"Yea, gladly," came back the answer, sweet and low; "and a kiss, too, my brave knight."
"Ye gods of Love!" exclaimed Sir Richard beneath his breath. "The very yearnings of Tantalus are at this moment put to the blush! Was ever a champion avowed under like romantic circumstances? Was ever a maiden wooed through a two-foot, key-cold wall?"
He then sent the pliant steel back through the wall, which he erroneously supposed to be constructed out of solid stone. In another moment there came to his impatiently waiting hand a very small cutting of saffron velvet, the which he touched reverently to his lips, as was becoming in a loyal champion, and then placed devoutly next his heart.
He whispered again, and again he whispered, but no answer came. Observing the precaution of scraping away a bit of mortar from another wall, he carefully concealed the opening. Upon which he replaced the bed in its former position, secured the note within the fillet of his helmet and once more sought his pillow, where he fell asleep presently in the midst of meditating as to the means through which he might, in safety to her, effect the deliverance of the fair unknown.
Yet not half so fair, nor yet half so lovely, was the vision that he materialized from the scrap of saffron velvet as was its beautiful owner, whom an unkind Fate decreed he should not set eyes upon till many days crowded with many misadventures had passed away.
[CHAPTER VI]
THE PAVILION OF PURPLE AND BLACK
It was a trifle past midnight when de Claverlok and the men he had commissioned to bring with him halted in the highroad before the door of the Red Tavern. Coincident with their arrival the hitherto deserted and lonely appearing hostelry was magically metamorphosed into a hive of buzzing industry. The near vicinity of the building became brilliantly illuminated with the flare of many links, the iron pikes of which had been struck into the earth from the roadway to the entrance of the inn. That the scene was one of martial activities could in no wise be mistaken, for the yellow light of the torches was reflected and repeated against a goodly number of steel cuirasses and polished bucklers.
Beside Tyrrell, near the doorway, stood a thin and rather under-sized man, wearing an intricately plaited coat of light chain mail, over which was drawn a white linen tunic, with a crimson Maltese cross emblazoned upon the breast, after the fashion of the ancient Crusaders. This individual, conspicuous alone because of the simplicity of his dress when contrasted with those about him, was the famed diplomatist, warrior, statesman, shrewd conspirator, and eminent churchman, Lord Bishop Kennedy, to whom Tyrrell looked ever for council and advice, and who, in reality, had been the brains and backbone of the movement that had been designed to set the youthful Duke of York upon the throne of England. Here was a man possessing that strength of character that permitted him to remain always in the background. From whence he was wont to view the vast schemes in which he became involved as a whole, much as the successful general might select a high eminence from which to overlook and direct the maneuvres of his army. While indolence was at times attributed to him, on account of a certain reserve and unobtrusiveness of manner, to those who knew him well he was known to be indefatigably energetic. It was said of him, indeed, that he never slept, saving with an open eye to his tent-flap, or doorway. In Sir James Tyrrell, Bishop Kennedy had achieved a notably brilliant confederate—a man of ideas, a born inventor, but visionary to a perilous degree. Tyrrell was not suffered to be awakened out of his dream that he was the real leader; though, in point of truth, he was but nominally such. If, however, the block were to claim its tithe of vengeance, Tyrrell's head, and not Lord Kennedy's, would have been among those selected. Kennedy regarded politics as he did a game of chess, and was marvelously proficient in playing both. "A knight, or even a despised pawn," he was known to have said, "may say 'check' to a king, but it is a wise precaution to have a bishop stationed on the long diagonal."