“And thou shalt have the plot ere it breaks. As it will.” “To this have I come at last,” said William to himself, as they parted. “To murder these English nobles, to marry their daughters to my grooms. Heaven forgive me! They have brought it upon themselves by contumacy to Holy Church.” “Call my secretary, some one.” The Italian re-entered. “The valiant and honorable and illustrious knight, Ivo Taillebois, Lord of Holland and Kesteven, weds Lucia, sister of the late earls Edwin and Morcar, now with the queen; and with, her, her manors. You will prepare the papers. “I am yours to death,” said Ivo. “To do you justice, I think thou wert that already. Stay--here--Sir Priest--do you know any man who knows this Torfrida?” “I do, Majesty,” said Ivo. “There is one Sir Ascelin, a man of Gilbert’s, in the camp.” “Send for him.” “This Torfrida,” said William, “haunts me.” “Pray Heaven she have not bewitched your Majesty.” “Tut! I am too old a campaigner to take much harm by woman’s sharpshooting at fifteen score yards off, beside a deep stream between. No. The woman has courage,--and beauty, too, you say?” “What of that, O Prince?” said the Italian. “Who more beautiful--if report be true--than those lost women who dance nightly in the forests with Venus and Herodias,--as it may be this Torfrida has done many a time?” “You priests are apt to be hard upon poor women.” “The fox found that the grapes were sour,” said the Italian, laughing at himself and his cloth, or at anything else by which he could curry favor. “And this woman was no vulgar witch. That sort of personage suits Taillebois’s taste, rather than Hereward’s.” “Hungry dogs eat dirty pudding,” said Ivo, pertinently. “The woman believed herself in the right. She believed that the saints of heaven were on her side. I saw it in her attitude, in her gestures. Perhaps she was right.” “Sire?” said both by-standers, in astonishment. “I would fain see that woman, and see her husband too. They are folks after my own heart. I would give them an earldom to win them.” “I hope that in that day you will allow your faithful servant Ivo to retire to his ancestral manors in Anjou; for England will be too hot for him. Sire, you know not this man,--a liar, a bully, a robber, a swash-buckling ruffian, who--” and Ivo ran on with furious invective, after the fashion of the Normans, who considered no name too bad for an English rebel. “Sir Ascelin,” said William, as Ascelin came in, “you know Hereward?” Ascelin bowed assent. “Are these things true which Ivo alleges?” “The Lord Taillebois may know best what manner of man he is since he came into this English air, which changes some folks mightily,” with a hardly disguised sneer at Ivo; “but in Flanders he was a very perfect knight, beloved and honored of all men, and especially of your father-in-law, the great marquis.” “He is a friend of yours, then?”