For now, as it seemed to him, he stood beside his King, and had found a throne in the desert.

Alone among all Christian men he had carried the Cross to a new world, and had been judged worthy to walk in the footprints of his captain Christ.

A great gladness and a great humility possessed him.
He had ridden beyond the ken of his own folk, and no tale of his end would ever be told in that northern hall of his when the hearth-fire flickered on the rafters.

That seemed small loss, for they would know that he had ridden the King's path, and that can have but the one ending....

Most clear in his memory now were the grey towers by Canche, where all day long the slow river made a singing among the reeds.