"This is not the Watling Street! Yet we have not turned-- Where are we?"
Rothgar gnawed at his heavy moustache as though the answer were difficult to
frame; and before he had time to evolve it, Elfgiva, who had caught the
exclamation, had broken off her prattle.
"That is true! The crowd has disappeared--the stones are overlaid with
weeds--" In her bewilderment, she reined in her horse and would have stopped
to look about her, if Thorkel's hand upon her bridle had not compelled her to
remain in motion.
"You are still on the Watling Street," he said harshly. "It is only that this
is the old bed of it that has not been used much since the Bridge was built.
Besides the ford, it leads also to Saint Peter's Monastery on Thorney--"
Stung with fear, she tried to snatch the lines from him. "I am not going to a
monastery! I am going to the Palace."
As a cliff stands against the fretting of waves, his grasp stood against hers;
and his voice was as immovable as his hand. "Certainly you are going to a
palace, you did not let me carry out my meaning. Adjoining the Monastery there
is a dwelling-place which was once a house for travellers, that King Edgar
himself has slept in--"
"It is a prison you are taking me to!" Her voice rose in a shriek. "It is a
prison! You are mocking me I will scream for help!"
His smile mocked her openly then.
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