My father came, and her mother, an unnurtured, uncouth woman, who
would have forced me to wed her on the spot, but my father would not
hear of it, more especially as there were then two male heirs, so
that I should not have gained her grim old Tower and bare moorlands.
All held that I was not bound to her; the Queen herself owned it, and
that whatever the damsel might be, the mother was a mere northern
she-bear, whose child none would wish to wed, and of the White Rose
besides. So the King had me to his school at Eton, and then I was a
squire of my Lord of Somerset, and there I saw my fairest Eleanor
Audley. The Queen and the Duke of Somerset--rest his soul--would
have had us wedded. On the love day, when all walked together to St.
Paul's, and the King hoped all was peace, we spoke our vows to one
another in the garden of Westminster. She gave me this rook, I gave
her the jewel of my cap; I read her true love in her eyes, like our
limpid northern brooks. Oh! she was fair, fairer than yonder star in
the sunset, but her father, the Lord Audley, was absent, and we could
go no farther; and therewith came the Queen's summons to her liegemen
to come and arrest Salisbury at Bloreheath. There never was rest
again, as you know. My father was slain at Northampton, I yielded me
to young Falconberg; but I found the Yorkists had set headsmen to
work as though we had been traitors, and I was begging for a priest
to hear my shrift, when who should come into the foul, wretched barn
where we lay awaiting the rope, but old Dacre of Whitburn.
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