VI

THE FAIRIES' WELL


What a beautiful place this is," Lady Philippa said softly. She was
standing with her husband near the great stone keep, looking out across a
half-built wall at the hills and valleys of his wilderness domain. It was
one of those mornings of early summer when the air is cool yet bright with
sunshine, and the unfolding beauty of the world has something of heaven in
it. Birds were singing everywhere, and the green of new leaves clothed the
land in elvish loveliness. "Your England is very fair, Gualtier."

"It is good that you find it so, love," answered the knight. He had had
misgivings a-plenty in bringing his gently-bred Provencal wife to this
rough country. Often he had to be absent from dawn to moonrise, riding on
some perilous expedition. He and his little force of men-at-arms and
yeomen were doing police work on the Welsh border, and no one ever knew
just when the turbulent chiefs of those mountains would attempt a raid.

Lady Philippa never complained. She ruled her household as he ruled his
lands, wisely and well. She called her husband Gualtier instead of Walter,
because he liked it, and sang to her lute the canzons and retronsas of her
country, but she seemed to love his England as he did. She talked to the
woodcutters' wives and the village women and farm people as if she had
played in childhood about their doors. In fact the knight had a shrewd
notion that if he had been a bachelor the taming of his half-British,