Though Hal left her sight in riding back to keep watch, she now knew that he would not flee without calling his attendants, nor could he continue his flight in either practicable direction—toward Nottingham or toward Newark—without passing the inn. So she went to her room—one of the few with which the low upper story of the house was provided—in confident mind, stationing Francis on a bench where he might, in a state of half slumber, watch the door of Kit and Anthony. As for the window of the room taken by these two, it was not far from her own, and by keeping the latter open she counted upon hearing any exit made through the former. She lay down, and dozed wakefully.
Hal's watch was without event. As he moved up and down the silent road with his horses, he continued to ask himself whether she might yet have formed a plan of action against him; and from this question he fell to considering what plan might be possible. He tried to devise one for her, but could invent none that he saw himself unable to defeat.
He returned to the inn at the end of his two hours, and summoned Anthony by a whistle previously agreed upon. Anthony came down by the stairs, and went silently on guard. Hal, who had not yet eaten, now entered the inn with a ready appetite for the supper he had previously ordered. As he stepped from the outer wind into the passage, he noticed that the door was open which led thence to the inn parlor. Just within that door stood a figure. He glanced at it. By the light of the candles farther in the room, he saw that it was Mistress Hazlehurst.
"Sir," she said to him, in a dry tone, which, as also her face, she tried to rob of all expression save that of ordinary, indifferent civility, "I learn you bespoke supper to be sent to your room. I am having mine own served here. We have full understanding of each other's intent. There is open warfare between us. Yet while we be fellow travellers, each set upon the other's defeat, meseems we should as well comport ourselves as fellow travellers till one win the other's undoing. Though writ down in blood as bitter foes, in birth we are equal, and our lands are neighbor. So I do offer that we sup together, as becometh people of civility upon the same journey, though enemies they be to the death."
To this proposal, so congenial with his inclinations, what could Master Marryott do but forthwith assent, too dazzled by the prospect to torture his brain for a likely motive on her part? With a "Right readily, mistress!" he hastened to give the necessary orders, and then entered the parlor, which had no occupant but Mistress Anne. The last tippler of the night had sought his bed.
At one side of the low room was a fire in a wide hearth. At another side, beneath a deep, long, horizontal window was a table, on which some dishes were already set. The floor was covered with stale rushes. There were no hangings on the besmoked, plastered, timbered walls. The poor candles shed a wavering light. This was no Mermaid tavern, indeed. Yet Hal felt mightily, dangerously comfortable here.
He opened a casement a little, that he might hear any alarm from Anthony, and then he sat down at the table, opposite Anne. He saw that Francis, who seemed of wire, and proof against fatigue and lack of sleep, stood ready to wait upon his mistress. He saw, too, that her wine was placed on a rude kind of sideboard, to be served from thence each time a sip might be wanted, as in the private houses of gentlefolk. When a tapster came, sleepy and muttering to himself, with Hal's wine, Master Marryott ordered it put as the lady's was; and then Mistress Hazlehurst proposed, in the manner she had used before, that the inn servant be dismissed and Francis wait upon them both.
"It is but fair repayment," she added, "for the protection I receive upon the road by the presence of your men."
Hal was nothing loath. He would not show suspicion, if he felt any, at being invited to be left alone with his enemy and her servant. Francis was but a slip of a boy,—and yet, in his tirelessness, his reposeful manner, his discreet look, the closeness of his mouth, there was sufficient of the undisclosed, of the possibly latent, to put a wise man on his guard. Hal kept a corner of his eye upon the page, therefore, while with the rest of it he studied the fine face and graceful motions—motions the more effective for being few—of the page's mistress.