But ere I started I made a
vow in Dr. Morton's hands, to take it only for the King, and so soon
as the troubles be ended to restore it to the lady, when our marriage
is dissolved. As it fell out, I never saw the lady. Her mother lay
a-dying, and there was no summoning her. I bade them show her all
due honour, hoisted my pennon, rode on to my uncle at Wearmouth, and
thence to mine own lands, whence I joined the Queen on her way to
London. As you well know, all was over with our cause at Towton
Moor; and it was on my way northward after the deadly fight that half
a dozen of the men-at-arms brought me tidings, not only that the
Gilsland Dacres had, as had been feared, claimed the castle, but that
this same so-called lady of mine had been shown to deal in sorcery
and magic. They sent for a wise man from Shields, but she found by
her arts what they were doing, fled, and was slain by an arquebuss in
the form of a hare!
"Do you believe it was herself in sooth?" asked Grisell.
"Ah! you are bred by Master Lambert, who, like his kind, hath little
faith in sorcery, but verily, old women do change into hares. All
have known them."
"She was scarce old," Grisell trusted herself to say.
"That skills not. They said she made strange cures by no rules of
art. Ay, and said her prayers backward, and had unknown books."
"Did your squire tell this, or was it only the men?"
"My squire! Poor Pierce, I never saw him.
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