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Updated: June 1, 2025
Naught could she do but sit and hold her, and comfort her with soft words and noises such as mothers make o'er their young babes. By-and-by she was calmer, and asked to see her lord. So Mistress Marian went out, but I remained on a low stool at the bed's foot. Lord Ernle entered, and she crept into his arms like a fawn into the hollow of a rock when the hail is falling.
She pleaded that prettily against it methought the veriest boor in Christendom would a given in to her, but my little lord was stanch. So they made her a throne o' flowers, and when she was seated thereon, Mistress Marian handed her the great wooden sword, and my lord, kneeling, bade her strike him on the shoulder with the flat side o' th' sword, saying, "Rise, Sir Ernle, my knight for evermore!"
And 'twas even i' th' same spot where Lord Ernle had discovered his love for my little lady, that he asked her. Again it was as though some one had smitten her her face deadly white and the red line across her brow. She put out one hand to keep him from her, and let it rest on his shoulder, and she said, "Rowland, I love thee well, but no man will ever call me wife." He said, "Is this the end?"
And she bended forward from her loins and listened, but in none otherwise moved she. And my lady went on, "To-morrow I will set thee free I do swear it. With the rising o' th' morrow's sun thou shalt be free as air. Only speak to me now. Only speak to me now. Just once, Ernle just once." With one spring Mistress Marian was upon her, and had pinned her arms to her sides.
"Comrade," saith he, "wilt thou call me an ass for my pains, I wonder, an I tell thee o' something that is troubling me sorely?" She, having in no wise moved from her first position, and her eyes still in shadow, saith, "I pray thee say on, Ernle, for such words as thou hast just spoken to me are idle."
He answered straightway, and said, "This once will I speak to thee, but if thou dost not unbar the door o' th' instant, I will never hold speech with thee again, nor touch so much as the hem of thy garments, by the living God!" She said, "I cannot! I cannot! But oh! say not such dreadful words. We will be happy. 'Tis for that I keep thee here. Speak to me! Ernle! Ernle! Ernle!
So I did take that fearful oath, coward as I was, and to this day am I a craven when I think on 't. When I had sworn, she turned from me as though there were no such woman in all the earth, and went once more to the door o' th' cave, and called his name "Ernle!"
And she snapt the girdle on her wrists like as it had been a thread o' silk, and ran and laid hold on him with her hands, and dragged him forth upon the grass. And she saith, "Ernle! Ernle! Ernle! What! wilt thou not answer me, now that thou art free? See! thou mayest ride to war. It is not yet too late. What there, nurse! My lord's charger! Run! run!"
But Mistress Marian saith again, "He hath swooned away." And she put her hand upon his brow, but no sooner did she touch it than she cried out at its coldness, and shook the dead man in her frenzy, crying, "Ernle! Ernle! thou art free! Wake, man! thou art free!" I said, "Mistress, mistress, for love of God! Dost thou not see that neither thou nor any other can wake him more?"
He said, "My name is Ernle; and I like thee too; therefore, I pray thee, tell me thine." So she told him, and my little lady sidling up, the three fell presently a-chattering like linnets at sunrise, and from that hour on I had no trouble with them. 'Twas pretty to mark them at their fantasies.
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