“There is no nunnery nearer at hand than Gateshead, and there the Prioress is a Musgrove, no friend to my lord. She might give her up, on such a charge, for holy Church is no guardian in them. My poor bairn! That ingrate Thora too! I would fain wring her neck! Yet here are our fisher folk, who love her for her bounty.”
“Would they hide her?” asked Pierce.
“That serving-wench—would I had drowned her ere bringing her here—might turn them, and, were she tracked, I ken not who might not be scared or tortured into giving her up!”
Here Dick looked in. “Tordu is crossing the yard,” he said.
They both became immediately absorbed in studying the condition of Featherstone’s horse, which had never wholly recovered the flight from Wakefield.
After a time Ridley was able to steal away, and visit Grisell in her apartment. She came to meet him, and he read alarm, incredulous alarm, in her face. She put her hands in his. “Is it sooth?” she said, in a strange, awe-stricken voice.
“You have heard, then, my wench?”
“Thora speaks in a strange tone, as though evil were brewing against me. But you, and Master Hardcastle, and Sir Lucas, and the rest would never let them touch me?”
“They should only do so through my heart’s blood, dear child; but mine would be soon shed, and Hardcastle is a weakly lad, whom those fellows believe to be bewitched. We must find some other way!”
“Sir Leonard would save me if he knew. Alas! the good Earl of Salisbury is dead.”