“When he had drawn his hand from her, and was gone forth, she sat a season like a statue, listening. She hearkened till she heard him ride away—on his way to Alianora. Then, as if some prop that had held her up were suddenly withdrawn, she fell forward, and lay with her face to the rushes. All that awful night she lay there. Alina came to her, and strove to lift her, to give her food, to yield her comfort: but she took no heed of anything. When the dawn came, she arose, and wrapped herself in her mantle. She took no money, no jewels—not an ouche nor a grain of gold. Only she wrapped in silk two locks of hair—his and thine. I should have left the first behind. Then, when she was seated on the horse to depart, the page told her who mounted afore, that his Lord had given him command to take her to a certain place, which was not to be told beforehand.
“Alina said she shivered a little at this; but she only answered, ‘Do my lord’s will.’ Then she asked for thee. Alina lifted thee up to her, and she clasped thee close underneath her veil, and kissed thee tenderly. And that was thy last mother’s kiss.”
“Then that is what I remember!” broke in Philippa suddenly.
“It is impossible, child!” answered Joan. “Thou wert but a babe of three years old.”
“But I do—I am sure I do!” she repeated.
“Have thy way,” said Joan. “If thou so thinkest, I will not gainsay thee. Well, she gave thee back in a few minutes; and then she rode away—never pausing to look back—no man knew whither.”
“But what became of her?”
“God wotteth. Sometimes I hope he murdered her. One sin more or less would matter little to the black list of sins on his guilty soul; and the little pain of dying by violence would have saved Isabel the greater pain of living through the desolate woe of the future. But I never knew, as I told thee. Nor shall I ever know, till that last day come when the Great Doom shall be, and he and she shall stand together before the bar of God. There shall be an end to her torment then. It is something to think that there shall be no end to his.”
So, in a tone of bitter, passionate vindictiveness, Joan La Despenser closed her story.
Philippa sat silent, wondering many things. If Guy of Ashridge knew any thing of this, if Giles de Edingdon were yet living, if Agnes the lavender had ever found out what became of her revered mistress. And when she knelt down to tell her beads that night, a very strange and terrible prayer lingered on her lips the last and most earnestly of all. It was, that she might never again see her father’s face. She felt that had she done so, the spirit of the prophetess might have seized upon her as upon Joan; that, terrified as she had always been of him, she should now have stood up before him and have cursed him to his face.