“And did he see them?”
“I warrant you, yes. For while he was questioning me the bell sounded, and they walked across to the Popish Chapel in the wood. And there was my gentleman, turned Papist all of a sudden, and must needs go and worship images too.”
“And where has he gone now?” I asked.
“I know not, neither do I care, so I am rid of him. But come, guest, if you must stay, get you to bed; for we be early folk here.”
I slept not a wink that night, and before daylight was astir and out of doors. For I, too, was curious concerning this nunnery and its inmates; and was minded to turn Catholic too for occasion, and see if, amongst the ladies, might appear the stately form of her whose fate had been so oddly woven with mine own.
But ill fortune attended me. For early as I was, matins had been sung an hour ago; nor was there another service till noon, and that only for the sisters. I must wait till evensong, to satisfy myself, and, with much misgiving at the delay, dragged myself back to the “Oriflame.”
Just as I turned off from the Dover road, there passed me in haste two men habited as priests, travel-stained, as coming off a long journey, yet apparently familiar enough with the path which led to the friendly shelter of the convent. I saw neither of their faces, for both were bent over the books they read; but I marked that one of them was tall and lean, while the other, who walked with more of a swagger, was shorter and better fed. I doubt if either of them saw me. But somehow I liked not the sight of them, or the path they took. It seemed to me to bode ill to the maiden; and I longed to have my business with his Grace ended that I might return and be near the place where she was.
For three mortal hours, that forenoon, was I kept kicking my heels in his Grace’s ante-chamber; and in the end was told curtly his Grace had no leisure at present for such business, and that I must come again on the morrow. I own I spake disrespectfully of his Grace when they gave me this message, and was fain, on that account, to retreat from the precincts more hastily than most suitors are wont to do. Here was another day wasted, and who was to say that the same put-off did not await me to-morrow?
It was late in the afternoon when I found myself again at the “Oriflame,” and there I found mine host in a monstrous flutter, thinking I, too, had given him the slip without paying my account. I made him happy on that score with the moiety of my gold piece, and thereby bound him to me for ever and a day. For he seemed a man whose wont it was never to get his due.
I was solacing my impatience as I waited for vespers, by pacing to and fro in the wood which divided the road to Dover from the convent wall; when I was startled to come suddenly upon a horse, saddled and bridled, tied up in a covert. It had a pillion on its back; and seemed like the beast on which a farmer and his wife might ride together to market. So, indeed, I thought it to be, when, looking about me, I perceived in the saddle-bow a knife, the hilt of which I had seen before. It was, in fact, a knife I had myself given to Peter, one day two years ago, when I had won a new one at Finsbury Fields, and when my fellow ’prentice and I were better friends than we became later on.