Bertrand of Brittany. Warwick Deeping

to pour some of the posset between the cracked lips, but the woman only choked, and the red wine dribbled down her chin. Tiphaïne put the cup back upon the table, and turned to the window-seat as though to wait and watch.

      “What is the use,” she said to herself, fingering the rosary that hung about her neck. “I can do nothing, and I have prayed.”

      Moved by some such simple thought as this, she left the woman to her moanings, hoping for pity’s sake that she might make a speedy end. It was more terrible to look on life than death, when life boasted so much horror. Lonely, very miserable, and sick at heart, she went to the little chapel beyond the solar and knelt down at the altar steps. Prayer was inarticulate in her, a blind up-rushing of the soul, a passionate desire for deliverance from the end. The sunlight had left the painted window, and everything was dim and indistinct and cold; the breath of the unseen seemed to fill the place and to chill her as she knelt before the cross.

      “Ah, I cannot pray.”

      She started up, half in petulance, half in despair, and went to her own bower that lay beyond the chapel. A hawk moped on the perch by the window, and even the bright colors on the walls seemed cold. Tiphaïne stood before the window and tried to remember how many days had passed since her father and Robin had ridden out. She strove to count them, taking her rosary and dropping a carved bead for each day. When would they return? And when they came they might find the Aspen Tower filled with the dead. Geoffrey the castellan and fifteen of the garrison lay buried with the three women under the apple-trees in the garden. Who would go next? Only crippled Jehanot, the man Guy, and the dog were left.

      Mad with the silence of the place, she picked up a lute from the bed and tried to sing. Anything, even mockery, was better than this accursed stillness—