n of the deepest dye. And not one voice said
him nay.

Thus went matters on till the beginning of September, 1326. The Queen
abode at Paris; the King of France made no sign: our King's trusty
messager, Donald de Athole, came and went with letters (and if it were
not one of his letters the Queen dropped into the brasier right as I
came one day into her chamber, I marvel greatly); but nought came forth
that we her ladies heard. On the even of the fifth of September, early,
came Sir John de Ostrevant to the Palace, and had privy speech of the
Queen--none being thereat but her confessor and Dame Isabel de Lapyoun:
and he was scarce gone forth when, as we sat in our chamber a-work, the
Queen herself looked in and called Dame Elizabeth forth.

I thought nought of it. I turned down hem, and cut off some threads,
and laid down scissors, and took up my needle to thread afresh--in the
Hotel de Saint Pol at Paris. And that needle was not threaded but in
the Abbey of Saint Edmund's Bury in Suffolk, twenty days after. Yet if
man had told me it should so be, I had felt ready to laugh him to scorn.
Ah me, what feathers we be, that a breath from God Almighty can waft
hither or thither at His will!

Never but that once did I see Dame Elizabeth to burst into a chamber.
And when she so did, I was in such amaze thereat that I fair gasped to
see it.

"Good lack!" cried I, and stared on her.

"Well may you say it!" quoth she. "Lay by work, all of you, and make
you ready privily in all haste for journeying by night. Lose not a
moment."

"Mary love us!" cries Isabel de la Helde. "Whither?"

"Whither the Queen's will is. Hold your tongues, and make you ready."

We lay that night--and it was not till late--in the town of Sessouns, in
the same lodging the Queen had before, at Master John de Gyse's house.
The next night we lay at Peronne, and the third we came to Ostrevant.

Dame Isabel told us the reason of this sudden flight. The Queen had
heard that her brother the King of France--who for some time past had
been very cool and distant towards her--had a design to seize upon her
and deliver her a prisoner to King Edward: and Sir John of Hainault,
Count of Ostrevant, who came to bring her this news, offered her a
refuge in his Castle of Ostrevant. I believed this tale when Dame
Isabel told it: I have no faith in it now. What followed did away
entirely therewith, and gave me firm belief that it was nothing save an
excuse to