"I am right thankful to answer No to that last. I saw not from what bow the cursed shaft came. But to think that I may be speaking to that man as a friend, not knowing——"
Lawrence left his sentence unfinished.
"Maybe it were meant for another," said Mr. Robesart quietly. "But if no—mind thou, my son, how God dealeth with thee and me, whose sins slew the Son of His love, and He knoweth it."
They set out for Usk the next day, taking the same route which Roger had traversed in life only four months before. His coffin was borne upon a bier drawn by six horses, through the green valleys of Kildare and Carlow and Wexford, and at Wexford Haven was transferred to a boat, the Chanty, which bore it across in the calm August sunlight to Haverford. Two days' journey took them to Caermarthen, where the travellers were housed in the Castle, and the corpse in the Church of St. Peter, watched all night by monks and four squires, and sprinkled frequently with holy water. Three days more took them to Merthyr Tydvil, a fourth to Pontypool, and on the afternoon of the fifth, which was the first of September, they marched in slow and solemn procession into Usk.
Before entering the town a fresh arrangement of the procession was made. First came the body of archers, carrying their bows unstrung in sign of mourning; then two knights of the household of the deceased Earl, the one bearing his pennon, the other his helmet with its crest. Then came his war-horse, led by a squire bare-headed, and caparisoned with all its ceremonial trappings—the saddle-cloth of blue velvet, broidered with silver ostrich-feathers (gold ones were peculiar to the monarch), a saddle-cloth which covered the horse from ears to hoofs, leaving only an outlet for the nose and the eyes—the bridle being of gilded leather, and the stirrup of gilt copper. After the horse walked Mr. Robesart, in full canonicals, bearing aloft a silver cross. Then came the bier, borne by ten spearmen specially selected from the corps—men whose qualifications for the office were good character and much physical strength. Immediately following, clad in white, then the colour of deepest mourning, came the little Lady Anne, on a white horse—truly the chief mourner for that father who had been her best friend in all the world. Her horse was led by a bare-headed squire. A little behind her, on the right, rode Lord Bardolf, and on the left the Lady Agnes. The remainder of the household, which included Guenllian, Beatrice, and Lawrence, rode after, and the company of spearmen closed the funeral procession.
Thus they bore him dead into the Castle of Usk, which he had entered living, an infant gift from God, on that very morning, twenty-five years before.
A trumpeter had been sent forward to announce the coming of the procession; and when they crossed the drawbridge, and filed slowly in beneath the portcullis into the court-yard, they were met by a group of black monks from the neighbouring Benedictine Abbey, the foremost swinging a censer, and two others sprinkling holy water. The bier was set down immediately under the portcullis, and there it rested while the De Profundis was chanted, in presence of the garrison and of many members of the household. The entire procession was meantime arrested.
With an irrepressible sob, Guenllian whispered to Lawrence, "'They that bare him stood still.' Here is the city, and there is the bier: but where is He that can say, 'Arise'?"
Lawrence answered by a quotation from the same book. "'I am again rising and life; ... he that believeth in Me shall not die withouten end. Believest thou this?'"
"It is hard to believe where man seeth not."