"How came you to know these things?" I asked.
"I saw the woman called Lucy Walters when she was in England," replied Katharine Harcomb; "I saw her as she was taken to the Tower."
"You saw Lucy Walters!" I cried.
"Ay, I saw her. No wonder Charles Stuart loved her, for a more beautiful woman I never set my eyes on. Ay, poor thing, she was neither wise nor prudent, as she found out afterwards to her cost, but she was the fairest maid to look upon that ever I clapped my eyes on. It is true her first beauty had left her, and at that time she was in sore trouble, for she was on her way to the Tower with soldiers on either side of her; nevertheless, every man fell in love with her as she went. The verse-makers have called her the 'nut-brown maid,' and well they might, for her hair was the colour of ripe chestnuts when they are picked from the trees in early October. It shone like the dowager queen's diamonds, and hung around her head in great curling locks. Her eyes were brown too, and sparkled like stars; even then roses were upon her cheeks, and she walked like a queen."
"But she was liberated from the Tower," said my father, "and went back to France."
"But not before I saw her, Master Rashcliffe," replied Katharine Harcomb, "and not before she told me that she was Charles Stuart's wedded wife."
"She told you that?"
"Ay, she told me that."
"But did she tell you where the marriage contract was?" asked my father.
"Of that I shall say nothing until I know whether Master Roland here will undertake the work I have spoken of," and again the woman's dark bright eyes scanned my face, as though she saw there an index to the thoughts which possessed my mind.