“You choose then a powerful enemy—”
She raised her arms above her head. “If you will show me where the world is not wicked—!”
“Psha! Do you remember a foggy night when we talked? Return to that mood and say, ‘It is a play, and I can do it wonderfully!’ You could—you can!”
“I do not see that Abbot Mark can harm me more than I am harmed!”
“Think you so? Should there come a band of monks to break the house and hale you forth—strip you and fling you into Wander, or maybe into fire? If Silver Cross but speaks to Saint Ethelred, Abbot Mark to Father Edmund? If I withdraw my hand? Do not look like a queen in a book! I mean only that in no wise can I save you further. Montjoy is not powerful enough, even if he would, and I have here less power of arm than has he. You must save yourself.”
“I think that your Abbot Mark and Prior Matthew are devils!”
“No. They are not. They are honest men trying to assure and increase that which they hold to be their own. Human stuff, even as you and I!”
“Human stuff! Well, I would choose another stuff if I might!”
“No, you would not, poor Morgen Fay, by the chill Wander! You chose this. Well, will you, or will you not?”