Denise went out from him and closed the door. For a moment a great faintness seized her, for she had taxed her very soul in carrying Aymery within. The sunlight flashed and flickered before her eyes, so that she put her hands up before her face, and leant, trembling, against the door. But the sound of the horns and the dogs grew louder in the beech wood, and Denise’s strength came back to her with that fine courage that women show when life and death hang in the balance. With one quick glance at the woods she went down on her knees on the stone-paved path, and began to pull up the few weeds that she could find in the borders. Her hair had become loosened in her flight through the wood, and hung in waves about her neck and shoulders. Denise kept her eyes on the ground before her, though her ears were straining to catch the slightest sound. She prayed as she knelt there, as she had never prayed for a boon before, that these men might pass by without seeing the dark thatch of her cell. The trampling of many horses swelled the shrill whimpering and tonguing of the dogs. A horn blared close by. The wood seemed full of voices, of swift movement, of hurrying sounds. Denise heard the laughter of a woman peal out suddenly, strange and unfamiliar in the midst of such a chorus. A man’s voice shouted a fierce command. The whole wood about the place seemed to become alive with colour, and the gleam and clangour of steel. Denise bent her head over the brown soil and gave no sign. Her fingers plucked at a tuft of grass, but could not close on it because of their great trembling. Her heart told her that these people would not pass by. Swiftly, half fearfully, she raised her head, and looked up over the wattle fence. Before her the shadowy wood seemed to swim with the faces and figures of armed men. Horses crowded in with tossing manes, shields flickered, surcoats with many colours. Brown-faced archers walked between the horses, their steel caps shining, bows ready with arrows on the strings. Rangers and servants held the dogs in leash, sweating, panting men who cursed the beasts that strained, and yelped, and rose upon their haunches. In the forefront of the whole rout, like a great gem set in the centre of a crown, Denise saw a woman seated on a milk-white horse. Her green gown was diapered over with golden lilies, and in her hand she carried a bow. The woman’s face was flushed with riding, and her hair disordered in its golden caul. On her right hand rode a lord in a surcoat of purple, and the trappings of his horse were of white and blue. On her left, with a drawn sword over his shoulder, Denise saw the man who had surprised her at the spring. Since there was no help for it, Denise sat back upon her heels, her face flushed with stooping over the soil. All those hundred eyes seemed fastened upon her. Yet there was a sudden silence save for the whimpering and the chafing of the dogs.