Читать книгу The Red Saint онлайн

43 страница из 75

The hunchback, marching beside Gaillard’s horse, led them towards Goldspur, following the high ground where there was less chance of an ambuscade. Gaillard had ordered silence. Not a man spoke. The grey shapes moved through the greyer mist with no sounds but the dull shuffle of hoofs, the occasional snort of a horse, the creaking of saddles, and the faint jingle of steel.

It was still very early when they came to the hill above Goldspur, and skirted the great beech wood whose topmost boughs were beginning to glitter in the sunlight. The mist lifted quite suddenly like a white diaphanous curtain drawn up into the sky. A broad beam of sunlight clove like a sword into the deeps of the beech wood. And to these rough riders of Peter of Savoy was revealed a vision, a vision such as a crystal-gazer might watch growing from nothingness in the heart of a crystal.

In the full sunlight at the opening of a glade a woman stood washing herself at a forest pool. The woman’s figure gleamed like snow against the sombre trunks of the trees. Her hair blazed about her naked body like flames licking a white tower. As yet she had not seen that line of armed men winding along the hillside not a hundred paces from where she stood.