CHAPTER XXIII
WITHIN THE MONKS' OVEN
The chamber into which Jeremy led me was small, but it had evidently been used for a sleeping-room before. A couch was placed in the corner. There were chairs and even a table. But I saw at the first glance that the window, placed high in the vaulted roof, was unglazed, but barred.
"It is not precisely a palace, so to speak," said Jeremy, shaking his long snaky curls, and smiling his unctuous thin-lipped smile; "but in comparison wi' some—mercy me, but ye should be content. Ye will be braw and warm here. This was never aught but a cosy corner—see, bonnie lass! There's the auld monks' wark—the oven where they baked their pies!"
And taking my hand in his great one he slapped the wall which ended my prison vault, cutting it, as it were, into two parts. It was, in fact, quite as warm as the fingers could bear, and most of the time since has kept an equal temperature—though, if anything, a little stifling on baking days.
"Here ye shall bide," said Jeremy, standing dark and lithe in the doorway; "I myself shall be your keeper, but think not but that Jeremy Orrin kens bravely how to behave himself to a leddy. Ye will wait here, sacred as St. Theresa, till the wedding gown is prepared and the table spread. But Jeremy will feed his ladybird with his own hand three times a day—nor shall his sister Aphra put so much as a pot stick in the cooking, for fear of mistakes! She's a fine lass, Aphra, when ye ken her, but little to trust to when she has a spite against ye. Stick you by Jeremy, leddy, and he will stick by you!"
After he was gone, and the silence had re-established itself, listening intently, I caught the sound of water flowing somewhere near, and lifting up a little square of wood let into the stone floor in the angle behind the couch, I saw black water creeping sullenly along underneath my dungeon—probably the outlet of the Moat Pond on its way to join the Brom Water. And I could not keep thinking of the fate of those "others," who had not the doubtful but yet puissant protection of Jeremy. The trapdoor was certainly large enough to take a man, and the water, creeping ice-free down to the Moat Pond, would tell no tales. As it was I tore one or two little notes sent me by Joe into the smallest pieces, and watched them float away—that I might in no way connect him with the miseries into which my foolish confidence had brought me.
I was altogether alone. On the table Jeremy had put a candle with matches. When he brought my evening meal of porridge, cooked in the monks' bakery by himself, he asked if I wanted anything to read.
"I canna aye gie ye my company," he said. "What wi' the maister bein' no well, I hae great stress o' business—but can ye read?"