“Ay, but we have had already enough of such fancies,” retorted Carew, stoutly; “we have not forgot the Oxford conjurer, nor the prophecy that he made whereby he declared that none of ‘the Cadwallader blood’ should reign long, and would even have raised an heir to Lancaster from the bloody field of Tewkesbury. All such matters be but the beginning of treason;” and the good baron turned to his posset in open disgust of the sorcerer’s arts.
Far other thoughts ran in the mind of his elder guest; Raleigh sat looking at the fire with much perplexity upon his face.
“Latimer a bishop!” he said, at last; “I do remember the time when they would have burnt him but for my lord cardinal; strange, too, that Wolsey’s hand should have plucked such a fagot from the fire. Verily, these are days when swift changes come upon this realm.”
CHAPTER III
MISTRESS BETTY GOES OUT INTO THE WORLD
Under a gray sky and over moors, brown with the frost, rode Mistress Betty Carew upon her first journey into the great world. She and her uncle were escorted by Master Raby and a few stout retainers, all being well armed, for travellers encountered some perils upon those lonely roads. The young girl, going out upon an unknown errand and feeling herself almost a stranger even to Sir William, spoke but little, her mind being full of many thoughts and fancies. She had as yet no intuition of her destination, and marvelled not a little at the peremptory summons coming to one so little known as she was. Happily for her, she had been bred up in the school of misfortune and had profited by its early and sharp lessons. Naturally imperious in temper, she had learned to submit to the inevitable, and accepted this sudden and unwelcome change as part of her uncertain destiny, knowing that her poverty and dependence made her a plaything in the hands of fate. She had learned also in that early school to be a close observer of men and women, and was not unskilful in reading character, although so young. Therefore she smiled a little when she heard her uncle’s sharp comment on Simon Raby’s groom.
“What hangdog knave is that thou hast there, Raby?” Sir William asked, when they were leaving an inn where they had stopped for a few moments.
“You mean not my groom surely, Sir William?” said Raby, smiling; “an honest fellow, who has served me two years or more.”
“I marvel that he stayed so long out of gaol,” Carew answered dryly; “a crop-eared villain, who will hang some day at Tyburn.”
The younger man laughed gayly. “A sorry prophecy, sir,” he said lightly; “the man has served me faithfully, as far as I know, and seems free enough of bad habits,—drinks less, thieves less, and quarrels less than most.”
“Ay,” retorted Sir William, with a grim smile, “he would not quarrel openly, but keep a knife for your back at midnight; I would give him short shrift if he were mine.”