An hour later Sir Raymond's dead body lay before the altar, whereon
burned many waxen tapers. Alone, upon the lowest step, Gilbert was
kneeling, with joined hands and uplifted eyes, motionless as a statue.
He had taken the long sword from the dead man's breast, and had set it
up against the altar, straight and bare. It was hacked at the edges,
and there were dark stains upon it from its master's last day's work.
In the simple faith of a bloody age, Gilbert Warde was vowing, by all
that he and his held sacred, before God's altar, upon God's Sacred
Body, upon his father's unburied corpse, that before the blade should
be polished again, it should be black with the blood of his father's
murderer.
And as he knelt there, his lady mother, now clad all in black, entered
the chapel and moved slowly towards the altar-steps. She meant to kneel
beside her son; but when she was yet three paces from him, a great
terror at her own falseness descended into her heart, and she sank upon
her knees in the aisle.
CHAPTER III
Very early in the morning, Gilbert Warde was riding along the straight
road between Sheering Abbey and Stortford Castle. He rode in his tunic
and hose and russet boots, with his father's sword by his side; for he
meant not to do murder, but to fight his enemy to death, in all the
honour of even chance. He judged that Sir Arnold must have returned
from Faringdon; and if Gilbert met him now, riding over his own lands
in the May morning, he would be unmailed and unsuspecting of attack.
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