She looked like an inspired prophetess, that tall white-haired woman, lifting her face up to the morning sun, as if addressing through it the Eternal Light, and challenging the love and wisdom of His decrees. Amphillis shrank back from her. Perrote came a little nearer.
“God is wiser than His creatures,” she said.
“Words, words, Perrote! Only words. And I have heard them all aforetime, and many a time o’er. If I could but come at Him, I’d see if He could not tell me somewhat better.”
“Ay,” said Perrote, with a sigh; “if we could all but come at Him! Dear my Lady—”
“Cross thyself, old woman, and have done. When I lack an homily preacher, I’ll send for a priest. My wimple, Phyllis. When comes Sir Godfrey back?”
“Saturday shall be a week, Dame.”
Sir Godfrey came back in a bad temper. He had been overcome at the tournament, which in itself was not pacifying; and he was extremely angry to hear of the unsuccessful attempt to set his prisoner free. He scolded everybody impartially all round, but especially Matthew and Father Jordan, the latter of whom was very little to blame, since he was not only rather deaf, but he slept on the other side of the house, and had never heard the noise at all. Matthew growled that if he had calmly marched the conspirators up to the prisoner’s chamber, and delivered her to them, his father could scarcely have treated him worse; whereas he had safely secured two out of the three, and the prisoner had never been in any danger.
Kate had been captured as well as the conspirators, and instead of receiving the promised crespine, she was bitterly rueing her folly, locked in a small turret room whose only furniture was a bundle of straw and a rug, with the pleasing prospect of worse usage when her mistress should return. The morning after their arrival at home, Lady Foljambe marched up to the turret, armed with a formidable cane, wherewith she inflicted on poor Kate a sound discipline. Pleading, sobs, and even screams fell on her ears with as little impression as would have been caused by the buzzing of a fly. Having finished her proceeding, she administered to the suffering culprit a short, sharp lecture, and then locked her up again to think it over, with bread and water as the only relief to meditation.
The King was expected to come North after Parliament rose—somewhere about the following February; and Sir Godfrey wrathfully averred that he should deal with the conspirators himself. The length of time that a prisoner was kept awaiting trial was a matter of supremely little consequence in the Middle Ages. His Majesty reached Derby, on his way to York, in the early days of March, and slept for one night at Hazelwood Manor, disposing of the prisoners the next morning, before he resumed his journey.
Nobody at Hazelwood wished to live that week over again. The King brought a suite of fourteen gentlemen, beside his guard; and they all had to be lodged somehow. Perrote, Amphillis, Lady Foljambe, and Mrs Margaret slept in the Countess’s chamber.