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The White Rose of Langley

by Emily Sarah Holt · English · Gutenberg #23276 · 544,772 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The White Rose of Langley

Author: Emily Sarah Holt


        
Release date: October 31, 2007 [eBook #23276]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23276

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE ROSE OF LANGLEY ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The White Rose of Langley, a Story of the Olden Time, by Emily Sarah
Holt.

________________________________________________________________________
This book is set in aristocratic circles in the fifteenth century.  For
that reason there is a great deal of mediaeval English.  However, most
of the unusual words are explained as they occur, so there is no problem
with comprehension.  The last chapter is headed "Historical Appendix",
and contains potted lives of most of the people whom we meet in the
book, since the majority of them really existed.  Of course the detail
of the conversations in the book is made up, but we can well believe
that something very like them might well have happened.  What is very
evident is that many of these people were plotters, the object of their
desires being in some way to increase their own wealth or status.  Even
small children may be imprisoned and murdered, as we remember from the
sad tale of "the Princes in the Tower".

If you are fond of reading historical novels, and are familiar with the
general history of the fifteenth century, you will enjoy this view of
the lives of the figures that made that history.

________________________________________________________________________
THE WHITE ROSE OF LANGLEY, A STORY OF THE OLDEN TIME, BY EMILY SARAH
HOLT.



CHAPTER ONE.

NOBODY'S CHILD.

  "Oh, how full of briars is this working-day world!"

  _Shakspere_.

"It is so cold, Mother!"

The woman addressed languidly roused herself from the half-sheltered
nook of the forest in which she and her child had taken refuge.  She was
leaning with her back supported by a giant oak, and the child was in her
arms.  The age of the child was about eight.  The mother, though still
young in years, was old before her time, with hard work and exposure,
and it might be also with sorrow.  She sat up, and looked wearily over
the winter scene before her.  There was nothing of the querulous,
complaining tone of the little girl's voice in hers; only the dull,
sullen apathy of hopeless endurance.

"Cold, child!" she said.  "'Tis like to be colder yet when the night
cometh."

"O Mother! and all snow now!"

"There be chiller gear than snow, maid," replied the mother bitterly.

"But it had been warmer in London, Mother?--if we had not lost our
road."

"May-be," was the answer, in a tone which seemed to imply that it did
not signify.

The child did not reply; and the woman continued to sit upright, and
look forward, with an absent expression in her face, indicating that the
mind was not where the eyes were.

"Only snow and frost!" she muttered--not speaking to the child.  "Nought
beyond, nor here ne there.  Nay, snow is better than snowed-up hearts.
Had it been warmer in London?  May-be the hearts there had been as
frosty as at Pleshy.  Well! it will be warm in the grave, and we shall
soon win yonder."

"Be there fires yonder, Mother?" asked the child innocently.

The woman laughed--a bitter, harsh laugh, in which there was no mirth.

"The devil keepeth," she said.  "At least so say the priests.  But what
wit they?  They never went thither to see.  They will, belike, some
day."

The little girl was silent again, and the mother, after a moment's
pause, resumed her interrupted soliloquy.

"If there were nought beyond, only!" she murmured; and her look and tone
of dull misery sharpened into vivid pain.  "If a man might die, and have
done with it all!  But to meet God!  And 'tis no sweven, [dream] ne
fallacy, this dread undeadliness [immortality]--it is real.  O all ye
blessed saints and martyrs in Heaven! how shall I meet God?"

"Is that holy Mary's Son, Mother?"

"Ay."

"Holy Mary will plead for us," suggested the child.  "She can alway
peace her Son.  But methought _He_ was good to folks, Mother.  Sister
Christian was wont to say so."

"To saints and good women like Sister Christian, may-be."

"Art thou not good, Mother?"

The question was put in all innocence.  But it struck the heart of the
miserable mother like a poisoned arrow.

"Good!" she cried, again in that tone of intense pain.  "_I_ good?  No,
Maude!--I am bad, bad, bad!  From the crown of mine head to the sole of
my foot, there is nothing in me beside evil; such evil as thou, unwemmed
[undefiled, innocent] dove as thou art, canst not even conceive!  God is
good to saints--not to sinners.  Sister Christian--and thou, yet!--be
amongst the saints.  I am of the sinners."

"But why art thou not a saint, Mother?" demanded the child, as
innocently as before.

"I was on the road once," said the woman, with a heavy sigh.  "I was to
have been an holy sister of Saint Clare.  I knew no more of ill than
thou whiteling in mine arms.  If I had died then, when my soul was
fair!"

Suddenly her mood changed.  She clasped the child close to her breast,
and showered kisses on the little wan face.

"My babe Maude, my bird Maude!" she said.  "My dove that God sped down
from Heaven unto me, thinking me not too ill ne wicked to have thee!
The angels may love thee, my bird in bower! for thou art white and
unwemmed.  The robes of thy chrism [see Note 1] are not yet soiled; but,
O sinner that I am! how am I to meet God?  And I must meet Him--and
soon."

"Did not God die on the rood, Mother?"

The woman assented, the old listless tone returning to her voice.

"Wherefore, Mother?"

"God wot, child."

"Sister Christian told me He had no need for Himself, but that He loved
us; yet why that should cause Him to die I wis not."

The mother made no answer.  Her thoughts had drifted away, back through
her weary past, to a little village church where a fresco painting stood
on the wall, sketched in days long before, of a company of guests at a
feast, clad in Saxon robes; and of One, behind whom knelt a woman
weeping and kissing His feet, while her flowing hair almost hid them
from sight.  And back to her memory, along with the scene, came a line
from a popular ballad ["The Ploughman's Complaint"] which referred to
it.  She repeated it aloud--

  "`Christ suffered a sinful to kisse His fete.'

"Suffered her, for that she was a saint?" she asked of herself, in the
dreamy languor which the intense cold had brought over her.  "Nay, for
she was `a sinful.'  Suffered her, then, for that she sinned?  Were not
that to impeach His holiness?  Or was He so holy and high that no sin of
hers could soil the feet she touched?  What good did it her to touch
them?  Made it her holy?--fit to meet God in the Doom [Judgment], when
she had thus met Him here in His lowliness?  How wis I?  And could it
make me fit to meet Him?  But I can never kiss His feet.  Nor lack they
the ournment [adornment] of any kiss of mine.  Yet methinks it were she,
not He, which lacked it then.  And He let her kiss His feet.  O Christ
Jesu! if in very deed it were in love for us that Thou barest death on
the bitter rood, hast Thou no love left to welcome the dying sinner?
Thou who didst pity her at yonder feast, hast Thou no mercy for Eleanor
Gerard too?"

The words were spoken only half aloud, but they were heard by the child
cradled in her arms.

"Mother, why christened you me not Eleanor?" she asked dreamily.

"Hush, child, and go to sleep!" answered the mother, startled out of her
reverie.

Maude was silent, and Eleanor wrapped her closer in the old cloak which
enfolded both of them.  But before the woman yielded herself up to the
stupor which was benumbing her faculties, she passed her hand into her
bosom, and drew out a little flat parcel, folded in linen, which she
secreted in the breast of the child's dress.

"Keep this, Maude," she said gravely.

"What is it, Mother?" was Maude's sleepy answer.

"It is what thou shalt find it hereafter," was the mysterious rejoinder.
"But let none take it away, neither beguile thee thereof.  'Tis all I
have to give thee."

Maude seemed too nearly asleep for her curiosity to be roused; and
Eleanor, leaning back against the tree, resigned herself to slumber
also.

Not long afterwards, a goatherd passing that way in search of a strayed
kid, came on the unconscious pair, wrapped in each other's arms.  He ran
for help to his hut, and had them conveyed to a convent at a little
distance, which the wanderers had failed to find.  The rescue was just
in time to bring the life back to the numbed limbs of the child.  But
for the mother there was no waking in this world.  Eleanor Gerard had
met God.

Four years after that winter evening, in the guest-chamber of the
Convent of Sopwell sat a nun of middle age and cheerful look, in
conversation with a woman in ordinary costume, but to whom the same
description would very nearly apply.

"Then what were the manner of maid you seek, good Ursula?" inquired the
nun.

"By Saint Luke's face, holy Sister, but I would not have her too cunning
[clever].  I count (though I say it that need not) I am none ill one to
learn her her work; and me loveth not to be checked ne taunted of mine
underlings."

The nun, who had known Ursula Drew for some time, was quite aware that
superfluity of meekness did not rank among that worthy woman's failings.

"I would fain have a small maid of some twelve or thirteen years.  An'
ye have them elder, they will needs count they know as much as you, and
can return a sharp answer betimes.  I love not masterful childre."

"But would you not she were something learned?"

"Nay!  So she wit not a pig's head from a crustade Almayne, [A kind of
pie of custard or batter, with currants] 'tis all one to me, an' she
will do my bidding."

"Then methinks I could right well fit you.  We have here at this instant
moment a small maid of twelve years, that my Lady the Prioress were well
fain to put with such as you be, and she bade me give heed to the same.
'Tis a waif that Anthony, our goatherd, found in the forest, with her
mother, that was frozen to death in an hard winter; but the child abode,
and was saved.  Truly, for cunning there is little in her; but for
meekness and readiness to do your will, the maid is as good as any.  But
ye shall see her I think on."

Sister Oliva stepped to the door, and spoke in a low tone to some person
outside.  She came back and reseated herself, and a minute afterwards
there was a low, timid tap at the door.

"Come in, child," said the nun.

And Maude came in.

She was small and slight for her twelve years, and preternaturally
grave.  A quantity of long dark hair hung round her head in a condition
of seemingly hopeless tanglement, and the dark eyes, proportionately
larger than the rest of the features, wore an expression of mingled
apathy and suspicion, alike strange and painful to see in the eyes of a
child.

"Come forward, Maude, and speak with Mistress Drew.  Mercy on us, child!
how hast moiled thine hair like a fowl his pennes!"  [Feathers.]

Maude made no reply.  She came a few steps nearer, dropped a rustic
courtesy, and stood to be questioned.

"What is thy name?" inquired Mistress Ursula, as though she were
beginning the catechism.

"Maude," said the child under her breath.

"And what years hast--twelve?"

"Twelve, the last Saint Margaret."

"And where wert born?  Dost know?"

Maude knew, though for some reason with which she herself was best
acquainted, she had been much more chary of her information to my Lady
the Prioress than she now chose to be.

"At Pleshy, in Essex."

"And what work did thy father?"

Maude looked up with a troubled air, as if the idea of that relative's
possible existence had never suggested itself to her.

"I never had any father!" she said, in a pained tone.  "Cousin Hawise
had a father, and he wrought iron on the anvil.  But I had none--never!
I had a mother--that was all."

"And what called men thy mother?"

"Eleanor Gerard."

"Then thy name is Maude Gerard," said Oliva, sharply.

Maude's silence appeared to indicate that she declined to commit herself
either affirmatively or negatively.

"And what canst do, maid?" inquired Ursula, changing the subject to one
of more practical purport.

Perhaps the topic was too large for reply, for Maude's only response was
a nervous twisting of her fingers.  Sister Oliva answered for her.

"Marry, she can pluck a chick, and roll pastry, and use a bedstaff, and
scour a floor, and sew, and the like.  She hath not been idle, I warrant
you."

"Couldst cleanse out a pan an' thou wert set about it?"

"Ay," said Maude, under her breath.

"And couldst run of a message?"

"Ay."

"And couldst do as folk bid thee?"

"Ay."

But each time the child's voice grew fainter.

"Sister Oliva, I will essay the little maid, by your leave."

"And with my very good will, friend Ursula."

"Me counteth I shall make the best cook of her in all Herts.  What
sayest, maid?--wilt of thy good will be a cook?"

Maude looked up, looked down, and said nothing.  But nature had not made
her a cook, and the utmost Ursula Drew could do in that direction was to
spoil a good milliner.

So little Maude went with Ursula--into a very different sphere of life
from any which she could hitherto remember.  The first home which she
recollected was her grandfather's cottage, with the great elms on one
side of it and the forge on the other, at which the old man had wrought
so long as his strength permitted, and had then handed over, as the
family inheritance, to his son.  Since the world began for Maude, that
cottage and the forge had always stood there, and its inhabitants had
always been Grandfather, and Uncle David, and Aunt Elizabeth, and Cousin
Hawise, and Cousin Jack, and Mother.

At some unknown time in the remote past there had been a grandmother,
for Maude had heard of her; but with that exception, there had never
been anybody else, and her father was to her an utterly mythic
individual.  She had never heard such a person named until Ursula Drew
inquired his calling.  And then, one awful winter night, something
dreadful had happened.  What it was Maude never precisely knew.  She
only knew that there was a great noise in the night, and strange voices
in the cottage, and cries for mercy; and that when morning broke Uncle
David was gone, and was seen afterwards no more.  So then they tried to
keep on the old forge a little longer; but Grandfather was past work,
and Cousin Jack was young and inexperienced, and customers would not
come as they had done to brawny-armed Uncle David, to whose ringing
blows on the anvil Maude had loved to listen.  And one day she heard
Aunt Elizabeth say to Grandfather that the forge brought in nothing, and
they must go up to the castle and ask the great Lord there, whose
vassals they were, to find them food until Jack was able to work: but
the old man rose up from the settle and answered, his voice trembling
with passion, that he would starve to death ere he would take food from
the cruel hand which had deprived him of his boy.  So then, Cousin Jack
used to go roaming in the forest and bring home roots and wild fruits,
and sometimes the neighbours would give them alms in kind or in money,
and so for a while they tried to live.  But Grandfather grew weaker, and
Mother and Aunt Elizabeth very thin and worn, and the bloom faded from
Cousin Hawise's cheeks, and the gloss died away from her shining hair.
And at last Grandfather died.  And then Aunt Elizabeth went to a
neighbouring franklin's farm, to serve the franklin's dame; and Cousin
Jack went away to sea; and Maude could not recollect how they lived for
a time.  And then came another mournful day, when strange people came to
the cottage and roughly ordered the three who were left to go away.
They took Cousin Hawise with them, for they said she would be comely if
she were well fed, and the Lady had seen her, and she must go and serve
the Lady.  And Maude never knew what became of her.  But Mother wept
bitterly, and seemed to think that Hawise's lot was a very unhappy one.
So then they set out, Mother and Maude, for London.  The reasons for
going to London were very dim and vague to Maude's apprehension.  They
were going to look for somebody; so much she knew: and she thought it
was some relation of Grandmother's, who might perchance give them a home
again.  London was a very grand place, only a little less than the
world: but it could not fill quite all the world, because there was room
left for Pleshy and one or two other places.  The King lived in London,
who never did any thing all day long but sit on a golden throne, with a
crown on his head, and eat bread and marmalade, and drink Gascon wine;
and the Queen, who of course sat on another golden throne, and shared
the good things, and wore minever dresses and velvet robes which trailed
all across the room.  Perhaps the houses were not all built of gold;
some of them might be silver; but at any rate the streets were paved
with one or other of the precious metals.  And of course, nobody in
London was at all poor, and everybody had as much as he could possibly
eat, and was quite warm and comfortable, and life was all music, and
flowers, and sunshine.  Poor little Maude! was her illusion much more
extravagant than some of ours?

But, as we have seen, the hapless travellers never reached their bourne.
And now even Mother was gone, and Maude was left alone in all the
world.  The nuns had not been particularly unkind to her; they had
taught her many things, though they had not made her work beyond her
strength; yet not one of them had given her what she missed most--
sympathy.  The result was that the child had been unhappy in the
convent, and yet she could not have said why, had she been asked.  But
nobody ever asked that of little Maude.  She was alone in all the
world--the great, bare, hard, practical world.

For this was the side of the world presented to Maude.

The world is many-sided, and it presents various sides and corners to
various people.  The side which Maude saw was hard and bare.  Hard bed,
hard fare, hard work, hard words sometimes.  Had she any opportunity of
thinking the world a soft, comfortable, cushioned place, as some of her
sisters find it?

This had been the child's life up to the moment when Ursula Drew made
her appearance on the scene.  But now a new element was introduced; for
Maude's third home was a stately palace, filled with beautiful carvings,
and delicate tracery, and exquisite colours, all which, lowest of the
low as she was, she enjoyed with an intensity till then unknown to
herself, and certainly not shared by any other in her sphere.  That
sense of the beautiful, which, trained in different directions, makes
men poets, painters, and architects, was very strong in little Maude.
She could not have explained in the least _how_ it was that the curves
in the stonework, or the rich colours in the windows of the great hall,
gave her a mysterious sensation of pleasure, which she could not avoid
detecting that they never gave to any of her kitchen associates; and she
obtained many a scolding for her habit of what my Lady the Prioress had
called "idle dreaming," and Mistress Drew was pleased to term "lither
laziness;" when, instead of cleaning pans, Maude was thinking poetry.
Alas for little Maude! her vocation was not to think poetry; and it was
to scour pans.

The Palace of Langley, which had become the scene of Maude's
pan-cleaning, was built in a large irregular pile.  The kitchen and its
attendant offices were at one end, and over them reigned Ursula Drew,
who, though supreme in her government of Maude, was in reality only a
vice-queen.  Over Ursula ruled a man-cook, by name Warine de la
Misericorde, concerning whom his subordinate's standing joke was that
"Misericorde was rarely [extremely] merciless."  But this potentate in
his turn owed submission to the master of the household, a very great
gentleman with gold embroidery on his coat, concerning whom Maude's only
definite notion was that he must be courtesied to very low indeed.

Master and mistress were mere names to Maude.  The child was
near-sighted, and though, like every other servant in the Palace, she
ate daily in the great hall, her eyes were not sufficiently clear, from
her low place at the extreme end, to make out anything on the distant
dais beyond a number of grey shapeless shadows.  She knew when the
royal, and in her eyes semi-celestial persons in question were, or were
not, at home; she had a dim idea that they bore the titles of Earl and
Countess of Cambridge, and that they were nearly related to majesty
itself; she now and then heard Ursula informed that my Lord was pleased
to command a certain dish, or that my Lady had condescended to approve a
particular sauce.  She had noticed, moreover, that two of the grey
shadows at the very top of the hall, and therefore among the most
distinguished persons, were smaller than the rest; she inferred that
these ineffable superiors had at least two children, and she often
longed to inspect them within comfortable seeing distance.  But no such
good fortune had as yet befallen her.  Their apartments were
inaccessible fairy-land, and themselves beings scarcely to be gazed on
with undazzled eyes.

Very monotonous was Maude's new life:--cleaning pans, washing jars,
sorting herbs, scouring pails, running numberless infinitesimal errands,
doing everything that nobody else liked, hard-worked from morning to
night, and called up from her hard pallet to recommence her toil before
she had realised that she was asleep.  Ursula's temper, too, did not
improve with time; and Parnel, the associate and contemporary of Maude,
was by no means to be mistaken for an angel.

Parnel was three years older than Maude, and much better acquainted with
her work.  She could accomplish a marvellous quantity within a given
time, when it pleased her; and it generally did please her to rush to
the end of her task, and to spend the remaining time in teasing Maude.
She had no positive unkind feeling towards the child, but she was
extremely mischievous, and Maude being extremely teasable, the
temptation of amusing her leisure by worrying the nervous and
inexperienced child was too strong to be resisted.  The occupations of
her present life disgusted Maude beyond measure.  The scullery-work, of
which Ursula gave her the most unpleasant parts, was unspeakably
revolting to her quick sense of artistic beauty, and to a certain
delicacy and refinement of nature which she had inherited, not acquired;
and which Ursula, if she could have comprehended it, would have despised
with the intense contempt of the coarse mind for the fine.  The child
was one morning engaged in cleaning a very greasy saucepan, close to the
open window, when, to her surprise, she was accosted by a strange voice
in the base court, or back yard of the palace.

"Is that pleasant work--frotting [rubbing] yonder thing?"

Maude looked up into a pair of bright, kindly eyes, which belonged to a
boy attired as a page, some three or four years older than herself.
Something in the lad's good-natured face won her confidence.

"No," she answered honestly, "'tis right displeasant to have ado with
such feune!"  [dirt.]

"So me counted," replied the boy.  "What name hast thou, little maid?"

"Maude."

"I have not seen thee here aforetime," resumed the page.

