The first sounds she there heard were, “Sir, I have given my faith to the Lady Eleanor of Audley, whom I love.”
“What is that to me? ’Twas a precontract to my daughter.”
“By your parents, with myself. You went near to being her death outright, marred her face for life, so that none other will wed her. What say you? Not hurt by your own will? Who said it was? What matters that?”
“Sir,” said Leonard, “it is true that by mishap, nay, if you will have it so, by a child’s inadvertence, I caused this evil chance to befall your daughter, but I deny, and my father denies likewise, that there was any troth plight between the maid and me. She will own the same if you ask her. As I spake before, there was talk of the like kind between you, sir, and my father, and it was the desire of the good King that thus the families might be reconciled; but the contract went no farther, as the holy King himself owned when I gave my faith to the Lord Audley’s daughter, and with it my heart.”
“Aye, we know that the Frenchwoman can make the poor fool of a King believe and avouch anything she choose! This is not the point. No more words, young man. Here stands my daughter; there is the rope. Choose—wed or hang.”
Leonard stood one moment with a look of agonised perplexity over his face. Then he said, “If I consent, am I at liberty, free at once to depart?”
“Aye,” said Whitburn. “So you fulfil your contract, the rest is nought to me.”
“I am then at liberty? Free to carry my sword to my Queen and King?”
Lord Whitburn held up the cross hilt of his sword before him, and made oath on it that when once married to his daughter, Leonard Copeland was no longer his prisoner.
Grisell through her veil read on the youthful face a look of grief and renunciation; he was sacrificing his love to the needs of King and country, and his words chimed in with her conviction.
“Sir, I am ready. If it were myself alone, I would die rather than be false to my love, but my Queen needs good swords and faithful hearts, and I may not fail her. I am ready!”
“It is well!” said Lord Whitburn. “Ho, you there! Bring the horses to the door.”
Grisell, in all the strange suspense of that decision, had been thinking of Sir Gawaine, whose lines rang in her head, but that look of grief roused other feelings. Sir Gawaine had no other love to sacrifice.