Igraine's eyes burned. She kissed Lilith on the lips and was mute.
For a while they sat with their arms about each other, not daring to
look into each other's eyes. Then the girl kissed Igraine's cheek, and
touched her hair with her slim fingers.
"Perhaps I can help you," she said.
"Help me?"
Lilith flushed, and spoke very quickly.
"Yes--to find Pelleas. I tell you what I will do. I will send a friend
of mine to question all the guards at the gates whether they have seen
such a one as you have described ride in."
Igraine hugged the girl.
"And then you say this Pelleas was in the King's service. I have never
heard of a knight so named; but there are so many, and I hear only
gossip. I know a girl in the King's household. I will go and ask her
whether she knows of a tall, dark knight whose colour is red, who rides
a black horse, and is named Pelleas. You do not know how much I may not
learn from her. I feel wise already."
Igraine plucked up heart and spirit. She felt sorry that she had
not spoken of her trouble to Lilith before, for she had lost many
days trusting to her own eyes and her little knowledge of the town.
She kissed the girl again, and almost laughed. Then in a flash she
remembered a speech of Pelleas's which she had forgotten till that
moment.
"Fool that I am," she said; "the very chain he wore he had it from your
father, and here in my bosom I have the little cross that nigh lost him
his life. Surely this may help us in some measure."
Lilith looked at the cross that Igraine had taken from under her tunic,
where it hung by a little chain about her neck.
"We will show it to my father," said the girl, "and ask him thereof. He
may have record of such a chain, and to whom it was sold. Who knows?
Come, Igraine, we will show it him after supper if you wish."
And again Igraine kissed her.
It was Radamanth's custom, after the business of the day had been
capped by an honest supper, to sit in his parlour and drink wine with
certain of his friends. He had a particular gossip, an old fellow named
Eudol, who had been a merchant in his time, and had retired with some
wealth. These two would spend many an evening together over their wine,
taking enough to make their tongues wag, but never exceeding the decent
warmth of moderation. Eudol was a lean old gentleman with a white beard
and a most patriarchal manner. He was much of a woman's creature, and
loved a pretty face and a plump figure, and he would father any wench
who came in his way with a benignity that often made him odious. He had
a soft voice, and a sleek, silken way with him that made folk think him
the most tender-souled creature imaginable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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