“But what said he?”
“Who—my Lord of Arundel? The unpiteous, traitorous, hang-dog lither oaf!” Bertram would apparently have chosen more opprobrious words if they would kindly have occurred to him. “Why, he said—‘Pray for yourself and your lord, Lady, and let this be; it were the better for you.’ The great Devil, to whom he ’longeth, be his aid in the like case!”
“Truly, he may be in the like case one day,” said Maude.
“And that were at undern (Eleven o’clock a.m.) this morrow, an’ I were King!” cried Bertram wrathfully.
“But what had Master Calverley done?” Bertram dared only whisper the name of the horrible crime of which alone poor Calverley stood accused. “He was a Lollard—a Gospeller.”
“Be they such ill fawtors?” asked Maude in a shocked tone.
“Judge for yourself what manner of men they be,” said Bertram indignantly, “when the King’s Highness and the Queen, and our own Lady’s Grace, and the Lady Princess that was, and the Duke of Lancaster, be of them. Ay, and many another could I name beyond these.”
“I will never crede any ill of our Lady’s Grace!” said Maude warmly.
“Good morrow, Bertram, my son,” said a voice behind them—a voice strange to Maude, but familiar to Bertram.
“Father Wilfred! Christ save you, right heartily! You be here in the nick of time. You are come—”