LITMIR.BIZ

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so that without doubt the lawyer still slept. Then he remembered that he would have that man hanged without delay. Without doubt he left his windows shuttered to give false news, for certainly, that morning, he had seen him moving those stones. He looked about him to see if in the open barns and byres he could not see any horse of the Prince Bishop or the Percy or any of their men polishing their head-pieces or their pikes. But, though many of the barns stood open, none could he observe.

      He looked over his shoulder and saw that the archers were come to the gateway and were peering sideways out, with a due caution. Then some of them came through and stood with their backs to the wall, waving at him their hands and shouting foul words. They would not come any further for fear he had an ambush hidden amongst the byres and middens of the village. So, still slowly, he rode on between heaps of garbage where the street was narrow and a filthy runnel went down.

      At the top the street grew very wide till it was a green swarded place with many slender, sea-bent trees to make a darkened shade up against the walls of the small monastery of Saint Edmund. He considered whether he should go in there, but he remembered that there were only a few monks and they had no men-at-arms to guard those who sought sanctuary with them from pursuers not afraid of sacrilege. He determined, however, to make his way to another monastery – the great and powerful one of Belford, where they had fifty bowmen and two hundred men-at-arms to guard them against the Scots. There he would go, unless the old woman told him other news when her breath came back. Then the old thing whimpered:

      "Set me down, master. I cannot speak on horse-back." He let her slide to the ground and, with the basket transfixed by the two arrows, she fell on her knees. And then she crossed herself and gave thanks to God for his coming so well off, and afterwards, his long-toed shoes being just on a level with her lips and she on her knees, she set her mouth to the shoe that was on the right side where she was, and then placed it over her head as far as the basket gave her space. He wondered a moment that this old woman should be so humble that was used to treat him as a dirty little boy, long after he had fought in great fights, she having nursed his mother before and him afterwards. But then he considered that she was doing homage for such small goods as she had and this was the first of his vassals to do this thing. And again he observed that the bright scarlet of his shoe and the bright green – it being particoloured and running all up his leg to his thigh – these were dull pink and dull brown. They had been the brightest colours that you could find in the North.

      Elizabeth Campstones stood up.

      "Where will you go to, my master Paris?" she asked. "Woeful lording, where will you find shelter?"

      "The Belford monks, I think, will give me the best rede and admonition," he said. "There I am minded to ride now."

      "Then come you down from the brown horse," she said, "and walk beside me on Belford road, for ye could go no better journey, only I cannot speak up to you with this basket on my poll."

      He came down from the brown horse, and as he did so his stirrup leather cracked and that was more than passing strange for he had had them new two days before. So when he was come round Hamewarts' head and had the reins through his arm, he said to the old woman:

      "Now tell me, truly, what day is this?"

      "This day is the last day of June," she answered. "My master Paris, it is three months from the day that you gat you gone, and ye are a very ruined lord and the haymakers have gone to the high hills."

      He answered only, "Ah," and walked thoughtfully forward. He had known that that lady was a fairy…

      He walked with the old woman beside him, through the little grove of thin trees, by the bridle gate into the yard of the square, brown church with the leaden roof, and so out into the field where it mounted towards the Spindleston Hills.

      Halfway up the low hillside there was a spring with blackthorn bushes, sea-holly and broom in thick tufts about it. The sun fell hot here, early as it was. A grey goat wandered through the rough and flowery thicket and many great bees buzzed. He sat himself down upon a soft-turfed molehill and left Hamewarts to crop the bushes. The old woman stood looking at him curiously and with a sort of dread, for a minute. Then she took the basket from her head and began to lament over it.

      The two arrows transfixed it through and through, so that it was impossible for her to draw out her cloths and linen. Lord Lovell came out of his trance of thought a moment. He looked upon the woman, and then, taking the basket from her, he broke off the feathered end of each arrow and so drew them right through the basket. The old woman pulled out her clouts and said, "Eyah, eyah." Through each clout one arrow or the other had made one, two or many round holes.

      "These," she lamented, "are all that your mother has for her bed or her body. All her others your sisters have taken."

      "I am considering," he answered her, "how I best may save my mother."

      She took her linen to the spring which was deep and clear, and began sedulously to soak piece after piece, rinsing it over and over as she knelt, and beating it with an oaken staff upon an oaken board that she had in her basket bottom. And as she hung each piece over the bramble bushes she looked diligently into the scene below her to see what was stirring in the Castle or the village. Young Lovell had selected that high spot so that they might know what was agate by way of a pursuit. She saw, at intervals, three men on horseback go spurring up the street from the Castle arch, but she did not disturb her master with the news. She thought it better to leave him to his thinking, for she considered that he would hit upon some magic way out of it. She imagined that he had dwelt that three months amongst wizards and sorcerers that he should have met during his vigil in the little old chapel that was a very haunted place.

      At last he raised his head and said:

      "Old woman, tell me truly now, all your news."

      What she knew first was that, on the morning when the Lord Lovell had died, all the lords and knights and the Prince Bishop and the others being gone from the hall, there remained only the dead lord, his wife in a swound, the Lady Margaret Eure and her. Then Sir Walter Limousin of Cullerford with his wife Isopel and the other sister had approached with several men of theirs in arms and had carried the good body of her senseless lady up to a little chamber in the tower called Wanshot, in the very top of it. She, Elizabeth Campstones, had carried her lady's feet, but all the rest of her bearers had been men-at-arms. The Lady Margaret had followed them up into that little stone cell and asked them what they would do with that lady in that place. But no one of them answered her a word, high and haughty as she was, and at last they went away and left them, the Lady Rohtraut just coming to herself on a little, rotting frame bed that had no coverings but the strings that held it together.

      The Lady Margaret had sought to go out with them, calling them all proud and beastly names and she was determined to set her own men that she had there, to the number of twenty, all well armed, to make war upon these and to raise the Castle. But when she came to the doorway that was little and low Sir Simonde Vesey set his hand upon her chest and thrust her back so hard into the room that she fell against the wall and lost her breath. When she had it again the door was locked and it was of thick oak, studded deep with nails.

      Finely she raved, but when she came to, the Lady Rohtraut was in a sort of stupour, sitting still and shaking her head at all that they said. She thought this must be a dream that would vanish upon her awakening, and so it was lost labour to talk.

      So they remained until well on into the afternoon, seeing nothing but the ceaseless run of the clouds and the sky and the gulls upon the Farne Islands and the restless sea, from their little window. Then there came three weeping maids of their lady's, bearing bedding that they set down on the floor, and a little food and some wine that were placed upon the window-sill. But these girls spoke no word, for Sir Simonde Vesey stood outside and looked awfully upon them. The Lady Margaret made to run from the room, but two men that stood hidden put their pikes to her breast so that she ran upon them, and would have been sore hurt only they were somewhat blunted.

      The Lady Rohtraut sat for a long while eating a little white bread that she crumbled in her fingers, and sipping at the wine from the black leather bottle, but still she said little, which was a great pity.

      Towards four of the afternoon, to judge by the shadows, Sir Simonde let himself in at the

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