She exclaimed loudly that she regretted having seen the day when a great lord should talk of loyalty to a King not a year on the throne, where they, the great barons of this realm, had set him. For the Percies were a respectable family though they were not of the standing and worth, in those parts, of the Eures, the Dacres, or the Nevilles; they had acquired the most part of their lands by a gradual purchase of Bishop Anthony Bek, who betrayed his ward the young Vesey, so that the Veseys ever since were poor enough and some of them as they knew had taken to evil ways. Still the Percies had had some very good knights amongst them, such as that Hotspur and his father Henry, and others.
At that point the Countess Maud sought to calm her, but the Lady Margaret would not be quieted. For she said that this was what all the North part was saying, and it was better for the Earl to hear it than to sit all day surrounded by flatterers of the make of John Harbottle and his like, or than setting up tablets on the walls of towers as John Harbottle was doing at Belford, praising the credit and renown of this Earl.
The Lady Margaret looked a very fair woman and the Earl had an eye for such, or very certainly he would have had her taken away, for he regarded himself like a second king in those North parts. Her eyes were very dark and flashed with the firelight; her black hair fell in two plaits, one over her back and one over her shoulder, and when she pointed at him her white hand, on which were many rings set with green stones and red stones, her ample sleeves of scarlet damask touched the firelit carpet. In the dark hall of that place her angry figure appeared to wave as the flames went over the logs of the sea coal, and over her shoulder looked the white face of the old lady, Bellingham, her duenna, who was much afraid. For the Lady Margaret continued her rude speeches. She was so vexed that the Percy would not go to the rescue of her aunt, the Lady Rohtraut.
"Sir Earl," she said, "this is the manner of the governance of this realm of England, that, if the great barons dislike a King they set him down. So they did, for one cause or another, with Edward II and with Richard II and with Henry VI and with Edward V and with Richard III. He, I think, was a very good King; nevertheless you and others betrayed him on Bosworth Field, God keeps the issue. And when we put down Edward II we set up Edward III; misliking his grandson we set up Henry Bolingbroke instead. And that Bolingbroke, called Henry IV, we did not well like when we had set him up. Yet I do not blame anyone either for setting him up nor yet for seeking to force him down again. For somebody must be King. He will make fair promises before we come to it, and if he break them afterwards it must be put to the issue of swords, pull devil, pull baker. So this Henry IV was too strong for Hotspur, God rest his soul... Then came Henry V that was a King after my heart and all good people's hearts, and so it went on... But that you, a Percy, should cry out before this King has sat in his saddle a year, that you are afraid of the fate of your grandsire Hotspur; that I think is a very filthy thing and so I tell you. And we of the North parts are not like to suffer it."
The Percy smiled a red smile in the firelight.
"Then you of the North parts," he said, "women and jackanapes, will do what you are held down to do... For I tell you this: this Henry Tudor sitteth so firm in his saddle by my aid that we will break all your necks or ever you raise them from the dust where you belong. And that I say to the North parts, brawling and fighting brother against brother as ye are ever doing... And this I say to you Margaret Eure and my gentle cousin: that your aunt, who has broad lands should be in prison to your cousins of Cullerford and Haltwhistle and to Bastards suits well my case and there she shall stop for me. For she has broad lands and the Lovells have broad lands and so have the Dacres, to whom she belongs, and whilst they are at each other's throats it is well for the King in London Town and for me at Alnwick. And I wish you were all at each other's throats more than you are; for the King shall have his pickings by way of fines and amercements, and so will I, and so will lawyers and bailiffs and others, and so ye are weakened the more. And it was for this reason that I gave judgment against your true love, the Young Lovell, in my Warden's court, though I knew that judgment should not stand... For I think that Young Lovell was a dangerous whelp, with his prating of this and that, and his being a very good knight and commander. And so I would be very willing to pull him down again if the Scots had not hanged him, as I hope they have. And I have written a broad letter to the King in London that these Lovells are a dangerous race with their hearts full of love for Richard Crookback. If the King do not forbid it, and, if Young Lovell shall come again to raise men and march upon Castle Lovell, I will march out with men and cannon and hot-trod and hang him upon the first gallows I come to. So say I, Henry, Earl Percy."
The Lady Margaret swallowed her hot rage and considered that she might better sting this lord with a low voice. So she spoke very clearly as follows:
"Henry Earl Percy, thou art a very filthy knave, and so thou knowest and so know all thy neighbours. Thou wast a foul traitor to Richard; thou art a foul traitor to thy kith and kin and to thy peers. For thou mightest well put down Richard Crookback. That was open to any man that could. And thou mightest well set up Henry and seek to maintain him till he has time to prove himself. But to seek to weaken thy kith and thy kin and thine order and thy kind that he may sit firm rivetted whether he deserve it or not, with the house of Percy as his flatterers, servants and pimps—that is not a pretty and gallant thing. For my cousin Lovell, I do not think ye dare set out against him, for if ye did, all the North part—and it is not yet so cast down—should rise upon you, and there should not remain, of Alnwick, nor yet of Warkworth, one stone upon another. And for this thing of my cousin and true love, I think you have a little mistaken it. For whiles my true love is away we, such as the Eures and the Dacres and the Nevilles and the Widdringtons and the Swinburns and the commoner sort, and the Elliotts and Armstrongs, go a little in doubt. For, if my true love be dead, it is his sisters that are his heirs, and to set them out of that Castle would be to set down his heirs, which is a thing not to be done. But if the Young Lovell should come again I think you should see a different thing, for there is not one of these people but should rise upon you, aye, and the Prince Palatine. I think you could not stand against us all. For that so they would do I have upon their oaths...."
The Countess Maud said then:
"So there you have the end of it." But the Earl was in haste to seize a point: