“Did I not tell you,” he exclaimed, “this is no place for a lady? If we cannot guard our dead, how can your charge be safe? Hear that shout—the Duke of Somerset is himself coming up from the river to reinforce his band of pillagers. A curse light upon his sacrilegious head for this day’s work—a curse on him and his!”
“Oh no, no; do not curse him!” exclaimed the Lady Jane, starting from Dudley’s arm, and flinging the hood back from her pale face with a wild impulse—“he does not know—he has not thought how dreadful all this is: you do not dream how kind he is. In pity—for sweet mercy’s sake, do not curse my father!”
“Her father,” exclaimed the men almost simultaneously, and with menacing looks; “her father!”
Lord Dudley drew the young girl back to his side, pulled the mantle almost roughly over her face, and turned sternly upon the men.
“Behold,” he said, with a flashing eye, “behold the effect of your cruel delay; my poor sister is driven stark mad at last.”
The speech, and the pale steadfast features of the young man, had the desired effect. The guard did not open the door, it is true, but their manner was more subdued, and they consulted in a low voice together.
“And if we unlock the church, what warrant have we that you are not a partisan of the Duke’s?” said the leader, glancing suspiciously at the young nobleman’s rich vestments; “you may be of his household, nay, his son, for aught we know.”
“You have the word of a Warwick, and this proof that the pledge is not given without right,” said the young man, flinging aside his velvet cloak, and displaying the family crest, set in brilliants, on his sword-hilt. “Now, sirs, let me pass! I have no share in this broil, and would gladly have escaped from it unknown.”
“Pass in, and heaven’s blessing go with you!” said the man, almost angrily striking up the line of weapons which his band still kept levelled.
He unlocked the heavy door, and while the dense mob shouted around him, eager to know why he acted thus for a stranger, he stood, with uncovered head, till the young nobleman had entered the church; then, he closed the door again with a half repeated blessing upon the lips that had been almost blistered with imprecations a few moments before. The solemn stillness and cool atmosphere, which pervaded that little church, fell like a breath from heaven on the three persons who entered it, weary and faint from the turmoil that raged without.