Great Britain -- History -- Tudors, 1485-1603 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
Thus, if Sir Walter and Limousin and the Decies came out with such
forces as they had, it was very likely—nay it was certain—that the men
who were in the White Tower and still faithful to the Young Lovell would
issue behind them into the Castle with their cannons, and so, if they
might not take the Castle they might at least set free the Lady
Rohtraut, and have her away by sea; for they of the Castle had no boats,
and no fisherman would help them.
The Young Lovell listened as attentively as he might to what Hugh Raket
had to say, and, at the end of the story, they were come to the hill top
where the heather and marshy ground ceased. They saw before them great
plains of green grass with people going about everywhere, and there
getting their hay. And a little way away there were going, along a
trodden road, some ten armed men and another amongst them, all on
horseback.
So the Lord Lovell kept himself apart, but sent Hugh Raket to look who
these men were that went abroad upon his lands. Before him, but a
little to the right was the town of Belford, but the monastery, with its
great church and its great tower just in building, was a little to the
South, near the wood called Newlands. Further to the South was the
little hamlet of Lucker. He cast his eyes behind him and he frowned.
For, apart from the sea and the sky, the two Castles and the islands set
in foam, he had seen mostly the square tower of Glororum. A little
company, in the clear weather, were riding out of this tower, and there
the Lady Margaret dwelt. It seemed a weary thought to him since he
remembered the lady with the crooked smile.
Hugh Raket came back to him and said that those ten men rode with a
prisoner that had been convicted of theft in the Courts of the Nevilles.
He had appealed to the Bishop’s Courts in Durham, and so they were
taking him there. Hugh Raket thought that it was a folly to make such
matter of a felon. Let them hang him to the first tree and ride back.
For this appeal, before they had the thief strung up, should cost the
Neville lord, for guards and victual and horsemeat and harbouring,
nothing less than ten pounds which was a great sum of money, and a folly
too.
He was of opinion that, if such great lords as the Nevilles and the
Darceys and the Young Lovell suffered none to appeal from their courts,
but hung every man that came before them, it would be much better; for
then there would be none of this monstrous outlay that was for ever
occurring, and the great lords could excuse their poor bondsmen their
rent-hens and their suit and service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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