When they sat again in the boat, Carew turned to her with a grim face, but there was a kind light in his eyes. “My wench,” he said bluntly, “thou art a fool, but I love thee.” CHAPTER XXV A SEASON OF WAITING LORD RABY was arrested in June, and at the time there seemed to be an immediate prospect of a trial, and he looked forward to it with the earnest hope of establishing his innocence. But he was doomed to a far different fate; he and his fellow prisoner, the wizard, were held while Cromwell slowly unravelled the threads of a great conspiracy, which had been only partially indicated by the papers in the mysterious packet. It was not good policy to seize at once upon men whose names figured in the documents, some of them the foremost in the land, and the privy seal played the waiting game, in which he was an adept. The slow months of the summer passed, and with Michaelmas came the rising in the northern counties, ostensibly provoked by the visitation of the monasteries, but really the outgrowth of many grievances, and the full fruit of a long-planned conspiracy. The Pilgrimage of Grace doomed Lord Raby to a long confinement. With this example of the result of treasonable machinations before his eyes, Cromwell had less mercy for those accused of direct complicity in it. As the rebels, under Robert Aske, advanced to Doncaster, threatening to overwhelm the king’s small army, the prisoners in the Tower were subjected to closer confinement. One of the avowed purposes of the insurgents was the fall of Cromwell, and it was not probable that he would be lenient to such offenders as were within his reach. It was, however, an inconvenient time for trial of the prisoners, and Raby and Sanders remained in suspense. Sir William Carew could not forgive the doubt of his packet expressed by Simon, and he turned a deaf ear to Betty’s entreaties. He would not move a finger in the cause. In fact, the stout-hearted gentleman doubted Lord Raby. The evidence was so plain, as Cromwell unfolded it, Simon’s accusation of Sir William’s documents so childish, the outbreak of the insurrection so convincing, that Carew felt certain that the nobleman had been led into dabbling with conspiracy and had committed himself to the cause of Mary Tudor and the papists.