“I hope so!  How could we sleep there?” said Cicely, looking with a shudder at the bed.

“Tush!  I have seen worse in Scotland, mignonne, ay and when I was welcomed as liege lady, not as a captive.  I have slept in a box like a coffin with one side open, and I have likewise slept on a plaidie on the braw purple blossoms of freshly pulled heather!  Nay, the very thought makes this chamber doubly mouldy and stifling!  Let the old knight beware.  If he open not his window I shall break it!  Soft.  Here he comes.”

Sir Walter Ashton appeared, louting low, looking half-dogged, half-sheepish, and escorting two heavy-footed, blue-coated serving-men, who proceeded to lay the cloth, which at least had the merit of being perfectly clean and white.  Two more brought in covered silver dishes, one of which contained a Yorkshire pudding, the other a piece of roast-beef, apparently calculated to satisfy five hungry men.  A flagon of sack, a tankard of ale, a dish of apples, and a large loaf of bread, completed the meal; at which the Queen and Cicely, accustomed daily to a first table of sixteen dishes and a second of nine, compounded by her Grace’s own French cooks and pantlers, looked with a certain amused dismay, as Sir Walter, standing by the table, produced a dagger from a sheath at his belt, and took up with it first a mouthful of the pudding, then cut off a corner of the beef, finished off some of the bread, and having swallowed these, as well as a draught of each of the liquors, said, “Good and sound meats, not tampered with, as I hereby testify.  You take us suddenly, madam; but I thank Heaven, none ever found us unprovided.  Will it please you to fall to?  Your woman can eat after you.”

Mary’s courtesy was unfailing, and though she felt all a Frenchwoman’s disgust at the roast-beef of old England, she said, “We are too close companions not to eat together, and I fear she will be the best trencher comrade, for, sir, I am a woman sick and sorrowful, and have little stomach for meat.”

As Sir Walter carved a huge red piece from the ribs, she could not help shrinking back from it, so that be said with some affront, “You need not be queasy, madam, it was cut from a home-fed bullock, only killed three days since, and as prime a beast as any in Stafford.”

“Ah! yea, sir.  It is not the fault of the beef, but of my feebleness.  Mistress Talbot will do it reason.  But I, methinks I could eat better were the windows opened.”

But Sir Walter replied that these windows were not of the new-fangled sort, made to open, that honest men might get rheums, and foolish maids prate therefrom.  So there was no hope in that direction.  He really seemed to be less ungracious than utterly clownish, dull, and untaught, and extremely shy and embarrassed with his prisoner.

Cicely poured out some wine, and persuaded her to dip some bread in, which, with an apple, was all she could taste.  However, the fare, though less nicely served than by good Mrs. Susan, was not so alien to Cicely, and she was of an age and constitution to be made hungry by anxiety and trouble, so that—­encouraged by the Queen whenever she would have desisted—­she ended by demolishing a reasonable amount.