"That cripple? The people would not have him before to rule over them. They will not now. Let them look on him and then on me; there can be but one decision. If there be a doubt, I shall contrive to get the weasel out of the way. And, moreover," said Rogier, who chuckled over his scheme, "all here are akin—that is why there was such a to-do about the seven degrees. It hit them all. I warrant ye, when gone into, it will be found that she has in her the blood of——. What is the name?"
"Cunedda."
"Aye, of that outlandish old forefather. If not, I can make it so. There is a man here—Meredith they call him—a bard and genealogist. I have a pair of thumb-screws, and I can spoil his harping forever unless he discover that the pretty wench whom I design for myself, to be my Baroness Caio, be lineally descended from—I cannot mind the name—and be, after Goronwy, the legitimate heir to all the tribal rights. Cadell, you can make a man say and swear to anything with the persuasion of thumb-screws. A rare institution."
The chaplain said nothing to this. It was a proposition that did not admit of dispute.
A good many of the Norman barons had taken the Welsh heiresses to them as a means of disarming the opposition they encountered, perhaps feeling a twinge of compunction at their methods of appropriation of lands by the sword. Gerald of Windsor, as we have seen, was married to a princess of the royal race of Dyfed, though not, indeed, an heiress. A knight occupying a subordinate position, if he chanced to secure as wife the heiress of some Welsh chief, at once claimed all her lands and rights, and sprang at once into the position of a great baron.
"Come, sweetheart!" exclaimed Rogier boisterously, and went up to Morwen and caught her by the chin. "Look me in the face and say 'Aye!' and I will put a coronet of pearls on thy black hair."
She shrank from him—not indeed, understanding his words, but comprehending that she was treated with disrespect.
"Speak to her, you fool!" said Rogier angrily. "She must be told what I purpose. If not by you then by Pont l'Espec, whom I will call in. But by the Conqueror's paunch, I do not care to do my wooing through the mouth of a common serving-man."
Cadell stood up from the seat into which he had lowered himself and approached Morwen.
"Hark y'!" said the Norman; "no advice of thine own. I can see thou likest not my design. Say my words, give my message, and bear me back her reply—and thrust in naught of thy mind, and thy suasion."