"Oh yes! speak, speak!" cried Henry; "I have not forgotten Hal of Hadnock. What of those days?"
"Why, Sire, you may remember," answered Woodville, "that, as that noble gentleman you have just named and I rode by the stream near Dunbury, one night in the spring of the year, we found the body of my poor cousin Kate drowned in the water. The man before you thought fit to cast foul doubts on as true and gallant a gentleman as ever lived, Sir Henry Dacre. He now lies at the point of death from wounds received near Agincourt, and if aught on earth can save him, it will be to know that his good name is cleared from all suspicion. If this man could but be brought to speak, and to acknowledge that the charges he insinuated were false, it would be balm to a bruised heart."
"Nay," cried the King, "his falsehood is so evident, his knavery so great, that charges from his mouth are now but empty air. Yet I have heard how Sir Harry Dacre has suffered the bare doubt to prey like a canker upon his peace. Speak, Simeon of Roydon; and, if it be your last word, speak truth. Know you aught of Catherine Beauchamp's death?--and, if you do, whose was the hand that did that horrid deed?"
"Sir Harry Dacre's," answered Roydon, with a malignant smile; for he thought to triumph even in death. "No one doubts it, I believe. Does your Grace?"
"Ay, that I do," answered Henry; "and I have good cause to doubt it. That man was sent by me to make inquiries," and he pointed to Dyram; "and everything that he discovered, I pray you mark, gentlemen all, tended to show that it was impossible Sir Henry Dacre could have done the deed. I have often fancied, indeed, that the knave had learned more than he divulged to me. Is it so, sir? I remember your ways in times of old, that you would tell part, and keep back part. Did you learn aught else?"
"Oh, no, Sire," replied Dyram, with a laugh, glancing his keen eyes towards Richard of Woodville; "I know nought; but I suppose that Sir Henry Dacre did it."
"My Lord the King," said Ella Brune, who had remained silent, with her dark eyes cast down, while this conversation took place, "I can give your Grace the information that you seek to have."
"Ha!--you!" cried Roydon, gazing at her with glaring eyes. "This is all pure hate. Mark, if she do not say I did it!"
"You did!" answered Ella, fixing her eyes upon him. "Do you remember the night after the Glutton mass?--I was there! Do you remember hiding beneath the willows on the abbey side of the stream?--I was there! Do you remember the lady coming and asking for the information you had promised to give, and your assailing her with words of love, and seeking to win her from her promised husband?--I was there!"
"False! false! all false!" cried Sir Simeon of Roydon; but his face as he spoke was deadly pale.