CHAPTER LVII
"I CHOOSE TO RIDE ALONE"
Mora escaped from the restraining arms of old Debbie, and appeared at the top of the steps leading down to the courtyard.
Framed in the doorway, in her green riding dress, she stood for a moment, surveying the scene before her.
The two men bound for Worcester, bearing her packet to the Bishop, had just ridden out at the great gates. Through the gates, still standing open, she could see them guiding their horses down the hill and taking the southward road.
The porter was attempting to close the gates, but a stable lad hindered him, pointing to Icon, whom a groom was leading, ready saddled, to and fro, before the door; Icon, with proudly arched neck and swishing tail, as conscious of his snowy beauty as when, in the river meadow at Worcester, he found himself the centre of an admiring crowd of nuns.
At sight of his flowing mane, powerful forequarters, and high stepping action, Mora was irresistibly reminded of the scene in the courtyard at the Nunnery, when the Bishop rode in on his favourite white palfrey, she standing at the top of the steps to receive him. Never again would she stand so, to receive the Bishop; never again would Icon proudly carry him. The Bishop had given her to Hugh and Icon to her. A faint sense of compunction stirred within her. Perhaps at that moment she came near to realising something of what both gifts had cost the Bishop.
Bending her head, she looked across the courtyard and under the gateway. The messengers were riding fast. Even as she looked, they disappeared into the pine wood.
Her letter to Symon was well on its way. She remembered with comfort and gladness certain things she had written in that letter.
Then—as the pine wood swallowed the messengers—with a joyous bound of reaction her whole mind turned to Hugh.
Three steps below her, a page waited, holding a dagger which she had been wont to wear, when riding in the forests. She had sent it out to be sharpened. She took it from him, tested its point, slipped it into the sheath at her belt, smiled upon the boy, descended the remaining steps, and laid her hand upon Icon's mane.
Then it was that Mistress Deborah's agitated signals from within the doorway, took effect upon old Zachary.
Coming forward, he bared his white head, and adventured a humble expostulation.
"My lady," he said, "it is not safe nor well that you should ride alone. A few moments' delay will suffice Beaumont to saddle a horse and be ready to attend you."
She mounted before she made answer.
She kept her imperious temper well in hand, striving to remember that to old Debbie and Zachary she seemed but the child they had loved and watched over from infancy, of a sudden grown older. They had not known the Prioress of the White Ladies.
Bending from the saddle, her hand on Icon's mane:
"I go to my husband, Zachary," she said, "and I choose to ride alone."
Then gathering up the reins, she turned Icon toward the gates and so rode across the courtyard, looking, neither back to where Mistress Deborah alternately wrung her hands and shook her fist at Zachary; nor to right or left, where Mark and Beaumont, standing with doffed caps waited till she should have passed, to yield to the full enjoyment of Mistress Deborah's gestures, and of Master Zachary's discomfiture.
She rode forth looking straight before her, over the pointed ears of Icon. She was riding to Hugh, and, they who stood by must not see the love-light in her eyes.
Grave and serene, her head held high, she paced the white palfrey through the gates. And if the porter marked a wondrous shining in her eyes—well, the sun began to slant its rays, and she rode straight toward the west.
Zachary mounted the steps and hastened across the hall, followed by
Deborah.
Mark thereupon enacted Mistress Deborah, and Beaumont, Master Zachary; while the page sat down on the steps to laugh.
The porter clanged to the gates.
The day's work was done.