"Nor I you," said Maude.  "I have bidden hither no long time.
Whereabout sit you in hall?"

"Nigh the high end," said he.  "But we are only this day come from
Clarendon with the Lord Edward, whom I and my fellows serve.  Fare thee
well, little maid!"

The bright eyes smiled at her, and the head nodded kindly, and passed
on.  But insignificant as the remarks were, Maude felt as if she had
found a friend in the great wilderness of Langley Palace.

The next time the page's head paused at her window, Maude summoned
courage to ask him his name.

"Bertram Lyngern," said he smilingly.  "I have a longer name than thou."
[See Note 2.]

"And a father and mother?" asked Maude.

"A father," said the boy.  "He is one of my Lord's knights; but for my
mother,--the women say she died the day I was born."

"I have ne father ne mother," responded Maude, sorrowfully, "ne none to
care for me in all the wide world."

"Careth Mistress Drew nought for thee?"

Maude's laugh was bitterly negative.

"Ne Parnel, thy fellow?"

"She striveth alway to abash [frighten] and trouble me," sighed Maude.

"Poor Maude!" said Bertram, looking concerned.  "Wouldst have me care
for thee?  May be I could render thy life somewhat lighter.  If I talked
with Parnel--"

"It were to no good," said Maude, brushing away to get her sink clean.
"There is nothing but sharp words and snybbyngs [scoldings] all day
long; and if I give her word back, then will she challenge [accuse] me
to Mistress, and soothly I am aweary of life."

Weary of life at twelve years old!  It was a new idea to Bertram, and he
had found no answer, when the sharp voice of Ursula Drew summoned Maude
away.

"Haste, child!" cried Ursula.  "Thou art as long of coming as Advent
Sunday at Christmas.  Now, by the time I be back, lay thou out for me on
the table four bundles of herbs from the dry herb closet--an handful of
knot-grass, and the like of shepherd's pouch, and of bramble-seeds, and
of plantain.  Now, mark thou, the top leaves of the plantain only!
Leave me not find thee idling; but have yonder row of pans as bright as
a new tester when I come, and the herbs ready."  [See note 3.]

Ursula bustled off, and Maude set to work at the pans.  When they were
sufficiently scrubbed, she pulled off the dirty apron in which she had
been working, and went towards the dry herb closet.  But she had not
reached it, when her wrist was caught and held in a grasp like that of a
vice.

"Whither goest, Mistress Maude?" demanded an unwelcome voice.

"Stay me not, I pray thee, Parnel!" said the child entreatingly.
"Mistress Drew hath bidden me lay out divers herbs against she cometh."

"What herbs be they?" inquired Parnel demurely, with an assumption of
gravity and superior knowledge which Maude knew, from sad experience, to
mask some project of mischief.  But knowing also that peril lay in
silence, no less than in compliance, she reluctantly gave the
information.

"There is no shepherd's pouch in the closet," responded Parnel.

"Then whither must I seek it?" asked Maude.

"In the fields," said Parnel.

"Ay me!" exclaimed the child.

"And 'tis not in leaf, let be flower," added her tormentor.

"What can I do?" cried Maude in dismay.

Still keeping tight hold of her wrist, Parnel answered the query by the
execution of a war-dance around Maude.

"Parnel, do leave go!" supplicated the prisoner.

"Mistress Maude is bidden lay out herbs!" sang the gaoler in amateur
recitative.  "Mistress Maude hath no shepherd's pouch!  Mistress Maude
is loth to go and pluck it!"

"Parnel, _do_ leave me go!"

"Mistress Maude doth not her mistress' bidding!  Mistr--"

Suddenly breaking off, Parnel, who could be as quick as a lizard when
she chose, quitted her hold, and vanished out of sight in some
incomprehensible manner, as Ursula Drew marched into the kitchen.

"Now, then, where be those herbs?" demanded that authority, in a tone
indicative of a whipping.

"Mistress, I could not help it!" sobbed the worried child.

"By'r Lady, but thou canst help it if thou wilt!" returned Ursula.
"Reach me down the rod; thy laziness shall be well a-paid for once."

Maude sobbed helplessly, but made no effort to obey.

"Where be thine ears?  Reach the rod!" reiterated Ursula.

"Whom chastise you, Mistress Drew?" inquired Bertram's voice through the
door; "she that demeriteth the same, or she that no doth?"

"This lazy maid demeriteth fifty rods!" was the pleasing answer.

"I cry you mercy, but I think not so," said Bertram judicially.  "An'
you whipped the demeritous party, it should be Parnel.  I saw all that
chanced, by the lattice, but the maids saw not me."

Parnel was not whipped, for her quickness made her a favourite; but
neither was Maude, for Bertram's intercession rescued her.

"The saints bless you, Master Bertram!" said Maude, at the next
opportunity.  "And the saints help me, for verily I have an hard life.
I am all of a bire [hurry, confusion], and sore strangled [tired], from
morn to night."

"Poor little Maude!" answered Bertram pityingly.  "Would I might shape
thy matters better-good.  Do the saints help, thinkest?  Hugh Calverley
saith no."

"Talk you with such like evil fawtors, [factor, doer], Master Bertram?"
asked Maude in a shocked voice.

"Evil fawtors, forsooth!  Hugh is no evil fawtor.  How can I help but
rede [attend to] his sayings?  He is one of my fellows.  And 'tis but
what he hath from his father.  Master Calverley is a squire of the
Queen's Grace, and one of Sir John de Wycliffe's following."

"Who is Sir John de Wycliffe?" said Maude.

"One of the Lord Pope his Cardinals," laughed Bertram.  "Get thee to
thine herbs and pans, little Maude; and burden not thy head with Sir
John de Wycliffe nor John de Northampton neither.  Fare thee well, my
maid.  I must after my master for the hawking."

But before Bertram turned away, Maude seized the opportunity to ask a
question which had been troubling her for many a month.

"If you be not in heavy bire, Master Bertram--"

"Go to!  What maketh a minute more nor less?"

"Would it like you of your goodness to tell me, an' you wit, who
dwelleth in the Castle of Pleshy?"

"`An' I wit'!  Well wis I.  'Tis my gracious Lord of Buckingham, brother
unto our Lord of Cambridge."

"Were you ever at Pleshy, Master Bertram?"

"Truly, but a year gone, for the christening of the young Lord
Humphrey."

"And liked it you to tell me if you wot at all of one Hawise Gerard
among the Lady's maidens?"

Maude awaited the answer in no little suppressed eagerness.  She had
loved Cousin Hawise; and if she yet lived, though apart, she would not
feel herself so utterly alone.  Perhaps they might even meet again, some
day.  But Bertram shook his head.

"I heard never the name," he said.  "The Lady of Buckingham her maidens
be Mistress Polegna and Mistress Sarah [fictitious persons]: their
further names I wis not.  But no Mistress Hawise saw I never."

"I thank you much, Master Bertram, and will not stay you longer."

But another shadow fell upon Maude's life.  Poor, pretty, gentle, timid
Cousin Hawise!  What had become of her?  The next opportunity she had,
Maude inquired from Bertram, "What like dame were my Lady of
Buckingham's greathood?"

Bertram shrugged his shoulders, as if the question took him out of his
depth.

"Marry, she is a woman!" said he; "and all women be alike.  There is not
one but will screech an' she see a spider."

"Mistress Drew and Mother be not alike," answered Maude, falling back on
her own small experience.  "Neither were Hawise and I alike.  She would
alway stay at holy Mary her image, to see if the lamp were alight; but
I--the saints forgive me!--I never cared thereabout.  So good was Cousin
Hawise."

"Maude," suggested Bertram in a low voice, as if he felt half afraid of
his own idea, "Countest that blessed Mary looketh ever her own self to
wit if the lamp be alight?"

Maude was properly shocked.

"Save you All Hallows, Master Bertram!  How come you by such fantasies?"

Bertram laughed and went away, chanting a stave of the "Ploughman's
Complaint"--[See Note 4.]

  "Christ hath twelve apostles here;
  Now, say they, there may be but one,
  That may not erre in no manere--
  Who 'leveth [believeth] not this ben lost echone.  [each one]
  Peter erred--so did not Jhon;
  Why is he cleped the principal?  [See note 5.]
  Christ cleped him Peter, but Himself the Stone--
  All false faitours [doers] foule hem fall!"  [Evil befall them.]

Late that evening a mounted messenger crossed the drawbridge, and stayed
his weary horse in the snows-prinkled base court.  He was quickly
recognised by the household as a royal letter-bearer from London.

"And what news abroad, Master Matthew?"

"Why, the King's Highness keepeth his Christmas at Eltham; and certain
of the Council would fain have the Queen's Bohemians sent forth, but I
misdoubt if it shall be done.  And Sir Nicholas Brembre is the new
mayor.  There is no news else.  Oh, ay!  The parson of Lutterworth, Sir
John de Wycliffe--"

"The lither heretic!" muttered Warine, for he was the questioner.  "What
misturnment [perversion] would he now?"

"He will never turn ne misturn more," said the messenger.  "The morrow
after Holy Innocents a second fit of the palsy took him as he stood at
the altar at mass, and they bare him home to die.  And the eve of the
Circumcision [December 31st, 1384], two days thereafter, the good man
was commanded to God."

"Good man, forsooth!" growled Warine.

"Master Warine," said Hugh Calverley's voice behind him, "the day may
come when thou and I would be full fain to creep into Heaven at the
heels of the Lutterworth parson."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  The anointing at baptism, when a white cloth was always placed
on the head.

Note 2.  Bertram, Ursula, Parnel, Warine, and Maude and her family, are
all fictitious persons.

Note 3.  The herbs were to be boiled and the liquid drunk, for a sprain,
bruise, or broken bone.

Note 4.  Wright's _Political Poems_, one 304, _et seq_.  The date of the
poem given by Wright is anticipated by about nine years.

Note 5.  Why is Peter called the "Prince of the Apostles?"



CHAPTER TWO.

SOMEBODY'S CHILD.

  "`Now God, that is of mightes most,
  Grant him grace of the Holy Ghost
  His heritage to win:
  And Mary moder of mercy fre
  Save our King and his meynie
  Fro' sorrow and shame and sin.'"

The song was trilled in a pleasant voice by an old lady who sat spinning
in an upper chamber of Langley Palace.  She paused a moment in her work,
and then took up again the latter half of the strain.

"`And Mary moder of mercy fre'--Called any yonder?"

"May I come in, Dame Agnes?" said a child's voice at the door.

The old lady rose hastily, laid down her distaff, and opening the door,
courtesied low to the little girl of ten years old who stood outside.

"Enter freely, most gracious Lady!  Wherefore abide without?"

It was a pretty vision which entered.  Not that there was any special
beauty in the child herself, for in that respect she was merely on the
pretty side of ordinary.  She was tall for her age--as tall as Maude,
though she was two years younger.  Her complexion was very fair, her
hair light with a golden tinge, and her eyes of a peculiar shade of
blue, bright, yet deep--the shade known as blue eyes in Spain, but
rarely seen in England.  But her costume was a study for a painter.
Little girls dressed like women in the fourteenth century; and this
child wore a blue silk tunic embroidered with silver harebells, over a
brown velvet skirt spangled with rings of gold.  Her hair was put up in
a net of golden tissue, ornamented with pearls.  The dress was cut
square at the neck; she wore a pearl necklace, and a girdle of turquoise
and pearls.  Two rows of pearls and turquoise finished the sleeves at
the wrist; they were of brown velvet, like the skirt.  This finery was
evidently nothing new to the little wearer.  She came into the room and
flung herself carelessly down on a small stool, close to the chair where
Dame Agnes had been sitting--to the unfeigned horror of that courtly
person.

"Lady, Lady!  Not on a stool, for love of the blessed Mary!"

And drawing forward an immense old arm-chair, Dame Agnes motioned the
child to take it.

"Remember, pray you, that you be a Prince's daughter!"  [See Note 1.]

The child rose with some reluctance, and climbed into the enormous
chair, in which she seemed almost lost.

"Prithee, Dame Agnes, is it because I be a Prince's daughter that I must
needs be let from sitting whither I would?"

"There is meetness in all things," said the old lady, picking up her
distaff.

"And what meetness is in setting the like of me in a chair that would
well hold Charlemagne and his twelve Peers?" demanded the little girl,
laughing.

"The twelve Peers of Charlemagne, such saved as were Princes, were not
the like of _you_, Lady Custance," said Dame Agnes, almost severely.

"Ah me!" and Constance gaped (or, as she would herself have said,
"goxide.") "I would I were a woodman's daughter."

Dame Agnes de La Marche, [see Note 2], whose whole existence had been
spent in the scented atmosphere of Court life, stared at the child in
voiceless amazement.

"I would so, Dame.  I might sit then of the rushes, let be the stools,
or in a fieldy nook amid the wild flowers.  And Dona Juana would not be
ever laying siege to me--with `Dona Constanca, you will soil your
robes!'--or, `Dona Constanca, you will rend your lace!'--or, `Dona
Constanca, you will dirty your fingers!'  Where is the good of being
rich and well-born, if I must needs sit under a cloth of estate [a
canopy] all the days of my life, and dare not so much as to lift a pin
from the floor, lest I dirty my puissant and royal fingers?  I would
liefer have a blacksmith to my grandsire than a King."

"Lady Custance!  With which of her Grace's scullion maidens have you
demeaned yourself to talk?"

"I will tell thee, when thou wilt answer when I was suffered to say so
much as `Good morrow' to any maid under the degree of a knight's
daughter."

"Holy Mary, be our aid!" interjected the horrified old lady.

"I am aweary, Dame Agnes," said the child, laying herself down in the
chair, as nearly at full length as its size would allow.  "I have played
the damosel [person of rank--used of the younger nobility of both sexes]
so long time, I would fain be a little maid a season.  I looked forth
from the lattice this morrow, and I saw far down in the base court a
little maid the bigness of me, washing of pans at a window.  Now,
prithee, have yon little maid up hither, and set her under the cloth of
estate in my velvets, and leave me run down to the base court and wash
the pans.  It were rare mirth for both of us."

Dame Agnes shook her head, as if words failed to express her feelings at
so unparalleled a proposal.

"What sangst thou as I was a-coming in?" asked the child, dropping a
subject on which she found no sympathy.

"'Twas but an old song, Lady, of your Grace's grandsire King Edward
(whom God assoil!  [pardon]) and his war of France."

"That was ere I was born.  Was it ere thou wert, Dame?"

"Truly no, Lady," said Agnes, smiling; "nor ere my Lord your father."

"What manner of lad was my Lord my father, when he was little?"

"Rare meek and gent, Lady,--for a lad, and his ire saved."  [Except when
he was angry.]

Dame Agnes saved her conscience by the last clause, for gentle as Prince
Edmund had generally been, he was as capable of going into a genuine
Plantagenet passion as any of his more fiery brothers.

"But a maiden must be meeker and gentler?"

"Certes, Damosel," said Agnes, spinning away.

The child reclined in her chair for a time in silence.  Perhaps it was
the suddenness of the next question which made the old lady drop her
distaff.

"Dame, who is Sir John de Wycliffe?"

The distaff had to be recovered before the question could be considered.

"Ask at Dame Joan, Lady," was the discreet reply.

"So I did; and she bade me ask at thee."

"A priest, methinks," said Agnes vaguely.

"Why, I knew that," answered the child.  "But what did he, or held he?--
for 'tis somewhat naughty, folk say."

"If it be somewhat naughty, Lady Custance, you should not seek to know
it."

"But my Lady my mother wagged her head, though she spake not.  So I want
to know."

"Then your best way, Damosel," suggested the troubled Agnes, "were to
ask at her Grace."

"I did ask at her."

"And what said she?"

"She said she would tell me another day.  But I want to know now."

"Her Grace's answer might have served you, Lady."

"It did not serve Ned.  He said he would know.  And so will I."

"The Lord Edward is two years your elder, Lady."

"Truth," said the child shrewdly, "and you be sixty years mine elder, so
you should know more than he by thirty."

Agnes could not help smiling, but she was sadly perplexed how to dismiss
the unwelcome topic.

"Let be.  If thou wilt not tell me, I will blandish some that will.
There be other beside thee in the university [world, universe].--What is
yonder bruit?"  [a noise.]

It was little Maude, flying in frantic terror, with Parnel in hot
pursuit, both too much absorbed to note in what direction they were
running.  The cause was not far to seek.

After Maude had recovered from the effects of her exposure in the
forest, she lighted unexpectedly on the little flat parcel which her
mother had charged her to keep.  It was carefully sewn up in linen, and
the sewing cost Maude some trouble to penetrate.  She reached the core
at last.  It was something thin and flat, with curious black and red
patterns all over it.  This would have been the child's description.  It
was, in truth, a vellum leaf of a manuscript, elaborately written, but
not illuminated, unless capitals in red ink can be termed illumination.
Remembering her mother's charge, to let "none beguile her of it," Maude
had striven to keep its possession a secret from every one, first from
the nuns, and then from Ursula Drew.  Strange to say, she had succeeded
until that morning.  It was to her a priceless treasure--all the more
inestimable because she could not read a word of it.  But on that
unlucky morning, Parnel had caught a glimpse of the precious parcel,
always hidden in Maude's bosom, and had immediately endeavoured to
snatch it from her.  Contriving to elude her grasp, yet fearful of its
repetition, Maude rushed out of the kitchen door, and finding that her
tormentor followed, fled across the base court, took refuge in an open
archway, dashed up a flight of steps, and sped along a wide corridor,
neither knowing nor caring that her flying feet were bearing her
straight in the direction of the royal apartments.  Parnel was the first
to see where they were going, and at the last corner she stayed her
pursuit, daring to proceed no further.  But Maude did not know that
Parnel was no longer on her track, and she fled wildly on, till her foot
tripped at an inequality in the stone passage, and she came down just
opposite an open door.

For a minute the child was too much stunned by her fall to think of any
thing.  Then, as her recollection returned, she cast a terrified glance
behind her, and saw that her pursuer had not yet appeared round the
corner.  And then, before she could rise, she heard a voice in front of
her.

"What is this, my child?"

Maude looked up, past a gorgeous spread of blue and gold drapery, into a
meek, quiet face--a face whose expression reassured and comforted her.
A calm, pale, oval face, in which were set eyes of sapphire blue, framed
by soft, light hair, and wearing a look of suffering, past or present.
Maude answered the gentle voice which belonged to that face as she might
have answered her mother.

"I pray you of pardon, Mistress!  Parnel, my fellow, ran after me and
affrighted me."

"Wherefore ran she after thee?"

"Because she would needs see what I bare in my bosom, and I was loth she
so should, lest she should do it hurt."

"What is that?  I will do it no hurt."

Maude looked up again, and felt as if she could trust that face with any
thing.  So merely saying--"You will not give it Parnel, Mistress?" she
drew forth her treasure and put it into the lady's hand.

"I will give it to none saving thine own self.  Dost know what it is,
little maid?"

"No, Mistress, in good sooth."

"How earnest by it?  'Tis a part of a book."

"My mother, that is dead, charged me to keep it; for it was all she had
for to give me.  I know not, in very deed, whether it be Charlemagne or
Arthur"--the only two books of which poor Maude had ever heard.  "But
an' I could meet with one that wist to read, and that were my true
friend, I would fain cause her to tell me what I would know thereabout."

"And hast no true friend?" inquired the lady.

"Not one," said Maude sorrowfully.

"Well, little maid, I can read, and I would be thy true friend.  What is
it thou wouldst fain know?"

"Why," said Maude, in an interested tone, "whether the great knight, of
whose mighty deeds this book doth tell, should win his 'trothed love at
the last, or no."

For the novel-reader of the fourteenth century was not very different
from the novel-reader of the nineteenth.  The lady smiled, but grew
grave again directly.  She sat down in one of the cushioned
window-seats, keeping Maude's treasured leaf in her hand.

"List, little maid, and thou shalt hear--that the great Knight, of whose
mighty prowess this book doth tell, shall win His 'trothed love at
last."

And she began to read--very different words from any Maude expected.
The child listened, entranced.

