'Mistress, you cannot just now. He is out of sight and hearing. "Take care of your mistress," he said to me, "and I will ride on in front." There are other riders behind. We are well protected now. It was such a job to get hold of you, mistress,' continued Betsy, 'that we don't mean to lose you again. There was much fighting to do before we could get into the Hall, I can tell you; but, first of all, we found the Duke of Northumberland's men were not much good, and we had to travel ever so far to get some picked men, quite gentlemen some of them, to come over and help.'
'Then Sir Hubert never was a prisoner at Crossley Hall?' asked I, thinking of the man in the dungeon, and of all that I had gone through in order to get him liberated.
Betsy laughed at the idea. 'Sir Hubert said he had had a narrow escape of being taken prisoner when you were,' she said. 'There were six to one, but he fought valiantly, and they could not take him, though he was unable to rescue you.'
Lying there in the litter, listening to Betsy's talk and looking on her familiar face, whilst the sweet country air fanned me pleasantly, bringing with it, too—or I could fancy so—a breath of the salt sea air in which I had grown up and lived most of my life, I could almost fancy that the Wheel of Time had gone back a little, and I was once more in my father's litter with Betsy, leaving home for the first time for Sion House and the service of Lady Jane Grey. I had to pull myself together before I could realize that far from being in my father's litter going to Isleworth, I was in one of the Duke of Northumberland's litters, returning in it to my old home.
'You will like to see Master Jack and Master Hal again,' said Betsy cheerily, and of course your father and Master Montgomery too, not to mention Timothy and John and Joseph.'
'Yes, that I shall,' I said, but half absently, for though I was returning to them, there was another love drawing my heart away from them back to the more hazardous life in the great metropolis, wherein was my sweet mistress, Lady Jane. 'For my own sake, I would rather have her with me,' those had been her words about me, and it needed not long thinking about them on my part to make of them my law. Lady Jane would rather have me with her, therefore I must go to Lady Jane. I said so to Betsy, much to her amazement and consternation.
'But, mistress, dear mistress, consider,' she cried. 'Before this she has probably been taken to the Tower, where she will be a prisoner. It will be very different from what it was before,' she continued. 'She will be in another part of the Tower, away from the Royal Palace that she was in before, and they will never allow you to go to her, or, once you go,' she went on inconsequently, 'you will never be permitted to return. Your life won't be safe for a minute, when once you are amongst the State prisoners. They will burn you alive and behead you,' she continued wildly, tears rolling down her face at the idea, 'and then where will you be, my sweet, precious Mistress Margery?' and she caught hold of my hands as if she would keep me away from the Tower by main force.
And then my litter suddenly stopped, and Sir Hubert rode alongside, and, stooping over his horse's head, looked earnestly into my face.
'My dearest,' he said to me, lifting his hat with one hand and reining in his horse with the other, 'what is the matter?'
I told him that he was taking me in the wrong direction, for that I desired, above all things, to return to Lady Jane.