Part 6 (1/2)

”The book! the book!” cried the guests. ”They dare not rend the holy book!”

So for the third time Rosamund advanced, bearing the missal.

”Knights,” she said, ”you have torn my kerchief and drunk my wine.

Now I offer this hallowed writing--to him who can read it best.”

”Give it to G.o.dwin,” said Wulf. ”I am a swordsman, not a clerk.”

”Well said! well said!” roared the company. ”The sword for us--not the pen!” But Rosamund turned on them and answered:

”He who wields sword is brave, and he who wields pen is wise, but better is he who can handle both sword and pen--like my cousin G.o.dwin, the brave and learned.”

”Hear her! hear her!” cried the revellers, knocking their horns upon the board, while in the silence that followed a woman's voice said, ”Sir G.o.dwin's luck is great, but give me Sir Wulf's strong arms.”

Then the drinking began again, and Rosamund and the ladies slipped away, as well they might--for the times were rough and coa.r.s.e.

On the morrow, after most of the guests were gone, many of them with aching heads, G.o.dwin and Wulf sought their uncle, Sir Andrew, in the solar where he sat alone, for they knew Rosamund had walked to the church hard by with two of the serving women to make it ready for the Friday's ma.s.s, after the feast of the peasants that had been held in the nave. Coming to his oaken chair by the open hearth which had a chimney to it--no common thing in those days--they knelt before him.

”What is it now, my nephews?” asked the old man, smiling. ”Do you wish that I should knight you afresh?”

”No, sir,” answered G.o.dwin; ”we seek a greater boon.”

”Then you seek in vain, for there is none.”

”Another sort of boon,” broke in Wulf.

Sir Andrew pulled his beard, and looked at them. Perhaps the Prior John had spoken a word to him, and he guessed what was coming.

”Speak,” he said to G.o.dwin. ”The gift is great that I would not give to either of you if it be within my power.”

”Sir,” said G.o.dwin, ”we seek the leave to ask your daughter's hand in marriage.”

”What! the two of you?”

”Yes, sir; the two of us.”

Then Sir Andrew, who seldom laughed, laughed outright.

”Truly,” he said, ”of all the strange things I have known, this is the strangest--that two knights should ask one wife between them.”

”It seems strange, sir; but when you have heard our tale you will understand.”

So he listened while they told him all that had pa.s.sed between them and of the solemn oath which they had sworn.

”n.o.ble in this as in other things,” commented Sir Andrew when they had done; ”but I fear that one of you may find that vow hard to keep. By all the saints, nephews, you were right when you said that you asked a great boon. Do you know, although I have told you nothing of it, that, not to speak of the knave Lozelle, already two of the greatest men in this land have sought my daughter Rosamund in marriage?”

”It may well be so,” said Wulf.

”It is so, and now I will tell you why one or other of the pair is not her husband, which in some ways I would he were. A simple reason. I asked her, and she had no mind to either, and as her mother married where her heart was, so I have sworn that the daughter should do, or not at all--for better a nunnery than a loveless bridal.