“Waltheof, I presume, plotted drunk, and repented sober, when too late. The wittol! He should have been a monk.”
“Repented he has, if ever he was guilty. For he fled to Archbishop Lanfranc, and confessed to him so much, that Lanfranc declares him innocent, and has sent him on to William in Normandy.”
“O kind priest! true priest! To send his sheep into the wolf’s mouth.”
“You forget, dear sire, that William is our king.”
“I can hardly forget that, with this pretty ring upon my ankle. But after my experience of how he has kept faith with me, what can I expect for Waltheof the wittol, save that which I have foretold many a time?”
“As for you, dear sire, the king has been misinformed concerning you. I have sent messengers to reason with him again and again; but as long as Taillebois, Warrenne, and Robert Malet had his ear, of what use were my poor words?”
“And what said they?”
“That there would be no peace in England if you were loose.”
“They lied. I am no boy, like Waltheof. I know when the game is played out. And it is played out now. The Frenchman is master, and I know it well. Were I loose to-morrow, and as great a fool as Waltheof, what could I do, with, it may be, some forty knights and a hundred men-at-arms, against all William’s armies? But how goes on this fool’s rebellion? If I had been loose I might have helped to crush it in the bud.”
“And you would have done that against Waltheof?”