“Alack,” cried Alicia, “I am shent!”
“Ye know him not,” replied Lord Foxham.
“It is but a trifle; he hath already clean
forgot your words.”
“He is, then, the very flower of knighthood,”
said Alicia.
“Nay, he but mindeth other things,” returned
Lord Foxham. “Tarry we no more.”
In the chancel they found Dick waiting, attended by
a few young men; and there were he and Joan united.
When they came forth again, happy and yet serious,
into the frosty air and sunlight, the long files of
the army were already winding forward up the road;
already the Duke of Gloucester’s banner was unfolded
and began to move from before the abbey in a clump
of spears; and behind it, girt by steel-clad knights,
the bold, black-hearted, and ambitious hunchback moved
on towards his brief kingdom and his lasting infamy.
But the wedding party turned upon the other side,
and sat down, with sober merriment, to breakfast.
The father cellarer attended on their wants, and
sat with them at table. Hamley, all jealousy
forgotten, began to ply the nowise loth Alicia with
courtship. And there, amid the sounding of tuckets
and the clash of armoured soldiery and horses continually
moving forth, Dick and Joan sat side by side, tenderly
held hands, and looked, with ever growing affection,
in each other’s eyes.
Thenceforth the dust and blood of that unruly epoch
passed them by. They dwelt apart from alarms
in the green forest where their love began.
Two old men in the meanwhile enjoyed pensions in great
prosperity and peace, and with perhaps a superfluity
of ale and wine, in Tunstall hamlet. One had
been all his life a shipman, and continued to the
last to lament his man Tom. The other, who had
been a bit of everything, turned in the end towards
piety, and made a most religious death under the name
of Brother Honestus in the neighbouring abbey.
So Lawless had his will, and died a friar.
{1} At the date of this story, Richard Crookback
could not have been created Duke of Gloucester; but
for clearness, with the reader’s leave, he shall
so be called.
{2} Richard Crookback would have been really far
younger at this date.
{3} Technically, the term “lance” included
a not quite certain number of foot soldiers attached
to the man-at-arms.
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