“I know she was a full wearisome woman to my Lord Duke her son, and that he is a jollier man by the acre since she here dwelt.”
“Was she his own mother?” asked Norman.
“His own?—ay, for sure; and did him a good turn at the beginning, by preserving his kingdom for him when he was but a lad.”
“And could he find no better reward for her than this?”
“Tut! she sharped (teased, irritated) him, man. He could not have his will for her.”
“Could he ne’er have put up with a little less of it? Or was his will so much dearer to him than his mother?”
“Dost reckon he longed sore to be ridden of an old woman, and made to trot to market at her pleasure, when his own was to take every gate and hurdle in his way? Thou art old woman thyself, an’ thou so dost. My Lord Duke is no jog-trot market-ass, I can tell thee, but as fiery a war-charger as man may see in a summer’s day. And dost think a war-charger should be well a-paid to have an old woman of his back?”
“My Lady his mother, then, hath no fire in her?” said Norman, glancing up at her where she stood behind the bars in her white weeds, looking down on the two young men in the garden.
“Marry, enough to burn a city down. She did burn the King of France’s camp afore Hennebon. And whenas she was prisoner in Tickhill Castle, a certain knight, whose name I know not, (the name of this knight is apparently not on record), covenanted secretly with her by means of some bribe, or such like, given to her keepers, that he would deliver her from durance; and one night scaled he the walls, and she herself gat down from her window, and clambered like a cat by means of the water-spout and slight footholds in the stonework, till she came to the bottom, and then over the walls and away. They were taken, as thou mayest lightly guess, yet they gat them nigh clear of the liberties ere they could again be captivated. Fire! ay, that hath she, and ever will. Forsooth, that is the cause wherefore she harried her son. If she would have sat still at her spinning, he’d have left her be. But, look thou, she could not leave him be.”
“Wherein did she seek to let him, wot you?”