“I lost sight of them in the crowd, for this strong-bitted brute was enough to manage without troubling myself with love matters. They were together, I had my reward, and that is the long and short of the matter,” replied the artisan, mingling truth and falsehood with no little address, considering the state of terror into which he had been thrown.
“And thou art ignorant where she is now?” inquired Somerset, still in a calm constrained voice.
“Even so, your highness. Lord Dudley has doubtless nestled his dove into some safe nook hereabouts, while he leads on the rioters near the church. I heard them shouting his name just as your lordly followers seized my mettlesome beast by the bit. So there is little fear that he will not be found all in good time.”
The Lord Protector turned away his head and wheeled his horse around without speaking a word, but his followers were struck by the fierce deep light that burned in his eyes and the extraordinary whiteness of his face. The artisan took this movement as a sign of his own liberation, and, glad to escape even with the loss of his plunder, he gathered up the bridle and was about to push his way from a presence that filled him with fear and trembling.
The Lord Protector’s quick eye caught the motion, and, as if all the passions of his nature broke forth in the command, he thundered out—
“Seize that man and take good care that he neither speaks nor is spoken to. God of Heaven!” he added, suddenly bending forward with all the keen anguish of a father and a disgraced noble breaking over his pale features as they almost touched the saddle-bow—“Father of Heaven, that the honor of a brave house should lie at the mercy of a slippery knave’s tongue!”
These words, spoken in a low stifled voice, were lost amid the din of surrounding strife; but instantly that pale proud head was lifted again and turned almost fierce upon his followers. The naked sword flashed upward, and a shout, like that of a wounded eagle fierce in his death-struggle, broke upon his white lips and rang almost like a shriek upon the burthened air.
“On to the church—on, on through the mob—trample them to the earth till we stand face to face with the leader!”
Instantly the men with their long pikes made a rush upon the multitude. The horsemen plunged recklessly forward, crushing the unarmed people to the earth, and trampling the warm life from many a human heart beneath the hoofs of their chargers.
It was the cry and struggle which arose from this onset that reached the Lord Dudley in the dim and solemn quietude of St. Margaret’s church. It was this which made the Lady Jane spring wildly upon the altar where she had been extended so weak and helpless, put back the hair from her face and listen, white and breathless as a statue, for another sound of her father’s voice like the one shrill war-cry that had cut to her heart like a denunciation.