g. He had supped so well that he was in love with
the world.

"Your house and board, my lady, are queen-like. I have seen worse in
palaces."

Her laugh was only half pleased. "Too fine, you would add, for a burgher
wife. Maybe, but rank is but as man makes it. The Kings of England are
sprung of a tanner. Hark you, father! I made a vow to God when I was a
maid, and I have fulfilled my side of the bargain. I am come of a nobler
race than any Markgrave, aye, than the Emperor himself, and I swore to
set the seed of my body, which the Lord might grant me, again among the
great ones. Have I not done it? Is not Philip, my son, affianced to that
pale girl of Avesnes, and with more acres of pleasant land to his name
than any knightlet in Artois?"

The Cluniac bowed a courtly head. "It is a great alliance--but not above
the dignity of your house."

"House you call it, and I have had the making of it. What was Willebald
but a plain merchant-man, one of many scores at the Friday Market?
Willebald was clay that I moulded and gilded till God put him to bed
under a noble lid in the New Kirk. A worthy man, but loutish and slow
like one of his own hookers. Yet when I saw him on the plainstones by
the English harbour I knew that he was a weapon made for my hand."

Her voice had become even and gentle as of one who remembers far-away
things. The Cluniac, having dipped his hands in a silver basin, was
drying them in the brazier's heat. Presently he set to picking his teeth
daintily with a quill, and fell into the listener's pose. From long
experience he knew the atmosphere which heralds confidences, and was
willing to humour the provider of such royal fare.

"You have never journeyed to King's Lynn?" said the voice from the bed.
"There is little to see there but mudbars and fens and a noisy sea.
There I dwelt when I was fifteen years of age, a maid hungry in soul
and body. I knew I was of the seed of Forester John and through him the
child of a motley of ancient kings, but war and famine had stripped
our house to the bone. And now I, the last of the stock, dwelt with
a miserly mother's uncle who did shipwright's work for the foreign
captains. The mirror told me that I was fair to look on, though
ill-nourished, and my soul assured me that I had no fear. Therefore I
had hope, but I ate my heart out waiting on fortune."

She was looking at the monk with unseeing eyes, her head half turned
towards him.

"Then came Willebald one March