“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. He was made captive by a White Rose party, so far as I could hear, and St. Peter knows where he may be. But look you, the lady, for all her foul looks, had cast her spell over him, and held him as bound and entranced as by a true love, so that he was ready to defend her beauty—her beauty! look you!—against all the world in the lists. He was neither to have nor to hold if any man durst utter a word against her! And it was the same with her tirewoman and her own old squire.”
“Then, sir, you deem that in slaying the hare, the arquebusier rid you of your witch wife?” There was a little bitterness, even scorn, in the tone.
“I say not so, mistress. I know men-at-arms too well to credit all they say, and I was on my way to inquire into the matter and learn the truth when these same Dacres fell on me; and that I lie here is due to you and good Master Lambert. Many a woman whose face is ill favoured has learnt to keep up her power by unhallowed arts, and if it be so with her whom in my boyish prank I have marred, Heaven forgive her and me. If I can ever return I shall strive to trace her life or death, without which mayhap I could scarce win my true bride.”
Grisell could bear no more of this crushing of her hopes. She crept away murmuring something about the vesper bell at the convent chapel near, for it was there that she could best kneel, while thoughts and strength and resolution came to her.
The one thing clear to her was that Sir Leonard did not view her, or rather the creature at Whitburn Tower, as his wife, but as a hag, mayhap a sorceress from whom he desired to be released, and that his love to Eleanor Audley was as strong as ever.
Should she make herself known and set him free? Nay, but then what would become of him? He still needed her care, which he accepted as that of a nurse, and while he believed himself to be living on the means supplied by his uncle at Wearmouth to the Apothecary, this had soon been exhausted, and Grisell had partly supplied what was wanting from Ridley’s bag, partly from what the old squire had sent her as the fishermen’s dues; and she was perceiving how to supplement this, or replace it by her own skill, by her assistance to Lambert in his concoctions, and likewise by her lace-work, which was of a device learnt at Wilton and not known at Bruges. There was something strangely delightful to her in thus supporting Leonard even though he knew it not, and she determined to persist in her present course till there was some change. Suppose he heard of Eleanor’s marriage to some one else! Then? But, ah, the cracked apple face. She must find a glass, or even a pail of water, and judge! Or the Lancastrian fortunes might revive, he might go home in triumph, and then would she give him her ring and her renunciation, and either earn enough to obtain entrance to a convent or perhaps be accepted for the sake of her handiwork!