grimbald made her talk of herself and Denise, brought Marpasse and the parish priest to a sudden sense of comradeship. With Isoult laid to rest they trudged off together to Lewes town, but could gain no sure news of Aymery there, though Grimbald found a Sussex man, Geoffrey de St. Leger, who swore that the Knight of the Hawk’s Claw had ridden in that last charge against Prince Edward’s company. Grimbald and Marpasse had already searched the ground in the dusk without coming upon Denise’s grey gown. A truce had been called, and torches were moving to and fro over the battlefield like corpse candles in the darkness. The parish priest and the bona-roba watched the night out under a hedge, and Marpasse fell asleep while Grimbald watched. They were up before dawn, however, and breaking bread as they went, they searched the scarred track along which Simon’s knights had ridden in pursuit of the flying royalists. Grimbald bent over many a body in the twilight, and though there were women lying dead and stiff upon the grass, Denise was not among them, nor did they find Aymery among the slain. The dawn was just breaking when they came to the river; grey fog hung there; and it was very still. The dead were here also, horse and man, and Grimbald saw that the richer bodies had been plundered, even stripped naked and left upon the grass. Their search had lessened the chances, save what the grey river might be hiding under its shroud. But Grimbald chose to be an optimist that morning, and swore, as though he had seen the thing in crystal, that neither Aymery nor Denise was under the quiet water. He chose the simplest explanation, and put it forward so confidently that Marpasse believed also, and fell in with his plan. Aymery had found Denise, and taken her away with him out of reach of the storm. “As sure as I live,” he said, “we shall find them at Goldspur. It is not the first time that I have prophesied the truth.” And Marpasse accepted Grimbald as a prophet, and he looked the part with his gaunt face and fiery eyes.