"Master Roger!" gasped Diccon. "This is indeed a rash venture. An Sir Mervyn find you within a five mile of the Manor there will be an arrow through you ere nightfall."
"I am more like to send an arrow through him," replied Roger fiercely. "He hath done me ill enough already, and now to crown it all he purposes to wed my betrothed. Catharine is mine, not only by her choice, but by the law of the land. She was affianced to me by King Edward himself. Have her I will, or leave my body for the crows!"
"Brave words, Master Roger, brave words!" said Diccon, shaking his head. "'Twill need more than a single sword to cross Sir Mervyn in the matter."
"Where a sword can naught avail, craft and guile must find a way," returned Roger. "List you, I have brought tidings. Edward has come to his own again. But two days since did his arms meet those of Lancaster at Barnet. The Red Rose is trampled under foot, and Warwick and Montague lie dead upon the field."
"In sooth if this be true it were news of great import."
"I met one who carried a letter from my lord of Gloucester. He rode to gather the supporters of York in the West. Margaret the Queen hath landed at Weymouth, and is calling the men of Devon and Cornwall to the standard of the red rose. I hied me in all haste to my lord of Norfolk, and he hath given me a band of stout fellows that are even now hid under the brushwood yonder. An I can surprise Sir Mervyn ere he hears that the emblem of Lancaster is raised in the west it will strike a blow for York in Somerset, and moreover I shall win me my bride. I must myself to the Manor. I would see how it is garrisoned, and convey a message to Catharine alone."
"You are a dead man first!" exclaimed Diccon. "This were folly, Master Roger. A lion's den were safer than the Manor."
"None shall pierce my disguise if you, good Diccon, will but aid to trick me out for the part I fain would play. I wot I could count on your faith!"
"To the last drop of my blood. Yet it is a rash venture, and one that ill pleases me," replied the old man sadly.
Late that same afternoon the golden shafts of the warm spring sunshine were finding their way through the narrow windows of an upper room in the Manor. The house in those days was but a quarter of its present size; it was strongly fortified, and bore more resemblance to a medieval keep than to the Tudor mansion of later times. Strength and defence had been considered before beauty and elegance, and there was little even of comfort to be found inside the stern, forbidding walls. In the apartment in question some rude attempt had been made to render things more habitable than in the rest of the grim establishment. A few pieces of tapestry covered the rough masonry, and the floor was strewn with fresh rushes. On a carved wooden bench by the window sat a fair and beautiful girl of seventeen, who was occupying herself with a piece of needlework, and talking earnestly meanwhile to her attendant, a maiden of her own age, busy also with her tambour frame.