“Give this packet to the little Moorish maid, and tell her that I will bring her better by and by, and mayhap make her a knight’s lady; but on thy life, say nought to any other.”
It was out now! Ambrose’s head was more in Sir Thomas’s books than in real life at all times, or he would long ago have inferred something—from the jackdaw’s favourite phrase—from Giles’s modes of haunting his steps, and making him the bearer of small tokens—an orange, a simnel cake, a bag of walnuts or almonds to Mistress Aldonza, and of the smiles, blushes, and thanks with which she greeted them. Nay, had she not burst into tears and entreated to be spared when Lady More wanted to make a match between her and the big porter, and had not her distress led Mistress Margaret to appeal to her father, who had said he should as soon think of wedding the silver-footed Thetis to Polyphemus. “Tilley valley! Master More,” the lady had answered, “will all your fine pagan gods hinder the wench from starving on earth, and leading apes in hell.”
Margaret had answered that Aldonza should never do the first, and Sir Thomas had gravely said that he thought those black eyes would lead many a man on earth before they came to the latter fate.
Ambrose hid the parcel for her deep in his bosom before he asked permission of his master to go to the Dragon court with the rest of the tidings.
“He always was an unmannerly cub,” said Master Headley, as he read the letter. “Well, I’ve done my best to make a silk purse of a sow’s ear! I’ve done my duty by poor Robert’s son, and if he will be such a fool as to run after blood and wounds, I have no more to say! Though ’tis pity of the old name! Ha! what’s this? ‘Wedded against my will—no troth plight.’ Forsooth, I thought my young master was mighty slack. He hath some other matter in his mind, hath he? Run into some coil mayhap with a beggar wench! Well, we need not be beholden to him. Ha, Dennet, my maid!”
Dennet screwed up her little mouth, and looked very demure, but she twinkled her bright eyes, and said, “My heart will not break, sir; I am in no haste to be wed.”
Her father pinched her cheek and said she was a silly wench; but perhaps he marked the dancing step with which the young mistress went about her household cares, and how she was singing to herself songs that certainly were not “Willow! willow!”
Ambrose had no scruple in delivering to Aldonza the message and token, when he overtook her on the stairs of the house at Chelsea, carrying up a lapful of roses to the still-room, where Dame Alice More was rejoicing in setting her step-daughters to housewifely tasks.
There came a wonderful illumination and agitation over the girl’s usually impassive features, giving all that they needed to make them surpassingly beautiful.
“Woe is me!” was, however, her first exclamation. “That he should have given up all for me! Oh! if I had thought it!” But while she spoke as if she were shocked and appalled, her eyes belied her words. They shone with the first absolute certainty of love, and there was no realising as yet the years of silent waiting and anxiety that must go by, nay, perhaps an entire lifetime of uncertainty of her lover’s truth or untruth, life or death.