"Burden not your Ladyship; 'tis but the Scots that have reached
Brotherton, and be firing the suburbs."
"Holy Mary, pray for us!" skraighs Dame Elizabeth, at last verily
feared: "Cicely, how canst thou ride so slow? For love of all the
saints; let us get on!"
Then fell she to her beads, and began to invoke all the Calendar, while
she urged on her horse till his rapid trotting brake up the _aves_ and
_oras_ into fragments that man might scarce hear and keep him sober. I
warrant I was well pleased, for all my weariness, when we rade in at
Micklebar of York; and so, I warrant, was Dame Elizabeth, for all her
impassibility. We tarried not long at York, for, hearing that the Scots
came on, the Queen removed to Nottingham for safer keeping. And so
ended that year.
But no contakes had I, save of Dame Elizabeth, that for the rest of that
month put on a sorrowful look at the sight of me. On the contrary part,
Robin had brave reward from the King, and my Lady the Queen was pleased
to advance me, as shall now be told, shortly thereafter: and ever
afterwards did she seem to affy her more in me, as in one that had been
tried and proved faithful unto trust.
Thus far had I won when I heard a little bruit behind me, and looking
up, as I guessed, I saw Jack, over my shoulder.
"Dear heart, Jack!" said I, "but thou hast set me a merry task! Two
days have I been a-work, and not yet won to the Queen's former journey
to France; yet I do thee to wit, I am full disheartened at the stretch
of road I see afore me. Must I needs tell every thing that happed for
every year? Mary love us! but I feel very nigh at my wits' end but to
think of it. Why, my Chronicle shall be bigger than the Golden Legend
and the Morte Arthur put together, and all Underby Common shall not
furnish geese enow to keep me in quills!"
I ended betwixt laughter and tears. To say sooth, I was very nigh the
latter.
"Take breath, Sissot," saith Jack, quietly.
"But dost thou mean that, Jack?"
"I mean not to make a nief [serf] of my wife," saith he. I was
something comforted to hear that.
"As for time, dear heart," he pursueth, "take thou an hour or twain by
the day, so thou weary not thyself; and for events, I counsel thee to
make a diverse form of chronicle from any ever yet written."
"How so, Jack?"
"Set down nothing because it should go in a chronicle, but only those
matters wherein thyself was interested."
"But that, Jack," said I, laughing as I looked up on him, "shall be the
`Annals of Cicely' over again; wherewith I thought thou wert not
compatient." [Pleased, satisfied; the adjective of compassion.]
"Nay, the Annals of Cicely were Cicely's fancies and feelings," he made
answer: "this should be what Cicely heard and saw."