With that we have nothing to do; and it is a maxim which a historian should always follow, never to mind anybody's business but his own. We shall therefore only say, that the king and Wolsey, occupied with the reception of the emperor, and his entertainment during the short time he stayed, forgot entirely Sir Payan Wileton till they reached Dover, when some one happening to call it a chilly morning, put Chilham Castle in Wolsey's head (for on such little pivots turn all the wheels of the world); and immediately a sergeant-at-arms, with a body of horse-archers, was sent to arrest the worthy knight and bring him to Calais, for which port the king and the whole court embarked immediately; and, with a fair wind and fine sky, arrived in safety towards the evening.
CHAPTER XXXV.
With clouds and storms
Around thee thrown, tempest on tempest roll'd.--Thomson.
Passing over all the consultations that took place between the prioress of Richborough, Dr. Wilbraham, and Lady Constance de Grey, regarding the means of crossing the sea to France with greater security, although manifold were the important considerations therein discussed, we shall merely arrive at the conclusion to which they came at length, and which was ultimately determined by the voice of the prioress. This was, that for several days Lady Constance and Mistress Margaret should remain at the convent as nuns, paying a very respectable sum for their board and lodging, while Dr. Wilbraham was to take up his abode at a cottage hard by. By this means, the superior said, they would avoid any search which the cardinal might have instituted to discover them in the vessels of passage between France and England, and at the end of a week they would easily find some foreign ship which would carry them over to Boulogne. Such a one she undertook to procure, by means of a fisherman who supplied the convent, and who, as she boasted, knew every ship that sailed through the Channel, from the biggest man-of-war to the meanest carvel.
We shall now leave in silence also the time which Lady Constance passed in the convent. Vonderbrugius, who, as the sagacious reader has doubtless observed, had a most extraordinary partiality for detailing little particulars, and incidents that are of no manner of consequence, here occupies sixteen pages with a correct and minute account of every individual day, telling how many masses the nuns sang, how often they fasted in the week, and how often they ate meat; and, not content with relating all that concerned Lady Constance, he indulges in some very illiberal insinuations in regard to the prioress, more than hinting that she loved her bottle and had a pet confessor.
Maintaining, however, our grave silence upon this subject, as not only irrelevant but ungentlemanlike, we shall merely say, that the days passed tranquilly enough with Lady Constance, although, like the timid creatures of the forest, whom the continual tyranny of the strong over the inoffensive has taught to start even at a sound, she would tremble at every little circumstance which for a moment interrupted the dull calm of the convent's solitude.
A week passed in this manner, and yet the prioress declared her old fisherman had heard of no vessel that could forward Constance on her journey, though the young lady became uneasy at the delay, and pressed her much to make all necessary inquiries. At length, happening one morning to express her uneasiness to Mistress Margaret, the shrewd waiting-woman, who, with an instinctive sagacity inherent in chambermaids, knew a thousand times more of the world than either her mistress or Dr. Wilbraham, at once solved the mystery by saying--
"Lord love you, lady! there will never be a single ship in the Channel that you will hear of, so long as you pay a gold mark a-day to the prioress while we stay."
"I would rather give her a hundred marks to let me go," replied Constance, "than a single mark to keep me. But what is to be done, Margaret?"
"Oh, if you will let me but promise fifty marks, lady," replied the maid, "I will warrant that we are in France in three days."