Читать книгу The Red Saint онлайн

26 страница из 75

Her brown eyes were sad that morning as she slipped on her white shift and her grey gown, and went back under the beech trees to her cell. With the fragrance of the wild flowers and the dew came the consciousness of the rougher world within that world of hers. She remembered the flames of the night before, Waleran’s dead boy, the savage anguish of the man breaking out into bitterness and laughter. What more might not happen in the deeps of the woods? Denise was no ignorant child, she had lived in another world before Olivia had built her the cell under the Goldspur beeches.

Denise said her prayers, worked awhile in her garden, and then brought out her orfrays of gold, and sat in the doorway under the deep shade of the thatch. But though her fingers were busy with the threads, her mind was full of a spirit of watchfulness and of unrest. She felt as it were the stir and movement of another world beyond the towering domes of the trees. She had a premonition that someone would come through the wood that morning. It would be a man, and yet not Grimbald. Denise’s hands were idle awhile, and her brown eyes looked thoughtfully into the deeps of the wood.