their halls thrown in.  For the sake of those jewels you have brought death on some and misery on some, and on your own soul damnation without end, though had you but been wise and consulted me—­why, they, or some of them, might have been yours.  Sir John was no fool; he would have parted with a pearl or two, of which he did not know the value, to end a feud against the Church and safeguard his title and his daughter.  And now, in your madness, you’ve burnt them—­burnt a king’s ransom, or what might have pulled down a king.  Oh! had you but guessed it, you’d have hacked off the hand that put a torch to Cranwell Towers, for now the gold you need is lacking to you, and therefore all your grand schemes will fail, and you’ll be buried in their ruin, as you thought we were in Cranwell.”

The Abbot, who had listened to this long and bitter speech in patience, groaned again.

“You are a clever woman,” he said; “we understand each other, coming from the same blood.  You know the case; what is your counsel to me now?”

“That which you will not take, being foredoomed for your sins.  Still I’ll give it honestly.  Set the Lady Cicely free, restore her lands, confess your evil doings.  Fly the kingdom before Cromwell turns on you and Henry finds you out, taking with you all the gold that you can gather, and bribe the Emperor Charles to give you a bishopric in Granada or elsewhere—­not near Seville, for reasons that you know.  So shall you live honoured, and one day, after you have been dead a long while and many things are forgotten, perchance be beatified as Saint Clement of Blossholme.”

The Abbot looked at her reflectively.

“If I sought safety only and old age comforts your counsel might be good, but I play for higher stakes.”

“You set your head against them,” broke in Emlyn.

“Not so, woman, for in any case that head must win.  If it stays upon my shoulders it will wear an archbishop’s mitre, or a cardinal’s hat, or perhaps something nobler yet; and if it parts from them, why, then a heavenly crown of glory.”

“Your head? Your head?” exclaimed Emlyn, with a contemptuous laugh.

“Why not?” he answered gravely.  “You chance to know of some errors of my youth, but they are long ago repented of, and for such there is plentiful forgiveness,” and he crossed himself.  “Were it not so, who would escape?”

Emlyn, who had been standing all this while, sat herself down, set her elbows on the table and rested her chin upon her clenched hands.

“True,” she said, looking him in the eyes; “none of us would escape.  But, Clement Maldon, how about the unrepented errors of your age?  Sir John Foterell, for instance; Sir Christopher Harflete, for instance; my Lady Cicely, for instance; to say nothing of black treason and a few other matters?”

“Even were all these charges true, which I deny, they are no sins, seeing that they would have been done, every one of them, not for my own sake, but for that of the Church, to overset her enemies, to rebuild her tottering walls, to secure her eternally in this realm.”