"By my troth, here is our quondam companion Hugh!"
The next moment Hugh le Barbier stood beside them, grasping their hands and looking with eager affection into their faces.
Although he came from the hostile camp, there was no hostility in the hearts of the Oxford students as they stood together once more. Eagerly did Hugh ask of their welfare, eagerly did they question him as to his adventures during the past months, and, above all, most eagerly did they ask him if he knew what sort of answer the King had returned to the messengers just sent, and whether there was any chance of a cessation of hostilities.
Hugh gravely shook his head.
"His Majesty is greatly incensed against the Barons. He would scarce listen with patience whilst the letter was being read. Had it been brought by others than Bishops, I fear me he would not even have heard it. His brother sat beside him, and in scorn he declared that he alone claimed the full sum offered by the Barons, as indemnity against his own personal losses. He and the Prince were equally indignant with the King; and whilst his Majesty dictated the terms of a wrathful letter in which he defies the Earls, and throws back their allegiance and their oaths of fidelity in their teeth, the Prince and his uncle together wrote another letter even more haughty and insulting than the one composed by the King, calling the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester 'faithless traitors,' and I know not what besides, and hurling defiance at them in a fashion than can but lead to one end. There will be no avoiding a battle now!"
Jack's eyes lighted with triumph, but Hugh spoke sorrowfully. He loved the Prince, and he felt bound to the royal standard by his duty as a subject. But the cause was not dear to his heart. Henry was not a monarch to inspire either confidence or love, and his embracing the cause of his foreign favourites—against whom this movement was really directed—and telling his own English Barons that any opposition to them was opposition to him, and that their quarrel was his, rendered him but a pitiful creature in the eyes even of those who desired to serve him loyally and well. None could stand near the royal presence without being continually galled and chafed by seeing aliens and sycophants preferred to honest and noble subjects of the realm. Hugh had had a fair insight of late into the methods of the King, and his heart was somewhat heavy within him at the thought of what must lie before the kingdom if the issues of the day should be favourable to the royal cause.
"If only the Prince were King!" he breathed. "He is hot and rash now, stirred up to filial emulation in his father's cause; but his heart is true and his judgment sound. Were he to be at the head of the state, we should not have to groan as we are groaning now."
And then turning suddenly away to another subject, he asked news of Linda, where and how his comrades had seen her last, and if she were still safe in the care of the Constable.
"Yes, and like a sister to Mistress Alys," answered Leofric. "I trow she is safe from any threatened peril there. But we have heard and seen naught of her foes since they were driven forth from the city by the Chancellor. I misdoubt me if they will ever seek to return."
"And Lotta—is aught known of her?" asked Hugh.