One day it moved her to hear unwonted sounds rising from the outer ward below, into which the public were admitted on occasion of State festivities, executions, and so forth. The multitudinous jollity of voices, soaring above the whine of bugle and tap of drum, proclaimed it a May-day revel, when the whole place was delivered over to sport and merriment.
She could not see from her high, narrow window, sunk deep in the wall; but the babble flowing in on a shaft of sunlight made her heart warm as it had never felt for days. Some spirit of release seemed to ride in on the happy music, some emotion that made her bosom heave and her eyes fill thick with tears.
She was standing, drinking in the merry noise, when her lids blinked involuntarily, and, with a swish and smack on the ceiling of her cell, something alighted at her feet. She fancied on the instant that a bird had flown in and struck against the stone; but, looking down quickly, she saw that it was a broken arrow—one of a dear, familiar pattern. With a gasp she stooped, snatched at it, and stood listening. There was no sign of any one having observed. With swift trembling fingers she detached a strand of green worsted which was knotted about the shaft under the quill, and found beneath a folded scrap of parchment, which, on being opened, revealed a glutinous smear of brown substance, and just these four woeful words written above:
“Poor Robin’s Pledge. Farewell.”
It was her death-warrant.
So sweet and tragic, her heart near stopped from its sorrow as she read it. She knew at once what it was—a mortal Arab poison, given long years ago to her woodland lover by a follower of the Lion King. It might serve him in a sore need, had been the words accompanying the gift—to taste it was death. And once Robin had shown it to her, proposing, half-playfully, that they should pledge one another in its Lethe were Fate ever to dispart them.
And so she knew that her last hope was dead before her. Robin could not come. He was hurt; he was ill; the guards were too many for them, the Fates too strong, and their only refuge at last was in death. He had sent some one of his cunning archers, Will Scarlet belike, to take advantage of this merrymaking to speed the message, and, when she had realised all that it meant to her, she fell on her knees with a bursting prayer of gratitude to the Providence, to the dear lover, between whom her honour was held safe from the despoiler.
She never doubted that her Robin meant to share the pledge. Likely his dear spirit was waiting for her now, eager to link with hers in the green woods where first their loves were spoken. Fearful of interruption, she put her lips to the poison, and died with his name on them.
That evening came Master Kay to the cell, with a sick smile on his mouth, and in his hands a tray of comfortable things, including a flask of drugged wine. The King’s patience was exhausted.
But when he saw what had happened he stole out, and fled to join the refractory Barons, of whom was Fitzwalter, father of Madelon la Belle.