As soon as might be, Montjoy would go that pilgrimage to Canterbury. Had it been true, that frightful story, were Mark and Westforest treacherous, Silver Cross down in the mire, evened and more than evened with Hugh across the river, he would have gone not to Canterbury only, but to Rome, to Palestine! Only there, in Gethsemane garden—

He sat, a slight, dark man with a worn, handsome face, beneath a cedar in his castle garden. This was lord’s corner. A castle, God wot, is a public place! But just here was retirement, appropriated long since and possessed for long. Wall and ivy and cedar row, and hardly a narrow window to overlook! Montjoy once had been quick for company, but now for long he sighed toward solitariness. Solitariness that still should be splendour!

Silver Cross—Silver Cross—Silver Cross! The splendour must run through it, bathing the tomb of Isabel, bathing the life-above-death of Isabel! Bathing also Silver Cross, church and abbey, the old form, antique, fair, one’s Lady, old yet young through the centuries!

The soul. How to keep the soul in joy? If not in joy, at least in humble peace.

Montjoy saw himself a grey palmer, state and place laid down. His daughter wedded come Martinmas to Effingham—another year and her son born—then he might go and have word with his own suzerain. Palmer—the road, the shrines, the houses of the religious; quiet, quiet, unobstructed room for dreams of God.

The sky was lead, the light greenish, the air hot and still. He would be glad when the storm burst and the land was drenched. Afterward it would smile once more. He thought, “The Flood is needed again, so wicked is the earth! Oh, my God, am I of the family of Noah? Do I build with gopher wood the Ark that saves? Do I enter Christ? Doth He enter me?”

The cedars clung dark, they darkened the day yet more. Montjoy looked into a cell at Westforest and saw there Richard Englefield. Surely he is mad, though he lies so still, with his face buried in his arms!

Brother Richard.

Montjoy looked into the prison under the castle hill and saw Morgen Fay.

Not for five years have I touched her, O Christ!

The prison closed. The sky hung so still and hung so heavy! Lightning and thunder would be welcome, rising wind and splash of rain. Friday would be welcome. The bramble burned, the hindering, evil bramble, harmful to the sheep, vexful to the shepherd—“O Christ, is there hardness? But the field must be cleared of bramble. Aye, it is worse than bramble. Mandrake and hemlock and helebore, and the children are endangered!”

Montjoy saw Holy Well and the great picture, and that fine, fine reliquary of pure gold that rejoicing—Satan afar and all the mind in health—Brother Richard had wrought for the Rose, Montjoy bringing the gold. Yesterday Montjoy had gone to Silver Cross and to Holy Well. There had been pilgrims a hundred, and they kneeled, praying and singing. The day was fair as this was foul, and had bubbled and laughed that crystal well, sunlight into sunlight! They had cups of silver and of horn and of tree and of clay, and one by one they drank while the singing rose around. He, Montjoy, had seen a cripple fling away his crutch and stand and run, and a palsied man grow firm. “Who healeth them? Thou, thou, who truly didst appear to Brother Richard!”

Even now, in this oppressive day, under this dull sky, Montjoy felt again that exaltation. He looked around him and up to the lowering heaven. “Little, weak castle—murky roof of ignorance—yet is there clear power!”

The rain began to fall.

In the night-time, waking, he found horror with him, something cold, something forlorn and suspicious. It deepened. He left his great bed and Montjoy’s wife sleeping, put thick gown around him and went noiseless into the oratory opening from the great chamber, cold in the beams of a moon growing old. No peace! At the turn of the night, when afar he heard cock crow and his dogs bark, he determined that he would go that morning to confession to Father Edmund at Saint Ethelred’s. That was the sternest, the most dedicated, the most single of eye and will! To him he would confess everything that he would if he could save from her death the harlot and witch.

Morning came and all the castle took up busy and talkative life. Montjoy rode to Saint Ethelred’s. Father Edmund? Oh, aye! he would hear him, and Father Edmund thought. “Time that lords give over slothful and unwise confessors! Father Ambrosius hath forever done him hurt.”

Montjoy was long upon his knees. He accepted heavy penance, took shrift humbly, came forth from Saint Ethelred’s with a colourless face like a gem.

Riding back to the castle, when he came to prison street he turned his black horse and rode slowly by the dark prison. He had told Father Edmund all his thoughts and in the bale was the thought, “I will visit her there in that dungeon before Friday. Is not that Christian, O God, if my deepest heart that is now thine seems to bid me to go?” But Father Edmund had been greatly stern. “Satan wrestleth for thy deepest heart! Hear me now! It is forbidden! Go not to, speak not to that All-Evil! If thou dost she will draw thee with her into hell! Thou thinkest, ‘Once I was familiarly with her’, and cowardice and heartlessness now only to think and never to say, ‘God have mercy upon thee, poor soul!’ Son, son, that is devil’s bait! He will come and stand and ask thee, ‘Is it knightly?’ It is his wile, to clothe himself in light! As for the witch, she lacks not soul counsel! Since she was taken, each day have I preached to her. I will hold the cross before her chained to stake. She shall see it, lifted high, till flame takes eyes. But thou, my son, I lay it upon thee, leaving here, to ride by the prison, and to say as thou ridest. ‘Sin, I will no longer sin with thee, nor come into thy company!’ Say it!”

“Sin, I will no longer sin with thee, nor come into thy company.”

“So! And son, thou wilt come with thy squires and thy men on Friday to town cross.”

So Montjoy rode by the prison.

It was dark in there, fetid and dark, and Morgen Fay the sinner had little to think of but her sins. She could not blink them that they were many.

Her sins and death, and after that the Judgment. Death and Judgment and for her Hell, or at the best the direst corner of dire Purgatory and the longest stay. Ages there, while souls of thieves and murderers left her one by one and went upward, and never a word for the one who must stay. At the best, the very best, and perhaps even that gleam had no reality! Not Purgatory, but everlasting Hell.