“Read, lad, read!” ordered Rockhurst, “and be in readiness.”
His step was already clanking down the stone stairs ere his son, hurrying to the window, could read the sheet in the waning light. Then a great cry broke from the young man: “Diana! Diana!”
“My lord” (so ran the hasty writing on the note), “the convent of St. Helen’s, Bishopgate, within where my kinswoman, Madam Anastasia Bedingfield, has given me shelter, though none of her faith, is even now attacked by the rabble; and we are in parlous danger. Send succour, as you still remember poor Diana!”
From below was heard the roll of drum; then the tramp of feet and the clank of firelock. And over all the Lord Constable’s voice:—
“Steady, lads, and haste. We’ve urgent work to-night!”
Hurriedly Harry set out to join them. His knees trembled as he went. He thought, in the confusion of his mind: My father goeth like a young man again to the rescue, and I like an old one. What will happen between us when we see Diana again?
III
THE LAST COMMAND
Ten frightened ladies, of various ages and comeliness, were gathered round the Mother Abbess in the great stone refectory of St. Helen’s House. Queen Catherine’s convent—removed since the subsidence of the great sickness from its original home in St. Martin’s Lane—was thus far outside the track of the fire, yet the “Blue Nuns” jostled one another like so many frightened children, each in the endeavour to get the closer to the large, firm comfort of her presence. Adown the long table, between the platters of untouched food, burned the four candles in high brazen candlesticks, scantily illumining the room.
The atmosphere was oppressively close, for all the windows were shuttered and barred. And, save for the whimpering of some of the nuns, the mouthing prayerful whispers of others, there was a heavy stillness within, in contrast to the sounds that beat round the walls without: the voice of a mob in a fury.