Those Twain Will Seek the Wisdom of the Wood-Wife

Again next day was their life such as it had been the day before; and as they lay in cool shadow of a great oak, Birdalone fell to telling Arthur all the whole story of her dealings with the wood-wife, and how that she had so loved her and holpen her, that through her love and her help she had escaped the witch and her snares, who would have turned her into a half-devil for the undoing of manfolk. And how that the said wood-wife had never appeared to her but as an image and double of herself, save on the time when she played the leech to him. Then she told him how all had gone when the wood-wife had sought him out for the fulfilment of their love, and of the dreadful day when they had come upon him out of his wit and but little manlike.

Then she asked, would he, within the next day or two, that they should go see the wood-wife together and thank her for her help, and bring him within the ring of her love and guarding; and he yeasaid it with a good will.

After this she would have him tell her of how things had gone with him since that evil day when he had come home from the Castle of the Quest and found her gone. So he told her somewhat, and of his dole and misery, and his dealings with the foemen of Greenford; but yet scantly, and as one compelled; and at last he said:

Dear love, since thou art cossetting me with all solace of caresses, I pray thee remember my trouble and grief, how sore they were, and do with me as with a sick man getting well, as I wot surely thou wouldest do; and do thou that which is at this present the softest and merriest to me, and that forsooth is, that thou shouldest talk and tell, and I should hearken the sweetness of the music, and only here and there put in a word to rest thee and make thy tale the sweeter.

She laughed with love on him, and without more ado fell to telling everything she might think of, concerning her days in the House of Captivity, both when she was but a bairn, and when she was grown to be a young woman; and long was she about the tale, nor was it all done in one day; and a multitude of things she told him which are not set down in this book.

In the evening when they were going again to and fro the meads, it was other talk they fell on, to wit, of their fellows of the Quest, both of Sir Hugh and the three lovely la............