But, heaven and earth! that you should have admitted
him to an audience by night, in the very tent of our royal
consort!--and dare to offer this as an excuse for his
disobedience and desertion! By my father's soul, Edith, thou
shalt rue this thy life long in a monastery!"
"My liege," said Edith, "your greatness licenses tyranny. My
honour, Lord King, is as little touched as yours, and my Lady the
Queen can prove it if she think fit. But I have already said I
am not here to excuse myself or inculpate others. I ask you but
to extend to one, whose fault was committed under strong
temptation, that mercy, which even you yourself, Lord King, must
one day supplicate at a higher tribunal, and for faults, perhaps,
less venial."
"Can this be Edith Plantagenet?" said the King bitterly--"Edith
Plantagenet, the wise and the noble? Or is it some lovesick
woman who cares not for her own fame in comparison of the life of
her paramour? Now, by King Henry's soul! little hinders but I
order thy minion's skull to be brought from the gibbet, and fixed
as a perpetual ornament by the crucifix in thy cell!"
"And if thou dost send it from the gibbet to be placed for ever
in my sight," said Edith, "I will say it is a relic of a good
knight, cruelly and unworthily done to death by" (she checked
herself)--"by one of whom I shall only say, he should have known
better how to reward chivalry.
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