ONE:His vigilance increased when their first love affairs began. At first they would gabble innocently to him about pretty girls they had seen in Rye, but they soon found out such conversation was most unwelcome. Reuben looked upon love as the biggest curse and snare of life; if David and William fell in love they would lose interest in Odiam, they would do something silly like Robert, or mad like Caro, or bad like Rose. Love was the enemy of Odiam, and Reuben having trodden it down himself was not going to see it rise and stamp on his boys. He gave them the benefit of his experience in no measured terms:
ONE:That night was a period of strong excitement within and without the Tower. Without, the moonlight displayed an immense mass of dark bodies stretched on the ground, and slumbering in the open air; while others, of more active minds, moved to and fro, like evil spirits in the night. Beyond, in the adjacent streets, occasionally rose the drunken shouts of rioters, or the shrieks of some unhappy foreigner, who was slaughtered by the ignorant and ferocious multitude for the crime of being unable to speak English. Within the Tower there was as little of repose; there were the fears of many noble hearts, lest the renegade leader might not be as influential as he vaunted, concealed beneath the semblance of contemptuous pride or affected defiance;then there were the sanguine hopes of the youthful Richard;the maternal fears of his mother;the anxious feelings of the baroness;the troubled thoughts and misgivings of John Ball;and the strange whisperings among the men at arms and archers, who all "did quail in stomach," we may suppose, at the novel combination of a prophet in prison, and an armed populace besieging the fortress.Chapter 8
ONE:The hall had a tesselated pavement, on which the arms of the united families of Sudley and De Boteler (the latter having inherited by marriage, in consequence of a failure of male issue in the former) were depicted with singular accuracy and beauty. About midway from the entrance, two broad steps of white marble led to the part of the hall exclusively appropriated to the owner of the castle. The mosaic work of this privileged space was concealed on the present occasion by a covering of fine crimson cloth. A large arm chair, covered with crimson velvet, with the De Boteler arms richly emblazoned on the high back, over which hung a velvet canopy fringed with gold, was placed in the centre of the elevation; and several other chairs with similar coverings and emblazonings, but wanting canopies, were disposed around for the accommodation of the guests.