"And I saigh [saw] newe heuene and newe erthe; for the firste heuene and
the firste erthe wenten awei; and the see is not now.  And I ioon [John]
saigh the hooli citee ierusalim newe comynge doun fro heuene maad redi
of god as a wyf ourned to hir husbonde.  And I herde a greet voice fro
the trone seiynge [saying], lo a tabernacle of god is with men, and he
schal dwelle with hem, and thei schulen be his peple, and he, god with
hem, schal be her [their] god.  And god schal wipe awei ech teer fro the
ighen [eyes] of hem, and deeth schal no more be, neithir mournyng
neither criyng neither sorewe schal be ouer, whiche thing is firste
[first things] wenten awei.  And he seide that sat in the trone, lo I
make alle thingis newe.  And he seide to me, write thou, for these
wordis ben [are] moost feithful and trewe.  And he seide to me, it is
don, I am alpha and oo [omega] the bigynnyng and ende, I schal ghyue
[give] freli of the welle of quyk [quick, living] water to him that
thirstith.  He that schal ouercome schal welde [possess] these thingis,
and I schal be god to him, and he schal be sone to me.  But to ferdful
men, and unbileueful, and cursid, and manquelleris, and fornicatours,
and to witchis and worschiperis of ydols and to alle lyeris the part of
hem schal be in the pool brenynge with fyer and brymstoon, that is the
secounde deeth.  And oon [one] cam of the seuene aungelis hauynge violis
ful of seuene the laste ueniauncis [vengeances, plagues], and he spak
with me and seide, come thou and I schal schewe to thee the spousesse
[bride] the wyf of the lombe.  And he took me up in spirit into a greet
hill and high, and he schewide to me the hooli cite ierusalem comynge
doun fro heuene of god, hauynge the cleerte [glory] of god; and the
light of it lyk a precious stoon as the stoon iaspis [jasper], as
cristal.  And it hadde a wall greet and high hauynge twelue ghatis
[gates], and in the ghatis of it twelue aungelis and names writen yn
that ben the names of twelue lynagis [lineages, tribes] of the sones of
israel.  Fro the eest three ghatis, and fro the north three ghatis, and
fro the south three ghatis, and fro the west three ghatis.  And the wall
of the citee hadde twelue foundamentis, and in hem the twelue names of
twelue apostlis and of the lombe.  And he that spak with me hadde a
goldun mesure of a rehed [reed] that he schulde mete the citee and the
ghatis of it and the wall.  And the citee was sett in a square, and the
lengthe of it is so mych as mych as is the brede [breadth], and he mat
[meted, measured] the citee with the rehed bi furlongis twelue
thousyndis, and the highthe and the lengthe and breede of it ben euene.
And he maat [meted, measured] the wallis of it of an hundride and foure
and fourti cubitis bi mesure of man, that is, of an aungel.  And the
bilding of the wall thereoff was of the stoon iaspis and the citee it
silff was cleen gold lyk cleen glas.  And the foundamentis of the wal of
the cite weren ourned [adorned] with al precious stoon, the firste
foundament iaspis, the secound saphirus, the thridde calsedonyus, the
fourthe smaragdus [emerald], the fifthe sardony [sardonyx], the sixte
sardyus [ruby], the seuenthe crisolitus, the eighthe berillus, the
nynthe topasius, the tenthe crisopassus, the elleuenthe iacinctus
[jacinth], the tweluethe amiatistus [amethyst].  And twelue ghatis ben
twelue margaritis [pearls] bi ech [each], and ech ghate was of ech
[each] margarite and the streetis of the citee weren cleen gold as of
glas ful schinynge.  And I saigh no temple in it, for the lord god
almyghti and the lomb is temple of it, and the citee hath not nede of
sunne neither moone that thei schine in it, for the cleerite of god
schal lightne it, and the lombe is the lanterne of it, and the kyngis of
erthe schulen bringe her glorie and onour into it.  And the ghatis of it
schulen not be closid bi dai, and nyght schal not be there, and thei
schulen bringe the glorie and onour of folkis into it, neither ony man
defouled and doynge abomynacioun and leesyng [lying] schal entre into
it, but thei that ben writun in the book of lyf and of the lombe."

When the soft, quiet voice ceased, it was like the sudden cessation of
sweet music to the enchanted ears of little Maude.  The child was very
imaginative, and in her mental eyes the City had grown as she listened,
till it now lay spread before her--the streets of gold, and the gates of
pearl, and the foundations of precious stones.  Of any thing typical or
supernatural she had not the faintest idea.  In her mind it was at once
settled that the City was London, and yet was in some dreamy way
Jerusalem; for of any third city Maude knew nothing.  The King, of
course, had his Palace there; and a strong desire sprang up in the
child's mind to know whether the royal mistress, who was to her a kind
of far-off fairy queen, had a palace there also.  If so--but no! it was
too good to be true that Maude would ever go to wash the golden pans and
diamond dishes which must be used in that City.

"Mistress!" said Maude to her new friend, after a short silence, during
which both were thinking deeply.

The lady brought her eyes down to the child from the sky, where they had
been fixed, and smiled a reply to the appeal.

"Would you tell me, of your grace, whether our Lady mistresshood's
graciousness hath in yonder city a dwelling?"

Maude wondered exceedingly to see tears slowly gather in the sapphire
eyes.

"God grant it, little maid!" was, to her, the incomprehensible answer.

"And if so were, Mistress, counteth your Madamship that our said
puissant Lady should ever lack her pans cleansed yonder?"

"Wherefore, little maid?" asked the lady very gently.

"Because, an' I so might, I would fain dwell in yonder city," said
Maude, with glittering eyes.

"And thy work is to cleanse pans?"

Little Maude sighed heavily.  "Ay, yonder is my work."

"Which thou little lovest, as methinks."

"Should you love it, Mistress, think you?" demanded Maude.

"Truly, little maid, that should I not," answered the lady.  "Now tell
me freely, what wouldst liefer do?"

"Aught that were clean and fair and honest!"  [pretty] said Maude
confidentially, her eyes kindling again.  "An' they lack any 'prentices
in that City, I would fain be bound yonder.  Verily, I would love to
twine flowers, or to weave dovecotes [the golden nets which confined
ladies' hair], or to guard brave gowns with lace, and the like of that,
an' I could be learned.  Save that, methinks, over there, I would be
ever and alway a-gazing from the lattice."

"Wherefore?"

"And yet I wis not," added Maude, thinking aloud.  "Where the streets be
gold, and the gates margarites, what shall the gowns be?"

"Pure, bright stones [see Note 3], little maid," said the lady.  "But
there be no 'prentices yonder."

"What! be they all masters?" said the child.

"`A kingdom and priests,'" she said.  "But there be no 'prentices,
seeing there is no work, save the King's work."

Little Maude wondered privately whether that were to sew stars upon
sunbeams.

"But there shall not enter any defouled thing into that City," pursued
the lady seriously; "no leasing, neither no manner of wrongfulness."

Little Maude's face fell considerably.

"Then I could not go to cleanse the pans yonder!" she said sorrowfully.
"I did tell a lie once to Mistress Drew."

"Who is Mistress Drew?" enquired the lady.

The child looked up in astonishment, wondering how it came to pass that
any one living in Langley Palace should not know her who, to Maude's
apprehension, was monarch of all she surveyed--inside the kitchen.

"She is Mistress Ursula Drew, that is over me and Parnel."

"Doth she cleanse pans?" said the lady smilingly.

"Nay, verily!  She biddeth us."

"I see--she is queen of the kitchen.  And is there none over her?"

"Ay, Master Warine."

"And who is over Master Warine?"

A question beyond little Maude's power to answer.

"The King must be, of force," said she meditatively.  "But who is else--
saving his gracious mastership and our Lady her mistresshood--in good
sooth I wis not."

The lady looked at her for a minute with a smile on her lips.  Then, a
little to Maude's surprise, she clapped her hands.  A handsomely attired
woman--to the child's eyes, the counterpart of the lady who had been
talking with her--appeared in the doorway.

"Senora!" she said, with a reverence.

The two ladies thereupon began a conversation, in a language totally
incomprehensible to little Maude.  They were both Spanish by birth, and
they were speaking their own tongue.  They said:--

"Dona Juana, is there any vacancy among my maids?"

"Senora, we live to fulfil your august pleasure."

"Do you think this child could be taught fine needlework?"

"The Infanta has only to command."

"I wish it tried, Dona Juana."

"I lie at the Infanta's feet."

The lady turned back to Maude.

"Thy name, little maid?" she gently asked.

"Maude, and your servant, Mistress," responded the child.

"Then, little Maude, have here thy treasure"--and she held forth the
leaf to her--"and thy wish.  Follow this dame, and she will see if thou
canst guard gowns.  If so be, and thou canst be willing and gent,
another may cleanse the pans, for thou shalt turn again to the kitchen
no more."

Little Maude clasped her hands in ecstasy.

"Our Lady Mary, and Peter and Paul, bless your Ladyship's mistresshood!
Be you good enough for to ensure me of the same?"

"Thou shalt not win back, an' thou do well," repeated the lady, smiling.
"Now follow this dame."

Dona Juana was not at all astonished.  Similar sudden transformations
were comparatively of frequent occurrence at that time; and to call in
question any act of the King of Castilla's daughter would have been in
her eyes the most impossible impropriety.  She merely noted mentally the
extremely dirty state of Maude's frock, calculated how long it would
take to make her three new ones, wondered if she would be very
troublesome to teach, and finally asked her if she had any better dress.
Maude owned that she possessed a serge one for holidays, upon which
Dona Juana, after a minute's hesitation, looked back into the room she
had left, and said, "Alvena!"  A lively-looking woman, past girlhood in
age, but retaining much of the character, answered the call.

"Hie unto Mistress Ursula Drew, that is over the kitchen, and do her to
wit that her Grace's pleasure is to advance Maude, the scullion, unto
room [situation] of tire-woman; bid her to give thee all that 'longeth
unto the maid, and bear it hither."

Alvena departed on her errand, and Maude followed Dona Juana into fairy
land.  Gorgeous hangings covered the walls; here and there a soft mossy
carpet was spread over the stone floor--for it was not the time of year
for rushes.  The guide's own dress--crimson velvet, heavily
embroidered--was a marvel of art, and the pretty articles strewn on the
tables were wonders of the world.  They had passed through four rooms
ere Maude found her tongue.

"Might it like your Madamship," she asked timidly, her curiosity at last
overcoming her reserve, though she felt less at home with Dona Juana
than with the other lady, "to tell me the name of the fair mistress that
did give me into your charge?"

"That is our Lady's Grace, maiden," said Juana rather stiffly, "the Lady
Infanta Dona Isabel, Countess of Cambridge."

"What, she that doth bear rule over us all?" said Maude amazedly.

"She," replied Juana.

"Had I wist the same, as wot the saints, I had been sore afeard,"
responded Maude.  "And what call men your Grace's Ladyship, an' I may
know?"

Dona Juana condescended to smile at the child's simplicity.

"My name is Juana Fernandez," she said.  "Thou canst call me Dame Joan."

At this point the hangings were suddenly lifted, and something which
seemed to Maude the very Queen of the Fairies crept out and stood before
them.  Juana stopped and courtesied, an act which Maude was too
fascinated to imitate.

"Whither go you, Dona Juana?" asked the vision.  "In good sooth, this is
the very little maid I saw a-washing the pans.  Art come to sit under
the cloth of estate in my stead?"

Little Maude gazed on her Fairy Queen, and was silent.

"What means your Grace, Dona Constanca?" asked Juana.

"What is thy name, and wherefore earnest hither?" resumed Constance,
still addressing herself to Maude.

"Maude," said the child shyly.

"Maude!  That is a pretty name," pronounced the little Princess.

"The Senora Infanta, your Grace's mother, will have me essay to learn
the maid needlework," added Juana in explanation.

"Leave me learn her!" said Constance eagerly.  "I can learn her all I
know; and I am well assured I can be as patient as you, Dona Juana."

"At your Ladyship's feet," responded Juana quietly, using her customary
formula.  She felt the suggestion highly improper and exceedingly
absurd, but she was far too great a courtier to say so.

"Come hither!" said Constance gleefully, beckoning to Maude.  "Sue
[follow] thou me unto Dame Agnes de La Marche her chamber.  I would fain
talk with thee."

Maude glanced at Juana for permission.

"Sue thou the Senorita Dona Constanca," was the reply.  "Be thou ware
not to gainsay her in any thing."

There was little need of the warning, for Maude was completely
enthralled.  She followed her Fairy Queen in silence into the room where
Dame Agnes still sat spinning.

"Sit thou down on yonder stool," said Constance.  "My gracious Ladyship
will take this giant's chair.  (I have learned my lesson, Dame Agnes.)
Now--where is thy mother?"

"A fathom underground."

"Poor Maude! hast no mother?--And thy father?"

"Never had I."

"And thy brethren and sustren?"  [Sisters.]

"Ne had I never none."

"Maiden!" interjected Dame Agnes, "wist not how to speak unto a damosel
of high degree?  Thou shalt say `Lady' or `Madam.'"

"`Lady' or `Madam,'" repeated Maude obediently.

"How long hast washed yonder pans?" asked Constance, leaning her head on
the arm of the chair.

"`Lady' or `Madam,'" answered Maude, remembering her lesson, "by the
space of ten months."

"The sely hilding!"  [sely=simple, hilding=young person of either sex]
exclaimed Agnes; while Constance flung herself into another attitude,
and laughed with great enjoyment.

"Flyte [scold] her not, Dame Agnes.  I do foresee she and I shall be
great friends."

"Lady Custance!  The dirt under your feet is no meet friend ne fellow
[companion] for the like of you."

"Truly, no, saving to make pies thereof," laughed the little Princess.
"Nathless, take my word for it, Maude and I shall be good friends."

Was there a recording angel hovering near to note the words?  For the
two lives, which had that day come in contact, were to run thenceforth
side by side so long as both should last in this world.

But the little Princess was soon tired of questioning her new
acquaintance.  She sauntered away ere long in search of some more novel
amusement, and Dame Agnes desired Maude to change her dress, and then to
return to the ante-chamber, there to await the orders of Dame Joan, as
Dona Juana was termed by all but the Royal Family.  Maude obeyed, and in
the ante-chamber she found, not Juana, but Alvena [a fictitious person],
and another younger woman, whom she subsequently heard addressed as
Mistress Sybil [a fictitious person].

"So thou shalt be learned?"  [you have to be taught] said Alvena, as her
welcome to Maude.  "Come, look hither on this gown.  What is it?"

"'Tis somewhat marvellous shene!"  [bright] said Maude, timidly stroking
the glossy material.

Alvena only laughed, apparently enjoying the child's ignorance; but
Sybil said gently, "'Tis satin, little maid."

"Is it for our Lady's Grace?" asked Maude.

"Ay, when 'tis purfiled," replied Alvena.

"Pray you, Mistress Alvena, what is `purfiled?'"

"Why, maid!  Where hast dwelt all thy life?  `Purfiled' signifieth
guarded with peltry."

"But under your good allowance, Mistress Alvena, what is `peltry'?"

"By my Lady Saint Mary! heard one ever the like?"

"Peltry," quietly explained Sybil, "is the skin of beast with the
dressed fur thereon--such like as minever, and gris [marten], and the
like."

"Thurstan," said Alvena suddenly, turning to a little errand boy [a
fictitious person] who sat on a stool in the window, and whose especial
business it was to do the bidding of the Countess's waiting-women, "Hie
thee down to Adam [a fictitious person] the peltier [furrier.  Ladies of
high rank kept a private furrier in the household], and do him to wit
that the Lady would have four ells of peltry of beasts ermines for the
bordure of her gown of blue satin that is in making.  The peltry shall
be of the breadth of thine hand, and no lesser; and say unto him that it
shall be of the best sort, and none other.  An' he send me up such evil
gear as he did of gris for the cloak of velvet, he may look to see it
back with a fardel [parcel] of flyting lapped [wrapped] therein.  Haste,
lad! and be back ere my scissors meet."

Thurstan disappeared, and Alvena threw herself down on the settle while
she waited for her messenger.

"Ay me!  I am sore aweary of all this gear--snipping, and sewing, and
fitting.  If I would not as lief as forty shillings have done with
broidery and peltry, then the moon is made of green cheese.  Is that
strange unto thee, child?"

"Verily, Mistress Alvena, methinks you be aweary of Fairy Land," said
little Maude in surprise.

"Callest this Fairy Land?" laughed Alvena.  "If so be, child, I were
fain to dwell a season on middle earth."

"In good sooth, so count I it," answered Maude, allowing her eyes to
rove delightedly among all the marvels of the ante-chamber, "and the
Lady Custance the very Queen of Faery."

"The Lady Custance is made of flesh and blood, trust me.  An' thou hadst
had need to bear her to her bed, kicking and striving all the way, when
she was somewhat lesser than now, thou shouldst be little tempted to
count her immortal."

"An' it like you, Mistress Alvena--"

"Marry, Master Thurstan, it liketh me right well to see thee back
without the peltry wherefor I sent thee!  Where hast loitered, thou
knave?"

"Master Adam saith he is unfurnished at this time of the peltry you
would have, Mistress, and without fox will serve your turn--"

"Fox me no fox, as thou set store by thy golden locks!" said Alvena,
advancing towards the luckless Thurstan in a threatening attitude, with
the scissors open in her hand.  "I'll fox him, and thee likewise.  Go
and bring me the four ells of peltry of beasts ermines, and that of the
best, or thou shalt wake up to-morrow to find thy poll as clean as the
end of thine ugsome [ugly] nose."

Poor Thurstan, who was only a child of about ten years old, mistook
Alvena's jesting for earnest, and began to sob.

"But what can I, Mistress?" urged the terrified urchin.  "Master Adam
saith he hath never a nail thereof, never name an ell."

"Alvena, trouble not the child," interposed Sybil.

But Sybil's gentle intercession would have availed little if it had not
been seconded by the unexpected appearance of the only person whom
Alvena feared.

"What is this?" inquired Dona Juana, in a tone of authority.

Thurstan, with a relieved air, subsided into his recess, and Alvena,
with a rather abashed one, began to explain that no ermine could be had
for the trimming of the blue satin dress.

"Then let it wait," decided the Mistress--for this was Juana's official
title.  "Alvena, set the child a-work, and watch that she goeth rightly
thereabout.  Sybil, sue thou me."

The departure of Juana and Sybil, for which Maude was privately rather
sorry, set Alvena's tongue again at liberty.  She set Maude at work, on
a long hem, which was not particularly interesting; and herself began to
pin some trimming on a tunic of scarlet cloth.

"Pray you, Mistress Alvena," asked Maude at length--wedging her question
in among a quantity of small-talk--"hath the Lady Custance brethren or
sustren?"

"Sustren, not one; and trust me, child, an' thou knewest her as I do,
thou shouldst say one of her were enough.  But she hath brethren twain--
the Lord Edward, which is her elder, and the Lord Richard, her younger.
The little Lord Richard is a sweet child as may lightly be seen; and
dearly the Lady Custance loveth him.  But as for the Lord Edward--an' he
can do an ill turn, trust him for it."

"And what like is my Lord our master?" asked Maude.

Alvena laughed.  "Sawest ever Ursula Drew bake bread, child?"

"Oh ay!" sighed the ex-scullery-maid.

"And hast marked how the dough, ere he be set in the oven, should take
any pattern thou list to set him on?"

"Ay."

"Then thou hast seen what the Lord Earl is like."

"But who setteth pattern on the Lord Earl?" inquired Maude, looking up
in some surprise.

"All the world, saving my Lady his wife, and likewise in his wrath.
Hast ever seen one of our Princes in a passion of ire?"

"Never had I luck yet to see one of their Graces," said Maude
reverently.

"Then thou wist not what a man _can_ be like when he is angered."

"But not, I ensure me, the Lady Custance!" objected Maude, loth to
surrender her Fairy Queen.

"Wait awhile and see!" was the ominous answer.

"Methought she were sweet and fair as my Lady her mother," said Maude in
a disappointed tone.

"`Sweet and fair'!--and soft, is my Lady Countess.  Why, child, she
should hardly say this kirtle were red, an' Dame Joan told her it were
green.  Thou mayest do aught with her, an' thou wist how to take her."

"How take you her?" demanded Maude gravely.

