However, done it was at last, and we were wedded. And, although my wife could not take me to any of her great possessions because she would not set foot in Spain while Philip ruled, and I could not take her to my home in Staffordshire (where the Trent rises) because of my political principles, we were very well content--since we were both young and hopeful!--and so we settled down in the old Paris house of the Carbajals in the Marais, and have, up to now, lived happy ever after, as the chapbooks say; a happiness which, you may be very sure, was not ruffled when we heard that the Prince of Csaba and Miranda Vitoria had married a princess of the ancient house of Ponte-Casoria (which is allied to the greater house of Bourbon), who was extremely rich, but as wizened as a monkey (as my wife told me), and who, report declared, led Csaba a terrible life.
"Forest-dweller and outlaw I may be, Master Cork," I said; "but I would have you remember that I was an honest man before I was driven here, and an honest man I am still, though I must needs be in hiding for speaking up for the weaker side."
"Honest men don't slay the king's deer," sneered Cork. "It seems to me that you have run into a fair noose by this time, for all your fine talk, seeing that deer-slaying is a hanging matter--for the king is the king, whether you choose to own him or not."
"Hungry men cannot stay to think of that," I answered shortly. But I knew that he was right, and that I must needs, with every honest door closed to me, go on sinking in the mire, as it were.
"Hungry forsooth!" he said. "And gold to be had to-night for the picking up! Come with me, I say, and the forest will know you no longer. Listen! yonder fall more bedizened nobles, with good gold nobles in their purses moreover to prove their nobility!"
I had heard plainly enough. The cold wind of Maytime set from far-off Hexham level to where we were standing under the shadow of Blockhill, and not for the first time that day the heavy sound of cannon came down it, like and yet unlike thunder. There was another battle on hand between the white rose and the red. Margaret of Anjou was making one more struggle, for herself and her son and husband, against Edward of York.