“Emlyn, I know these parchments.  They are those that my father took with him when he rode for London to disprove the Abbot’s claim, and with them the evidence of the traitorous words he spoke last year at Shefton.  Yes, this inner wrapping is my own; I took it from the store of worn linen in the passage-cupboard.  But how come they here?”

Emlyn made no answer, only lifted the wrappings and shook them, whereon a strip of paper that they had not seen fell to the table.

“This may tell us,” she said.  “Read, if you can; it has words on its inner side.”

Cicely snatched at it, and as the writing was clear and clerkly, read with ease save for the chokings of her throat.  It ran—­

“My Lady Harflete,

“These are the papers that Jeffrey Stokes saved when your father fell.  They were given for safekeeping to the writer of these words, far away across the sea, and he hands them on unopened.  Your husband lives and is well again, also Jeffrey Stokes, and though they have been hindered on their journey, doubtless he will find his way back to England, whither, believing you to be dead, as I did, he has not hurried.  There are reasons why I, his friend and yours, cannot see you or write more, since my duty calls me hence.  When it is finished I will seek you out if I still live.  If not, wait in peace until your joy finds you, as I think it will.

“One who loves your lord well, and for his sake you also.”

Cicely laid down the paper and burst into a flood of weeping.

“Oh, cruel, cruel!” she sobbed, “to tell so much and yet so little.  Nay, what an ungrateful wretch am I, since Christopher truly lives, and I also live to learn it, I, whom he deems dead.”

“By my soul,” said Emlyn, when she had calmed her, “that cloaked man is a prince of messengers.  Oh, had I but known what he bore I’d have had all the story, if I must cling to him like Potiphar’s wife to Joseph.  Well, well, Joseph got away and half a herring is better than no fish, also this is good herring.  Moreover, you have got the deeds when you most wanted them and what is better, a written testimony that will bring the traitor Maldon to the scaffold.”

CHAPTER XIV

JACOB AND THE JEWELS

Cicely’s journey to London was strange enough to her, who never before had travelled farther than fifty miles from her home, and but once as a child spent a month in a town when visiting an aunt at Lincoln.  She went in ease, it is true, for Commissioner Legh did not love hard travelling, and for this reason they started late and halted early, either at some good inn, if in those days any such places could be called good, or perhaps in a monastery where he claimed of the best that the frightened monks had to offer.  Indeed, as she observed, his treatment of these poor folk was cruel, for he blustered and threatened and inquired, accusing them of crimes that they had not committed, and finally, although he had no mission to them at the time, extracted great gifts, saying that if these were not forthcoming he would make a note and return later.  Also he got hold of tale-bearers, and wrote down all their scandalous and lying stories told against those whose bread they ate.