She did not hesitate. She took no thought for her brother, she did not remember her loved sisters: Ettarre and Dorothy were their names, and they also suffered for their beauty, and for the desire it quickened in the hearts of men. Melicent knew only that Perion was in captivity and might not look for aid from any person living save herself.
She gathered in a blue napkin such emeralds as would ransom a pope. She cut short her marvellous hair and disguised herself in all things as a man, and under cover of the ensuing night slipped from the castle. At Manneville she found a Venetian ship bound homeward with a cargo of swords and armour.
She hired herself to the captain of this vessel as a servant, calling herself Jocelin Gaignars. She found no time--wherein to be afraid or to grieve for the estate she was relinquishing, so long as Perion lay in danger.
Thus the young Jocelin, though not without hardship and odd by-ends of adventure here irrelevant, came with time's course into a land of sunlight and much wickedness where Perion was.
There the boy found in what fashion Perion was living and won the dearly purchased misery of seeing him, from afar, in his deplorable condition, as Perion went through the outer yard of Nacumera laden with chains and carrying great logs toward the kitchen. This befell when Jocelin had come into the hill country, where the eyrie of Demetrios blocked a crag-hung valley as snugly as a stone chokes a gutter-pipe.
Young Jocelin had begged an audience of this heathen lord and had obtained it--though Jocelin did not know as much--with ominous facility.