So Hugh strove to grow strong, and, nature helping him, not in vain.  At length there came a day when he might rise from his bed, and sit on a bench in the pleasant spring sunshine by the open window.  Walk he could not, however, not only on account of his weakness, but because of another hurt, now discovered for the first time, which in the end gave him more trouble than did the dreadful and dangerous blow of Clavering’s sword.  It seemed that when he had fallen suddenly beneath that murderous stroke all his muscles relaxed as though he were dead, and his left ankle bent up under him, wrenching its sinews in such a fashion that for the rest of his life he walked a little lame.  Especially was this so in the spring season, though whether because he had received his hurt at that time or owing to the quality of the air none could ever tell him.

Yet on that happy day he thought little of these harms, who felt the life-blood running once more strongly through his veins and who awaited Eve’s long-promised advent.  At length she came, stately, kind and beautiful, for now her grief and terror had passed by, leaving her as she was before her woes fell upon her.  She came, and in Sir Andrew’s presence, for he would not leave them, the tale was told.

Hugh learned for the first time all the truth of her imprisonment and of her shameful drugging.  He learned of the burying of Sir John Clavering and of her naming as sole heiress to his great estates.  To these, however, Acour had not been ashamed to submit some shadowy claim, made “in right of his lawful wife, Dame Eve Acour, Countess de Noyon,” which claim had been sent by him from France addressed to “all whom it might concern.”  He learned of the King’s wrath at the escape of this same Acour, and of his Grace’s seizure of that false knight’s lands in Suffolk, which, however, proved to be so heavily mortgaged that no one would grow rich upon them.

Lastly he learned that King Edward, in a letter written by one of his secretaries to Sir Andrew Arnold and received only that morning, said that he held him, Hugh de Cressi, not to blame for Acour’s escape.  It commanded also that if he recovered from his wound, for the giving of which Sir John Clavering should have paid sharply if he had lived, he and the archer, his servant, should join him either in England or in France, whither he purposed shortly to proceed with all his host.  But the Mayor and men of Dunwich he did not hold free of blame.

The letter added, moreover, that the King was advised that Edmund Acour on reaching Normandy had openly thrown off his allegiance to the crown of England and there was engaged in raising forces to make war upon him.  Further, that this Acour alleged himself to be the lawfully married husband of Eve Clavering, the heiress of Sir John Clavering, a point upon which his Grace demanded information, since if this were true he purposed to escheat the Clavering lands.  With this brief and stern announcement the letter ended.