He had
craved me from the Duke of York, it seems, and gained my life on what
condition he did not tell me, but he bound my feet beneath my horse,
and thus bore me out of the camp for all the first day. Then, I own
he let me ride as became a knight, on my word of honour not to
escape; but much did I marvel whether it were revenge or ransom that
he wanted; and as to ransom, all our gold had all been riding on
horseback with my poor father. What he had devised I knew not nor
guessed till late at night we were at his rat-hole of a Tower, where
I looked for a taste of the dungeons; but no such thing. The choice
that the old robber--"
Grisell could not repress a dissentient murmur of indignation.
"Ah, well, you are from Sunderland, and may know better of him. But
any way the choice he left me was the halter that dangled from the
roof and his grisly daughter!"
"Did you see her?" Grisell contrived to ask.
"I thank the Saints, no. To hear of her was enow. They say she has
a face like a cankered oak gall or a rotten apple lying cracked on
the ground among the wasps. Mayhap though you have seen her."
Grisell could truly say, in a half-choked voice, "Never since she was
a child," for no mirror had come in her way since she was at Warwick
House. She was upborne by the thought that it would be a relief to
him not to see anything like a rotten apple. He went on -
"My first answer and first thought was rather death--and of my word
to my Eleanor.
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