They were away, running hand in hand, and even their chance of death had
an exultant cry in its throat.
A voice snarled in the darkness behind them:
“Shoot—shoot! No mercy!”
Fulk let go of Isoult’s hand, and swung behind her so as to cover her
from the arrows of Merlin’s men, but she hung back and would not suffer
him to serve her as shield.
“No, no; I take the same chance as you, my friend. There are oak woods
down yonder—they will be our salvation.”
“I will show them a woodland trick or two.”
Arrows went past them, first one, and then three flying together and
whistling like wind through the keyhole. A cross-bow bolt struck the
turf close to Isoult’s heels, and they heard the harsher twang of the
arblast cord.
“That was Merlin’s shot. He has poached many a bird.”
“Let them shoot. It means they will lose in the running.”
They heard Merlin’s voice, furious and strident.
“After them. Bring down both, lording and jade.”
The stiffness went out of Fulk’s legs like wax melting before a fire. He
felt monstrously strong, ready to run on air, with never a thought of
tiring. Isoult, being a woman of sense, had twitched her skirts up over
her girdle, and she ran beside him like a deer.
“My desire, you have good wings.”
She laughed, feeling the mounting pride of his manhood in her.
“An I were naked I would dare any man to catch me—save you, perhaps!”
He glanced back with an exultant lift of the chin.
“They shoot like townsmen, and it is all down hill. Skim, swallow,
skim!”
“In the oak woods we’ll make a maze for them.”
“Let me but cut a quarterstaff, and I’ll thank any five of them to come
within striking distance. Jump, jump—a ditch!”
They leapt it together, and an arrow struck a thorn bush near them on
the farther bank.
“The luck is with us!”
“I could sing, but breath is precious! Ah, Master Fierceheart, my pride
flies with yours!”
He swerved close in, so that their shoulders touched.
“Isoult, when did it begin with you?”
“Ah—when! And with you?”
“God knows! Someone lit a torch in me—Hullo!”
Fulk had heard the whir of an arrow shot at a venture, and the sound of
its striking home. He felt Isoult’s fingers contract on his, and heard
her utter a sharp cry.
“Isoult, ar’t hurt?”
She flagged and faltered, with one hand to her side.
“It’s over with me, Fulk; put your arm under my shoulders.”
“Dear heart, where has it struck you?”
“Here, where God thieved from Adam.”
He heard her breathing through clenched teeth, and she began to weigh
heavily upon his arm.
“Fulk, I can go no farther.”
“I’ll carry you.”
“No, no; lay me down, dear madman, and run for it. Our luck is out. I
have got my quittance.”
He felt the arrow in her side, and the warmth of her blood upon his arm,
and a wondering wrath came over him. Her body seemed to melt, to slip
away, to surrender all the thrilling tenseness of its muscles.
“Lay me down, my desire—and go.”
He laid her down very gently, yet the twisting of the barb made her cry
out.
“A curse on the pain.”
He knelt by her, but she tried to thrust him away.
“It is my death wound. Up, dear fool; go—I charge you.”
“Not I. Give me your knife.”
She threw out her arms and caught him about the neck.
“Go. You cannot save me. Go. I ask it, with the blood of my death wound
on me. Oh, strong heart—once—the last!”
She drew him down and kissed him fiercely with lips that clung, and then
thrust him off.
“Take the knife; I shall never need it!”
“Isoult.”
“Now—go!”
“By God—I cannot!”
“My own mad fool, what can you do now? Come back with the sword
to-morrow—and take your vengeance.”
He sprang up, her knife in his hand, as a man came out of the darkness.
Fulk struck him so fiercely that he went down without a cry. Another
rushed at him, and had the knife in his throat; but the rest of the pack
were closing in.
Fulk heard Isoult call to him.
“The life is out of me, my desire. Run, cheat Merlin, and I’ll die
happy.”
He threw himself down beside her, kissed her mouth, and sprang away from
under the feet of Merlin’s men. A flurry of arrows went after him in the
darkness, but they flew wild and wide, and before they could shoot again
Fulk had reached the woods.
* * * * *
How long or whither he ran Fulk of the Forest never knew. Isoult’s last
cry had flung him forward into blind, physical activity that was
fanatical and dazed. He blundered through the underwood and between the
trunks of trees, hardly feeling the hazel rods stinging his face. Once
he crashed into an oak bole, and went on with his head singing. A voice
kept crying in him, “Run, run!” and his limbs and his senses were mere
brute beasts that served.
Fulk ran for some three miles before the self suddenly awoke in him like
a raw wound uncovered to the air. He faltered in his stride, dropped to
a walk, and then stood still, staring at the ground in front of him, as
though he had been running in his sleep.
“Isoult!”
He thrust out his hands with a fierce cry, and then covered his face
with his forearms. Vision had come to him so vividly and with such
bitterness that he rocked as he stood and breathed like a man in pain.
Dead! He could not believe it. Her lips were still alive to his, and her
hands still thrilled him. Had it all happened, that passionate
conspiring of theirs, that rushing together through the darkness, that
mad, exultant love flight? He heard again her cry when the arrow struck
her, her fierce pleading with him to leave her, and felt her arms
holding him and her lips pressing themselves to his. Mother of God,
those lips of hers! They had left him on fire, those lips of hers, and
she herself was dead.
A savage compassion swept over him, an impotent and furious love rage
that struggled against a sense of utter and incredible emptiness.
“Isoult!”
He bit the flesh of his wrist, and cursed himself. She was dead by now
for his sake, this incomparable, strange creature, with all her fierce,
wayward pride. Why had he run away and left her to Merlin? She was his,
though dead; the hands, the lips, the eyes were his. He should have
fought it to a finish with that scum of serfdom, and not left her alone
in death. It was monstrous, damnable, fit only for the spittle of a
superhuman scorn.
What had he lost? And yesterday his eyes were blind! He saw it all now
in a flare of tenderness, her desire to save him, and the
stiffneckedness of his own pride. What was he that she should have
suffered to save him, that she should have stooped to a lie against her
honour, and lost her life at the hands of Merlin and these boors?
Merlin!
His passion turned like a wounded boar, seeing something to strike at,
something to slay. By the Cross, he would make amends, come by arms and
horse, and join himself to those who were ready to trample this stubble
of the fields into the mud. And this knife of Isoult’s that he had at
his girdle should be kept for Merlin—the grey friar.