Suddenly, from behind some dark corner, a figure rushed at them in the gloom, and fell on his knees before Aliva. She started violently, and Ralph drew his sword.
"Misericorde, misericorde! for the love of Heaven and our Lady!" whined a familiar voice, that of Bertram de Concours. "Fair lady, as you hope for mercy, show some to me, and mind you how I succoured you in the chapel, when De Breauté and his men might have--ah!"
He never finished. A trampling of armed feet was heard behind, and he turned his head to see a guard advancing upon him.
"Better a watery grave than a living tomb!" he shrieked, and, before Ralph could stop him, plunged into the stream.
"Plague take the traitor priest! We have lost him," growled the veteran man-at-arms in command.
"Old Ouse will have naught of such foul spawn, I trow," corrected Ralph. "There are but two feet of water 'neath this bank at harvest-time. Fish him out; he sticketh in the mud, and is set fast.--But come, sweet Aliva," he added, turning to the maiden at his side; "let us hasten. The Lady Margaret hath without doubt ere now gained the house of good Master Gilbert the Clothier, who bade me offer thee his hospitality."
Aliva moved on, clinging to her lover's arm. Behind them, into the darkness, the guard marched off the bedraggled priest. As regards the latter's ultimate fate the chronicler is silent, beyond relating the fact that he was committed for trial in the court of the archbishop, and doubtless the ambitious Bertram de Concours fretted away the remainder of his days a prisoner in the cell of some austere order. But the little episode had awakened another memory in Aliva's breast.
"My Ralph," she exclaimed, "and what of the other, the Benedictine lay-brother, the Bletsoe youth, who did in all truth and fidelity succour me and strive to bring me aid?"
Sir Ralph looked down on the fair face resting on his arm, and then up to the purple sky of the summer night--
"The azure gloom,
When the deep skies assume
Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven."