Igraine went among the bodies like a black monk seeking some still quick enough to be shriven before their souls took flight from the riven clay. Her cloak was gathered jealously about her as she threaded her way among the huddled figures, peering under helmets, scanning harness narrowly in her death-inspired quest. Casting hither and thither in the moonlight, she came to a tangled bank of furze, and beyond it a low hillock that seemed piled and paved with the bodies of the slain. Here had stood the banner of Tintagel, and here the prowess of Gorlois's household knights had fallen before the charge of Gilomannius's chivalry. Igraine saw the medley of mail, the dead horses, jumbled figures, wreck of shield and spear rising out above her in the moonlight, cloaked with a silence grim and irrefutable, as though Death himself sat sentinel on the pyramid of carnage. Half shuddering at the sight like an aspen, for all the intent that was in her heart, she drew near, determined and resolved to search the mound. Compelled to climb over the dead and to set her foot on the breasts and shoulders of the slain, her tread lighted more than once on a body that squirmed like a dying snake. Strong to do the uttermost after that day of revelation she struggled on, loathing the task, her shoes clammy with the blood-sweat of death. On the summit of the mound she came upon Gorlois's white horse lying dead by the wreathing folds of the fallen banner of his house. A whimper of joy came up into Igraine's heart. Sinister as the sign seemed, she was soon searching the mound with an alert desire in her eyes that prophesied no vestige of pity for the thing for which she sought. Hunt as she would, and she was marvellously patient over the gruesome business, no glint of Gorlois's golden harness flattered her hate as she searched the mound. Many a good knight lay there, some that she had known at Tintagel, and hated because they served her husband, but of Gorlois she found no trace. As a last hope, she dragged aside the great standard and found a dead man there sheeted in its folds, a man in black armour with his face to the sky--Brastias, who had ridden with her from Caerleon. She stood a moment looking down at him with a sudden feeling of awe such as had not come upon her through all that day. A white face lay turned to the sky,--a face that had looked kindly into hers with a level trust,--and smiled with a wealth of manly sympathy. It was a simple thing enough, nothing but one death among many thousands, but it touched Igraine to the core, and made her ashamed of the lies she had given him. She found herself wondering like a child whether Brastias was in heaven, and whether he watched her and her thoughts with his calm grey eyes. The notion disquieted her. She bent down, took his naked sword from his hand, and shrouded him again in the gorgeous blazonry of the flag for which he had died, and so left him with a sigh.