Saint George for England | Page 7

that many were taking up arms, but it was useless. The castle
was attacked, and after three days' fighting, was taken. Roland was
killed, and I was cast out with my child. Afterwards they repented that
they had let me go, and searched far and wide for me; but I was hidden
in the cottage of a woodcutter. They were too busy in hunting down
others whom they proclaimed to be enemies of the king, as they had
wrongfully said of Roland, who had but done his duty faithfully to
Queen Isabella, and was assuredly no enemy of her son, although he
might well be opposed to the weak and indolent king, his father.

However, when the search relaxed I borrowed the cloak of the good
man's wife and set out for London, whither I have traveled on foot,
believing that you and Bertha would take me in and shelter me in my
great need."
"Aye, that will we willingly," Giles said. "Was not Bertha your nurse ?
and to whom should you come if not to her? But will it please you to
mount the stairs, for Bertha will not forgive me if I keep you talking
down here. What a joy it will be to her to see you again!"
So saying, Giles led the way to the apartment above. There was a
scream of surprise and joy from his wife, and then Giles quietly
withdrew downstairs again, leaving the women to cry in each other's
arms.
A few days later Geoffrey Ward entered the shop of Giles Fletcher.
"I have brought you twenty score of arrowheads, Master Giles," he said.
"They have been longer in hand than is usual with me, but I have been
pressed. And how goes it with the lady whom I brought to your door
last week?"
"But sadly, Master Ward, very sadly, as I told you when I came across
to thank you again in her name and my own for your kindness to her.
She was but in poor plight after her journey; poor thing, she was little
accustomed to such wet and hardship, and doubtless they took all the
more effect because she was low in spirit and weakened with much
grieving. That night she was taken with a sort of fever, hot and cold by
turns, and at times off her head. Since then she has lain in a high fever
and does not know even my wife; her thoughts ever go back to the
storming of the castle, and she cries aloud and begs them to spare her
lord's life. It is pitiful to hear her. The leech gives but small hope for
her life, and in troth, Master Ward, methinks that God would deal most
gently with her were He to take her. Her heart is already in her
husband's grave, for she was ever of a most loving and faithful nature.
Here there would be little comfort for her - she would fret that her boy
would never inherit the lands of his father; and although she knows
well enough that she would be always welcome here, and that Bertha
would serve her as gladly and faithfully as ever she did when she was
her nurse, yet she could not but greatly feel the change. She was
tenderly brought up, being, as I told you last week, the only daughter of
Sir Harold Broome. Her brother, who but a year ago became lord of

Broomecastle at the death of his father, was one of the queen's men,
and it was he, I believe, who brought Sir Roland Somers to that side.
He was slain on the same night as Mortimer, and his lands, like those of
Sir Roland, have been seized by the crown. The child upstairs is by
right heir to both estates, seeing that his uncle died unmarried. They
will doubtless be conferred upon those who have aided the young king
in freeing himself from his mother's domination, for which, indeed,
although I lament that Lady Alice should have suffered so sorely in the
doing of it, I blame him not at all. He is a noble prince and will make
us a great king, and the doings of his mother have been a shame to us
all. However, I meddle not in politics. If the poor lady dies, as methinks
is well-nigh certain, Bertha and I will bring up the boy as our own. I
have talked it over with my wife, and so far she and I are not of one
mind. I think it will be best to keep him in ignorance of his birth and
lineage, since the knowledge cannot benefit him, and will but render
him discontented with his lot and make him disinclined to take to my
calling, in which