He tossed his head back suddenly and laughed, so that Denise saw the red roof of his mouth above his smooth, strong, shining chin. “Sister, do they write of such things in heaven? Clerks tell us a tale that whenever a cock crowed, St. Peter was seized with a spasm of coughing. Who is it that you are hiding, yonder?” Denise stood dumb before him. The man’s face mocked her like the face of a mocking Faun. “I have no answer for you, messire,” she said. “Go back to those who sent you, and to your horns and your dogs.” She turned slowly, meaning to reach the cell and bar the door, hoping the last hope that these people would ride on and leave her in peace. But Gaillard was too shrewd to be cheated thus. He struck his horse with the spurs, set him at the low fence, cleared it, and trampling the garden under foot, put himself between Denise and the cell. “A capture, a capture!” He laughed down in Denise’s face, as he waved his sword to those who were waiting on the fringes of the beech wood. The flash of the Gascon’s sword brought the whole rout swarming down upon the place, dogs, men, and horses, fur, steel and colour. The wattle fence went down before them; the herbs and the spring flowers were trampled into the soil. A horse plunged and reared close beside Denise, so that she had a glimpse of a black muzzle with the teeth showing, and soaring hoofs ready to crush her to the earth. Some unknown hand thrust her roughly aside, when a hound sprang at her, and was dragged back snarling on the end of a leash. Suddenly in the whirl of it she found Gaillard beside her on his horse, pushing the beast forward so as to shelter her from the rout that had stormed in as though half Waleran’s rebels held the hermitage. “Back, fools,” and he struck at some of them with the flat of his sword. “Out, out! Who called for a charge?” He turned his horse this way and that, driving the men back, and clearing a space about the cell. “Roland, on guard there, man, by the door. Stand to your arms, sirs; am I captain of a drove of swine?” There was something fine in the way he wheeled his great horse to and fro, driving men and dogs like so many sheep. Denise, her hair falling upon her shoulders, drew back towards the cell, her senses dazed for the moment by all this violence and roughness. The crowd of armed men parted suddenly, and through the gap between their swords and lances came riding the woman on the milk-white horse, haughty, yet smiling, her bow across her knees. Peter of Savoy rode close beside her, a quiet, noiseless man, whose cold eyes were more dangerous than a dozen swords. Gaillard wheeled towards them, touching his horse with the spur so that the beast caracoled and showed off his lord’s masterfulness in the saddle. Peter of Savoy smoothed his beard with a gloved hand that showed a great ruby upon the leather. “What have we here, my friend? The lady in the grey gown looks as though she would kill you an she could.”