"By 'r Lady! have yonder fond [foolish] books of the Lutterworth parson
at thy tongue's end, and make up a sad face, and talk of faith and grace
and forgiving of sins and the like, and mine head to yon shred of tinsel
an' she give thee not a gown within the se'nnight."

"But, Mistress Alvena! that were to be an hypocrite, an' you felt it
not."

"Hu-te-tu!  We be all hypocrites.  Some of us feign for one matter, and
some for other.  I wis somewhat thereabout, child; for ere I came hither
was I maid unto the Lady Julian [a fictitious person], recluse of
Tamworth Priory.  By our dear Lady her girdle! saw I nothing of
hypocrisy there!"

"You never signify, Mistress, that the blessed recluse was an
hypocrite?"

"The blessed recluse was mighty fond of sweetbreads," said Alvena,
taking a pin out of her mouth, "and many an one smuggled I in to her
under my cloak, when Father Luke thought she was a-fasting on bread and
water.  And one clereful [glorious] night had we, she and I, when one
that I knew had shot me a brace of curlews, and coming over moorland by
the church, he dropped them--all by chance, thou wist!--by the door of
the cell.  And I, oping the door--to see if it rained, trow!--found
these birds a-lying there.  Had we no supper that night!--and 'twas a
vigil even.  The blessed martyr or apostle (for I mind me not what day
it were) forgive us!"

"But how dressed you them?" said Maude.

Alvena stopped in her fitting and pinning to laugh.

"Thou sely maid!  The sacristan was my mother's brother."

Maude looked up as if she did not see the inference.

"I roasted them in the sacristy, child.  The priests were all gone home
to bed; and so soon as the ground were clear, mine uncle rapped of the
door; and the Lady Julian came after me to the sacristy, close lapped in
my cloak--"

How long Alvena might have proceeded to shock Maude's susceptibilities
and outrage her preconceived opinions, it is impossible to say; for at
this moment Thurstan opened the door and announced in a rather
consequential manner--

"The Lord Le Despenser, to visit the Lady Custance, and Dame Margaret
his sister."

Maude lifted her eyes to the height of Alvena, and found that she had to
lower them to her own.  A young lady of about sixteen entered, dressed
in a rose-coloured silk striped with gold, and a gold-coloured mantle
lined with the palest blue.  She led by the hand a very pretty little
boy of ten or eleven years of age, attired in a velvet tunic of that
light, bright shade of apple-green which our forefathers largely used.
It was edged at the neck by a little white frill.  He carried in his
hand a black velvet cap, from which depended a long and very full red
plume of ostrich feathers.  His stockings were white silk, his boots red
leather, fastened with white buttons.  The brother and sister were
alike, but the small, delicately-cut features of both were the more
delicate in the boy, and on his dark brown hair was a golden gloss which
was not visible on that of his sister.

"Give you good morrow, Mistress Alvena," said Dame Margaret pleasantly.
"The Lady Custance--may one have speech of her?"

Before Alvena could reply, the curtain which shrouded the door leading
to the Countess's rooms was drawn aside, and Constance came forward
herself.

"Good morrow, Meg," said she, kissing the young lady.  "Thou hast
mistaken thy road, Tom."

"Wherefore so?" asked Dame Margaret; for her little brother was silent,
except that he offered a kiss in his turn, and looked rather
disconcerted when no notice was taken of it.

"Why, Ned is playing quoits below, and Tom should have bidden with him.
Come hither, Meg; I have a pretty thing to show thee."

"But Tom came to see your Ladyship."

"Well, he has seen me!" said the little Princess impatiently.  "I love
not lads.  They are fit for nought better than playing quoits.  Let them
go and do it."

"What, Dickon?" said Margaret, smiling.

"Oh, Dickon!" returned Constance in a changed tone.  "But Tom is not
Dickon.  Neither is he an angel, I wis, for I heard him gainsay once his
preceptor."

Tom looked very unhappy at this raking up of bygone misdeeds.

"Methinks your Ladyship is in ill humour this morrow," said Margaret.
"Be not so hard on the lad, for he loveth you."

"When I love him, I will do him to wit," said Constance cuttingly.
"Come, Meg."

Dame Margaret obeyed the command, but she kept hold of the hand of her
little brother.  When they were gone, Alvena laid down her work and
laughed.

"Thy Queen of Faery is passing gracious, Maude."

"She scarce seemed to matter the lad," was Maude's reply.

"Yet she hath sworn to do his bidding all the days of her life," said
Alvena.

"Why," said Maude, looking up in surprise, "would you say the Lady
Custance is troth-plight unto this imp?"  [Little boy.]

"Nay, she is wedded wife.  'Tis five years or more sithence they were
wed.  My Lady Custance had years four, and my Lord Le Despenser five.
They could but just syllable their vows.  And I mind me, the Lady
Custance stuck at `obey,' and she had to be threatened with a
fustigation [beating, whipping] ere she would go on."

"But who dared threaten her?" inquired Maude.

"Marry, my Lord her father, which fell into a fit of ire to see her
perversity.--There goeth the dinner bell; lap thy work, child.  For me,
I am well fain to hear it."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  The child was Constance, only daughter of Edmund Duke of York
(seventh son of Edward the Third) and Isabel of Castilla.

Note 2.  Agnes de La Marche had been the nurse of two of Edward the
Third's sons, Lionel and Edmund.  She lived to old age, and was long in
receipt of a pension from the Crown for her former service.

Note 3.  Wycliffe's rendering of Revelations sixteen 6.  In various
places he follows what are now determined to be the best and most
ancient authorities.



CHAPTER THREE.

STRANGE TALES.

  "Oh stay me not, thou holy friar!
  Oh stay me not, I pray!
  No drizzling rain that falls on me
  Can wash my fault away."--Bishop Percy.

On entering the banquet-hall of Langley Palace, Maude the tire-maiden
found herself promoted to a very different position from that which had
been filled by Maude the scullion.  Her former place had been near the
door, and far below that important salt-cellar which was then the
table-indicator of rank.  She was directed now to take her seat as the
lowest of the Countess's maidens, on a form just opposite the
salt-cellar, which was more than half-way up the hall.  Maude had hardly
sat down when her next neighbour below accosted her in a familiar voice.

"Why, little Maude!  I looked for thee in vain at yon board end, and I
was but now marvelling what had befallen thee.  How earnest up hither?"
Maude smiled back at Bertram Lyngern.

"It pleased the Lady's Grace to make me of her especial following."

"Long life to the Lady!--Now will I cause thee to wit who be all my
friends.  This on my left hand is Master Hugh Calverley, Mistress Maude
(for thou art now of good degree, and must be spoken unto belike); he is
mine especial friend, and a very knight-errant in succour of all unceli
[distressed, unhappy] damsels."

"And who is he that is next unto the Lady Custance?"

"On her right hand, the Lord Edward, and the Lord Richard at her left--
her brethren both."

Lord Richard pleased Maude.  He was a winning little fellow of eight
years old.  But Edward she disliked instinctively:--a tall, handsome boy
of twelve, but completely spoiled by the supercilious curl of his lip
and the proud carriage of his head.

"And the Lord Earl?" she whispered to Bertram, who pointed out his royal
master.

He was very tall, and extremely slender; not exactly ungraceful, but he
gave the impression that his arms and legs were perpetually in his way.
In fact, he was a nervous man, always self-conscious, and therefore
never natural nor at ease.  His hair was dark auburn; and in his lower
lip there was a tremulous fulness which denoted at once great
good-nature and great indecision.

It is a singular fact that the four English Princes who have borne the
name of Edmund have all shared this character, of mingled gentleness and
weakness; but in each the weakness was more and the amiability less,
until the dual character terminated in this last of our royal Edmunds.
He was the obedient servant of any person who chose to take the trouble
to be his master.  And there was one person who found it worth his while
to take that trouble.  This individual--the Earl's youngest brother--
will come across our path presently.

The dinner to-day was more elaborate than usual, for there were several
guests present.  Since the host was a Prince, the birds presented were
served whole; had both he and his guests been commoners, they would have
been "chopped on gobbets."  More interesting than any fictitious
delineation on my part will be a genuine _menu_ of the period, "The
purveyance made for King Richard, being with the Duke of Lancaster at
the Bishop's Palace of Durham at London," of course accompanied by their
suites.  That the suites were of no small size we gather from the
provision made.  It consisted of "14 oxen lying in salt, 2 oxen fresh,
120 heads of sheep fresh, 120 carcases of sheep fresh, 12 boars, 14
calves, 140 pigs; 300 marrow-bones, of lard and grease enough, 3 tons of
salt venison, 3 does of fresh venison.  The poultry:--50 swans, 210
geese, 50 capons of grease (fat capons), 8 dozen other capons, 60 dozen
hens, 200 couple conies (rabbits), 4 pheasants, 5 herons and bitterns, 6
kids, 5 dozen pullets for jelly, 12 dozen to roast, 100 dozen peions
(peacocks), 12 dozen partridges, 8 dozen rabbits, 10 dozen curlews, 12
dozen brewes (doubtful), 12 cranes, wild fowl enough: 120 gallons milk,
12 gallons cream, 40 gallons of curds, 3 bushels of apples, eleven
thousand eggs."

This tremendous supply was served in the following manner:

"The first course:--Venison with furmety; a potage called viaundbruse
(broth made with pork and onions); heads of boars; great flesh (probably
roast joints); swans roasted, pigs roasted; crustade lumbard (custard)
in paste; and a subtlety."  (The subtlety was an ornamental dish,
representing a castle, ship, human figures, etcetera.)

"The second course:--A potage called jelly (jellies of meat or fish were
served as entrees); a potage of blandesore (a white soup); pigs roasted;
cranes roasted; pheasants roasted; herons roasted; chickens roasted;
breme (possibly pork broth); tarts; brokebrawn; conies roasted; and a
subtlety.

"The third course:--Potage brewet of almonds (another white soup, made
with almonds and rabbit or chicken broth); sewde lumbarde (probably some
kind of stew); venison roasted; chickens roasted; rabbits roasted;
partridges roasted; peions roasted; quails roasted; larks roasted; payne
puff (a pudding); a dish of jelly; long fruits (a sweetmeat); and a
subtlety."

It must not be inferred that no vegetables were used, but simply that
they were not thought worth mention.  Our forefathers ate, either in
vegetable or salad, almost every green thing that grew.

Before Maude had been many days in her new position, she made various
discoveries--not all pleasant ones, and some at complete variance with
her own preconceived fancies.  In the first place she discovered that
her Fairy Queen, Constance, was neither more nor less than a spoiled
child.  While the young Princess's affections were very warm, she had
been little accustomed to defer to any wishes but her own or those of
her two brothers.  The pair of boys governed their sister, but they
swayed different sceptres.  Edward ruled by fear, Richard by love.
"Ned" must be attended to, because his wont was to make himself very
disagreeable if he were not; but "Dickon" must have every thing he
wanted, because Constance could not bear to deny her darling any thing.
Bertram told Maude, however, that nobody could be more fascinating than
Edward when he liked: the unfortunate item being that the happy
circumstance very rarely occurred.

But Bertram's information was not exhausted.

"Hast heard that the Lady of Buckingham cometh hither?"

"When?"  Maude whispered back.

"To-morrow, to sup and bide the night.  So thou mayest search her
following for thy Mistress Hawise."

"But shall all her following follow her?" inquired Maude.

"Every one, for she goeth anon unto her place in London to tarry the
winter, and shall be here on her way thither.  And hark thou, Maude! in
her train--as thou shalt see--is the fairest lady in all the world."

"And what name hath she?" was Maude's answer.

"The fair Lady de Narbonne, widow of Sir Robert de Narbonne, a good
knight and true, that fell in these late wars.  She hath but some twenty
years e'en now, and 'tis full three summers sithence his death."

"And what like is she?"

"Like the angels in Paradise!" said Bertram enthusiastically.  "I tell
thee, there is none like her in all the world."

Maude awaited the following evening with two-fold interest.  She might
possibly see Hawise, and she should certainly see some one who was like
the angels in Paradise.  The evening came, and with it the guests.  One
look at the Countess of Buckingham was enough.  She certainly did not
resemble the angels, unless they looked very cross and discontented.
Her good qualities were not apparent to Maude, for they consisted of two
coronets and an enormous fortune.  Her ladies were much more interesting
to Maude than herself.  The first who entered behind her was a stiff
middle-aged woman with dark hair.

"That is Dame Edusa," [A fictitious person] whispered Bertram, "the Lady
Mistress.  Here is Mistress Polegna--yonder little damsel with the dark
locks; and the high upright dame is Mistress Sarah.  She that cometh
after is the Lady de Say."

Not one of these was the golden-haired Cousin Hawise, whose years barely
numbered twenty.  Maude's eyes had come back in disappointment, when
Bertram touched her arm.

"Now, Maude--look now!  Look, the beauteous Lady de Narbonne!  [A
fictitious person.] Sawest ever maiden meet to be her peer?"

Maude looked, and saw a young girlish figure, splendidly attired,--a
rich red and white complexion, beautiful blue eyes, and a sunny halo of
shining fair hair.  But she saw as well, a cold, hard curve of the
delicate lips, a proud cynical expression in the handsome eyes, a bold,
forward manner.  Yes, Maude admitted, the Lady de Narbonne was
beautiful; yet she did not care to look at her.  Bertram was
disappointed.  And so was Maude, for all hope of finding Hawise had
disappeared.

When supper was over, the tables were lifted.  The festive board was at
this time literally a board or boards, which were simply set upon
trestles to form a table.  At the close of a meal, the tables were
reduced to their primitive elements, and boards and trestles were either
carried away, or heaped in one corner of the hall.  The dining-room was
thus virtually transmuted into the drawing-room, ceremony and precedence
being discarded for the rest of the evening--state occasions of course
excepted, and the royal persons present not being addressed unless they
chose to commence a conversation.

Maude kept pretty strictly to her corner all that evening.  She was
generally shy of strangers, and none of these were sufficiently
attractive to make her break through her usual habits.  Least attractive
of all, to her, was the lovely Lady de Narbonne.  Her light, airy ways,
which seemed to enchant the Earl's knights and squires, simply disgusted
Maude.  She was the perpetual centre of a group of frivolous idlers, who
dangled round her in the hope of leading her to a seat, or picking up a
dropped glove.  She laughed and chatted freely with them all,
distributing her smiles and frowns with entire impartiality--except in
one instance.  One member of the Earl's household never came within her
circle, and he was the only one whom she seemed at all desirous to
attract.  This was Hugh Calverley.  He held aloof from the bright lamp
around which all the other moths were fluttering, and Maude fancied that
he admired the queen of the evening as little as she did herself.

All at once, by no means to Maude's gratification, the lady chose to
rise and walk across the room to her corner.

"And what name hast thou, little maid?" she asked, with a light swing of
her golden pomander--the vinaigrette of the Middle Ages.

Maude had become very tired of being asked her name, the more so since
it was the manner in which strangers usually opened negotiations with
her.  She found it the less agreeable because she was conscious of no
right to any surname, her mother's being the only one she knew.  So she
answered "Maude" rather shortly.

"Maude--only Maude?"

"Only Maude.  Madam, might it like your Ladyship to tell me if you wit
of one Hawise Gerard anything?"

If the Lady de Narbonne would talk to her, Maude resolved to utilise the
occasion; though she felt there could be little indeed in common between
her gentle, modest cousin, and this far from retiring young widow.  That
they could not have been intimate friends Maude was sure; but
acquaintances they might be--and must be, unless the Lady de Narbonne
had been too short a time at Pleshy to know Hawise.  As Maude in
speaking lifted her eyes to the lady's face, she saw the smiling lips
grow suddenly grave, and the cold bright light die out of the beaming
eyes.

"Child," said the Lady de Narbonne seriously, "Hawise Gerard is dead."

"Woe is me!  I feared so much," answered Maude sorrowfully.  "And might
it please you, Madam, to arede [tell] me fully when she died, and how,
and where?"

"She died to thee, little maid, when she went to the Castle of Pleshy,"
was the unsatisfactory answer.

"May I wit no more, Madam?  Your Ladyship knew her, trow?"

"Once," said the lady, with a slight quiver of her lower lip,--"long,
long ago!"  And she suddenly turned her head, which had been for a
moment averted from Maude, round towards her.  "`When, and how, and
where?'" she repeated.  "Little maid, some dying is slower than men may
tell the hour, and there be graves that are not dug in earth.  Thy
cousin Hawise is dead and gone.  Forget her."

"That can I never!" replied Maude tenderly, as the memory of her dead
came fresh and warm upon her.

The Lady de Narbonne rose abruptly, and walked away, without another
word, to the further end of the room.  Half an hour later, Maude saw her
in the midst of a gay group, laughing and jesting in the cheeriest
manner.  Of what sort of stuff could the woman be made?

The Countess of Buckingham did not leave Langley until after dinner the
next day--that is to say, about eleven a.m.  A little before dinner, as
Maude, not being wanted at the moment, stood alone at the window of the
hall, leaning her arms on the wide window-ledge, a voice asked behind
her,--"Art yet thinking of Hawise Gerard?"

"I was so but this moment, Madam," replied Maude, turning round to meet
the eyes of the Lady de Narbonne, now quiet and grave enough.  "'Tis
little marvel, for I loved her dear."

"And love lasteth with thee--how long time?"

"Till death, assuredly," said Maude.  "What may lie beyond death I wis
nothing."

"Till what manner of death?  The resurrection, men say, shall give back
the dead.  But what shall give back a dead heart or a lost soul?  Can
thy love pass such death as this, Maude Gerard?"

"Madam, I said never unto your Ladyship that Hawise Gerard was kinswoman
of mine.  How wit you the same?"

A faint, soft smile, very unlike her usual one, so bright and cold,
flickered for a moment on the lips of the Lady de Narbonne.

"Not too far gone for that, Cousin Maude," she said.

"`Cousin'--Madam!  You are--"

"I am Avice de Narbonne, waiting-dame unto my Lady of Buckingham's
Grace.  I was Hawise Gerard, David Gerard's daughter."

"Hawise!  Thou toldest me she was dead!" cried Maude confusedly.

"That Hawise Gerard whom thou knewest is dead and gone, long ago.  Thou
wilt never see her again.  Thy mother Eleanor is not more dead than she;
but the one may return to thee on the resurrection morrow, and the other
never can.  Tell me now whether I could arede thee, as thou wouldst have
had it, how, or where, or when, thy cousin Hawise died?"

"Our dear Lady be thine aid, Hawise!  What has changed thee so sore?"
asked Maude, the tears running down her cheeks.

"Call me Avice, Maude.  Hawise is old-fashioned," said the lady coolly.

Maude seized her cousin's hands, and looking into her eyes, spoke as
girls of her age rarely speak, though they think frequently.

"Come back to me, Hawise Gerard!--from the dead, if thou wilt have it
so.  Cousin Hawise--fair, gent, shamefaced, loving, holy!--come back to
me, and speak with the olden voice, and give me to wit what terrible
thing hath been, to take away thyself, and leave but this instead of
thee!"

Maude's own earnestness was so intense, that she felt as if her
passionate words must have moved a granite mountain; but they fell cold
and powerless upon Avice de Narbonne.

"Look out into the dark this night, Maude, and call thy mother, and see
whether she will answer.  The dead _cannot_ come back.  I have no more
power to call back to thee the maiden I was of old, than thou.  Rest,
maid; and do what thou wilt and canst with that which is."

"What can I?" said Maude bitterly.  "At least thou canst tell me what
hath wrought this fearful change in thee."

