“Thank me not, Lady,” answered the honest Thomas. “To speak truth it was Emlyn whom I served, for though monks parted us we have been friends for many a year. As for the matter of the child and that spawn of hell, the Flounder, be grateful to God, not to me, for it was by mere chance that I came here that evening, which I had not intended to do. I was going about my business with the cattle when something seemed to tell me to arm and come. It was as though a hand pushed me, and the rest you know, and so I think by now does Mother Megges,” he added grimly.
“Yes, yes, Thomas; and in truth I do thank God, Whose finger I see in all this business, as I thank you, His instrument. But there are other things whereof Emlyn has spoken to me. She said—ah! she said my husband, whom I thought slain and buried, in truth was only wounded and not buried, but shipped over-sea. Tell me that story, friend, omitting nothing, but swiftly for our time is short. I thirst to hear it from your own lips.”
So in his slow, wandering way he told her, word by word, all that he had seen, all that he had learned, and the sum of it was that Sir Christopher had been shipped abroad upon the Great Yarmouth, sorely wounded but not dead, and that with him had sailed Jeffrey Stokes and the monk Martin.
“That’s ten months gone,” said Cicely. “Has naught been heard of this ship? By now she should be home again.”
Thomas hesitated, then answered—
“No tidings came of her from Spain. Then, although I said nothing of it even to Emlyn, she was reported lost with all hands at sea. Then came another story——”
“Ah! that other story?”
“Lady, two of her crew reached the Wash. I did not see them, and they have shipped again for Marseilles in France. But I spoke with a shepherd who is half-brother to one of them, and he told me that from him he learned that the Great Yarmouth was set upon by two Turkish pirates and captured after a brave fight in which the captain Goody and others were killed. This man and his comrade escaped in a boat and drifted to and fro till they were picked up by a homeward-bound caravel which landed them at Hull. That’s all I know—save one thing.”
“One thing! Oh, what thing, Thomas? That my husband is dead?”
“Nay, nay, the very opposite, that he is alive, or was, for these men saw him and Jeffrey Stokes and Martin the priest, no craven as I know, fighting like devils till the Turks overwhelmed them by numbers, and, having bound their hands, carried them all three unwounded on board one of their ships, wishing doubtless to make slaves of such brave fellows.”