Followed silence. "Roger," the Queen ordered, sharply, "give me the paper which I would not sign."
The Earl of March had drawn an audible breath. The Bishop of London somewhat wrinkled his shaggy brows, as a person in shrewd and epicurean amusement, what while she subscribed the parchment within the moment, with a great scrawling flourish.
"Take, in the devil's name, the hire of your dexterities," said Ysabeau, and pushed this document with her wet pen-point toward March, "and ride for Berkeley now upon that necessary business we know of. And do the rest of you withdraw, saving only my prisoner—my prisoner!" she said, and laughed not very pleasantly.
"'MY PRISONER!' SHE SAID" Painting by Howard Pyle
Followed another silence. Queen Ysabeau lolled in her carven chair, considering the comely gentleman who stood before her, fettered, at the point of shameful death. There was a little dog in the room which had come to the Queen, and now licked the palm of her left hand, and the soft lapping of its tongue was the only sound you heard. "So at peril of your life you rode for Ordish, then, messire?"
The tense man had flushed. "You have harried us of the King's party out of England—and in reason I might not leave England without seeing her."
"My friend," said Ysabeau, as half in sorrow, "I would have pardoned anything save that." She rose. Her face was dark and hot. "By God and all His saints! you shall indeed leave England to-morrow and the world as well! but not without a final glimpse of this same Rosamund. Yet listen: I, too, must ride with you to Ordish—as your sister, say—Gregory, did I not hang last April the husband of your sister? Yes, Ralph de Belomys, a thin man with eager eyes, the Earl of Farrington he was. As his widow will I ride with you to Ordish, upon condition you disclose to none at Ordish, saving only, if you will, this quite immaculate Rosamund, even a hint of our merry carnival. And to-morrow (you will swear according to the nicest obligations of honor) you must ride back with me to encounter—that which I may devise. For I dare to trust your naked word in this, and, moreover, I shall take with me a sufficiency of retainers to leave you no choice."
Darrell knelt before her. "I can do no homage to Queen Ysabeau; yet the prodigal hands of her who knows that I must die to-morrow and cunningly contrives, for old time's sake, to hearten me with a sight of Rosamund, I cannot but kiss." This much he did. "And I swear in all things to obey her will."