He found the former at the door of the old stable—whence issued wild screams and cries. Several priests and attendants were there now, and the kind Dean with Lucas was trying to induce Aldonza to relax the grasp with which she embraced the body, whence a few moments before the brave and constant spirit had departed. Her black hair hanging over like a veil, she held the inanimate head to her bosom, sobbing and shrieking with the violence of her Eastern nature. The priest who had been sent for to take care of the corpse, and bear it to the mortuary of the Minster, wanted to move her by force; but the Dean insisted on one more gentle experiment, and beckoned to the kindly woman, whom he saw advancing with eyes full of tears. Perronel knelt down by her, persevered when the poor girl stretched out her hand to beat her off, crying, “Off! go! Leave me my father! O father, father, joy of my life! my one only hope and stay, leave me not! Wake! wake, speak to thy child, O my father!”
Though the child had never seen or heard of Eastern wailings over the dead, yet hereditary nature prompted her to the lamentations that scandalised the priests and even Lucas, who broke in with “Fie, maid, thou mournest as one who hath no hope.” But Dr. Colet still signed to them to have patience, and Perronel somehow contrived to draw the girl’s head on her breast and give her a motherly kiss, such as the poor child had never felt since she, when almost a babe, had been lifted from her dying mother’s side in the dark stifling hold of the vessel in the Bay of Biscay. And in sheer surprise and sense of being soothed she ceased her cries, listened to the tender whispers and persuasions about holy men who would care for her father, and his wishes that she should be a good maid—till at last she yielded, let her hands be loosed, allowed Perronel to lift the venerable head from her knee, and close the eyes—then to gather her in her arms, and lead her to the door, taking her, under Ambrose’s guidance, into Lucas’s abode, which was as utterly and mournfully dismantled as their own, but where Perronel, accustomed in her wandering days to all sorts of contrivances, managed to bind up the streaming hair, and, by the help of her own cloak, to bring the poor girl into a state in which she could be led through the streets.
The Dean meantime had bidden Lucas to take shelter at his own house, and the old Dutchman had given a sort of doubtful acceptance.
Ambrose, meanwhile, half distracted about his brother, craved counsel of the jester where to seek him.
CHAPTER XVII.
ILL MAY DAY
“With two and two together tied,
Through Temple Bar and Strand they go,
To Westminster, there to be tried,
With ropes about their necks also.”
Ill May Day.
And where was Stephen? Crouching, wretched with hunger, cold, weariness, blows, and what was far worse, sense of humiliation and disgrace, and terror for the future, in a corner of the yard of Newgate—whither the whole set of lads, surprised in Warwick Inner Court by the law students of the Inns of Court, had been driven like so many cattle, at the sword’s point, with no attention or perception that he and Giles had been struggling against the spoilers.
Yet this fact made them all the more forlorn. The others, some forty in number, their companions in misfortune, included most of the Barbican prentices, who were of the Eagle faction, special enemies alike to Abenali and to the Dragon, and these held aloof from Headley and Birkenholt, nay, reviled them for the attack which they declared had caused the general capture.
The two lads of the Dragon had, in no measured terms, denounced the cruelty to the poor old inoffensive man, and were denounced in their turn as friends of the sorcerer. But all were too much exhausted by the night’s work to have spirit for more than a snarling encounter of words, and the only effect was that Giles and Stephen were left isolated in their misery outside the shelter of the handsome arched gateway under which the others congregated.