Читать книгу The Red Saint онлайн

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“Tell him,” she said, “it is almost shame to me that you should have brought the boy here.”

Aymery covered the lad’s face again with the shield.

“Pray for Waleran,” he said.

“For the living rather than the dead.”

Aymery rose and joined Grimbald the priest, who was standing by the gate. Denise still knelt beside the litter, holding the dead boy’s hands. And if compassion could have given him life, compassion for that silent man who stood aloof, life might have flowed miraculously from Denise’s body, and spread like fire into the limbs of the dead.

Grimbald left Aymery, and crossed the grass to where Waleran stood, Waleran that sturdy man with the fierce red shock of hair. Waleran had been the first mesne lord in those parts to bristle his mane against Count Peter of Savoy. This hardihood had lost him his only child, and made a bonfire of his home, though he would not believe at first that the boy was dead.

Aymery of Goldspur turned again to Denise. He could see that she was praying, and his eyes, that were frosty with the cold anger of a strong man helpless in the face of death, flashed suddenly as he saw the moonlight touching Denise’s hair.