Great Britain -- History -- Tudors, 1485-1603 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
"Indeed it is more profitable than treasure-troving and seeking the
philosopher’s stone," the lawyer tittered, and he rubbed, from habit,
his hands together, so that little, triturated grains of mud fell from
them into the peasant’s poor, boggy grass. "This is Hal o’ the Mill’s
land, and I have moved the stone a furlong into the feu of Timothy
Wynvate. There shall arise from this a lawsuit that shall last the
King’s reign out. Aye, belike, one of the twain shall slay the other.
His land your honour may take back as forfeit, and the other’s as
deodand. I will so contrive it, for I will foment these suits and have
the handling of them. By these means, in time, your lordingship may
have back all the lands ye ever feu’d. In time. Only give me time...."
The Young Lovell lifted up his fist to the sky. The most violent rage
was in his heart.
"Now by the paps of Venus and the thunder of Jove, I have forgotten the
penalty of him that removeth his neighbour’s landmark! But if I do not
die before night, and I think I shall not, that death you shall die.
Say your foul prayers, filth, your doom is said...."
Master Stone lifted up both his hands, clasped together, to beg his life
of this hot but charitable youth. But Young Lovell had leaped his horse
across a dune faster than the words could follow him.
He came upon a narrow strip of nibbled turf running down a valley of
rushy sand-hills. Hamewarts guided him. They went over one ridge and
had sight of the white horse; they sank into another dale and lost it.
On the summit of the next ridge Hamewarts became suddenly like a horse
of bronze and the Young Lovell had a great dizziness. He had a sense of
brown, of pearly blue, of white, of many colours, of many great flowers
as large as millstones. With a heavy sense of reluctance he looked
behind him. The mists were rising like curtains from over Bamborough;
since the tide was falling the pall of spray was not so white on
Dunstanburgh. Upon his own castle, covering its promontory near at
hand, they were hoisting a flag, so that from there the tower warden
must have already perceived the sun. From over the castle on Holy
Island the pall of smoke was drifting slowly to sea. No doubt in the
courtyard they had been roasting sheep and kine whole against the visit
of the Warden and the Prince Bishop who would ride on there with all
their men by nine of the clock.
In every bay and reedy promontory the cruel surf gnawed the sand; the
ravens were flying down to the detritus of the night, on the wet margins
of the tide. The lawyer was climbing over the shoulder of a dune, a
sack upon his back; a shepherd, for the first time that spring, was
driving a flock of sheep past the chapel yew. There was much surf on
Lindisfarne.
Suddenly, from the middle of the bow of the grey horizon there shot up a
single, broadening beam. Young Lovell waved his arm to the golden disk
that hastened over the grey line.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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