"Can I?" replied Avice, seating herself on the window-seat, and
motioning her cousin to do the same.  "And what shall I say it were--
call it light or darkness, love or hate?  For six months after I left
home I was right woesome.  (It is all gone, Maude--the old cottage, and
the forge, and the elms--they razed them all!)  And then there came into
my life a fair false face, and a voice that spake well, and an heart
that was black as night.  And I trusted him, for I loved him.  Loved
him--ay, better than all the saints in Heaven!  I could have died to
save a pang of pain to him, and smiled in doing it.  But he was false,
false, false!  And on the day that I knew it--O that horrible day!--my
love turned to black hate within me.  I knelt and prayed that my wrong
should be avenged--that some sorrow should befal him.  But I never meant
that.  Holy Mary, Lady of Sorrows, thou knewest I never meant that!  And
that very night I knelt and prayed, he died on the field of battle far
away.  I knew not he was in danger till four days after.  When I so did,
I prayed as fervently for his safety.  The old love came back upon me,
and I could have rent the heavens if my weak hands had reached them, to
undo that fearful prayer.  But she heard me not--she, the Lady of Pity!
She had heard me once too well.  And fifteen days later, I knew that I
was a widow--that he had died that night, with none to pillow his head
or wipe the death-dews from his brow--died unassoiled, unatoned with
either God or me!  And I had done it.  Child, my heart was closed up
that day as with a wall of stone.  It will never open again.  It is not
my love that is dead--it is my heart."

"But, Hawise, hadst no masses sung for his soul?" asked Maude in loving
pity.

"Too late," she said, dropping her face upon her hands.  "Too late!"

"Too late for what?" softly inquired a third voice--so gently and
compassionately that no annoyance could be felt.

Avice was silent, and Maude answered for her.

"For the winning of a soul from Purgatory that hath passed thither
without housel ne chrism."

"Too late for the mercy of God?" replied Hugh Calverley gently.  "For
the housel and the chrism, they be mercies of man.  But the mercies of
God are infinite and unchangeable unto all such as grip hold on Jesu
Christ."

"Unto them that die in mortal sin?" said Avice, not lifting her head.

"All sin is mortal," said Hugh in the same quiet manner; "but for His
people, He hath made an end of sin, and hath `distreiede [destroyed]
deeth, and lightnide [brought to light] lyf.'"

"That is, for the saints?" said Maude sadly.

"Mistress, an' it had not been for the sinners, you and I must needs
have fared ill.  Who be saints saving they that were once sinners?"

"Soothly, Master Calverley, these be matters too high for me.  I am no
saint, God wot."

"Doth God wot that, Mistress Maude?  Then of a surety I am sorry for
you."

Maude was silent, though she thought it strange doctrine.  But Avice
said in a low voice, recurring to her former subject,--"You believe,
Master Calverley, that God can raise the dead; but think you that He can
quicken again to life an heart that is dead, and cold, and hard as
yonder stone?  Is there any again rising for such?"

"Madam, if no, there had been never none for neither you nor me.  We be
all dead souls by nature."

"Ay, afore baptism, so wit I; but what of mortal sin done after
baptism?"

"I speak but as I am learned, Madam," said Hugh modestly.  "I am younger
even than you, methinks, and far more witless.  But I have heard them
say that have been deep skilled, as methinks, in the ministeries
[mysteries] of God, that wherein it is said that `He mai save withouten
ende,' it scarce signifieth only afore baptism."

"Ah!" said Maude, with a sigh, "to do away sin done after baptism is a
mighty hard and grievous matter.  Good sooth, at my first communion,
this last summer, so abashed [nervous] was I, and in so painful bire
[confused haste], that I let drop the holy wafer upon the ground; and
for all I gat it again unbroke, and licked well with my tongue the stide
[spot] where it had fallen, Father Dominic [a fictitious person] said I
had done dreadful sin, and he caused me to crawl upon my knees all
around the church, and to say an hundred Ave Marys and ten Paternosters
at every altar.  And in very deed I was right sorrowful for mine ill
mischance; nor could I help the same, for I saw not the matter rightly.
But Father Dominic said our Lord should be right sore offenced with me,
and mine only hope lay in moving the mercy of our dear worthy Lady to
plead with Him.  If it be not wicked to say the same," added she
timidly, "I would God were not angered with us for such like small gear.
But I count our Lady heard me, sith Father Dominic was pleased to
absolve me at last."

"Will you give me leave to say a thing, Mistress Maude?"

"I pray you so do, Master Calverley."

"Then if the same hap should chance unto you again, I counsel you to
travail [trouble] yourself neither with Father Dominic nor our Lady, but
to go straight to our Lord Himself.  Maybe He were pleased to absolve
you something sooner than Father Dominic.  Look you, the priest died not
to atone God for your sins, neither our Lady did not.  And if it be, as
men do say, that commonly the mother is more fond [foolishly indulgent]
unto the child than any other, by reason she hath known more travail and
pain [labour] with him, then surely in like manner He that hath borne
death for our sins shall be more readier to assoil them than he that no
did."

These were bold words to speak in the year of grace 1385.  But the
Queen's squire, John Calverley, was one of those advanced Lollards of
whom there were very few, and his son had learned of him.  Even Wycliffe
himself would scarcely have dared to venture so far as this, until the
latter years of his life.  It takes long to convince men that no lesser
advocate is needed between them and the one Mediator with God.  And
where they are taught that "Mary is the human side of Jesus," the result
generally is that they lose sight of the humanity of Jesus altogether.

It was not, therefore, unnatural that Maude's answer should have
been,--"But, Master Calverley! so saying you should have no need of our
Lady."  She expected Hugh to reply by an indignant denial; and it
astounded her no little to hear him quietly accept the unheard-of
alternative.

"Do you as you list, Mistress Maude," he answered.  "For me, I am
content with our Lord."

"Well-a-day! methought all pity [piety] lay in worship of our Lady!"
said Maude, in that peculiar constrained tone which implies that the
speaker feels himself the infinitely distant superior of his antagonist.

"Mistress," was Hugh's answer, "I never said that I was content without
our Lord.  I lack an advocate, to the full as well as any; but Saint
Paul saith that `oo [one] God and a mediatour is of God and of men, a
man, Christ Jesu.'  And methinks he should be a sorry mediator that
lacked an advocate himself."

Avice had lifted her head, and had fixed her eyes intently on Hugh.  She
had said nothing more; she was learning.

"Likewise saith He," resumed Hugh, "that `no man cometh to the Fadir but
by me.'  Again, `no man may come to me but if the Fadir that hath sente
me drawe him:' yet `all thing that the Fadir gyueth me schal come to
me.'"

Avice spoke at last.

"`All thing given' and none other?  Then without we be given, we may not
come.  And how shall a man wit so much?"

"Methinks, Madam," said Hugh, thoughtfully, "that if a man be willing to
come, and to give himself, he hath therein witness that he was given of
the Father."

"But to give himself wholly unto God," added Maude, "signifieth that he
shall take no more pleasure in this life?"

"Try it," responded Hugh, "and see if it signifieth not rather that a
man shall enter into joys he never knew aforetime.  God's gifts to us
prevent our gifts to Him."

"Lady Avice!  Dame Edusa hath asked twice where you be," said Polegna,
running into the hall.  "The bell shall sound in an other minute, and
our Lady maketh no tarrying after dinner."

So the trio were parted.  There was no opportunity after dinner for
anything beyond a farewell, and Maude, with her heart full of many
thoughts, went back to her sewing in the antechamber.

About an hour after Maude had resumed her work, Constance strolled into
the room in search of amusement.  She looked at the crimson tunic and
black velvet skirt which were in making for her own wear at the coming
Easter festival; gazed out of the window for ten minutes; sat and
watched Maude work for about five; and at last, a bright idea striking
her, put it into action.

"Dona Juana! lacked you Maude a season?"

Half an hour previous, Juana had been urging on her workwomen with
reminders that very little time was left before the dresses must be
ready; but Maude had learned now that in the eyes of the Mistress,
Constance's will was law, and she therefore received with little
surprise the order to "sue the Senorita."  Resigning her work into the
hands of Sybil, Maude followed her imperious little lady into the
chamber of Dame Agnes de La Marche, who was busy arranging fresh flax
for her spinning.

"Your fingers be busy, Dame Agnes," observed the little Princess.  "Is
your tongue at leisure?"

"Both be alway at your service, Damosel," replied the courtly old lady.

"Then, I pray you, tell to me and Maude your fair story of the
Lyonesse."

"With a very good will."

"Then, prithee, set about it," said Constance, ensconcing herself in the
big chair.  "Sit thou on that stool, Maude."

The old lady took her distaff, now ready, and sat down, smiling at the
impatience of the capricious child.

"Once upon a time," she began, "the ending of the realm of England was
not that stide [place] which men now call the Land's End in Cornwall.
Far beyond, even as far as the Isles of Scilly, stretched the fair green
plains: a kingdom lay betwixt the two, and men called it La Lyonesse.
And in the good olden days, when Arthur was king, the Lyonesse had her
prince, and on her plains and hills were fair rich cities, and through
her forests pricked good knights on the quest of the Holy Grail, [see
note 2] that none, save unsinning eyes, might ever see.  For of all the
four-and-twenty Knights of the Round Table, none ever saw the Holy Grail
save one, and that was Sir Galahad, that was pure of heart and clean of
life.  Howbeit, one night came a mighty tempest.  The sea raged and
roared on the Cornish coast, and dashed its waters far up the rocks,
washing the very walls of the Castle of Tintagel.  And they that saw
upon that night told after, that there came one wild flash of lightning
that lightened sky and earth; and men looked and saw by its light,
statelily standing, the rich cities and green forests of the Lyonesse;
and then came black darkness, and a roar, and a crash, and a rending, as
though all the rocks and the mountains should be torent [violently torn
asunder]; and then another wild flash lightened sky and earth, and men
looked, and the rich cities and green forests of the Lyonesse were
gone."

Maude was listening entranced, with parted lips; Constance carelessly,
as if she knew all about it beforehand, and were chiefly amusing herself
by watching the rapt face of her fellow-listener.

"Long years thereafter," resumed Dame Agnes, "ay, and even now, men said
and say, that at times ye may yet hear the sound and see the sight of
the drowned cities of the Lyonesse.  Ever sithence that tempestuous
night, the deep green sea lies heavy on the bosom of the lost land; and
no man of unpure heart, nor of evil life, ne unbaptised, ne unshriven,
may see nor hear.  But if one of Christian blood, a christened man, pure
of heart and clean in life, that is newly shriven, whether man or maid,
will sail forth at midnight over the green sea, and when he cometh to
the place where lieth the Lyonesse, will bend him down from the boat,
and look and listen, then shall come up around his ears soft weird music
from the church bells in the silver steeples of the doomed cities: yea,
and there have been so pure, and our Lady hath shown them such grace,
that they have seen the very self streets down at the bottom of the sea,
where the dead walk and speak as they did of old--the knights and the
ladies, as in the days gone by, when Arthur was King, a thousand years
ago, when he held his court in the palaces of the lost land.  And the
Islands of Scilly, as men say, be the summits of the mountains, that
towered once hoary and barren over the green forests and the rich
cities."  [This story is a veritable legend of the Middle Ages.]

The story was being told to an uncritical and unchronological audience,
or Dame Agnes might have received a gentle intimation that she was
antedating the reign of King Arthur by the short period of two hundred
years.

The silence which followed--for both the little girls were meditating on
the story, and Dame Agnes's flax was just then entangled in a
troublesome knot--was broken, suddenly and very thoroughly, by the
unexpected entrance, quiet though it were, of the Countess herself.
Dame Agnes gave no heed to her broken thread, but rose instantly,
distaff in hand, with a low reverence; Constance rubbed her sleepy eyes
and slowly descended from her great chair; while Maude, recalled to the
present, dropped her lowest courtesy and stood waiting.

There was a peculiar air about the Countess Isabel, which suggested to
bystanders the idea of a tired, worn-out woman.  It was not discontent,
not irritability, not exactly even sadness; it was the tone of one who
had never fitted rightly into the place assigned to her, and who never
felt at home.  Though it disappeared when she spoke, yet as soon as her
features were at rest it came again.  It was little wonder that her face
wore such an expression, for she was the daughter of a murdered father
and a slandered mother, and the wife of a man who valued her very highly
as the Infanta of Castilla, but as Isabel his wife not at all.  During
her early years, she had sought rest and comfort in the world.  She
plunged wildly into every manner of dissipation and pleasure; like
Solomon, she withheld not her heart from any good; and like Solomon's,
her verdict at the close was "Vanity and vexation of spirit."  And
then--just when she had arrived at the conclusion that there was nothing
upon earth worth living for--when she had "come to the end of
everything, and cared for nothing," she met with an old priest of
venerable aspect, a trusted servant of King Edward, whose first words
touched the deepest chord in her heart, while his second brought the
healing balm.  His name was John de Wycliffe.  Was it any wonder that
she accepted him as a very angel of God?

For he showed her where rest was, not within, but without; not from
beneath, nor from around, but from above.  So the tired heart rested in
Jesus here, looking forward to its perfected rest in the presence of
Jesus hereafter.

For so far as the world was concerned, there was no rest any longer.  It
was fearfully up-hill work for Isabel to aim at such a walk as should
please God.  Her husband did not oppose her; he was as profoundly
indifferent to her new opinions and practices as he had been to her old
ones, as he was to herself.  So far as her life was concerned, of the
two he considered that she had altered for the better.  There had never
been but one heart which had loved Isabel, and that heart she pierced as
with a sword when she entered her new path on the narrow way.

To Constanca of Castilla, the sister who had shared with her their
"heritage of woe," this younger sister was inexpressibly dear.  The two
sisters had married two brothers, and they saw a good deal of each other
until that time; but after Isabel cast in her lot with Wycliffe, very
little.  The Gospel parted these loving sisters as with a sword; the
magnet was received by each at an opposite end.  It attracted Isabel,
and repelled Constanca.  The elder wanted nothing more than she had
always had; the gorgeous ceremonies and absolving priests of the old
Church satisfied her, and she demanded no further comfort.  She was "a
woman devout above all others" in the eyes of the monkish chroniclers.
And that usually meant that in this world she never awoke to her soul's
uttermost need, and she was therefore content with the meagre supply she
found.  So the difference between the sisters was that Constanca slept
peacefully while Isabel had awoke.

It was because Isabel had awoke, that she was unsatisfied with the round
of ritual observances which were all in all to her sister.  She could
confess to man, and be absolved by man; but how could she wrestle
against the conviction that she rose from the confessional with a soul
none the cleaner, with a heart just as disinclined to go and sin no
more?  The branches might be lopped; but what mattered that while the
root of bitterness remained?  It is only when we hear God say, "Thy sins
are forgiven thee," that it is possible to go in peace.  And Isabel
never heard it until she came to Him.  Then, when she came empty-handed,
He filled her hands with gifts; He breathed into the harassed soul rest
and hope.

This was what God gave her.  But men gave her something very different.
They had nothing better for this woman that had been a sinner, than the
old comment of Simon the Pharisee.  They were not ready to cast the
remembrance of her iniquities into the depths of the sea--far from it.
What they gave her was a scorned and slandered name, a character
sketched in words that dwelt gloatingly on her early devotion to the
world, the flesh, and the Devil, and left unwritten the story of her
subsequent devotion to God.  The later portion of her life is passed
over in silence.  We see something of its probable character in the
supreme contempt of the monkish chroniclers; in the heretical epithet of
"pestilent" applied to her; in the Lollard terms of her last will; in
her choice of eminent Lollards as executors; in her bosom friendship
with the Lollard Queen.

But at another Table from that of Simon the Pharisee, "many that are
first shall be last, and the last first."

We have kept Maude standing for a long while, before her mistress,
seated in the great chair in Dame Agnes de La Marche's chamber.

"And how lovest thy new fashion of life, my maid?" demanded the
Countess, when she had taken her seat.

"Right well, an' it like your Grace."

"Thou art here welsomer [more comfortable] than in the kitchen?"

"Surely so, Madam."

"Dame Joan speaketh well of thy cunning."  [Skill.]

Maude smiled and courtesied.  She was gradually learning Court manners.

"And hast thou yet thy book-leaf, the which I read unto thee?"

"Oh ay, Madam!"

"`Thy book-leaf!'" interjected Constance.  "What book hast thou?"

"A part of God's Word, my daughter," replied her mother gravely;
"touching His great City, the holy Jerusalem, which shall come down from
God out of Heaven, and is lightened with His glory."

"When will it come?" said Constance, with unwonted gravity.

"God wot.  To all seeming, not ere thou and I be either within the same,
or without His gates for ever."

The Countess turned back to Maude.

"My maid, thou wouldst fain know at that time whether I had any dwelling
in that city.  Wist thou that an' thou wilt, there thou mayest dwell?"

"I, Madam!  In very sooth, should it like your Grace to take me?"  And
Maude's eyes sparkled with delight.

"I cannot take thee, my child!" was the reply, spoken in a tone so grave
that it was almost sad.  "If thou wouldst go, it is Another must bear
thee thither."

"The Lady Custance?" inquired Maude, glancing at her.

"The Lord Jesus Christ."

Agnes mechanically crossed herself.  Maude's memory ran far back.

"Sister Christian, that was a nun at Pleshy," she observed, dreamily,
"was wont to say, long time agone, unto Mother and me, that holy Mary's
Son did love us and die for us; but I never wist nought beyond that.
Would your Grace, of your goodness, tell me wherefore it were?"

"Wherefore He died?  It was in the stead of thee, my maid, if thou wilt
have it so: He died that thou mightest never die withouten end.--Or
wherefore He loved, wouldst know?  Truly, I can but bid thee ask that of
Himself, for none wist that mystery save His own great heart.  There was
nought in us that He should love us; but there was every cause in
Himself wherefore He should love."

Maude was silent; but the thought which she was revolving in her mind
was whether any great saint had ever asked such a question of Him who to
her was only "holy Mary's Son."  Of course it would have to be asked
through Mary.  No one, not even the greatest saint, considered Maude,
had ever spoken direct to Him, except in a vision.  The next remark of
the Countess rather startled her.

"My maid, dost ever pray?"

"An' it like your Grace, I do say every even the Hail Mary, and every
morrow the Credo; and of Sundays and holy days likewise the
Paternoster."

"And didst never feel no want ne lack, for the which thou findest not
words in the Hail Mary ne in the Credo, if it be not an holy day?"

Ay, many a want, as Maude well knew, but what had Credo or Angelus to do
with wants?  Prayer, in her eyes, meant either long repetitions imposed
as penances by the priest, or else the daily use of a charm, the
omission of which might entail evil consequences.  Of prayer as a real
means of procuring something about which she cared, she had no more
notion than Dame Agnes's squirrel, at that moment running round his
cage, had of the distance and extent of Sherwood Forest.  Maude looked
up in the face of her mistress with an expression of deep perplexity.

"Child," said the Countess, "when Dame Joan would send word touching
some matter unto Dame Agnes here, falleth she a-saying unto herself of
Dan Chaucer's brave Romaunt of The Flower and the Leaf?"

"Surely, no, Madam."

"Then what doth she?"

"She cometh unto her," said Maude, immediately adding, in a
matter-of-fact way, "without she should send Mistress Sybil or some
other."

"Good.  Then arede [inform] me wherefore thou shouldst fall a-saying the
Credo when thou wouldst send word of thy need unto God, any more than
Dame Joan should fall a-saying the Romaunt?"

"But God heareth us, and conceiveth us, Madam," said Maude timidly, "and
Dame Agnes no doth."

"Truth, my maid.  Therein faileth my parable.  But setting this aside,
tell me,--how shall the Credo give to wit thy need?"

Maude cogitated for a minute in silence.  Then she answered--

"No shall it, Madam."

"Then wherefore not speak thy lack straightway?"

Maude was silent, but not because she was stupid.

"My maid, what saith the Credo?  When thus thou prayest, dost thou aught
save look up to Heaven, and say, `God, I believe in Thee'?  So far as it
goeth, good.  But seest not that an' thou shouldst say to me, `Madam, I
crede and trust you,' thou shouldst have asked nought from me--have
neither confessed need, ne presented petition?  The Credo is matter said
to men--not to God.  Were it not better to say, `Lord, I love Thee?'  Or
best of all, `Lord, love Thou me?'"

"I wis, Madam, that our Lord loveth the saints," said Maude in a low
voice.

She felt very much in the condition graphically described by John Bunyan
as "tumbled up and down in one's mind."

"Ah, child!" was the Countess's answer, "they be lost sheep whom Christ
seeketh.  And whoso Christ setteth out to seek shall, sooner or later,
find the way to Him."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  Harl.  Ms. 4016, folios 1, 2.

