A whirl of figures came down the outer steps with an old man in their midst. His fierce white beard stuck out under a grim mouth; the swineherds and scullions had not cowed him.
They dragged him this way and that, like hounds pulling at a fox.
One was found and rolled forward, and Sir Robert Hales thrown across it, face upwards, his hands clutching the air.
“My stroke, sirs. Room, room! I’ll do’t at one swash!”
The door of the White Tower stood open at the head of the steps down which the men of Kent had dragged Sir Robert Hales. The steps themselves were deserted for the moment, and Isoult climbed them and fled into the cool gloom of the great tower, trying to forget the sight of the old man flung face upwards across the horse-block. A desire to escape from these wretches seized her, and she fled along passages and up stairways, knowing not where she went, but seeking for some place where she might hide.
Loud laughter and a pother of rough voices broke suddenly from a room at the top of a short flight of broad steps. Isoult heard the proud, but appealing voice of a woman and the laughter seemed to falter and die down.
The door was half open, and Isoult, gliding along the wall, climbed the steps and peered through the gap at the hinges.
It was a noble room hung with sky-blue arras dusted with silver stars, and over by the window stood a great bed covered with a canopy of purple cloth. Hutches and chests had been broken open, and rich clothes and stuffs of cloth of silver and gold had been scattered about the floor. In the bed sat the Princess, the King’s mother, white as her own night gear. Three women cowered in a corner. A dozen or more peasants were crowded round, snapping their fingers in the Princess’s face, jeering, and threatening to pull the clothes from her, and thrusting the points of their pikes into the bed.
“Men of Kent, have you forgotten Edward the Black Prince?”
She faced them fearlessly, in spite of deathly fear, and the white pride of her face was like a white flame, keeping the men back. They were awed and, a little ashamed, faltered, grinned at each other, and then slunk back towards the door.
Isoult hid herself in a dark recess in the thickness of the wall, and they went crowding down the stairs past her.