Mrs Rose was not told a word; but Thekla saw her father before he left England. Then he was passed secretly across the Channel, and on Rysbank Mr Stevens met him, and took him to his house. The next day he was sent away to Boulogne, and so on to Paris, always in the keeping of Huguenots, and thence to Lyons, and so to Switzerland.
On the 26th of August, the King set out for Spain, the Queen going with him as far as Greenwich, where she remained, and the Princess Elizabeth with her.
The respite from the slaughter was short; and it was only the enemy’s breathing-time for a more terrible onslaught. The next entry in Isoult’s diary ran thus:—
“By Austin Bernher woeful news is come. My Lord Archbishop, that stood so firm for God’s truth—that was already doomed for his faithfulness—that all we have so loved, and honoured, and mourned—Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, is fallen away from Christ, and hath recanted and rejected the truth by which he stood so firm. I knew never any thing that so cut me to the heart after this sort, sithence Sir Will Smith’s recanting at Calais. Surely, surely, Christ will rescue this His sheep from the jaws of the wolf whereinto he is fallen! Of them whom the Father hath given Him, can He lose this one?”
Mr Underhill came in on the 19th of October strangely sad and pensive for him.
“Have you the news this even?” said he.
“What news?” inquired John. “Is it death or life?”
“It is martyrdom,” he answered, solemnly. “Is that death, or life?”
His manner fairly frightened Isoult. She was afraid lest he should have come to give them dreadful tidings of Robin; or, it might be, that Mr Rose had been recaptured on his journey through France.
“O Mr Underhill!” she cried, tremblingly, “pray you, the name of the martyr?”