“And so must I.”
“Then we are both agreed. Let us work together, and never mind if one’s blood be old and the other’s new. I am neither fool nor weakly, as thou knowest.”
Ascelin could not but assent.
“Then here. We must send the King’s message. But we must add to it.”
“That is dangerous.”
“So is war; so is eating, drinking; so is everything. But we must not let Hereward come in. We must drive him to despair. Make the messenger add but one word,—that the king exempts from the amnesty Torfrida, on account of——You can put it into more scholarly shape than I can.”
“On account of her abominable and notorious sorceries; and demands that she shall be given up forthwith to the ecclesiastical power, to be judged as she deserves.”
“Just so. And then for a load of reeds out of Haddenham fen.”
“Heaven forbid!” said Ascelin, who had loved her once. “Would not perpetual imprisonment suffice?”
“What care I? That is the churchmen’s affair, not ours. But I fear we shall not get her. Even so Hereward will flee with her,—maybe escape to Flanders, or Denmark. He can escape through a rat’s-hole if he will. And then we are at peace. I had sooner kill him and have done with it: but out of the way he must be put.”