And at that the old Princess cried out:
"Body of God! You have taken Castle Cramlin? Then without doubt you have taken Plessey House and Killingworth?"
"Madam and gentle Princess," the Young Lovell said, "I have taken and hold them for my mother. And so I will do for all my mother's lands whether round Morpeth or elsewhere."
"Then I have no more to say," the old Princess said. "Get you gone." The Young Lovell remained nevertheless kneeling for a space.
"Madam," he said, "it comes to me now that ye have a lawsuit with my mother for certain of those lands."
"Aye, and I will have them," she said. "It is not you nor any stiff popinjay shall hold them from me." She leaned out from her chair and cried these words into his face, her own being purple and her eyes bloodshot. So he crossed himself with his hand of bright steel.
"Madam," he said, "I cannot talk of lawsuits. They have done me too much wrong."
"But I will talk of lawsuits," she said. "By God, I will take a score of my fellows and drive your rats from my Castle of Cramlin!"
"Madam and gentle Princess," he answered, "you could not do it with ten score nor yet twenty. For I have there forty of the best fighting men of this North country; and in two days I think I shall have six score. How the rights of this lawsuit may be I do not know. But my mother's necessity is great. She has languished for a quarter year in prison during which time you have done nothing for her. When the lands fall to me upon my mother's death you and the Dacres may have them again. That is all that I know. And so I pray our gentle Saviour to have you in His keeping; and so I get me gone."
All this while the Lady Margaret had sat motionless, gazing upon her true love's face that never cast a glance aside at her. For it was not manners that she should speak before that old lady. But when he was on his feet and near the door, she ran down from that throne-step, and her rich robes and her great veil ran out behind her. The Cornish knight was already in the stairway, and the Lady Margaret came to it before the Young Lovell, for he walked slowly on account of the weight of his armour. So in the stairway she came before him and held up her hands to his steel chest: