It looked, indeed, a royal prison.  A low wall on his right protected the road from the huge outer moat that ran, in the shape of a fetterlock, completely round all the buildings; and beyond it, springing immediately from the edge of the water, rose the massive outer wall, pierced here and there with windows.  He thought that he could make out the tops of the hall windows in one place, beyond the skirting wall, the pinnacles of the chapel in another, and a row of further windows that might be lodgings in a third; but from without here nothing was certain, except the gigantic keep, that stood high to the west, and the strong towers that guarded the drawbridge; this, as he went by, was lowered to its place, and he could look across it into the archway, where four men stood on guard with their pikes.  The inner doors, however, were closed beyond them, and he could see nothing of the inner moat that surrounded the court, nor the yard itself.  Neither did he think it prudent to ask any questions, though he looked freely about him; since the part he must play for the present plainly was that of one who had a right here and knew what he did.

He came back to the inn an hour later, after a walk through the village and round the locked church:  this was a splendid building, with flying buttresses and a high tower, with exterior carvings of saints and evangelists all in place.  But it looked desolate to him, and he was the more dejected, as he seemed no nearer to the Queen than before, and with little chance of getting there.  Meanwhile, there was but one thing to be done, and that the hardest of all—­to wait.  Perhaps in a few days he might get speech with Mr. Bourgoign; yet for the present than, too, as the priest had told him, was out of the question.

III

Five days were gone by, Sunday had come and gone, and yet there had been no news, except a letter conveyed to him by Merton, written by Mr. Bourgoign himself, telling him that he had news that Mr. Beale, the Clerk of the Council, was to arrive some time that week, and that this presaged the approach of the end.  He would, therefore, do his utmost within the next few days to approach Sir Amyas and ask for the admission of the young herbalist who had done her Grace so much good at Chartley.  He added that if any question were to be raised as to why he had been so long in the place, and why, indeed, he had come at all, he was to answer fearlessly that Mr. Bourgoign had sent for him.

On the Sunday night Robin could not sleep.  Little by little the hideous suspense was acting upon him, and the knowledge that not a hundred yards away from him the wonderful woman whom he had seen at Chartley, the loving and humble Catholic, who had kneeled so ardently before her Lord, the Queen who had received from him the sacraments for which she thirsted—­the knowledge that she was breaking her heart, so near, for the consolation which a priest only could give, and that he, a priest, was free to go through all England, except through that towered gateway past which he walked every day—­this increased his misery and his longing.