But her pursuers were drawing on apace. The foremost was not De Breauté himself, but one of his men, who sprang from his horse and seized Aliva by the hood which hung loosely from her shoulders.
"Let go thy hold, varlet!" shouted De Breauté, in the rear. Even in his madness he could not bear to see her thus roughly handled by a rude soldier.
But Aliva was free ere he spoke. She unclasped the buckle which fastened her hood and mantle round her neck, and as the man fell back with the garments in his hand, flung herself into the muddy dike.
The water reached nearly to her waist, and with difficulty she struggled through. As she passed her horse, standing half bogged in the middle, she seized the reins and drew them over his head. By good chance a stunted willow overhung the further bank. She made a snatch at it, caught it, and with a supreme effort gained firm ground.
With the purchase afforded by the tree, Aliva was now able to get a tight hold of her horse's head, and encouraging him with her voice, she induced him to follow her example, and to struggle up the bank.
The two soldiers, meanwhile, watched her manoeuvres from the further side in some perplexity. Their lord's order to release her had been peremptory, and it was now apparent that she was escaping them again. Their lord himself, at some little distance, dismounted, his horse dangerously engulfed in a bog, was in as much uncertainty as they were.
When he had first started off in his wild chase of Aliva, he had indeed no fixed intention with regard to her, except perhaps to carry her off to Bedford along with Henry de Braybrooke; and now that he had pursued her thus far from Elstow, and held her, as it were, in his grasp, he was still undecided.
A wild chase through Ouse marshes.
Any brutal violence was far from his thoughts; for had he not forbidden his man to lay a hand upon her? A marriage was what he contemplated, though indeed it might be a forced marriage, like that of his brother Fulke with the Lady Margaret.