But some one else was listening too.
In the thickness of the wall, at the south-east corner of the keep, on the same floor as the great hall, was the small chapel of the castle. It was a tiny apartment, affording room for but few worshipping besides those attending on the ministrations of the priest. Behind a round arched arcading in a stone gallery were accommodated the ladies and the household of the lord's family; but the bulk of the congregation would have to stand in a sort of antechapel opening out of the great hall, and join in the mass from that position.
Up and down the narrow space in front of the altar--freshly repaired and cleaned for the bridal of Aliva and De Breauté--paced restlessly at midnight Bertram de Concours. His thoughts were not pleasant ones. The freshly-appointed chaplain of Bedford Castle had conceived that his new position would be one which would lead him to power and authority, and probably give him an opportunity to triumph over those whom he considered his enemies, the ecclesiastical superiors who had dishonoured and disowned him. But now, instead of rising to power with the De Breauté family, he found his new patrons in sore distress. He was well aware that the two assaults which had already been made on the castle had been completely successful, and that all the outer defences had been taken. He gleaned, from the talk of De Breauté and his under-officers, that if the walls were really undermined, and a fresh attack should be made with the same vigour, nothing could avert the fall of the castle.
For the fate of De Breauté and his men Bertram de Concours cared nothing, but in the event of his own capture he clearly foresaw for himself condemnation in the ecclesiastical court. The sentence would be perpetual imprisonment in the cell of some stringent order, where offending priests were subjected to even more severe discipline than that voluntarily assumed by the most austere monks themselves.
"Fool that I was," he muttered to himself, "to have thrown in my lot with these French upstarts! Why did I not see this maiden safe to her father's house, and so have won me the eternal gratitude of this love-sick knight, and what is more, the favour of his family?"
As he moved restlessly to and fro, he paused, and opening the rude shutter which closed the narrow window on the south, looked out into the silent summer night. The calm freshness seemed to mock the consuming uneasiness in his mind.
But as he gazed he heard voices. He leaned out and listened intently.
Yes, he was not mistaken: a voice there was above him--a woman's--answering to a man's below in the darkness.
"Escape, my Ralph, ere dawn break! There are watchers at each end of the long wall, and they will certes espy thee if thou lingerest till it grows light. How it came that thou crossedst the glacis, and scaledst the keep mound unseen, I cannot tell. May the saints bear thee safe across the river!"
And then another female voice went on,--