Note 2.  The "Holy Grail" was one of the most singular of Romish
superstitions.  A glass vessel, supported by a foot, was shown to the
people as the cup in which Christ gave the wine to His disciples at the
Last Supper; and they were taught, not only that Joseph of Arimathea had
caught the blood from His side in the same vessel, but that he and Mary
Magdalene, sailing on Joseph's shirt, had brought over the relic from
Palestine to Glastonbury.  "The Quest of the Saint Graal" was the
highest achievement of the Knights of the Round Table.



CHAPTER FOUR.

IN THE SCRIPTORIUM.

  "There are days of deepest sorrow
  In the season of our life;
  There are wild, despairing moments,
  There are hours of mental strife;
  There are times of stony anguish,
  When the tears refuse to fall;
  But the waiting time, my brothers,
  Is the hardest time of all."
  _Sarah Doudney_.

Beside a Gothic window, and under a groined stone roof, that afternoon
sat a monk at his work.  The work was illumination.  The room was bare
of all kinds of furniture, with the exception of a wooden erection which
was chair and desk in one.  On the desk lay a large square piece of
parchment, a future leaf of a book, in which the text was already
written, but the illuminated border was not yet begun.  There was a pen
in the monk's hand, with which he was about to execute the outline; but
the pen was dry, and the old man's eyes were fixed dreamily upon the
landscape without.

"`In wisdom hast Thou made them all,'" he murmured half audibly.  "O
Lord, `the earth is full of Thy riches!'"

It was early morning, for the illuminator was at work betimes.  From a
little cottage visible across the green, he saw a peasant go forth to
his daily work, his wife watching him a moment from the door of the hut,
and two little children calling to him lovingly to come back soon.

"And life also is full of Thy riches," whispered the solitary monk.
"This poor hind hath none other riches than what Thine hand hath given
him.  Is he in truth the poorer for it?  We live on Thy daily bounty
even more than he; for like Thy lilies, we toil not, neither do we spin.
Yet Thou hast given to him, as sweetening to his toil, solace denied by
Thy holy will to us.  Wherefore denied to us?  Because we are set apart
for Thee.  So were Thy priests of old, in Thy Temple at Jerusalem: yet
it was not denied to them.  Why should we love Thee less for loving
little children?"

The monk turned back abruptly to his work.

"Ah me! these be problems beyond mine art.  And whatso be the solving of
the general matter, I have no doubt as to Thy will _for me_.  The joys
of earth be not for me; but Thou art my portion, O Lord!  And I am
content--ay, satisfied abundantly.  Maybe, on the golden hills of the
_Urbs Beata_, we shall find joys far passing the sweetest here, kept for
that undefouled company which shall sue the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.
And could any joy pass that?"

The venerable head was bent over the parchment, upon which the grotesque
outline of a griffin began to grow, twisted round a very conventional
tree, with the stem issuing from its mouth, and its elongated tail
executing marvellous spiral curves.  The illuminator was taken by
surprise the next instant, and the curve of the griffin's tail then
pending was by no means round in consequence.

"Alway at work, Father Wilfred?"  [A fictitious person.]

"Bertram Lyngern," said the monk calmly, "thou hast marred my griffin."

"What, have I made him a wyvern?"

"That had less mattered.  A twist of his tail is square, thy sudden
speech being the cause thereof."

"Let be, Father Wilfred.  'Tis a new pattern."

The monk smiled, but shook his head, and proceeded to erase the faulty
strokes by means of a large piece of pumice-stone.  Bertram sat
contemplating his friend's work, curled up in the wide stone
window-ledge, to which he had climbed from the horse-block below it.
The lattice was open, so there was no hindrance to conversation.

"I would I were a knight!" said Bertram suddenly, after a few minutes'
silence on both sides.

"To wear gilded spurs?" inquired Wilfred calmly resuming his pen, and
going on with the griffin.

"Thou countest me surely not such a loon, Father Wilfred?  No,--I long
to be great.  I feel as though greatness stirred within me.  But what
can I do,--a squire?  If I were a knight I could sign my shoulder with
the holy cross, and go fight for our Lord's sepulchre.  That were
something worth.  But to dangle at the heels of my Lord Edward all the
day long, and fly an half-dozen hawks, and meditate on pretty sayings to
the Lady's damsels, and eat venison, and dance--Father Wilfred, is this
life meet for a man's living?"

The illuminator laid his pen down, and looked up at the lad.

"Bertram," he said, "just fifty years gone, I was what thou art, and my
thoughts then were thine."

"Thou wert, Father?" responded Bertram in an interested tone.  "Well,
and what was the end?"

"The end is not yet.  But the next thing was, that I did as thou fain
wouldst do:--I signed me with the good red cross, and I went to the Holy
Land."

"And thou earnest back, great of name, and blessed in soul?"

"I came back, having won no name, and with no blessing, for I knew more
of evil than when I set forth."

"But, Father, at our Lord's sepulchre!" urged Bertram.

"Youngling," said Wilfred, a rare, sweet smile flitting across his lips,
"dost thou blunder as Mary did?  Is the Lord yet in the sepulchre?  `He
is not here; He is risen.'  And why then should His sepulchre be holier
than other graves, when He that made the holiness is there no longer?"

"But where then is our Lord?" asked Bertram, rather perplexed.

"He is where thou wouldst have Him," was the quiet answer.  "If that be
in thine heart, ay:--and if no, no."

Bertram meditated for a little while upon this reply.

"But seest thou any reason, Father, wherefore I should not become a
great man?" he said, reverting to his original topic.

"I see no reason at all, Bertram Lyngern, wherefore thou shouldst not
become a very great man."

Still Bertram was dissatisfied.  He had an instinctive suspicion that
his great man and Wilfred's were not exactly the same person.

"But what meanest by a great man, Father?"

"What meanest thou?"

"I mean a warrior," said the lad, "dauntless in war, and faithful in
love--brave, noble, and high-souled, alway and every whither."

"And so mean I."

"But I mean one that men shall talk of, and tell much of his noble deeds
and mighty prowess."

"Were he less brave without?"

"He were less puissant, Father."

Wilfred did not reply for a minute, but devoted himself to hanging
golden apples from the stiff boughs of his very medieval tree.

"The heroes of the world and those of the Church," he said at last, "be
rarely the same men.  A man cannot be an hero in all things.  The
warrior is not the statesman, nor is neither of them the bishop.  Thou
must choose thy calling, lad."

"Yet a true hero must be an hero all the world over, Father--in every
calling."

"How much hast heard of one Master Vegelius?"

"Never afore this minute."

"I thought so much."

"Who was he?" inquired Bertram.

"The best and most cunning limner of this or any land."

"Oh!  Only a scriptorius?"

"Only a scriptorius," said the monk quietly--not at all offended.  "And
it may be that he never heard of some of thy heroes."

"My heroes are Alexander and Charlemagne," said Bertram proudly.  "He
must have heard of them."

Wilfred dipped his pen in the ink with a rather amused smile.

"Now, Father Wilfred!"

"I was only thinking, lad, that when I set up my hero, he shall not be a
man that met his death in a wine-butt."

"What?--Oh!  Alexander.  Well, we have all our failings," admitted
Bertram, reluctant to give up his favourite.

"Thou sayest sooth, lad."

"Father Wilfred, who is thine hero?"

"Wist thou who is God's hero?" asked the illuminator, laying down his
pen, and fixing his eyes on the boy.  "God Himself once told men who was
their greatest.  And who was it, countest?"

"Was it Charlemagne?" eagerly responded the unchronological Bertram.

"`Among men that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater
than--'"

"Whom?" interpolated the boy, when Wilfred paused.

"`John the Baptist.'"

Bertram's face fell with a most disappointed look.

"Why, what did he?  How was he great?"

"He was great in four matters, methinks, in one whereof only thou or I
may not have leave to follow him.  In that he foreran our Lord, his deed
is beyond our reach: but in three other concernments, in no wise.
Firstly, he preached Christ."

"That the priests do," interjected Bertram.

"Do they so?" asked Wilfred rather drily.  "Secondly, he feared not,
when need were, to gainsay a master in whose hand lay his life.  And
lastly, he knew how to deny himself."

"But, Father Wilfred! all those be easy enough."

"Be they so, lad?  How many times hast tried them?"

"In good sooth, never tried I any of them," said Bertram honestly.

"Then wait ere thou say so much."

There was another pause; and then Bertram found another question.

"Father Wilfred, what thinkest of Sir John de Wycliffe?"

"I never brake bread with him, lad," said the monk, busy with the
griffin.

"But what thinkest?"

"How should I know?"

Evidently the illuminator did not mean to commit himself.

"Is he a great man or a small?"

"God wot," said the monk.

"Hugh Calverley saith he is the greatest man that ever lived," said
Bertram.

"Greater than Saint John Baptist?"

"His work is of the like sort," pursued Bertram meditatively.  "'Tis
preaching and reproving men of their sins."

"God speed all His work!" said the monk.

"Father, what didst after thy turning back from Holy Land?"

"What all men do once a life.  What thou wilt do."

"Marry, what so?"

"Why, I became a fool."

"Father Wilfred!  I counted thee alway a wise man."

"A sorry blunder, lad," said Wilfred, putting in the griffin's teeth.

"Wouldst say a Court fool?"

"Nay--a worser fool than that."

"How so?"

"I trusted a woman," answered Wilfred,--bitterly, for him.

"Father! hadst thou ever a lady-love?"

Bertram's interest was intense at this juncture.

"Go to, Bertram Lyngern!" answered the monk, looking up with a smile.
"Be thy thoughts on lady-loves already?  Nay, lad; she that I trusted
was a kinswoman--no love.  Little love in very deed was there betwixt
us.  And yet"--his voice altered suddenly--"I knew what that was too--
once."

"And she mocked thee, trow?" asked Bertram, who expected a small
sensation novel to spring out of this avowal.

Wilfred worked in silence for a minute.  Then he said in a low tone,
"Forty years' violets have freshened and faded on her grave; nor one of
all of them more fair ne sweet than she."  But there was something in
his manner which said, "Question me no further."  And, curious as
Bertram was, he obeyed the tacit request.

"And what stood next in thy life, Father?"

"This, lad," said the monk, touching his cowl.

Bertram did not consider this by any means satisfactory.

"Well!  All said, Father Wilfred, we come back to the first matter.
What wouldst thou do an' thou wert I?"

"Soothly, that wis I not," said the illuminator rather drily.  "What
thou shouldst do an' thou wert I, might be easier gear."

"Well--and that were?"

"To set claws unto this griffin."

"Now, Father Wilfred!  My work is not to paint griffins."

"What thy work is, do," replied the monk sententiously.

"But 'tis sheer idlesse!  'Tis not work at all.  It is but to wait till
I am called to work."

"The waiting is harder than the work," replied Wilfred, again laying
down his pen.  "If thou be well assured that waiting is thy work, wit
thou that 'tis matter worthy of the wits of angels, for there is no work
harder than to wait for God."

"But 'tis not _work_, Father!"

"If thou so think, thou art not yet master of that art."

"Of what art?"

"Waiting."  Wilfred's pen pursued its journey for a moment before he
added, "Lad, this that I am on is but play and revelry.  But the lack
thereof--the time passed in awaiting till the lad that enscribeth the
text have fresh parchment ready--that is work."

Bertram frowned and pursed his lips as if he could not see it.

"For forty years, Bertram, all the wisdom of the wisest nation in the
world was sometime taught unto a man named Moyses.  His work was to lead
the chosen folk of God into the land that God should give them.  But at
the end of that forty years, he was but half learned.  So for other
forty years, he was sent into a wilderness for to keep sheep."

"Why, he were past work then!"

"Nay, he was but then ready for it."

"And did he lead the folk after all?"

"He did so."

"And what gave him our Lord for guerdon, when his toil was done?"

"Was the work no guerdon?" responded Wilfred thoughtfully.  "Well, lad,
He gave him--a grave in Moab, far away from home and friends and
country, and from His land."

"Father, what mean you?  That was no guerdon!"

"Then thou wist not that jewels be alway covered with stone-crust, ere
the cutter polish them?"

"Soothly, Father, I can see the stone-crust yonder, but verily mine eyes
be too weak to pierce to the gem."

"Ah! our eyes be rarely strong enough for that.  It taketh God's eyes
many times.  They say,"--Wilfred went on dreamily, scanning the white
clouds which floated across the blue--"they say, the old writers of the
Jews, that this man Moyses died by the kiss of God.  Methinks that were
brave payment for the grave in Moab.  And after all, every man of us
must have his grave dug some whither.  Is it of heavy moment,
mewondereth, whether men delve it in the swamps of Somerset or in the
Priory at Langley?  God shall see the dust as clear in either; and shall
know, moreover, to count it His treasure."

"Father Wilfred, where wouldst thou fain be buried?"

"What matter, lad?"

"I know where I would:--in the holy minster at Canterbury, nigh unto the
tomb of Edward the Prince, that was so great an hero, and not far from
the blessed shrine of Saint Thomas the martyr."

"Ah!" said the monk with a sigh, "there is a little church among the
hills of Cumberland, that I had chosen rather.  But the days of my
choosing are over.  I would have God choose for me."

"But that might be the sea, Father Wilfred, or the traitors' elms
[Tyburn.] by London, or the plague dead-pit."

"Child! when the Lord cometh with all His saints, there will be no
labels on the raised bodies, to note where the dust was found lying."

And Wilfred turned back to his desk, and took up his pen.  Both were
silent for a time; but it was the old monk who resumed the conversation.

"Thou wouldst fain attain greatness, Bertram," he said.  "Shall I tell
thee of two deeds done but this sennight past, that I saw through yonder
lattice as I sat at my painting?  Go to!  I saw, firstly, a poor
shepherd lad crossing the green one morrow, on his needful toil, clad in
rough russet; and another lad lesser than he, clad in goodly velvets and
brave broidery, bade him scornfully thence out of his sight, calling him
rascal, fool, lither oaf, and the like noisome words--the shepherd lad
having in nowise offended save by his presence.  And I say, lad, that
was a little deed--the deed of a little soul; a mean, base deed; and he
that did it, except God touch his heart, will never be a great man."

"But, Father Wilfred!  I saw it--it was the Lord Edward; and he is great
even now, and like to be greater."

"Mark my words, lad,--he will never be a great man."

Bertram looked as if he thought the proposition incomprehensible.

"Well, the day thereafter," pursued Wilfred, "I was aware, in the very
same place, of other two lads--bravely clad, though not so brave as he--
bearing betwixt them a pail of water, for the easement of an halt and
aged wife that might scarce lift it from the ground.  And I heard the
one say to the other, as they came by this lattice,--`How if some of our
fellows see us now?'--with his answer returned,--`Be it so; we do no
wrong.'  And I say, boy, that was a great deed, the deed of a great
soul; and I look for both those lads to be great men, though I verily
think the greater to have been he that was in no wise shamed of his
deed."

Bertram's face was crimson, for he very well knew that on this occasion
the heroes of Wilfred's adventure were himself and his friend, Hugh
Calverley.  He remembered, moreover, that he had felt ashamed, and
afraid to be seen, and had taken his share in the act, partly from his
own kindness of heart, but partly from a wish to retain Hugh's good
opinion.

"Shall I tell thee another tale, lad?"

"Prithee, Father, so do."

"Touching greatness in a woman?"

"By my Lady Saint Mary! can a woman be great?"

"Methinks, Bertram, _she_ was," said Wilfred quietly, "But it was not of
Saint Mary, nor of any other saint, that I had intent to tell thee, but
of one whom no Pope ever took the pain to canonise, and who yet, as
methinks, was the greatest woman of whom ever I heard.  It may perchance
astound thee somewhat, to learn that I am not purely an English man.  My
mother came from far over seas,--from Dutchland, [Germany.] in the
dominions of the Duke's Grace of Austria.  And when she was a young
maid, at home in her country, that befel of which I am about to tell
thee.  It happed that in the Court of the Emperor's Majesty, [Note 1]
which at that time was Albright [Albert] the First, was a young noble,
by name Rudolph, Count von der Wart.  My mother was handmaid unto my
Lady Gertrude his wife, and she spake right well of her mistress.  A
young gentle lady, said she, meek and soft of speech, loving and
obedient unto her lord, and in especial shamefaced, shrinking from any
public note of herself or any deed she did.  This lady had not been wed
long time, when the Emperor Albright died.  And he died by poison.  Some
among his following had given it; and his judges sat to try whom.  God
wot who it were, and assoil [forgive] him!  But some men thought that
his cousin, Sir Henry of Luxemburg, which was Emperor at after him, had
been more in his place at the bar than on the bench.  The sentence of
the court was that divers men were cast for death.  And one of them thus
convinced [convicted] was the young Count von der Wart."

"But was he not innocent, Father?"

"He was innocent.  But he was doomed to the awful death of the wheel,
and he suffered it."

"Pity of his soul!" cried Bertram indignantly.

"And when the news was brought to the Lady Gertrude, she went white as
death, and fell back in a swoon into the arms of my mother."

"And she was borne to her bed, and brake her heart, and so died!"
interjected Bertram, who thought that this would be the proper poetical
ending of the story.

"Thou shalt hear.  When the day of execution came, a great throng of men
gathered in the market-place for to see the same.  And when all was
done,"--Wilfred evidently shrank from any lingering over the harrowing
details--"when the dusk fell, and the prisoners had suffered their
torments, such as yet overlived were left bound on the wheel to die
there.  Left, amid the jeers and mockings of the fool [foolish] throng,
which dispersed not, but waited to behold their woe--left, with unbound
wounds, to the chill night, and with no mercy to look for saving mercy
of God.  But no sooner were the executioners gone, than, lapped in a
furred cloak, the Lady Gertrude left her house, and went out into the
midst of the cruel, taunting crowd."

"But what did she?"

Wilfred's answer was in that low, tremulous voice, which would have
hinted to a more experienced listener that his sympathies were deeply
stirred by the story he was telling.

"She climbed up on the great wheel, lad, and sat upon the rim of it; and
she did off her fur cloak, and laid it over her dying lord; and when
that served not, so strong was the shivering which had seized him, she
stripped off her gown, and spread that over him likewise.  And when in
his death-thirst he craved for water, she clomb down again, and drew
from the well in her shoe, for she had nought else:--and there sat she,
all that woeful night, giving him to drink, bathing his brows, covering
his wounds, whispering holy and loving words.  And when the morrow
brake, there below were the throng, mocking her all they might, and
calling her by every evil name their tongues might utter."

"How could she hear it, and abide?"  [bear] broke forth Bertram.

"Did she hear it?" answered Wilfred in the same low voice.  "Ah, child!
love is stronger than death.  So, when all was over--when Count
Rudolph's eyes had looked their last upon her--when his voice had
whispered the last loving word--`Gertrude, thou hast been faithful until
death!'--and it was not till high noon,--then she laid her hand upon his
eyes, and clomb down from the wheel, and went back to her void and
lonely home.  Boy, I never heard of any woman greater than Gertrude von
der Wart."  [Note 2.]

"I marvel how she bare it!" said Bertram, under his breath.

"And to worsen her sorrow," added Wilfred, "when day brake, came the
Duke's Grace of Austria, and his sister, Queen Agnes of Hungary, and all
their following, to behold the scene--men and women amongst whom she had
dwelt, that had touched hand or lip with her many a time--all mocking
and jibing.  Methinks that were not the least bitter thing for her to
see--if by that time she could see anything, save Rudolph in his agony,
and God in His Heaven."

"And after that--she died, of force?" said Bertram, clinging still to
the proper and conventional close of the tale.

"She was alive thirty years thereafter," replied Wilfred quietly,
turning his attention to a bunch of leaves which ended a bough of his
tree.

Bertram privately thought this a lame and impotent conclusion.  For a
few minutes he sat thinking deeply, while Wilfred sketched in silence.

"Father Wilfred!" the boy broke forth at last, "why letteth God such
things be?"

"If thou canst perceive the answer to that, lad, thou hast sharper sight
than I.  God knoweth.  But what He doth, we know not now.  Passing that
word, none other response cometh unto us from Him unto whose eyes alone
is present the eternal future."

"Must we then never know it?" asked Bertram drearily.

"Ay--`thou shalt know hereafter.'  Yet this behest [promise] is given
alonely unto them that sue the Lamb whithersoever He goeth above; and
they which begin not that suing through the mire of the base court,
shall never end it in the golden banquet hall."

