Then Mistress Alice had awakened and
come downstairs, and the three women had waited on the priest, as, in
boots and cloak, he had taken some food.
Then, as the sound of the horses' feet coming round from the stables at
the back had reached them, she had determined to tell Robin before he
went of how she had played the coward.
She went out with him to the entry between the hall and the buttery,
holding the others back with a glance.
"I near destroyed the letter," she said simply, with downcast eyes, "and
sent the man away again. I was afraid of what might fall at
Fotheringay.... May Christ protect you!"
She said no more than that, but turned and called the others before he
could speak.
As he gathered up the reins a moment later, before mounting, the three
women kneeled down in the lighted entry and the two farm-men by the
horses' heads, and the priest gave them his blessing.
CHAPTER VII
I
It was not until after dawn on Wednesday, the twenty-fifth of January,
as the bells were ringing in the parish church for the Conversion of St.
Paul, that the two draggled travellers rode in over the bridge of
Fotheringay, seeing the castle-keep rise grim and grey out of the
river-mists on the right; and, passing on, dismounted in the yard of the
New Inn. They had had one or two small misadventures by the way, and
young Merton, through sheer sleepiness, had so reeled in his saddle on
the afternoon of Monday, that the priest had insisted that they should
both have at least one good night's rest.
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