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Updated: June 1, 2025
Upon the instant Galliard was also on his feet. He escorted her to the foot of the staircase, and there: "Permit me, Mistress Cynthia," said he, "to take my leave of you. In an hour or so I shall be riding away from Castle Marleigh." Her eyes sought the ground, and had he been observant of her he might have noticed that she paled slightly. "Fare you well, sir," said she in a low voice.
The child Gregory had indeed spared, and it seems from what I have learned within the last half-hour that he had entrusted his rearing to Alan Stewart, of Bailienochy, seeking afterwards I take it to wed him to his daughter, so that should the King come to his own again, they should have the protection of a Marleigh who had served his King."
Not satisfied with involving me in that business at Castle Marleigh, you must needs cross my path again when I am about to make amends, and so blight my last chance. My God, sir, am I never to be rid of you? What harm have I done you?" A spasm of pain, like a ripple over water, crossed the knight's swart face.
"If he were among the fallen if he were dead then indeed the matter would be at an end." "Aye, and well ended." "You forget Cynthia," Gregory reproved him. "Forget her? Not I, man. Listen." And he jerked his thumb in the direction of the wainscot. To the two men in that rich chamber of Castle Marleigh was borne the sound softened by distance of a girlish voice merrily singing.
"It was no ghost sat with me, but Roland Marleigh, himself, in the flesh, and strangely changed by time. So changed that I knew him not, nor should I know him now but for that which, not ten minutes ago, I overheard." His earnestness was too impressive, his sanity too obvious, and Joseph's suspicions were all scattered before it.
I lived, and I, Crispin Galliard, the debauched Tavern Knight that was once Roland Marleigh, am here to demand a reckoning." The very incarnation was he then of an avenger, as he stood towering before them, his grim face livid with the passion into which he had lashed himself as he spoke, his blazing eyes watching them in that cunning, half-closed way that was his when his mood was dangerous.
"Wait, Joseph!" he cried dramatically. "This is no time to disarm. Keep your sword on your thigh, man; you will need it as you never yet have needed it." He paused, took a deep breath, and hurled the news at his brother. "Roland Marleigh is here." And he sat down like a man exhausted. Joseph did not start; he did not cry out; he did not so much as change countenance.
"You yourself know of the drunken excess wherewith three nights ago he celebrated his coming to Castle Marleigh. Nor do I forget what I owe him, and payment is to be made in a manner you little know of. If I said of him what I did, it was but in answer to your taunts. Think you I could endure comparison with such a man as that? Know you what name the Royalists give him?
The reply, delivered more boldly than Kenneth had spoken hitherto, was not without its effect. "From whom are these letters?" "From Mr. Joseph Ashburn, of Castle Marleigh." "Produce them." With trembling fingers Kenneth complied. This the sergeant observed as he took the package. "What ails you, man?" quoth he. "Naught, sir 'tis the cold." The sergeant scanned the package and its seal.
The measure that she had hummed was silenced, and her shapely mouth took on a pout of impatience, which anon grew into a tighter mould, as he continued absent. A frown drew her brows together, and Mistress Cynthia's thoughts were much as they had been the night before she left Castle Marleigh. Where was he? Why came he not?
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