“Which had thus disguised him in order to essay the freeing of your Grace.”
“I am at peace with him, then, for his caitiff twist. Knights make ill tradesmen, I doubt not. Poor fool, to think he could do any such thing! What befell him?”
“With him, Dame, were two other—Ivo filz Jehan, yon little Breton jeweller that was used to trade at Hennebon; I know not if your Grace have mind of him—”
“Ay, I remember him.”
“And also a priest, named Father Eloy. The priest won clean away over the wall; only Mark saith that Colle hath a piece of his hose for a remembrance. Sir Roland and Ivo were taken, and be lodged in the dungeon.”
“Poor fools!” said the Countess again. “O Perrote, Perrote, to be free!”
“Dear my Lady, should it be better with you than now?”
“What wist thou? To have the right to go right or left, as man would; to pluck the flowerets by the roadside at will; to throw man upon the grass, and breathe the free air; to speak with whom man would; to feel the heaving of the salt sea under man’s boat, and to hear the clash of arms and see the chargers and the swords and the nodding plumes file out of the postern—O Perrote, Perrote!”
“Mine own dear mistress, would I might compass it for you!”
“I know thou dost. And thou canst not. But wherefore doth not God compass it? Can He not do what He will? Be wrong and cruelty and injustice what He would? Doth He hate me, that He leaveth me thus to live and die like a rat in a hole? And wherefore? What have I done? I am no worser sinner than thousands of other men and women. I never stole, nor murdered, nor sware falsely; I was true woman to God and to my lord, and true mother to the lad that they keep from me; ay, and true friend to Lord Edward the King, that cares not a brass nail whether I live or die—only that if I died he would be quit of a burden. Holy saints, but I would full willingly quit him of it! God! when I ask Thee for nought costlier than death, canst Thou not grant it to me?”