“Depend on it, there was no time for a change,” gravely said Groot. “Have not Nostradamus, Albertus Magnus, and Rogerus Bacon” (he was heaping names together as he saw Hannekin’s big gray eyes grow rounder and rounder) “all averred that the great Diabolus can give his minions power to change themselves at will into hares, cats, or toads to transport themselves to the Sabbath on Walpurgs’ night?”

“You deem it in sooth,” said the Dutchman, “for know you that the parish priest swears, and so do the more part of the villein fisher folk, that there’s no sorcery in the matter, but that she is a true and holy maid, with no powers save what the Saints had given her, and that her cures were by skill. Yet such was scarce like to a mere Jungvrow.”

It went sorely against Master Lambert’s feelings, as well as somewhat against his conscience, to encourage the notion of the death of his guest as a hare, though it ensured her safety and prevented a search. He replied that her skill certainly was uncommon in a Jungvrow, beyond nature, no doubt, and if they were unholy, it was well that the arblaster had made a riddance of her.

“By the same token,” added Hannekin, “the elf lock came out of my hair this very morn, I having, as you bade me, combed it each morn with the horse’s currycomb.”

Proof positive, as Lambert was glad to allow him to believe. And the next day all Sunderland and the two Wearmouths believed that the dead hare had shrieked in a human voice on being thrown on a fire, and had actually shown the hands and feet of a woman before it was consumed.

It was all the safer for Grisell as long as she was not recognised, and of this there was little danger. She was scarcely known in Wearmouth, and could go to mass at the Abbey Church in a deep black hood and veil. Master Lambert sometimes received pilgrims from his own country on their way to English shrines, and she could easily pass for one of these if her presence were perceived, but except to mass in very early morning, she never went beyond the garden, where the spring beauty was enjoyment to her in the midst of her loneliness and entire doubt as to her future.

It was a grand old church, too, with low-browed arches, reminding her of the dear old chapel of Wilton, and with a lofty though undecorated square tower, entered by an archway adorned with curious twisted snakes with long beaks, stretching over and under one another.

The low heavy columns, the round circles, and the small windows, casting a very dim religious light, gave Grisell a sense of being in the atmosphere of that best beloved place, Wilton Abbey. She longed after Sister Avice’s wisdom and tenderness, and wondered whether her lands would purchase from her knight, power to return thither with dower enough to satisfy the demands of the Proctor. It was a hope that seemed like an inlet of light in her loneliness, when no one was faithful save Cuthbert Ridley, and she felt cut to the heart above all by Thora’s defection and cruel accusations, not knowing that half was owning to the intoxication of love, and the other half to a gossiping tongue.

CHAPTER XX
A BLIGHT ON THE WHITE ROSE

Witness Aire’s unhappy water
Where the ruthless Clifford fell,
And when Wharfe ran red with slaughter
On the day of Towton’s field.
Gathering in its guilty flood
The carnage and the ill spilt blood
That forty thousand lives could yield.

Southey, Funeral Song of Princess Charlotte.