"Nay, give ear till I've finished and you shall see it plain enough. My knight of the brown-gold curls, an I mistake me not, is even at this moment slumbering within the next chamber. With a bodkin a cleft in the wall can be used as a slight avenue of secret communication. Then a missive, and a bit of cloth clipped from my—no yours, 'tis of a more enticing color—your saffron gown, I'll say, dear cousin; and thus I have my champion and no soul but you and I the wiser. Do not say me nay, good, generous Rocelia. It will be a right merry and harmless frolic, think you not?"
"'Twould be a sorry one for you, I fear, an my father found you out," replied Rocelia, half in jest, half earnestly.
"Enough. Let the hazard be mine, sweet. And now to business. Whilst I am at work with the bodkin, do you shear me a strip from off your saffron velvet kirtle."
*****
Sir Richard, sleeping soundly, was all unconscious of the widely varying activities of which he was now become the center. Beneath the room in which Isabel, now singing, now laughing, was engaged upon the wall, Friar Diomed had finished brewing and mixing the herbs and chemicals of his narcotic.
"My oath on 't, Friar Diomed," Tyrrell was saying from his seat beside the fire, "your cloth shall not save your shaven pate, an this potion bring one jot of harm to the young noble."
"An it be administered with your usual skill and caution, Sir James," returned the monk, elevating a phial filled with the liquid between his squinting eyes and the light of the fire, "'twill bring no more harm than so much aqua pura. But, by my church! 'tis beside my understanding why you must observe all of these dark ceremonies. Let the young knight but read the King's warrant in his slop pouch, an he were a long-eared ass not to embrace our cause."
"Have I not already said, my stupid friend, that he would at once charge us with substitution and false writing? Think you not that the young noble hath heard a many an evil tale of this tavern along the way? Marry, an he had not, all our trouble and precaution to shield the young prince from discovery and harm would have been but of slight avail. But only once again, good friar, need this phantom inn disappear, and then 'twill serve as a blazing torch to light the start of our movement southward."
"Pity 'tis that the young prince died," observed the monk, giving the phial into Tyrrell's hand and standing with his broad back to the blaze. "And just at the point, too, when you had gathered a sufficient power to hurl effectively against Henry. So fire shall consume our refuge, you say? Well, Sir James, ab igne ignem, say I."
"Yea, and I. But regarding the young prince, regret not that which is beyond mending. In truth, Friar Diomed, I like this young Earl of Warwick mightily. He's a right goodly youth to look upon, and brave—aye, as fearless as a lion cub. Nay—let us not regret, but rather return thanks to a generous God for having thus dropped down upon us a proper and legal substitute."