CHAPTER XXVIIINight came while Marpasse and Isoult were building a fire under the lee of a grass bank in a meadow outside Guildford, for Marpasse, shrewd woman, had no sooner heard the din that the King’s men were making in the town, than she had chosen to pass the night in the open rather than within the walls.
“They will all be drunk as swine,” she said, “and a drunken man is no bargain. Out with your knife, Black Cat, and run and cut some of that furze yonder. Some lazy soul has left faggots in that ditch.”
Marpasse made Denise sit down under the shelter of the bank, for the grey sister’s feet had hurt her through the last two miles. So Denise sat there in the dusk, lost in a kind of vacant wonder at life, and at herself, and at the strange way that things happened. She felt tired, ev