"But what is it to sue the Lamb?" replied Bertram almost impatiently.

Wilfred laid down his pen, and looked up into the boy's face, with one
of his sweet smiles flitting across his lips.  The sketch was finished
at last.

"Dear lad!" he said lovingly, "Bertram Lyngern, ask the Lamb to show
thee."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  A title at this time restricted to the Emperor of Germany.  The
first English King to whom it was applied, was Richard the Second.  It
is often said that Henry the Eighth was the first to assume it, but this
is an error.

Note 2.  It is surely not the least interesting association with the
Castle of the Wartburg, whose best-known memories are connected with
Luther, to remember that it was the home of Rudolph and Gertrude von der
Wart.



CHAPTER FIVE.

CHANGES AND CHANCES OF THIS MORTAL LIFE.

  "Now is done thy long day's work;
  Fold thy palms across thy breast,
  Fold thine arms, turn to thy rest,
  Let them rave."
  _Tennyson_.

The Earl and Countess were away from home, during the whole spring of
the next year; but Constance stayed at Langley, and so did Alvena and
Maude.  There was a grand gala day in the following August, when the
Lord of Langley was raised from the dignity of Earl of Cambridge to the
higher title of Duke of York: but three days later, the cloth of gold
was changed for mourning serge.  A royal courier, on his way from
Reading to London, stayed a few hours at Langley; and he brought word
that the mother of the King, "the Lady Princess," was lying dead at
Wallingford.

The blow was in reality far heavier than it appeared on the surface, and
to the infant Church of the Lollards the loss was irreparable.  For the
Princess was a Lollard; and being a woman of most able and energetic
character, she had been until now the _de facto_ Queen of England.  She
must have been possessed of consummate tact and prudence, for she
contrived to live on excellent terms with half-a-dozen people of
completely incompatible tempers.  When the reins dropped from her dead
hand a struggle ensued among these incompatible persons, who should pick
them up.  The struggle was sharp, but short.  The elder brothers retired
from the contest, and the reins were left in the Duke of Gloucester's
hand.  And woe to the infant Church of the Lollards, when Gloucester
held the reins!

He began his reign--for henceforward he was virtually King--by buying
over his brother of York.  Edmund, already the passive servant of
Gloucester, was bribed to active adherence by a grant of a thousand
pounds.  The Duke of Lancaster, who was not his brother's tool, was
quietly disposed of for the moment, by making him so exceedingly
uncomfortable, that with the miserable _laisser-aller_, which was the
bane of his fine character, he went home to enjoy himself as a country
gentleman, leaving politics to take care of themselves.

But an incident happened which disconcerted for a moment the plans of
the Regent.  The young King, without consulting his powerful uncle,
declared his second cousin, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, heir
presumptive of England, and--in obedience to a previous suggestion of
the Princess--broke off March's engagement with a lady of the Arundel
family, and married him to Richard's own niece, the Lady Alianora de
Holand.

The annoyance to Gloucester, consisted in two points: first, that it
recognised female inheritance and representation, which put him a good
deal further from the throne; and secondly, that Roger Mortimer, owing
to the education received from his Montacute grandmother, had stepped
out of his family ranks, and was the sole Lollard ever known in the
House of March.

Gloucester carried his trouble to his confessor.  The appointed heir to
the throne a Lollard!--nor only that, but married to a grand-daughter of
the Lollard Princess, a niece of the semi-Lollard King!  What was to be
done to save England to Catholicism?

Sir Thomas de Arundel laughed a low, quiet laugh in answer.

"What matters all that, my Lord?  Is not Alianora my sister's daughter?
The lad is young, yielding, lazy, and lusty [self-indulgent,
pleasure-loving.] Leave all to me."

Arundel saw further than the Princess had done.

And Gloucester was Arundel's slave.  Item by item he worked the will of
his master, and no one suspected for a moment whither those acts were
tending.  The obnoxious, politically-Lollard Duke of Lancaster was
shunted out of the way, by being induced to undertake a voyage to
Castilla for the recovery of the inheritance of his wife Constanca and
her sister Isabel; a statute was passed conferring plenipotentiary
powers on "our dearest uncle of Gloucester;" all vacant offices under
the Crown were filled with orthodox nominees of the Regent; the Lollard
Earl of Suffolk was impeached; a secret meeting was held at Huntingdon,
when Gloucester and four other nobles solemnly renounced their
allegiance to the King, and declared themselves at liberty to do what
was right in their own eyes.  The other four (of whom we shall hear
again) were Henry Earl of Derby, son of the Duke of Lancaster; Richard
Earl of Arundel, brother of Gloucester's confessor; Thomas Earl of
Nottingham his brother-in-law; and Thomas Earl of Warwick, a weak
waverer, the least guilty of the evil five.  The conspirators conferred
upon themselves the grand title of "the Lords Appellants;" and to divert
from themselves and their doings the public mind, they amused that
innocent, unsuspecting creature by a splendid tournament in Smithfield.

Of one fact, as we follow their track, we must never lose sight:--that
behind these visible five, securely hidden, stood the invisible one, Sir
Thomas de Arundel, setting all these puppets in motion according to his
pleasure, and for "the good of the Church;" working on the insufferable
pride of Gloucester, the baffled ambition of Derby, the arrogant
rashness of Arundel, the vain, time-serving nature of Nottingham, and
the weak fears of Warwick.  Did he think he was doing God service?  Did
he ever care to think of God at all?

The further career of the Lords Appellants must be told as shortly as
possible, but without some account of it much of the remainder of my
story will be unintelligible.  They drew a cordon of forty thousand men
round London, capturing the King like a bird taken in a net; granted to
themselves, for their own purposes, twenty thousand pounds out of the
royal revenues; met and utterly routed a little band raised by the Duke
of Ireland with the object of rescuing the sovereign from their power;
impeached those members of the Council who were loyalists and Lollards;
plotted to murder the King and the whole Council, which included near
blood relations of their own; prohibited the possession of any of
Wycliffe's books under severe penalties; murdered three, and banished
two, of the five faithful friends of the King left in the Council.  The
Church stood to them above all human ties; and Sir Thomas de Arundel was
ready to say "_Absolvo te_" to every one of them.

This reign of terror is known as the session of the Merciless
Parliament, and it closed with the cruel mockery of a renewal of the
oath of allegiance to the hapless and helpless King.  Then Gloucester
proceeded to distribute his rewards.  The archbishopric of York was
conferred on Sir Thomas de Arundel, and Gloucester appropriated as his
own share of the rich spoil, the vast estates of the banished Duke of
Ireland.

And then the traitor, robber, and murderer, knelt down at the feet of
Archbishop Arundel, and heard--from man's lips--"Thy sins are forgiven
thee"--but not "Go, and sin no more."

"Master Calverley, you?  God have mercy! what aileth you?"

For Hugh Calverley stood at one of the hall windows of Langley Palace,
on the brightest of May mornings, in the year 1388, his face hidden in
his hands, and his whole mien and aspect bearing the traces of sudden
and intense anguish.

"God had no mercy, Mistress Maude!" he wailed under his voice.  "We had
no friend save Him, and He was silent to us.  He cared nought for us--He
left us alone in the uttermost hour of our woe."

"Nay, sweet Hugh! it was men, not God!" said Bertram's voice soothingly
behind them.

"He gave them leave," replied Hugh in an agonised tone.

It was the old reproachful cry, "Lord, carest thou not that we perish?"
but Maude could not understand it at all.  That cry, when it rises
within the fold, is sometimes a triumph, and always a mystery, to those
that are without.  "You believe yourselves even now as safe as the
angels, and shortly to be as happy, and you complain thus!"  True; but
we are not angels yet.  Poor weak, suffering humanity is always
rebellious, without an accompanying unction from the Holy One.  But it
is not good for us to forget that such moods are rebellion, and that
they often cause the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.

Bertram quietly drew Maude aside into the next window.

"Let the poor fellow be!" he said compassionately.  "Alack, 'tis no
marvel.  These traitor loons have hanged his father.  And never,
methinks, did son love father more."

"Master Calverley's father!--the Queen's squire?"

"He.  And look you, Maude,--heard man ever the like! the Queen's own
Grace was on her knees three hours unto my Lord of Arundel, praying him
to spare Master Calverley's life.  Think of it, Maude!--Caesar's
daughter!"

"Mercy, Jesu!"--Maude could imagine nothing more frightful.  It seemed
to her equivalent to the whole world tumbling into chaos.  What was to
become of "slender folk," such as Bertram and herself, when men breathed
who could hear unmoved the pleadings of "Caesar's daughter?"

"But what said he?"

"Who--my Lord of Arundel?  The unpiteous, traitorous, hang-dog lither
oaf!"  Bertram would apparently have chosen more opprobrious words if
they would kindly have occurred to him.  "Why, he said--`Pray for
yourself and your lord, Lady, and let this be; it were the better for
you.'  The great Devil, to whom he 'longeth, be _his_ aid in the like
case!"

"Truly, he may be in the like case one day," said Maude.

"And that were at undern [Eleven o'clock a.m.] this morrow, an' I were
King!" cried Bertram wrathfully.

"But what had Master Calverley done?"  Bertram dared only whisper the
name of the horrible crime of which alone poor Calverley stood accused.
"He was a Lollard--a Gospeller."

"Be they such ill fawtors?" asked Maude in a shocked tone.

"Judge for yourself what manner of men they be," said Bertram
indignantly, "when the King's Highness and the Queen, and our own Lady's
Grace, and the Lady Princess that was, and the Duke of Lancaster, be of
them.  Ay, and many another could I name beyond these."

"I will never crede any ill of our Lady's Grace!" said Maude warmly.

"Good morrow, Bertram, my son," said a voice behind them--a voice
strange to Maude, but familiar to Bertram.

"Father Wilfred!  Christ save you, right heartily!  You be here in the
nick of time.  You are come--"

"I am come, by ordainment of the Lord Prior, to receive certain commands
of my Lord Duke touching a book that he desireth to have written and
ourned [ornamented] with painting in the Priory," said Wilfred in his
quiet manner.  "But what aileth yonder young master?--for he seemeth me
in trouble."

What ailed poor Hugh was soon told; and Wilfred, after a critical look
at him, went up and spoke to him.

"So thou hast a quarrel with God, my son?"

"Nay!  Who may quarrel with God?" answered Hugh drearily.

"Only men and devils," said Wilfred.  "Such as be God's enemies be alway
quarrelling with Him; but such as be His own dear children--should they
so?"

"Dealeth He thus with His children?" was the bitter answer.

"Ay, oftentimes; so oft, that He aredeth [tells] us, that they which be
alway out of chastising be no sons of His."

Hugh could take no comfort.  "You know not what it is!" he said, with
the impatience of pain.

"Know I not?" said Wilfred, very tenderly, laying his hand upon Hugh's
shoulder.  "Youngling, my father fell in fight with the Saracens, and my
mother--my blessed mother--was brent for Christ's sake at Cologne."

Hugh looked up at last.  The words, the tone, the fellowship of
suffering, touched the wrung heart through its own sorrow.

"You know, then!" he said, his voice softer and less bitter.

"`Bithenke ghe on him that suffride such aghenseiynge of synful men
aghens himsilff, that ghe be not maad weri, failynge in ghoure soulis.'
Bethink ye: the which signifieth, meditate on Him, arm ye with His
patience.  Look on Him, and look to Him."

Bertram stared in astonishment.  The cautious scriptorius, who never
broke bread with Wycliffe, and declined to decide upon his great or
small position, was quoting his Bible word for word.

Hugh looked up in Wilfred's face, with the expression of one who had at
last found somebody to understand him.

"Father," he said, "did you ever doubt of _every_ thing?"

"Ay," said Wilfred, quietly.

"Even of God's love? yea, even of God?"

"Ay."

Bertram was horrified to hear such words.  And from Hugh, of all people!
But Wilfred, to his surprise, took them as quietly as if Hugh had been
repeating the Creed.

"And what was your remedy?"

"I know but one remedy for all manner of doubt, and travail, and sorrow,
Master; and that is to take them unto Christ."

"Yet how so," asked Hugh, heaving a deep sigh, "when we cannot see
Christ to take them to Him?"

"I know not that your seeing matters, Master, so that He seeth.  And
when your doubts come in and vex you, do you but call upon Him with a
true heart, desiring to find Him, and He will soon show you that He is.
Ah!" and Wilfred's eyes lighted up, "the solving of all riddles touching
Christ's being, is only to talk with Christ."

Bertram could not see that Wilfred had offered Hugh the faintest shadow
of comfort; but in some manner inexplicable to him, Hugh seemed
comforted thenceforward.

There was a great stir at Langley in the April of 1389; for the King and
Queen stayed there a night on their way to Westminster.  Maude was in
the highest excitement: she had never seen a live King before, and she
expected a formidable creature of the lion-rampant type, who would order
every body about in the most tyrannical manner, and command Master
Warine to be instantly hanged if dinner were not punctual.  She saw a
very handsome young man of three and twenty years of age, dressed in a
much quieter style than any of his suite; of the gentlest manners, a
model of courtesy even to the meanest, delicately considerate of every
one but himself, and especially and tenderly careful of that darling
wife who was the only true friend he had left.  Ever after that day, the
faintest disparagement of her King would have met with no reception from
Maude short of burning indignation.

King Richard recovered his power by a _coup d'etat_, on the 3rd of May,
1389.  He suddenly dissolved and reconstituted his Council, leaving out
the traitor Lords Appellants.  It was done at the first moment when he
had the power to do it.  But a year and a half later, Gloucester crept
in again, a professedly reformed penitent; and from the hour that he did
so, Richard was King no longer.

During all this struggle the Duke of York had kept extremely quiet.  The
King marked his sense of his uncle's allegiance by creating his son
Edward Earl of Rutland.  Perhaps, after all, Isabel had more power over
her husband than he cared to allow; for when her gentle influence was
removed, his conduct altered for the worse.  But a stronger influence
was at work on him; for his brother of Lancaster had come home; and
though Gloucester moulded York at his will when Lancaster was absent,
yet in his presence he was powerless.  So peace reigned for a time.

And meanwhile, what was passing in the domestic circle at Langley?

In the first place, Maude had once more changed her position.  From the
lower-place of tire-woman, or dresser, to the Duchess, she was now
promoted to be bower-maiden to the Lady Constance.  This meant that she
was henceforth to be her young mistress's constant companion and
habitual confidant.  She was to sleep on a pallet in her room, to go
wherever she went, to be entrusted with the care alike of her jewels and
her secrets, and to do everything for her which required the highest
responsibility and caution.

In the second place, both Constance and Maude were no longer children,
but women.  The Princess was now eighteen years of age, while her
bower-maiden had reached twenty.

And in the third place, over the calm horizon of Langley had appeared a
little cloud, as yet no more than "a man's hand," which was destined in
its effects to change the whole current of life there.  No one about her
had in the least realised it as yet; but the Duchess Isabel was dying.

Very gently and slowly, at a rate which alarmed not even her physician,
the Lollard Infanta descended to the portals of the grave.  She knew
herself whither she was going before any other eyes perceived it; and
noiselessly she set her house in order.  She executed her last will in
terms which show that she died a Gospeller, as distinctly as if she had
written it at the outset; she left bequests to her friends--"a fret of
pearls to her dear daughter, Constance Le Despenser;" she named two of
the most eminent Lollards living (Sir Lewis Clifford and Sir Richard
Stury) as her executors; she showed that she retained, like the majority
of the Lollards, a belief in Purgatory, by one bequest for masses to be
sung for her soul; and lastly--a very Protestant item when considered
with the rest--she desired to be interred, not by the shrine of any
saint or martyr, but "whithersoever her Lord should appoint."

The priests said that she died "very penitent."  But for what?  For her
early follies and sins, no doubt she did.  But of course they wished it
to be understood that it was for her Wycliffite heresies.

It was about the beginning of February, 1393, that the Duchess died.
Her husband never awoke fully to his irreparable loss until long after
he had lost her.  But he held her memory in honour at her burial, with a
gentle respect which showed some faint sense of it.  The cemetery which
he selected for her resting-place was that nearest her home--the Priory
Church of Langley.  There the dust slept quietly; and the soul which had
never nestled down on earth, found its first and final home in Heaven.

It might not unreasonably have been expected that Constance, now left
the only woman of her family, would have remembered that there was
another family to which she also belonged, and a far-off individual who
stood to her in the nominal relation of husband.  But it did not please
her Ladyship to remember any such thing.  She liked queening it in her
father's palace; and she did not like the prospect of yielding
precedence to her mother-in-law, which would have been a necessity of
her married life.  As to the Lord Le Despenser, she was absolutely
indifferent to him.  Her childish feeling of contempt had not been
replaced by any kindlier one.  It was not that she disliked him: she
cared too little about him even to hate him.  When the thought of going
to Cardiff crossed her mind, which was not often, it was always
associated with the old Lady Le Despenser, not at all with the young
Lord.

Now and then the husband and wife met for a few minutes.  The Lord Le
Despenser had grown into a handsome and most graceful gentleman, of
accomplished manners and noble bearing.  When they thus met, they
greeted each other with formal reverences; the Baron kissed the hand of
the Princess; each hoped the other was well; they exchanged a few
remarks on the prominent topics of the day, and then took leave with
equal ceremony, and saw no more of one another for some months.

The Lady Le Despenser, it must be admitted, was not the woman calculated
to attract such a nature as that of Constance.  She was a Lollard, by
birth no less than by marriage; but in her creed she was an ascetic of
the sternest and most unbending type.  In her judgment a laugh was
indecorum, and smelling a rose was indulgence of the flesh.  Her
behaviour to her royal daughter-in-law was marked by the utmost outward
deference, yet she never failed to leave the impression on Constance's
mind that she regarded her as an outsider and a reprobate.  Moreover,
the Lady Le Despenser had some singular notions on the subject of love.
Fortunately for her children, her heart was larger than her creed, and
often overstepped the bounds assigned; but her theory was that human
affections should be kept made up in labelled parcels, so much and no
more to be allowed in each case.  Favouritism was idolatry affectionate
words were foolish condescensions to the flesh; while loving caresses
savoured altogether of the evil one.

Now Constance liked dearly both to pet and to be petted.  She loved, as
she hated, intensely.  The calm, sedate personal regard, in
consideration of the meritorious qualities of the individual in
question, which the Lady Le Despenser termed love, was not love at all
in the eyes of Constance.  The Dowager, moreover, was cool and
deliberate; she objected to impulses, and after her calm fashion
disliked impulsive people, whom she thought were not to be trusted.  And
Constance was all impulse.  The squeaking of a mouse would have called
forth gestures and ejaculations from the one, which the other would have
deemed too extreme to be appropriate to an earthquake.

The Lord Le Despenser was the last of his mother's three sons--the
youngest-born, and the only survivor; and she loved him in reality far
more than she would have been willing to allow, and to an extent which
she would have deemed iniquitous idolatry in any other woman.  In
character he resembled her but slightly.  The narrow-mindedness and
obstinacy inherent in her family--for no Burghersh was ever known to see
more than one side of any thing--was softened and modified in him into
firmness and fidelity.  His heart was large enough to hold a deep
reservoir of love, but not so wide at its exit as to allow the stream to
flow forth in all directions at once.  If this be narrow-mindedness,
then he was narrow-minded.  But he was loyal to the heart's core,
faithful unto death, true in every fibre of his being.  "He loved one
only, and he clave to her," and there was room in his heart for none
other.

The Dowager had several times hinted to the Duke of York that she
considered it high time that Constance should take up her residence at
Cardiff, for she was a firm believer in "the eternal fitness of things,"
and while too much love was in her eyes deeply reprehensible, a proper
quantity of matrimony, at a suitable age, was a highly respectable
thing, and a state into which every man and woman ought to enter, with
due prudence and decorum.  And as a wife married in childhood was
usually resigned to her husband at an age some years earlier than
Constance had now attained, the Dowager was scandalised by her
persistent absence.  The Duke, who recognised in his daughter a more
self-reliant character than his own, and was therefore afraid of her,
had passed over the intimation, accompanied with a request that she
would do as she liked about it.  That Constance would do as she liked
her father well knew; and she did it.  She stayed at home, the Queen of
Langley, where no oppressive pseudo-maternal atmosphere interfered with
her perfect freedom.

