“May it be so! But when he came into the king’s grace, he must needs demand me back in his son’s name.”
“What does Dolfin want with you?”
“His father wants my money, and stipulated for it with the king. And besides, I suppose I am a pretty plaything enough still.”
“You? You are divine, perfect. Dolfin is right. How could a man who had once enjoyed you live without you?”
Alftruda laughed,—a laugh full of meaning; but what that meaning was, Hereward could not divine.
“So now,” she said, “what Hereward has to do, as a true and courteous knight, is to give Alftruda safe conduct, and, if he can, a guard; and to deliver her up loyally and knightly to his old friend and fellow-warrior, Dolfin Gospatricksson, earl of whatever he can lay hold of for the current month.”
“Are you in earnest?”
Alftruda laughed one of her strange laughs, looking straight before her. Indeed, she had never looked Hereward in the face during the whole ride.
“What are those open holes? Graves?”
“They are Barnack stone-quarries, which Alfgar my brother gave to Crowland.”