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"You are hurting me," Marie screamed. |
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"And you tried to have me killed," Walter replied. |
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"No! No!" Marie shrieked, seeing death in his merciless face. |
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"Walter . . ." Sybelle whispered, frightened herself by his implacable expression, although she had not feared his anger. |
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"Why?" he demanded inexorably of Marie. |
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And so the whole ugly story spilled out. And as he listened, Walter's hand relaxed its cruel grip and the hardness went out of his face, leaving only disgust and contempt. At the end he shrugged and said Marie was not worth bothering with, bent his head to kiss Sybelle as if that contact could clean his mouth of the taste of the petty dirtiness of Marie's tale, and went out to send two men to Clyro for a larger escort. From the sounds coming in through the open door, he judged the obstructions had been cleared from in front of the gate. |
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Trembling, thoroughly cowed, Marie looked up at Sybelle. "What will you do with me?" she whispered. |
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"As for me, nothing," Sybelle replied. "If Heribert had succeeded and killed my husband, I would have hunted you to your deathand it would have been no easy death. But since Walter is not hurt nor any other harm done except to my husband's enemy, and since in his mind Walter will spit on your name when he hears it in the future, I have no interest in you. I will send you to Clifford, if you wish, or to Craswall if you prefer." |
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"Will you tell Richard?" Marie whimpered. |
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"I will tell no one except my mother and grandmother so that they will know where to look first if ill befalls me or Walter, but the tale will go no further than their ears. We of Roselynde are not gossips." |
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"Let me go before he returns," Marie pleaded. |
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"As you will," Sybelle replied indifferently, and went out to tell two men to get Marie's horse saddled and to escort her wherever she wished to go. |
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Marie fled the house and hid herself in the stable, and when Walter came back inside with a half-dozen serfs to carry out the bodies of the slain men, she fled from the manor. Walter did not care when Sybelle told him what she had done. For him, Marie no longer existed. Nor did he react when the bailiff came in and knelt before the chair in which he was sitting, pleading for mercy, begging Walter to believe |
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