“Good lack! not I. If thou art so troubled thereanent, thou wert best ask my father. Maybe he wist not. I cannot say.”
“It must have been sore disheartenment,” said Norman, pityingly, “to win nearly away, and then be brought back.”
“Ay, marry; and then was she had up to London afore the King’s Grace, and had into straiter prison than aforetime. Ere that matter was she treated rather as guest of the King and Queen, though in good sooth she was prisoner; but after was she left no doubt touching that question. Some thought she might have been released eight years agone, when the convention was with the Lady Joan of Brittany, which after her lord was killed at Auray, gave up all, receiving the county of Penthièvre, the city of Limoges, and a great sum of money; and so far as England reckoned, so she might, and maybe would, had it been to my Lord Duke’s convenience. But he had found her aforetime very troublesome to him. Why, when he was but a youth, he fell o’ love with some fair damsel of his mother’s following, and should have wedded her, had not my Lady Duchess, so soon as ever she knew it, packed her off to a nunnery.”
“Wherefore?”
“That wis I not, without it were that she was not for him.” (Unsuitable.)
“Was the tale true, think you?”
“That wis I not likewise. Man said so much—behold all I know. Any way, she harried him, and he loved it not, and here she is. That’s enough for me.”
“Poor lady!”
“Poor? what for poor? She has all she can want. She is fed and clad as well as ever she was—better, I dare guess, than when she was besieged in Hennebon. If she would have broidery silks, or flowers, or any sort of women’s toys, she hath but to say, and my Lady my mother shall ride to Derby for them. The King gave order she should be well used, and well used she is. He desireth not that she be punished, but only kept sure.”
“I would guess that mere keeping in durance, with nought more to vex her, were sorest suffering to one of her fashioning.”