Niall caught the descending arm and wrenched it aside, hooked a knee round the assailant’s knee with a wrestler’s instinct, and brought them both crashing to the ground. They rolled and strained, twigs crackling under them in the blind dark, bruised shoulders against the boles of trees, wrenched and struggled, the one to free his knife arm, the other to hold the blade away from himself or get possession of it. Their breath mingled as they strained and panted face to face, and each still invisible to the other. The attacker was strong, muscular and determined, and had a fund of vicious tricks to play, using head and teeth and knees freely, but he could not break away or get to his feet again. Niall had him by the right wrist, and with his other arm wound about the man’s body, pinning the upper arm so that his opponent could only claw fiercely at neck and face, drawing blood. With a grunting effort he heaved up his body and rolled them both over to make violent impact with the bole of a tree, intent on half-stunning Niall and breaking his grip to free the knife, but he succeeded all too well, and his own knife arm, already weakened with cramps from the grip on his wrist, struck the solid timber hard, jarring from elbow to fingers. His hand started open, the knife flew wide and was lost in the grass.
Niall came dazedly to his knees, to hear his enemy gasping and moaning, groping about in the turf and leaf-mould for his weapon, and muttering curses because he could not find it. And at the first lunge Niall made to grapple with him again he dragged himself to his feet and ran, breaking through the bushes, back the way he had come. The lashing of branches and rustling of leaves marked his path through the thick woods, until the last sound faded away into distance, and he was gone.
Niall clambered to his feet, shaking his ringing head, and groped for a tree to hold by. He was no longer sure which way he was facing on the path, or where to find Judith, until a still voice said, with slow, composed wonder: “I am here!” and the barely perceptible pallor of an extended hand beckoned him, and closed on the hand he reached out to meet it. Her touch was chill but firm. Whether she knew him or not, of him she had no fear. “Are you hurt?” she said. They drew together very gently, rather out of a startled and mutual respect than out of any caution, and their human warmth met and mingled.
“Are you? He struck at you before I could reach him. Did he wound you?”
“He has slit my sleeve,” she said, feeling at her left shoulder. “A scratch, perhaps - nothing more. I’m not hurt, I can go. But you... “
She laid her hands on his breast, and felt anxiously down from shoulders to forearms, and found blood. “He has gashed you - this left arm
“It’s nothing,” said Niall. “We’re lightly rid of him.”
“He meant killing,” said Judith gravely. “I didn’t know there could be outlaws prowling so close to the town. Night travellers could be butchered for the clothes they wear, let alone the money they might be carrying.” Only then did she begin to quiver with the laggard disruption of shock, and he drew her into his arms to warm the chill out of her. Then she did know him. His voice had started echoes for her, his touch was certainty. “Master Bronzesmith? How did you come to be here? So happily for me! But how?”
“No matter for that now,” said Niall. “First let me bring you wherever you were going. Here in the forest, if there are such scum abroad, we could still come to grief. And you may take cold from the very malice and violence of it. How far have you to go?”
“Not far,” she said. “Down to the brook here, barely half a mile. All the stranger that footpads should be loose here. I am going to the Benedictine nuns at Godric’s Ford.”
He asked her nothing more. Her plans were her own, there was nothing here for him to do but see that they were not impeded. He kept an arm about her as they set off down the path, until presently it widened into a grassy ride, where a faint light came in like mist. Invisibly beyond the trees the moon was rising at last. Somewhere before them there was the elusive gleam of water in motion, in mysterious, vibrant glimpses that shifted and vanished, and emerging from the misty air on their side of it, the sharp black edges of roofs and a fence, and a little bell-turret, the only vertical line.
“This is the place?” asked Niall. He had heard of the cell, but never before questioned where it lay, or been anywhere near it.
“Yes.”
“I’ll bring you as far as the gate, and see you within.”
“No, you must come in with me. You must not go back now, alone. Tomorrow, by daylight, we shall be safe enough.”
“There’s no place here for me,” he said doubtfully.
“Sister Magdalen will find a place.” And she said with sudden passionate entreaty: “Don’t leave me now!”
They came down together to the high timber fence that enclosed the cell and its gardens. Though the moon was still hidden from their sight beyond the forested uplands, its reflected light was growing with every moment; buildings, trees, bushes, the curve of the brook and cushioned strips of meadow along its banks, all emerged slowly from black obscurity into subtle modulations of grey, soon to be silvered as the moon climbed. Niall hesitated with his hand on the rope of the bell at the closed gate, such a violation it seemed to break the silence. When he did rouse himself to pull, the jangle of sound went echoing along the water, and rang back from the trees of the opposite shore. But there was only a short wait before the portress came grumbling and yawning to open the grille and peer out at them.
“Who is it? Benighted, are you?” She saw a man and a woman, both unknown to her and astray here in the forest at night, and took them for what they seemed, respectable travellers who had lost their way and found themselves in unfrequented solitudes where any shelter was more than welcome. “You want a night’s lodging?”
“My name is Judith Perle,” said Judith. “Sister Magdalen knows of me, and once offered me a place of refuge when I needed it. Sister, I need it now. And here with me is my good friend who has stood between me and danger and brought me safely here. I pray shelter through the night for him, too.”
“I’ll call Sister Magdalen,” said the portress with wise caution, and went away to do so, leaving the grille open. In a very few minutes the two returned together, and Sister Magdalen’s bright, shrewd brown eyes looked through the lattice with wide-awake interest, alert even at this hour of the night.
“You may open,” she said cheerfully. “Here is a friend, and a friend’s friend is just as welcome.”
In the tiny parlour, without fuss and without questions, Sister Magdalen did first things first, mulled strong wine to warm the last chill of shock and fright out of them, rolled back Niall’s bloody sleeve, bathed and bandaged the long gash in his forearm, anointed the scratch on Judith’s shoulder, and briskly repaired the long tear in her bodice and sleeve.
“It is but cobbled,” she said. “I was never a good hand with a needle. But it will serve until you’re home.” And she picked up the bowl of stained water and bore it away, leaving them for the first time alone together by candle-light, gazing earnestly and wonderingly at each other.
“And you have asked me nothing,” said Judith slowly. “Neither where I have been all these days past, nor how I came to be riding through the night to this place, in company with a man. Neither how I vanished, nor how I got my freedom again. And I owe you so much, and I have not even thanked you. But I do, from my heart! But for you I should be lying dead in the forest. He meant killing!”
“I know well enough,” said Niall steadily, “that you never would willingly have left us all in distress and dismay for you these three days. And I know that if you choose now to spare the man who put you to such straits, you do it of good intent, and in the kindness of your heart. What more do I need to know?”