an in Hastings, having won the
silver arrow at the butts at the last meeting, and from archers of all
ages. Yet the sight of their deaths haunted me who remembered how well
their fate might have been my own, had they got in the first shot or
blow.

Where had they gone to, I wondered? To the priest's Heaven or Hell? Were
they now telling their sins to some hard-faced angel while he checked
the count from his book, reminding them of many that they had forgotten?
Or were they fast asleep for ever and ever as a shrewd thinker whom I
knew had told me secretly he was sure would be the fate of all of us,
whatever the priests might teach and believe. And where was my mother
whom I had loved and who loved me well, although outwardly she was so
stern a woman, my mother whom I had seen burned alive, singing as she
burned? Oh! it was a vile world, and it seemed strange that God should
cause men and women to be born that they might come to such cruel ends.
Yet who were we to question His decrees of which we knew neither the
beginning nor the finish?

Anyway, I was glad I was not dead, for now that all was over I trembled
and felt afraid, which I had never done during the fighting, even when
my hour seemed very near.

Lastly there was this high-born lady, Blanche Aleys, with whom fortune
had thrown me so strangely that day. Those blue eyes of hers had pierced
my heart like darts, and do what I would I might not rid my mind of the
thought of her, or my ears of the sound of her soft voice, while her
kisses seemed still to burn upon my lips. It wrung me to think that
perhaps I should never see her again, or that if I did I might not speak
with her, being so far beneath her in condition, and having already
earned the wrath of her father, and, as I guessed, the jealousy of that
scented cousin of hers whom they said the King loved like a brother.

What had my mother told me? To leave this place and go to London, there
to find my uncle, John Grimmer, goldsmith and merchant, who was my
godfather, and to ask him to take me into his business. I remembered
this uncle of mine, for some seven or eight years before, when I was a
growing lad, because there was a plague in London he had come down to
Hastings to visit us. He only stayed a week, however, because he said
that the sea air tied up his stomach and that he would rather risk
the plague with a good stomach than leave it behind him with a bad
one--though I think it was his business he tho