The King Behind the King

Fulk of the Forest had taken the way towards Witch’s Cross, with the full moon shining like a silver buckler behind him, to find himself standing at gaze among the yews of the B...

A woman it was, and a very angry one at that: breathless, a little frightened, yet whole-heartedly defiant. She sat up, feeling her throat that had felt the grip of Fulk’s finge...

“Oh, my good bachelor,” she said to herself, “you are likely to have your throat cut because of this, and someone will thrust a torch into yonder thatch. The dice cannot serve b...

There were deeps in the forest where a hundred men could hide and never be stumbled on for weeks together. Thieves and outlaws who knew the ways could travel north, south, east,...

Father Merlin walked with his head thrown back, and his beak of a nose with its hungry nostrils sniffing the freshness of the morning; for the forest was in a joyous mood and th...

It was the poll-tax that had set every common man in England snarling like an angry dog. Hitherto no one had listened to the sullen grumbling of the poor, those brown men with b...

About sunset Fulk went up to Standard Hill and looked out over the forest. Spread below him, with all the great oaks burgeoning into bronze, was a shimmering sea of gold meeting...

In the forest there was an old stone quarry, and in the wall thereof some hermit of long ago had cut himself a little chamber; but the hermit had died in the time of the Barons’...

About that time Father Merlin had news brought him. Runners came to the White Lodge in the forest, where Merlin was to be found sitting on a stool by the pond, fishing; or kneel...

Fulk sat in the doorway of the hermit’s cell and watched the dusk come down—the slow, subtle dusk of a still May evening. The beech wood had been full of the singing of birds, a...

The men of Sussex were on the march, and Father Merlin rode on a white mule, with Fulk on a forest pony beside him, and the Sussex men wondered who the priest’s prisoner might b...

Isoult saw Merlin loitering for her among the fir trees, and she could imagine the smile on his face—that face with its red, libidinous mouth and hungry, restless eyes. He stood...

Fulk let go of Isoult’s hand, and swung behind her so as to cover her from the arrows of Merlin’s men, but she hung back and would not suffer him to serve her as shield.

Fulk, tramping it, with an oak cudgel over his shoulder and his face set like a stone towards London Town, saw nothing but empty fields and great woods that seemed to smother th...

Isoult, seated on a bundle of straw in the bottom of a wagon, saw stretching for more than a mile behind her an undulating mass of marching men, a veritable river of humanity oo...

The window was full of the deep blue gloom of a summer night, with stars shining like the feathers of silver arrows shot into a target. A black curtain shut off the window reces...

All through the night those who were awake in the city heard the rebels howling in the suburbs outside the walls. They had ransacked wood lodges and pulled down palings, and mad...

The great lords and gentlemen sat round the table in the Council Chamber in the White Tower, and out of the summer night came the shouts of the peasants. They had lit bonfires i...

Friday’s dawn came in stealthily, with a mist that foretold heat, masking the windings of the river. The King’s standard on the White Tower hung in folds against the pole, and h...

They looked at each other, these two—Fulk, like a man who stares into the heart of a fire; Isoult, with eyes that showed at first no more than a tired wonder. She saw the red br...

At Mile End Fulk Ferrers sat on his white horse, a little apart from his lords and gentlemen, who held together like desperate men expecting treachery. With the rich colours of...

The Inn of The Painted Lady stood near the river, a gaudy, cut-throat, bold-faced house, the plaster between its beams daubed a hard, bright red, the barge-boards of its gables...

In the Princess’s chamber at the Wardrobe the real King sat on an oak hutch, kicking his heels against a panel upon which some craftsman had carved the Pelican in her Piety. The...

Fulk’s eyes were two blue stones set in a face of granite. He sat his horse, alert yet motionless, watching Isoult and the man behind her. It was Merlin. Fulk knew him in spite...

A flare of light leapt into Fulk’s eyes. His figure seemed to dilate, to tower higher on his white horse. He was lifted up, the god of a great moment.

It was night, and the Princess knelt at her _prie-dieu_ in her chamber at the Wardrobe, and offered up thanks for the passing of this great peril. And being a noble lady, and a...

It was a grey dawn, because of the mist on the river, with a promise of heat and of a cloudless sky. On London Bridge the houses looked as though they were smothered in white sm...

London was asleep, a mere confusion of black roofs and spires without a lantern or a rushlight shining to mimic the stars; but at the Wardrobe torches were burning in the narrow...

When they had breasted the chalk hills with their beech woods, great yews, and wild junipers, and saw the lush valley country below them, Cavendish rode on ahead to speak with t...

He dropped the pole lazily into the shallows, and heard the water prattling at the prow, and as the boat moved over towards the island a surge of emotion rose in him, a sudden w...

Dawn came and Fulk awoke, to see through the arch of the doorway where the steps went down into the hall, the rays of light striking in through the narrow windows. Everything wa...

Fulk slept heavily that night, so heavily that when the day had come he did not hear the opening of Isoult’s door. Stepping over him as he lay, she stood for a moment, looking d...

The group over the water was making away towards the beech woods. Fulk unchained the boat, sprang in, and laying his sword on one of the seats, took the pole and sent the boat s...

They were breathless, both of them, and exultant, though Death in a grey friar’s frock raged to and fro beyond the water. Fulk closed the heavy, nail-studded door of the hall, a...

Fulk went down to bar and barricade the door that opened from the passage leading to the kitchen quarters from the yard. He dragged all the lumber he could find in the kitchen a...

The stairway was not more than three feet broad; there was no handrail to it, and it went up steeply, yet Merlin’s men tried to rush it in a body, only to cumber each other and...

They brought a settle out from the solar, and setting it against the wall, made ready for a night’s vigil. Since the last torch had gone out the place was in utter darkness save...

Fulk’s eyes were cold as a frost, and a great and bitter scorn possessed him. He had kept faith with the King and his lords, and now that they no longer needed him they had gone...

It was late in the afternoon when they saw William of Wykeham’s tower rising above the trees like a casket of rose-red marble. The track ran near the river, and a long curve of...

The King had supped and was playing at “tables” with one of his gentlemen. The room was hung with blue arras, covered with lions rampant in gold. The sun had long set, and a sof...

They rode back to the Black Mere next morning, and a buxom old gentleman on a white palfrey rode with them, even Father Hilarius, whom Knollys had chartered and sworn to secrecy...