I marvel how our Queen kept up in that rough walk until the cave was reached, but she never faltered. Once I pressed on her the boar spear that I carried, that she might use it as a staff, but she would not have it, and she never so much as put out her hand to my arm when she stumbled over root or jutting rock. It was a rough road for her, but I dared take no path lest we should be more easily followed. And all the way I listened for the voices of men who hunted us, but I heard none.
So we came to my cave without mischance and were safe. I set the half-sleeping prince on a heather-covered bank while I pulled away the stones of its entrance, and the Queen stood by him watching him, and I thought how any other woman had surely sunk down to rest after that weary flight. But she seemed tireless in this as in all else that she took in hand.
When the way was clear, I prayed her to enter, and she took the hand of the prince and led him in without a word, while I followed, hanging the great wild bull's skin that I used as a curtain across the as yet unblocked doorway, that no light might betray the place.
The fire still smouldered in its far corner, where some fathomless cleft in the rock took its smoke far into the heart of the hill and lost it there, and I stirred it to a blaze. I had long ago so screened it with a stone wall from the doorway that I might use it safely, for I had a mind to be in comfort when I spent the winter here. And indeed, to me at least, the cave seemed homelike enough. There was my couch of springy heather, skin-covered and warmly-blanketed, and the flat-topped stones that were my seats and table were set in order, and deerskins were on them also. My bows and quiver and spare arms were on the walls, with an antlered skull or two, and I was used to bare stone walls in my old tower in the bygone days. Yet, as I watched the weary face of the Queen, I knew how wretched all would seem to her.
"It is no fit place for you, Madam," I said, "but it is safe. When daylight comes again your people will be searching for you, and I will meet them and bring them to you, and all will be well."
"They fled from me even now," she said in a cold voice, "and here I do not even know the name of the friend who has come by chance to me."
"My name is Richard Barvill, Madam," I said—and it was good to own the honest old name once more—"I will say, even before my Queen, that I have no cause to be ashamed of it, being a forest dweller only because of the troubles."
This I added, lest the thought of being in the hands of some wrong-doer might cause her trouble presently when I left her and passed beyond her sight. One could not tell what fears of treachery might come into her mind.
"Because of the troubles," she repeated softly, "and they say that I am the main cause of them all. Yet I have my share in bearing them for his sake," and she looked towards the young prince, who was now asleep in earnest on my couch, where he had thrown himself at once when we came in.