“My lord! my lord! it is his note,” she cried.
“Father come home!” shouted Bernard, just awake. “Grisly! Grisly! help me don my clothes.”
Lady Whitburn trembled and shook with haste, and Grisell could not help her very rapidly in the dark, with Bernard howling rather than calling for help all the time; and before she, still less Grisell, was fit for the public, her father’s heavy step was on the stairs, and she heard fragments of his words.
“All abed! We must have supper—ridden from Ayton since last baiting. Aye, got a prisoner—young Copeland—old one slain—great victory—Northampton. King taken—Buckingham and Egremont killed—Rob well—proud as a pyet. Ho, Grisell,” as she appeared, “bestir thyself. We be ready to eat a horse behind the saddle. Serve up as fast as may be.”
Grisell durst not stop to ask whether she had heard the word Copeland aright, and ran downstairs with a throbbing heart, just crossing the hall, where she thought she saw a figure bowed down, with hands over his face and elbows on his knees, but she could not pause, and went on to the kitchen, where the peat fire was never allowed to expire, and it was easy to stir it into heat. Whatever was cold she handed over to the servants to appease the hunger of the arrivals, while she broiled steaks, and heated the great perennial cauldron of broth with all the expedition in her power, with the help of Thora and the grumbling cook, when he appeared, angry at being disturbed.
Morning light was beginning to break before her toils were over for the dozen hungry men pounced so suddenly in on her, and when she again crossed the hall, most of them were lying on the straw-bestrewn floor fast asleep. One she specially noticed, his long limbs stretched out as he lay on his side, his head on his arm, as if he had fallen asleep from extreme fatigue in spite of himself.
His light brown hair was short and curly, his cheeks fair and ruddy, and all reminded her of Leonard Copeland as he had been those long years ago before her accident. Save for that, she would have been long ago his wife, she with her marred face the mate of that nobly fair countenance. How strange to remember. How she would have loved him, frank and often kind as she remembered him, though rough and impatient of restraint. What was that which his fingers had held till sleep had unclasped them? An ivory chessrook! Such was a favourite token of ladies to their true loves. What did it mean? Might she pause to pray a prayer over him as once hers—that all might be well with him, for she knew that in this unhappy war important captives were not treated as Frenchmen would have been as prisoners of war, but executed as traitors to their King.
She paused over him till a low sound and the bright eyes of one of the dogs warned her that all might in another moment be awake, and she fled up the stair to the solar, where her parents were both fast asleep, and across to her own room, where she threw herself on her bed, dressed as she was, but could not sleep for the multitude of strange thoughts that crowded over her in the increasing daylight.
By and by there was a stir, some words passed in the outer room, and then her mother came in.
“Wake, Grisly. Busk and bonne for thy wedding-morning instantly. Copeland is to keep his troth to thee at once. The Earl of Warwick hath granted his life to thy father on that condition only.”