“There is nothing,” she said, and then, still looking away into the woods, reached sideways and took Ernald's arm firmly, “but be said by me, there was something hunting along our trail not a sennight since, and should it come here, see you and yours are within the gates.” She shook him gently. “Do not be slighting it, Ernald, great strong lad that you are and brave as a bear: it is something terrible, that no one should run to meet.”

Lady Isabeau was tall for a woman, nearly as tall as Molly, but slender where Molly was stout, with a smooth immobile face that looked as if it had been carved from ivory, pale and serene. Hob stared at her: glossy black hair bound about the brows with a broad white linen fillet and partly concealed by a veil that draped down her neck; dark eyes beneath dark brows plucked thin; unsmiling lips, full and well-shaped. There was so little expression on her face, and its beauty was so unworldly, that Hob had a moment when he thought her an apparition, or a graven figure. “Blanche comme la neige,” came to his mind, a song Molly had taught him, “belle comme le jour.” The thinnest of scars ran from her hairline down her forehead, divided her left eyebrow, and curved along her cheek to the corner of her mouth, and seemed at once to augment her beauty and to reinforce its carven stillness, as if some wright's chisel had slipped in the course of fashioning her visage. A linen band of the sort known as a barbette ran down from the fillet at her temples and passed under her chin, framing her face, and rendering her features all the more austere.
Her gown was a muted purple; heavy embroidery of red and blue circled its neckline, and it was gathered by a zone of gray silk, sewn with pearls, that circled her hips. From this belt depended a silver ring, as wide around as a big man's fist. On the ring was a bunch of black iron keys, of varying sizes: the symbol and reality of her standing as administrator of the household. As she spoke, she fiddled with the keys as though they were prayer beads; they gave off a continual muted clink, just barely audible to Hob above the rumble of voices, the thuds and thumps of plank tabletops settling onto their trestles.

Something had curdled in the atmosphere of the great hall. A further restlessness, a sense of unease, seemed to seep into the air through the walls. The cat, once more in its favored perch in the window recess, began to back up against the shutter, its ears flat and its eyes wide. After a moment even this refuge would not suffice, and it dropped with a small bang onto the table below, leaped to the floor, and scuttled along the wall till it disappeared through an archway near the dais.

Dame Aline, somewhat younger than her husband, was a short, sturdily built woman with fair hair beneath a white lace coif, small square hands, a merry giggle. She had a mask of light freckles across her face that on feast days she hid beneath a powder of rice mixed with dried white rose-petal: a faint scent of rose hung about her even tonight, when she wore no powder. Her cheeks were full, making Hob think at first of a squirrel with acorns in its cheeks. He thought her plain, especially next to the ivory perfection of Lady Isabeau. As the evening wore on, though, she seemed more appealing to him, by reason of her blithe chatter, her delight in each jest, and above all the contrast she made with the dire ominous bulk of her husband. He sat beside her and cut her meat, as was polite: men cut for women, the younger for the elder, the lesser for the greater. When he had done, she placed her hand on his arm affectionately; she smiled in his face. Her rounded cheek, her easy laugh, lent her a childlike prettiness, and Hob wondered that she had no fear of the sinister castellan, who made even the tough-as-gristle sergeant Ranulf uneasy.

“Precious Christ!” cried Sir Balthasar, looking down at what lay on the floor. “Has he been torn by demons?”