the King's name (having his ring for a token) to aid them
in a certain enterprise which concerned the King's honour and safety.
The Constable sware so to do, and then saith Sir William--

"Now, surely, dear friend, it behoved us to win your assent, in order to
seize on the Mortimer, sith you are Keeper of the Castle, and have the
keys at your disposal."

Then the Constable, having first lift his brows and made grimace of his
mouth, fell in therewith, and quoth he--

"Sirs, if it be thus, you shall wit that the gates of the Castle be
locked with the locks that Queen Isabel sent hither, and at night she
hath all the keys thereof, and layeth them under the pillow of her bed
while morning: and so I may not help you into the Castle at the gates by
any means. But I know an hole that stretcheth out of the ward under
earth into the Castle, beginning on the west side [still called
Mortimer's Hole], which neither the Queen nor her following nor Mortimer
himself, nor none of his company, know anything of; and through this
passage I will lead you till you come into the Castle without espial of
enemies."

Thereupon went they forth that even, as though to flee away from the
town, none being privy thereto save the King. And Saint Luke's Day
passed over quiet enough. The Queen went to mass in the Church of the
White Friars, and offered at the high altar five shillings, her
customary offering on the great feasts and chief saints' days. All
peaceful sped the day; the Queen gat her abed, and the keys being
brought of the Constable's deputy, I (that was that night in waiting)
presented them unto her, which she received in her own hands and laid
under the pillow of her bed. Then went we, her dames and damsels, forth
unto our own chambers in the upper storey of the Castle: and I, set at
the casement, had unlatched the same and thrown it open (being nigh as
warm as summer), and was hearkening to the soft flow of the waters of
the Leene, which on that side do nearhand wash the Castle wall. I was
but then thinking how peaceful were all things, and what sore pity it
were that man should bring in wrong, and bitterness, and anguish, on
that which God had made so beautiful--when all suddenly my fair peace
changed to fierce tumult and the clang of armed men--the tramp of
mail-clad feet and the hoarse crying of roaring voices. I was as though
I held my breath: for I could well guess what this portended. Then
above all the routing and brui