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They straggled along by twos and threes, some silent and morose, others talking with the quick muttering intensity of men who have given and taken blows. A darker core moved along the woodland path in the midst of this scattered company. Men were carrying a litter of boughs piled upon the trunks of two young ash trees. The moonlight played intermittently upon the men about the litter, showing so many white faces, intent and silent, and a body that lay upon the bed of boughs with a shield covering its face.

A breadth of clear sky in the thick of the wood showed them that they were close on the glade where Denise of the Forest had her cell. The place was sacred and full of mystery to the woodlanders of those parts, and the scattered figures drew together under a tree where the path came out of the wood into the glade. Only the litter of boughs and the men with it went forward into the moonlight; the rest held aloof like dogs left by their master at the door of a church.

The men who carried the litter set it down outside the gate in the wattle fence that shut in Denise’s garden. There was some whispering, but the men’s voices were no longer harsh and angry. Grimbald, the parish priest, sent them back into the wood to wait. Two men remained beside the litter, one standing a little apart with a cloak wrapped round him, and a hood drawn forward over his face.