Thus, if Sir Walter and Limousin and the Decies came out with such forces as they had, it was very likely—nay it was certain—that the men who were in the White Tower and still faithful to the Young Lovell would issue behind them into the Castle with their cannons, and so, if they might not take the Castle they might at least set free the Lady Rohtraut, and have her away by sea; for they of the Castle had no boats, and no fisherman would help them.
The Young Lovell listened as attentively as he might to what Hugh Raket had to say, and, at the end of the story, they were come to the hill top where the heather and marshy ground ceased. They saw before them great plains of green grass with people going about everywhere, and there getting their hay. And a little way away there were going, along a trodden road, some ten armed men and another amongst them, all on horseback.
So the Lord Lovell kept himself apart, but sent Hugh Raket to look who these men were that went abroad upon his lands. Before him, but a little to the right was the town of Belford, but the monastery, with its great church and its great tower just in building, was a little to the South, near the wood called Newlands. Further to the South was the little hamlet of Lucker. He cast his eyes behind him and he frowned. For, apart from the sea and the sky, the two Castles and the islands set in foam, he had seen mostly the square tower of Glororum. A little company, in the clear weather, were riding out of this tower, and there the Lady Margaret dwelt. It seemed a weary thought to him since he remembered the lady with the crooked smile.
Hugh Raket came back to him and said that those ten men rode with a prisoner that had been convicted of theft in the Courts of the Nevilles. He had appealed to the Bishop's Courts in Durham, and so they were taking him there. Hugh Raket thought that it was a folly to make such matter of a felon. Let them hang him to the first tree and ride back. For this appeal, before they had the thief strung up, should cost the Neville lord, for guards and victual and horsemeat and harbouring, nothing less than ten pounds which was a great sum of money, and a folly too.
He was of opinion that, if such great lords as the Nevilles and the Darceys and the Young Lovell suffered none to appeal from their courts, but hung every man that came before them, it would be much better; for then there would be none of this monstrous outlay that was for ever occurring, and the great lords could excuse their poor bondsmen their rent-hens and their suit and service.
The Lord Lovell made Hugh Raket tell all over again his story of how they had contended with the bailiff. For, the first time, he had not been very attentive. But now he bent his brows firmly on the face of this cunning bondsman and gave him all his mind. And then it speedily appeared to him that it was this fellow that had really moved in the resistance to the bailiff, and that Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock had had little to do with it, for they were simple, slow fellows. So the Young Lovell frowned upon Hugh Raket and called him a naughty knave, for the Young Lovell prized good order in his dominions above everything.
The bondsman began to cry out then, that if they had paid their tributes, heriots and what not to the bailiff of the false pretenders, they would have none wherewith to pay the Young Lovell's bailiff when he came in turn as come he would.
"Now are you a very naughty fellow," the Young Lovell cut into his outcry, "for well ye knew ye thought I should never come again, but was away amongst the false Scots and dead, or amongst the false witches and worse. So ye were minded to escape all your suits and services for ever. And, for the bailiff of a great lord, proclaimed with drums upon his hill, he is no person for such scum and vermin as ye are to protest against, or against whom to cry out to lawyers. It is for you to do your services to those whom God for the time sees fit to set over you, and to our Lord the King and the Prince Bishop and the Lord Warden and others. For, if such fellows as you are to question whom ye shall pay and whom ye shall not pay, what peace or order should we have in these my lands? Nay, we shall see ye rise up against mine own bailiffs, so that, by God His sorrow, I must speedily come against ye with fire and brands...."
The Lord Lovell set his teeth and the bondsman shrank back. Nevertheless, he mumbled that they were very poor folk and could never pay two sets of masters, the one against the law and the other their rightful lord.
"Sir, you lie," the Lord Lovell said. "For very well ye know that such a parcel of rich scoundrels are not between Tweed and Tyne. For my Castle is a very strong Castle, and I have been and shall be to you a very powerful lord at whose name all the false Scots do tremble. So that, from the shadow of that my Castle, ye go burning and reiving into Scotland and the Marches, whereas none dare ever come against ye to take what ye have by right or what ye have falsely stolen. I have had complaints against ye, in my father's time, that, in one winter season, you and Barty of the Comb and the other Milburns and Jock Corbit and his fellows and others that are upon my lands, with fellows from Haltwhistle, and God only knows where or under whose leadership (though I think it was a Wharton that led ye), you cast down or burned ninety-two towns, towers, stedes, barnekyns, and parish churches; ye slew one hundred and seven Scots, and prisoners taken were two hundred and nine, who were ransomed with whitemail and black; 2,700 horned cattle ye took, and 3,039 sheep, along with nags, geldings, goats, swine and eight hundred bolls of corn...."