The Young Lovell. Ford Ford Madox

the Lady Margaret if she would forthwith marry the Decies. She said no, not if Sathanas himself branded her with hot irons to make her do it. Sir Simonde said she might as lief do it since she was betrothed to that good knight and that could never be altered. Then she caught at the little dagger with which she was wont to mend her pens. It hung in her girdle, and Sir Simonde went swiftly enough out at the little door.

      The Lady Margaret chafed up and down that small place, but those women said little, for they knew well what this all meant in the way of robbery and pillage and bending them to their wills. But the Lady Margaret swore that she would have the Eures of Witton and the Widdringtons and the Nevilles themselves – aye and the spy Percies – who were all her good cousins, and they should hang the Decies and do much worse to the Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle.

      And no doubt she had the right of it, for long after it was dark they saw a glow of light illumining in a dreary way the face of the White Tower, so that the Lady Margaret thought it was a fire of joy or at least a baal-blaze, but Elizabeth Campstones said that it was houses burning in the township. Then a man with a torch came through the little doorway and lighted in the Magister, or as he now was, the Bailiff Stone, since the Prince Bishop had signed the appointment for him that morning. This rendered him safe against any persecution or processes of laymen in those parts, nevertheless, when the torch-bearer had stuck his torch in a ring by the door and gone away, the lawyer would have the little door left open, and they knew afterwards that it was done so that the men without might rescue him if the Lady Margaret meant to strike or slay him, for she could have slain five of such lean cats.

      Before the Lady Margaret could bring out a question, for she was astonished and could not think why such a person should come there, he broke into a trembling gibber:

      "Oh, good kind ladies; oh, gentle sweet and noble dames, for God His love and sufferings, save all our lives and houses of which two are burning!"

      The Lady Margaret asked highly what all this claver was and what he wanted.

      "These are very violent and high-stomached people," the lawyer babbled quaveringly on. "Two houses of the township they have burned, and hanged the husbandmen for an example. So that if you do not save us…"

      He stretched his hands to the Lady Rohtraut, but she looked before her and said nothing.

      "Well, go you and make common cause with them," the Lady Margaret said to him contemptuously. "So you will save your neck.

      "Ah, but no," he answered miserably but with a sort of professional and cunning air. "I must be on the side of the law."

      "Then what does the law say?" she asked as bitterly. "I will warrant you will not be far from the top dog."

      He began, however, to whine and wring his hands and said that he had not long to live if he could not win these ladies to do the wills of the violent people who had taken that Castle, not but what it might not be said that they had not some shew of equity on their sides.

      "I thought we should come near there," the Lady Margaret said; "come, Master, what is the worst on 't?"

      "Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer said, "this is at the best a grievous matter; at the worst it is…" And he waved his hand as if there were no speaking of it.

      "Go on," the Lady Margaret said grimly.

      "I have been so confused," the lawyer answered, "with much running here and there and seeing such blood flow and the hearing of such threats…"

      "Come, come," the lady said, "you are a man of law and such a clever one that if I threw you out of this window you could tell the law of it or ever you fell to the ground."

      "I am not saying," he retorted, with a sort of relish, "that I go in doubts concerning the law. What perplexes and affrights me is the fall of great and powerful lords. As to the torts, replevins, fines, amercements and the other things too numerous to recite, I am clear enough."

      "Well, it is in the fall of mighty lords that the rats of your trade find bloody bones to gnaw," she answered him. "But if you are too amazed at the contemplation of the wealth that you shall make out of this to tell me, get you gone. If not, speak shortly, or I warrant you a few cousins of mine shall burn this Castle and you in a little space."

      The lawyer shrank at these words and she went on:

      "I trysted with my cousin Widdrington to meet him at Glororem at six to-night and bade him fetch me hence with what companions he needed at twelve if I were not home, so you have but an hour."

      "Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer said, "it is three hours."

      "Well then, you have kept me twelve hours here," the lady said; "I shall pay you in full for your entertainment."

      "Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer sighed, "not me, not me!"

      She answered only: "Out with your tale."

      He hesitated for a moment, and then began with another sigh:

      "For your noble cousin Paris, Lord Lovell, I fear it is all done with him."

      "I think he may be dead that he did not come to his betrothal with me," the lady said. "If that is so you have my leave to tell me."

      "It is worse than that," he groaned. "Woe is me, that noble lordings should bend to violent passions."

      The Lady Margaret looked at him with disdain.

      "If ye would tell me," she said, "that the Young Lovell is gone upon a sorcery, ye lie."

      Again the lawyer sighed.

      "It is too deeply proven," he said. "These poor eyes did see him and two other pairs – both his well-wishers, even as I am."

      "Even whose?" she asked. "And what saw ye?"

      "For the eyes," the lawyer said, "they were those of the Decies and of an ancient goody called Meg of the Foul Tyke."

      "For well-wishers," the Lady Margaret answered, "you well-wish whence your money comes; the Decies would claim my cousin's land and gear: and Meg of the Foul Tyke, though the best of the three is a naughty witch in a red cloak. I have twice begged her life of my lording."

      "The more reason," Master Stone said, "why you should not doubt she is your well-wisher, even more than the young lording's. And that is why she would see you have a better mate."

      The lady said: "Aha!"

      "I will tell you how it was," the lawyer said. "I could not very well sleep that night because I had been turning of old parchments, where, to make a long story short, I had found that if the Lord Lovell should, on the next day, swear to give the Bishop the rights of ingress and fire-feu over his lands in Barnside he should do himself a wrong. For, since the days of that blessed King, Edward the Second, those lands have been held by carta directa…"

      "Get on; get on," the Lady Margaret cried.

      "But this is in the essence of the thing," the lawyer protested, "for a carta directa…"

      "I will not hear this whigamaree," the lady said, "Let us take it, though no doubt you lie, that you had found certain parcels of sheepskin. But understand that we have stomachs for other things than that dry haggis."

      "That is a lamentable frame of mind," the lawyer said, "for look you, a carta of that tenure is the best that can be come by." But, at a gesture of the lady's hand, he began again very quickly: "I spent a night of groaning and sighing, for it was a grievous dilemma. On the one hand, my beloved young lord might do himself a wrong by swearing away his chartered rights. On the other hand, if I should tell him that I had found them, this might be deemed foul play by the Pro-proctor Regis Rushworth, who is a lawyer for the house of Lovell in the Palatine districts. Though how it is that Rushworth knoweth not of this charter I cannot tell."

      "How came you by them?" the lady asked. "Without a doubt you stole them to make work."

      "They were old papers that were there when I bought the study of my master that was Magister Greenwell," the lawyer answered, and again the lady said: "Get on; get on."

      "So, at the last," Stone continued, "I made, after prayer, the resolution and firm intent to tell my lord. And so I arose, remembering how he would be praying in the