A less impulsive and demonstrative woman would not have spoken her thoughts aloud. But Custance wore her heart upon her sleeve. What wonder if the daws pecked at it?
“Not betwixt wrong and wrong, fair Cousin,” responded the cool voice of the King. “Rather, betwixt wrong and right. Nor betwixt sorrow and sorrow, but betwixt sorrow and pleasance.”
With another sudden change in her mood, Custance lifted her head, and asked in a tone which was almost peremptory—
“Is it the desire of my Lord himself that I be present?”
To reply in the affirmative was to lie; for Kent was entirely innocent and ignorant of the King’s demand. But what mattered a few lies, when Archbishop Arundel, the fountain of absolution, was seated in the banquet-hall? So Henry had no scruple in answering unconcernedly—
“It is our cousin of Kent his most earnest desire.”
“And yet once more,” she said, fixing her eyes upon him, as if to watch the expression of his face while she put her test-question. “Yonder writ of excommunication:—was it verily and indeed forth against Sir Ademar de Milford, the Sunday afore I was wed?”
Did she expect to read any admission of fraud in that handsome passionless face? If she did, she found herself utterly mistaken.
“Fair Cousin, have ye so unworthy thoughts of your friends? Certes, the writ was forth.”
“My friends! where be my friends?—The writ was forth?”