This was some other place—but what?
Determined to assure herself, she stood with her back to the door, and walked forward slowly, groping in the darkness, with her hand stretched out before her. She had not gone far before her feet brushed against something which rustled, and, stooping, her hand touched some spread-out straw. Once more upright, she moved across the straw, and came to the wall.
The truth dawned on her now, and she sank on the straw with a sense of horror, hopelessness, an indescribable fear—she knew not what to call it. But this she knew, that she was in prison!
She buried her face in her hands and, shuddering, tried to think this thing out. Why should she be in a prison cell, and not in a cavern with an outlet to the open air, where, when she came to herself she might have waited by the river till the day dawned, and she could have gone to the city gates, and so to her home?
She recalled the voices which had startled her in the cavern. To whom did they belong? Were they river robbers? and was it possible that they made the cavern one of their hiding-places? She began to put the thing into shape. These robbers had found her, and had carried her to some inner place, thinking to deal with her later on, when they had time.
It was a terrible plight for a delicate girl to be in, and she prayed for God's shielding if she had fallen into the hands of desperate and disreputable men.
Another thought gripped her which seemed more terrible than the other. What if those voices belonged to the emissaries of the Inquisition, who had gained an inkling of the fact that William Tyndale was hiding hereabouts, and had come to search the cavern on the chance of finding him? If that were so, then they had found her while she was unconscious, and had carried her to this cell. It was fearful to contemplate the possibility, that this was one of the dungeons in the place which was known throughout the city as the Holy House.
Margaret crouched on the heap of straw until the light of the day-dawn began to creep through the barred window. When she lifted her white, drawn, tear-stained face, and gazed around, she saw that it was as she feared. She really was in a prison; and from what was there, it surely was a part of the Inquisitors' House. When her eyes ranged round the damp walls, where the morning sun came in brokenly, and made the lines of trickling moisture gleam, she saw a great crucifix hanging opposite the window, so placed that the prisoner could not fail to be reminded of the religion and the Church to which she was supposed to be a renegade. The size of this one in the cell was disconcerting, for it was as large as life, as though the Inquisitors meant that the figure of the suffering Saviour should be intrusive.
The long hours went, and Margaret was left to her loneliness. No one came with food, and nothing had passed her lips for all the hours that had gone since she left her home on her father's errand to bid Tyndale leave the city. She looked about to see whether the usual prison fare was in the cell—the bread and water; but none was there.
Nothing living came, save a bird that hopped about on the window-sill, between the bars, and peeped in at the prisoner. Standing in the line of light, the little creature sang his song, but Margaret gained no cheering from it, sweet though it was. There was liberty for that pretty bit of feathered life, which only served to make her feel the misery of her own imprisonment.