They heard from Bury that the marriage of Eva de Braose took place about the same time. And the general opinion in the Lincolnshire parsonage was rather, as respected Sir William de Cantilupe, one of condolence than of congratulation.
Eighteen years after that summer, a solitary traveller was approaching the city of Tewkesbury. He sat down on a low wall which skirted the road, and wiped his heated brow. He was a tall, fine-looking man, with a dark olive complexion, and clustering masses of black hair. There was no one in sight, and the traveller began to talk in an undertone to himself, as solitary men are sometimes wont to do.
“A good two hours before sunset, I suppose,” he said, looking towards the sun, which was blazing fiercely. “Pugh! where does that horrid smell come from? Ah, that is the vesper bell, as they call it—the unclean beasts that they are! Well, we at least are pure from every shadow of idolatry.
“Yet are we pure from sin? I do think, now, it was a pity—a mistake—that visit of mine to Sir Piers de Rievaulx. I might have let that girl live—the girl that Belasez loved. Well! she is one of the creeping things now. She—our Belasez! This is a cross-grained, crooked sort of world. Faugh! that smell again!
“I suppose this is the wall of Tewkesbury Castle. Is my Lord the Earl at home, I wonder? How I did hate that boy!
“What is coming yonder, with those jingling bells? A string of pilgrims to some accursed shrine, most likely. May these heathen idolaters be all confounded, and the chosen people of Adonai be brought home in peace! I could see, I dare say, if I stood on the wall. They may have some vile idol with them, and if I do not get out of the way—”
He had sprung upon the parapet, and stood trying so to twist himself as to catch a glimpse of the religious procession which he supposed to be approaching, when suddenly he slipped and fell backwards. A wild cry for “Help!” rang through the startled air. Where was he going? Down, down, plunging overhead into some soft, evil-odoured, horrible mass, from which, by grasping an iron bar that projected above, he just managed so far to raise himself as to get his head free. And then the dreadful truth broke upon him, and his cries for help became piercing.
Delecresse had fallen into the open cess-pool of Tewkesbury Castle.
Suddenly he ceased to shriek, and all was still. Not that he needed help any the less, nor that he was less conscious of it, but because he remembered what at first he had forgotten in his terror and disgust, that until sunset it was the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord. Perhaps, by clinging to the iron bar, he could live till the sun dropped below the horizon. At any rate, Delecresse, sternest of Pharisees to his heart’s core, would not profane the Sabbath, even for life.