“Scale walls at thy pleasure,” she said in a calmer tone, “and lock Harry of Bolingbroke under forty keys if thou list: I will not let thee. But no blood, Ned, or I leave thee and thy gear this minute.”
“Fair sister Custance, never had I no such intent, by All Hallows!”
“Have a care!” she said warningly.
After that they galloped in silence.
The journey went on till the Welsh Marches were reached, of which the Earl of March was lord. Edmund began to hold his head higher, for he knew that the Welsh loyalists were ready to welcome him as King. Little Roger innocently asked if he would be Prince of Wales when his brother was King of England; because in that case, he would pull down some of the big hills which it took so long to climb. At last only one day’s march lay between them and the Principality.
And on that morning Edward left them. Constance could not understand why he did not go with them to Cardiff. He was determined not to do so; and to the disappointment of every one, he induced his brother to accompany him. Richard would rather have stayed; but he had been too long accustomed to obey the stronger will of his brother to begin the assertion of his own. The yielding character which he had inherited from his father prevailed; and however unwillingly, he followed Edward.
On the morning of that last day’s march, they had to traverse a narrow rocky pass. The path, though rough and stony, was tolerably level; and feeling themselves almost safe, they slackened their pace. They had just been laughing at some remark of little Roger’s, and they were all in more or less good spirits, feeling so near the end of their perilous journey; when all at once, in a turn of the pass, the leading horse came to a sudden halt.
“Stand, in the King’s name!”
Before them was a small, compact body of cavalry; and at their head, resplendent in official ermine, Sir William Hankeford, Judge of the King’s Bench.
Resistance and flight were equally impossible. Constance addressed herself to the old man whom she had cheated five years before, and who, having subsequently discovered her craftiness, had by no means forgotten it.