Mistress Margery - Emily Sarah Holt

“Ha! the Lollard knight!” cried the King. “Better he than another! I had bruit of him, and, truly, I looked to have him to the stake when he should return from his Eastern travel. It is well.”

The King and his suite rode on; but Geoffrey was not one of them. He had thrown down the shield, and had turned to the dear friend of his youth, who lay dying before him.

“Richard! dear, dear Richard!” he said, in trembling accents. “How came you here? Have you only come home to die? O Richard, die not just now! But perchance it were better so,” he added, in a low tone, recalling the cruel words of the King. “Is it thus that thy God hath granted thee that which thou requestedst, and hath not let thee pass through the fiery trial?”

As Geoffrey thus bemoaned the fate of his old friend, he fancied that he saw Richard’s lips move, and he bent his head low to catch his last words. Faintly, but audibly, those two last words, so full of meaning, reached his ear. And the first of the two was “Margery!” and the last “Jesus!”

The tears fell from Geoffrey’s eyes, as he softly kissed the pale brow of the dead; and then, remounting his horse, he galloped after the King. There was no need of his remaining longer; for he could do nothing more for Richard Pynson, when he had clasped hands with Margery Lovell at the gates of the Urbs Beata.

The End.