Maude’s tone was just a little stiff.
“The Lady Alianora de Holand, Madam.”
“Ah! our fair cousin her babe?—Poor heart!”
Maude was silent.
“Verily, had I wist the pain it should take us to come hither,” pursued Isabel, apparently quite careless about interrupting the spiritual labours of her sister nun, “methinks I had prayed my Lord the King to choose another messenger. By the rainfall of late, divers streams have so bisched (overflowed) their banks, that me verily counted my mule had been swept away, not once ne twice. It waked my laughter to see how our steward, that rade with us, strave and struggled with his beast.”
Maude’s heart was too heavy to answer; but Isabel went on chattering lightly, to a murmured under-current of “Ora pro nobis” as bead after bead, in the hands of the kneeling nun, pursued its fellow down the string of the rosary. Maude sat on the settle, with the sleeping child in her arms, listening as if she heard not, and feeling as though she had lost all power of reply. At last the rosary came to its final bead, and, crossing herself, the elder nun arose.
“Sister, I pray you of your Paternoster, sith you be terminate,” said Isabel, holding out her hand. “Mine brake, fording the river astont (near), and half the beads were gone ere I could gather the same. ’Tis pity, for they were good cornelian.”
The rosary changed hands, and Isabel began to say her prayers, neither leaving her chair nor stopping her conversation.
“’Twas when we reached the diversory (inn) last afore Stafford, Dame Lyngern—Janua Coeli, ora pro nobis!—we were aware of a jolly debonere pardoner (Note 1),—Stella Matutina, ora pro nobis!—that rade afore, on a fat mule, as well-liking as he—Refugium Peccatorum, ora pro nobis!—and coming anigh us, quoth he to me, that first rade—Regina Angelorum, ora pro nobis!—‘Sister,’ quoth my master the pardoner—.”
“Sister Isabel, you have dropped a bead!” snapped the elder nun.