XXIX
When Annys approached the Castle the following morning, he learned that the Baron had gone to one of his manors lying on the highroad to Sudbury, which was the direct way to the Mile End. Hearing of the growing boldness of the insurgents, and having some of his costliest purchases from the Stourbridge Fair yet stored within the Manor House, he thought it well to bring them to the well-protected Castle.
On the terrace Annys hid himself behind an abutment of a tower, and peered out cautiously every now and then to see if any one came by who could get word for him to Rose. As he waited there came along Will Langland, no longer the glutton of the night before, but of a sad and dejected mien, as if his conscience lay none too easy within his breast.
"Ah, Robert Annys!" he exclaimed, as he recognized the poor priest whom he had encountered several times in the past. "How comes it I find you not with our new masters of England? What brings a poor priest within the Baron's domains? 'Tis enough to make thy head cease acquaintance with thy neck."
"Better die of an honest twist of the neck, and have done with it, than from a heart that breaks within and slowly wastes the blood drop by drop," cried Annys, bitterly, turning away his face. He could not bear it that this man should be his long-idolized Will Langland.
The poet looked at him long and silently out of his deep-seated, piercing eyes. The lines about his mouth deepened; it was evident that the man's soul wept within him. At last he spoke.
"Ay! if one did but die of a broken heart. Ah, you would not see Will Langland alive were it so. If it only were vouchsafed one to die. But alas, when only the heart is dead, we live on and on, and play the fool to our clod of clay."
Annys regarded him impatiently. "Little looked you yestere'en as one whose heart was broken. You seemed not unjoyful sitting a beggar at my Lord Baron's table."
A queer look came into Langland's face. "Nay, not as a beggar," he interposed softly, "not as a beggar. I keep my Lord's chantry in London which he did erect for the soul of his mother. I came but for the feast. I return to London to-morrow."