“You will not bury him—where you said?” she cries. For a moment I stood irresolute, staring at her. “We waste time,” whispers John Stirk at my elbow. “I must carry out my plans, cousin,” I answers, roughly.
She drew away her fingers from my arm. “Cruel—cruel!” she says, and falls a-weeping on Barbara’s shoulder.
“The devil!” says I, under my breath. “Cousin!” I says, approaching her, “what can we do else? Would you leave my uncle’s body to be stared at by the fellows outside, and maybe suffer indignity at their hands? Lord!” I says, well nigh beyond myself, “why wont you listen to reason?”
But she put out her hand and waved me off. “Do what you please,” she says. Old Barbara gives me a look. “Come,” says I, and went out, followed by John and Humphrey. I wiped my forehead when I got outside—faith, it was warmer work debating with Alison than fighting a company of troopers!
Gregory and Jasper had made swift work with the grave, which they had dug under the very spot in the hall where my uncle’s chair used to stand. There was a rich, soft loam under the pavement, and they had dug into it some four feet and lined the hole with boards since there was no time to make a coffin. “All’s ready, Master Richard,” says old Gregory, and the five of us went softly upstairs. At the door of the chamber, where I had left Alison, I paused and knocked ere I went in. She was still weeping on Barbara’s shoulder, and the old woman talked to her as if she had been a child.
“Cousin,” says I, “we are ready, and there is no time to lose. If you wish to see him——”
She turned her head and looked at me with a frightened enquiry in her eyes. “Give me your hand,” I says, and took it in my own. “Come,” says I, and led her out of the room and to the door of Sir Nicholas’s chamber. The men stood aside and bent their heads. I opened the door and let her in, and then shut it and waited. It was some minutes ere she came out, and then she was calm enough and faced us all with great composure. “Stand thee with her, Dick,” whispers old Gregory, and he motioned the rest of them to follow him into the room. And so I stood at Alison’s side, and neither of us spoke. But when the four men came out carrying my uncle’s body, closely wrapped in his grave-clothes, she gave a little shudder and put out her hand and I took it in mine and held it there, and so we followed them down the wide staircase and into the hall, and as we came in sight of the staring hole in the floor where his chair used to stand I felt her fingers close tighter on my own.
There was no more light in the hall than came from the two lanthorns brought there by Gregory and Jasper, and the grave-clothes looked ghastly white as we laid the good old knight in the only resting-place we could give him. As we stood looking down into his grave a thought came to me, and I stepped across the hall and took down from its shelf the great prayer-book which he was wont to use. And coming back, I knelt down by the grave with Alison at my side and the others about us, and read certain passages out of the service for the burial of the dead, and when we had all said the Lord’s Prayer, and Gregory had twice repeated “Amen,” we got up from our knees, and I led my cousin out of the hall, signing to the men to do what they had to do with all speed.
Outside the hall I released Alison’s hand. “Now, cousin,” says I, “you must prepare for your journey. I hope to see you in safety to your father’s house ere daybreak, but there may be obstacles that I have not reckoned for, and we must be prepared.”