Fulk pulled off his right gauntlet, and felt for Isoult’s hand.
“Try to sleep. Why should two keep watch?”
“By my love, do you think that I could sleep to-night? There will be some devil’s work to be baffled.”
They sat close together like two children, listening for any sound, for the night had grown strangely silent, and silence told them nothing, save that there was danger near.
An hour passed before Fulk and Isoult heard a sound of stirring in the darkness. Voices spoke in undertones, and there was the crackling of brittle wood. There was movement down yonder in the hall, a kind of groping movement that came nearer and nearer. Fulk stood ready behind the barricade made of chests, thinking that Merlin’s men were crawling up the stairway, but it was a subtler attack that they were preparing.
A faggot was thrown down with a crash at the foot of the stairs. They heard men running. More faggots were carried in and piled in a heap that covered the dead men and the wrecked furniture. The darkness hid them at their work, though there was just one patch of moonlight where the doorway of the hall opened, and Fulk could see nothing more than the suggestion of shadows coming and going across this patch of moonlight.
He found Isoult beside him, and her very nearness quickened his consciousness of their danger.
“Burnt like rats. The house is all timber and thatch.”
“Isoult, there is but one thing to be done. Help me to lift this chest aside.”
She put her hands to it, and between them they carried it back into the solar.
He caught her and held her almost roughly, for the love in him had come to desperate ends.
“That’s the cry. I will give these dogs cold steel in the dark. It is a chance, and nothing more. If I can but clear the hall of them, we can throw faggots across the doorway and hold it. And we can open the shutters and get out of this black pit.”
“Isoult, bide here, but come to me if I call. It will mean that I have won the fight. If I do not call, you will know how things have sped. Unbuckle these greaves and thigh-pieces; they are too heavy for such a game as hide-and-seek.”
She knelt down and plucked at the buckles, and her fingers trembled a little.
Fulk climbed over the oak chest and went step by step down the stairs, stooping with one hand stretched out to feel what lay before him. He had laid aside his gauntlets, and stuck his dagger into its sheath, meaning to trust solely to his sword and to quick wits and quick feet. Six steps from the bottom his hand touched the faggots, and feeling about him cautiously he found that he could step down on to the daïs table. As he crouched there, faggot after faggot was carried in and thrown upon the pile. Moving along the daïs table to the end wall of the hall, he came upon a gap that had been left, and through it he was able to slip to the ground.