Sir Hereward Hamlin, it appeared, had a commission which he would entrust to none but Elyas, and very wroth he became when he found it could not be undertaken. It was evident that he was not used to be gainsaid, for he stormed and tried to browbeat the stonemason, who showed no signs of disturbance. The little girl also listened quite unmoved.
“They say she is as proud as he is,” Wat the gossip commented under his breath, “for all her name is Dulcia; and the poor lady her mother scarce can call her soul her own between them.”
“I hope the master will not yield,” muttered Hugh indignantly.
There was small fear of that. Sir Hereward’s fiery temper and passionate outbreaks had caused him to be much disliked in the city, and Gervase would at no time have been disposed to work for him even had time been at his disposal.
“It is impossible, your worship,” he said coldly, nor could anything turn his resolution, so that Sir Hereward had to leave, muttering angry maledictions upon upstart knaves who know not how to order themselves to their betters.
“I would he knew how to order himself to his own,” said Gervase to Franklyn, “but he has never been friendly to the king since he was forced to restore the crown lands and divers of our rights which his fathers had illegally seized. If I had yielded and done his work he would have thought the honour sufficient payment.”
When the week of rogations was at an end, with its processions and singing of litanies all about the streets from gate to gate, Gervase told Hugh of a plan which mightily delighted him, for it was none other but to take him with him on his journey to Tor Brewer, or Tor Mohun, where he had to go on this business of the Dame Alicia’s chantry. She had already sent serfs and horses to fetch the carved work, and with them an urgent message for Master Gervase to come; and as Hugh had done his work well—marvellously well, Elyas privately thought—he determined to give him the delight of seeing it fixed in its place, and the two set off together one morning in early June, with Joan kissing her hand from the balcony. The only pang to Hugh was the leaving Agrippa, but Wat was his devoted slave, and solemnly vowed not to neglect him, and, moreover, to protect him from Roger, who had developed a keen dislike for the creature, while Mistress Prothasy had quite forgotten hers.
It was a fair morning, and the country, then far more thickly wooded than now, was in its loveliest dress of dainty green. The brushwood was full of birds, thrushes and blackbirds drowning the smaller notes by the jubilance of their whistling, while, high up, the larks were pouring out a rapturous flood of song. It was the same road along which Hugh had journeyed twice before, but how different it looked now, and how strange it seemed to him that he should ever have run away from the home where he was so happy! Something of the same thought may have been in Gervase’s mind, for when they were not very far from Exminster, riding between banks, and under oaks, of which the yellow leaf was not yet fully out, he pointed to a spot in the hedge, and said with a smile:
“’Twas there I found thee, Hugh, and a woe begone object thou wast!” Then, as he saw the boy redden, he went on kindly, “But that is all over and done with long ago, and now thou art content, if I mistake not.”
“More than content, good sir.”