But in the October following the death of her mother, a thunderbolt fell
at Constance's feet, which eventually drove her to Cardiff.

The Duke was from home, and, as everybody supposed, at Court.  He was
really in mischief; for mischief it proved, to himself and all his
family.  Late one evening a courier reached Langley, where in her bower
Constance was disrobing for the night, and Maude was combing out her
mistress's long light hair.  A sudden application for admission, in
itself an unusual event at that hour, brought Maude to the door, where
Dona Juana, pale and excited, besought immediate audience of her
Senorita.

The Princess, without looking back, desired her to come forward.

"Senorita, my Lord's courier, Rodrigo, is arrived hither from
Brockenhurst, and he bringeth his Lord's bidding that we make ready his
Grace's chamber for to-morrow."

"From Brockenhurst!  Well, what further?"

"And likewise _her_ Grace's chamber--whom Jesu pardon!--for the Lady
newly-espoused that cometh with my Lord."

"Mary Mother!" exclaimed Maude, dropping the silver comb in her sudden
surprise.

Constance had sprung up from her seat with such quick abruptness that
the chair, though no light one, fell to the ground behind her.

"Say that again!" she commanded, in a hard, steel-like voice; and, in a
more excited tone than ever, Dona Juana repeated her unwelcome tidings.

"So I must needs have a mistress over me!  Who is she?"

"From all that Rodrigo heard, Senorita, he counteth that it should be
the Lady Joan de Holand, sister unto my Lord of Kent and my Lady of
March.  She is, saith he, of a rare beauty, and of most royal presence."

"Royal presence, quotha!--and a small child of ten years!" cried the
indignant girl of nineteen.  "Marry, I guess wherefore he told me not
aforetime.  He was afeard of me."

She pressed her lips together till they looked like a crimson thread,
and a bright spot of anger burned on either cheek.  But all at once her
usual expression returned, and she resumed her seat quietly enough on
the chair which Maude had mechanically restored to its place.

"Go, Dona Juana, and bid the chambers be prepared, as is meet.  But no
garnishing of the chambers of my heart shall be for this wedding.  Make
an end, Maude.  `A thing done cannot be undone.'  I will abide and see
this small damsel's conditions [disposition]; but my heart misgiveth me
if it were not better dwelling with my Lord Le Despenser than with her."

Maude obeyed, feeling rather sorry for the Lord Le Despenser, whose
loving spouse seemed to regard him as the less of two evils.

The new Duchess proved to be, like most of the Holands, very tall and
extremely fair.  No one would have supposed her to be only ten years
old, and her proud, demure, unbashful bearing helped to make her look
older than she was.  The whole current of life at Langley changed with
her coming.  From morning to night every day was filled with feasts,
junkets, hawking parties, picnics, joustings, and dances.  The Duke was
devoted to her, und fulfilled, if he did not anticipate, her every wish.
Her youthful Grace was entirely devoid of shyness, and she made a point
of letting Constance feel her inferiority by addressing her on every
occasion as "Fair Daughter."  She also ordered a much stricter
observance of etiquette than had been usual during the life of the
Infanta, whose rule, Spaniard though she was, had been rather lax in
this particular.  The stiff manners commonly expected from girls towards
their mothers had only hitherto been exacted from Constance upon state
occasions.  But the new Duchess quickly let it be understood that she
required them to the smallest detail.  She was particular that her
step-daughter's chair should not be set one inch further under the
canopy than was precisely proper; her fur trimmings must be carefully
regulated, so as not to equal those of the Duchess in breadth; instead
of the old home name of "the Lady Custance," she must be styled "the
Lady Le Despenser;" and the Duchess strongly objected to her using such
vulgar nicknames as "Ned" and "Dickon," desiring that she would in
future address her brothers properly as "my Lord."  Angrily the royal
lioness chafed against this tyranny.  Many a time Maude noticed the
flush of annoyance which rose to her lady's cheek, and the tremor of her
lip, as if she could with difficulty restrain herself from wrathful
words.  It evidently vexed her to be given her married name; but the
interference with the pet name of the pet brother was what she felt most
bitterly of all.  And Maude began to wonder how long it would last.

It was a calm, mild evening in January, 1394, and in the Princess's
bower, or bedroom, stood Maude, re-arranging a portion of her lady's
wardrobe.  The Duchess had been that day more than usually exacting and
precise, much to the amusement of Bertram Lyngern, at present at Langley
in the train of his master.  The door of Constance's bower was suddenly
opened and dashed to again, and the Princess herself entered, and began
pacing up and down the room like a chafed lioness--a habit of all the
Plantagenets when in a passion.  She stopped a minute opposite Maude,
and said in a determined voice:

"Make ready for Cardiff!"

And she resumed her angry march.

In this manner the Lady Le Despenser intimated her condescending
intention of fulfilling her matrimonial duties at last.  Maude knew her
too well to reply by anything beyond a respectful indication of
obedience.  Constance only gave her one day to prepare.  The next
morning but one the whole train of the Lady Le Despenser set forth on
their eventful journey.



CHAPTER SIX.

TRUE GOLD AND FALSE.

  "Woe be to fearful hearts and faint hands, and the sinner that goeth
  two ways!"--Ecclus. two 12.

Whatever may have been the feeling which possessed the mind of Constance
on her departure from Langley, the incident was felt by Maude as a
wrench and an uprooting, surpassing any previous incident of her life
since leaving Pleshy.  The old house itself had come to feel like a mute
friend; the people left behind were acquaintances of many years; the
ground was all familiar.  She was going now once more into a new world,
to new acquaintances, new scenes, new incidents.  The journey over land
was in itself very pleasant.  But the journey over sea from Bristol was
so exceedingly unpleasant, that poor Maude found herself acquainted with
a degree of physical misery which until then she had never imagined to
exist.  And when at last the great, grim, square towers of the Castle of
Cardiff, which was to be her new home, rose before her eyes, she thought
them absolutely lovely--because they were _terra firma_.  It can only be
ascribed to her unusual haste on the one hand, or to her usual caprice
on the other, that it had not pleased the Lady of Cardiff to give any
notice of her approach.  Of course nobody expected her; and when her
trumpeter sounded his blast outside the moat, the warder looked forth in
some surprise.  It was late in the evening for a guest to arrive.

"Who goeth yonder?"

"The Lady and her train."

"Saint Taffy and Saint Guenhyfar!" said the warder.

"Put forth the bridge!" roared the trumpeter.

"It had peen better to send word," calmly returned the warder.

"Send word to thy Lord, thou lither oaf!" cried the irate trumpeter,
"and see whether it liketh him to keep the Lady awaiting hither on an
even in January, while thou pratest in chopped English!"

Thereupon arose a passage of arms between the two affronted persons of
diverse nationalities, which was terminated by Constance, with one of
her sudden impulses, riding forward to the front, and taking the
business on herself.

"Sir Warder," she said--with that exquisite grace and lofty courtesy
which was natural to every Plantagenet, be the other features of his
character what they might,--"I am your Lady, and I pray you to notify
unto your Lord that I am come hither."

The warder was instantly mollified, and blew his horn to announce the
arrival of a guest.  There was a minute's bustle among the minor
officials about the gate, a little running to and fro, and then the
drawbridge was thrown across, and the next moment the Lord Le Despenser
knelt low to his royal spouse.  He could have had no idea of her coming
five minutes before, but he did his best to show her that any omissions
in her welcome were no fault on his part.

Thomas Le Despenser was just twenty years of age.  He was only of
moderate height for a man; and Constance, who was a tall woman, nearly
equalled him.  His Norman blood showed itself in his dark glossy hair,
his semi-bronzed complexion, and his dark liquid eyes, the expression of
which was grave almost to sadness.  An extremely short upper lip perhaps
indicated blue blood, but it gave a haughty appearance to his features,
which was not indicative of his character.  He had a sweet low-toned
voice, and an extremely winning smile.

The Princess suffered her husband to lift her from the pillion on which
she rode behind Bertram Lyngern, who had been transferred to her service
by her father's wish.  At the door of the banquet-hall the Dowager Lady
met them.  Maude's impression of her was not exactly pleasant.  She
thought her a stiff, solemn-looking, elderly woman, in widow's garb.
The Lady Elizabeth received her royal guest with the lowest of
courtesies, and taking her hand, conducted her with great formality to a
state chair on the dais, the Lord Le Despenser standing, bare-headed, on
the step below.

The ensuing ten minutes were painfully irksome to all parties.
Everybody was shy of everybody else.  A few common-place questions were
asked and answered; but when the Dowager suggested that "the Lady" must
be tired with her journey, and would probably like to rest for an hour
ere the rear-supper was served, it was a manifest relief to all.

A sudden incursion of so many persons into an unprepared house was less
annoying in the fourteenth century than it would be in the nineteenth.
There was then always superfluous provision for guests who might
suddenly arrive; a castle was invariably victualled in advance of the
consumption expected; and as to sleeping accommodation, a sack filled
with chaff and a couple of blankets was all that any person anticipated
who was not of "high degree."  Maude slept the first night in a long
gallery, with ten other women; for the future she would occupy the
pallet in her lady's chamber.  Bertram was provided for along with the
other squires, in the banquet-hall, the chaff beds and blankets being
carried out of the way in the morning; and as to draughts, our
forefathers were never out of one inside their houses, and therefore did
not trouble themselves on that score.  The washing arrangements,
likewise, were of the most primitive description.  Princes and the
higher class of peers washed in silver basins in their own rooms; but a
squire or a knight's daughter would have been thought unwarrantably
fastidious who was not fully satisfied with a tub and a towel.  A comb
was the only instrument used for dressing the hair, except where
crisping-pins were required; and mirrors were always fixtures against
the wall.

A long time elapsed before Maude felt at home at Cardiff; and she could
not avoid seeing that a still longer period passed before Constance did
so.  The latter was restless and unsettled.  She had escaped from the
rule of her step-mother to that of her mother-in-law, and she disliked
the one only a little less than the other; though "Daughter" fell very
differently on the ear from the lips of a child of ten, and from those
of a woman who was approaching sixty.  But the worst point of
Constance's new life was her utter indifference to her husband.  She
looked upon his gentle deference to her wishes as want of spirit, and
upon his quiet, reserved, undemonstrative manner as want of brains.
From loving him she was as far as she had been in those old days when
she had so cruelly told his sister Margaret that "when she loved Tom,
she would let him know."

That he loved her, and that very dearly, was patent to the most
superficial observer.  Maude, who was not very observant of others, used
to notice how his eyes followed her wherever she went, brightened at the
sound of her step, and kindled eagerly when she spoke.  The Dowager saw
it too, with considerable disapproval; and thought it desirable to turn
her observations to profit by a grave admonition to her son upon the sin
and folly of idolatry.  She meant rightly enough, yet it sounded harsh
and cruel, when she bluntly reminded him that Constance manifestly cared
nothing for him.

Le Despenser's lip quivered with pain.

"Let be, fair Mother," he said gently.  "It may be yet, one day, that my
Lady's heart shall come home to God and me, and that she shall then say
unto me, `I love thee.'"

Did that day ever come?  Ay, it did come; but not during his day.  The
time came when no music could have been comparable to the sound of his
voice--when she would have given all the world for one glimpse of his
smile--when she felt, like Avice, as though she could have climbed and
rent the heavens to have won him back to her.  But the heavens had
closed between them before that day came.  While they journeyed side by
side in this mortal world, he never heard her say, "I love thee."

The news received during the next few months was not likely to make
Constance feel more at home at Cardiff than before.  It was one constant
funeral wail.  On the 24th of March, 1394, her aunt Constanca, Duchess
of Lancaster, died of the plague at Leicester; in the close of May, of
the same disease, the beloved Lollard Queen; and on the first of July
her cousin, Mary Countess of Derby.  Constance grew so restless, that
when orders came for her husband to attend the King at Haverford, where
he was about to embark on his journey to Ireland, she determined to go
there also.

"I can breathe better any whither than at Cardiff!" she said
confidentially to Maude.

But in truth it was not Cardiff from which he fled, but her own restless
spirit.  The vine had been transplanted, and its tendrils refused to
twine round the strange boughs offered for its support.

The Princess found her father at Haverford, but the pair were very shy
of one another.  The Duke was beginning to discover that he had made a
blunder, that his fair young wife's temper was not all sunshine, and
that his intended plaything was likely to prove his eventual tyrant.
Constance, on her part, felt a twinge of conscience for her pettish
desertion of him in his old age; for to her apprehension he was now an
old man: and she was privately conscious that she could not honestly
plead any preconsideration for her husband.  She had merely pleased
herself, both in going and staying, and she knew it.  But she spent her
whole life in gathering apples of Sodom, and flinging away one after
another in bitter disappointment.  Yet the next which offered was always
grasped as eagerly as any that had gone before it.

Perhaps it was due to some feeling of regret on the Duke's part that he
invited his daughter and son-in-law to return with him.  Constance
accepted the offer readily.  The Duke was Regent all that winter, during
the King's absence in Ireland; and, as was usual, he took up his
residence in the royal Palace of Westminster.  Constance liked her visit
to Westminster; she was nearly as tired of Langley as of Cardiff, and
this was something new.  And a slight bond of union sprang up between
herself and her husband; for she made him, as well as Maude, the
confidant of all her complaints and vexations regarding her step-mother.
Le Despenser was satisfied if she would make a friend of him about
anything, and he was anxious to shield her from every annoyance in his
power.

It appeared to Maude, who had grown into a quiet, meditative woman, that
the feeling of the Duchess towards her step-daughter was not far from
positive hatred.  She seemed to seek occasions to mortify her, and to
manufacture quarrels which it would have been no trouble to avoid.  It
was some time before Maude could discern the cause.  But one day, in a
quiet talk with Bertram Lyngern, still her chief friend, she asked him
whether he had noticed it.

"Have I eyes, trow?" responded Bertram with a smile.

"But wherefore is it, count you?"

"Marry, the old tale, methinks.  Two men seldom discern alike; and he
that looketh on the blue side of a changeable sarcenet [shot silk], can
never join hands with him that seeth nought save the red."

"You riddle, Master Lyngern."

"Why, look you, our Lady Custance was rocked in a Lollard cradle; but my
Lady Duchess' Grace had a saint's bone for her rattle.  And her mother
is an Arundel."

"But so is my Lord's Grace of York [the archbishop] himself an Arundel."

"Ay--as mecounteth you shall see, one day."

"Doth not the doctrine of Sir John de Wycliffe like, him well?"

"Time will show," said Bertram, drily.

It was quite true that Archbishop Arundel had for some two years been
throwing dust in Lollard eyes by plausible professions of conversion to
some of the views of that party.  At a time when I was less acquainted
with his character and antecedents, I gave him credit for sincerity.
[Note 1.] I know him better now.  He was merely playing a very deep
game, and this was one of his subtlest moves.  His assumption of
Lollardism, or of certain items of it, was only the assumption of a
mask, to be worn as long as it proved serviceable, and then to be
dropped and forgotten.  The time for the mask to drop had come now.  The
death of Archbishop Courtenay, July 31, 1396, left open to Thomas de
Arundel the sole seat of honour in which he was not already installed.
Almost born in the purple [Note 2], he had climbed up from
ecclesiastical dignity to dignity, till at last there was only one
further height left for him to scale.  It could surprise no one to see
the vacant mitre set on the astute head of Gloucester's confessor and
prompter.

The Earl of Rutland presented himself at Westminster Palace before his
sister left it, attended as usual by his squire, Hugh Calverley.
Bertram and Maude at once wished to know all the news of Langley, from
which place they had come.  Hugh seemed acquainted with no news except
one item, which was that Father Dominic, having obtained a canonry, had
resigned his post of household confessor to the Palace; and a new
confessor had been appointed in his stead.

"And who is the new priest?" asked Bertram.  "One Sir Marmaduke de
Tyneworth."  [A fictitious person.]

"And what manner of man is he?"

"A right honest man and a proper [a fitting, satisfactory man], say they
who have confessed unto him; more kindly and courteous than Father
Dominic."

"He hath then not yet confessed thee?"

"I never confess," said Hugh quietly.  The impression made upon
Bertram's feelings by this statement was very much that which would be
left on ours, if we heard a man with a high reputation for piety calmly
remark that he never prayed.

"Never confess!" he repeated in astonished tones.  "Not to men.  I
confess unto God only."

"But how canst, other than by the priest?"

"What hardship, trow?  Can I not speak save by the priest?"

"But thou canst receive no absolving!"

"No can I?  Ay verily, friend, I can!"

"But--" Bertram stopped, with a puzzled look.

"Come, out with all thy _buts_," said Hugh, smilingly.

"Why, methinks--and holy Church saith it--that this is God's means
whereby men shall approach unto Him: nor hath He given unto us other."

"Holy Church saith it?  Ay so.  But where saith God such a thing?"

Bertram was by no means ignorant of Wycliffe's Bible, and he searched
his memory for authority or precedent.

"Well, thou wist that the man which had leprosy was bidden to show him
unto the priest, the which was to declare if his malady were true
leprosy or no."

"The priest being therein an emblem or mystery of Christ, which is true
Healer of the malady of sin."

"Ah!" said Bertram triumphantly, "but lo' thou, when our Lord Himself
did heal one that had leprosy, what quoth He?  `Show thyself to the
priest,' saith He: not, `I am the true Priest, and therefore thou mayest
slack to show thee to yon other priest, which is but the emblem of Me.'"

"Because," replied Hugh, "He did fulfil the law, and made it honourable.
Therefore saith He, `Show thyself to the priest.'  The law held good
until He should have fulfilled the same."

"But mind thou," urged Bertram eagerly, "it was but the lither [wicked,
abandoned] Pharisees which did speak like unto thee.  What said they
save the very thing thou wouldst fain utter--to wit, `Who may forgyve
synnes but God aloone?'  And alway our Lord did snyb and rebuke these
ill fawtors."

"Friend, countest thou that the Jew which had leprosy, and betook him
unto the high priest, did meet with contakes because he went not
likewise unto one of the lesser?  Either this confession unto the priest
is to be used with, or without, the confession unto God.  If to be used
without, what is this but saying the priest to be God?  And if to be
used with, what but saying that God is not sufficient, and the High
Priest may not act without the lesser priest do aid Him?"

"But what sayest touching the Pharisees?" repeated Bertram, who was not
able to answer Hugh's argument, and considered his own unanswerable.

"What say I?" was the calm answer.  "Why, I say they spake very sooth,
saving that they pushed not the matter to its full issue.  Had they
followed their reasoning on to the further end, then would they have
said, and spoken truly, `If this man can in very deed forgive sin, then
is He God.'  Mark, I pray thee, what did our Lord in this matter.  He
brought forth His letters of warrant.  He healed the palsied man afore
them--`that ye wite,' saith He, `that mannes sone hath power in erthe to
forgyve synnes.'  As though He had said unto them, `Ye say well; none
may forgive sins but God alone: wherefore see, in My forgiving of sin,
the plain proof that I am God's Son.'  To show them that He had power to
forgive sin, He did heal this man of his malady.  And verily I ask no
more of any priest that would confess me, but only that he bring forth
his letters of warrant, as did his Master and mine.  When I shall I see
him to heal the sick with a word, then will I crede that he can forgive
sin in like manner.  Lo' thou, if he can forgive, he can heal: if he can
heal by his word, then can _he_ forgive."

The waters were rather too deep for Bertram to wade in.  He tried
another line of argument.

"Saint James also saith that men should confess their sins."

"`Ech to othire'--well: when it liketh Sir Marmaduke to knowledge his
sins unto me, then will I mine unto him, if we have done any wrong each
to other.  But look thou into that matter of Saint James, and thou shalt
find it to touch not well men, but only sick; which, knowledging their
sins when their conscience is troubled, and praying each for other,
shall be healed of their sickness."

"Moreover, Achan did confession unto Josue," said Bertram, starting
another hare.

"Ah!  Josue was a priest, trow?"

"Nay, but if it be well to knowledge our sins each to other, it shall
not be worse because the man is a priest."

"Nor better," said Hugh, in his quietest manner.

"Nay!" urged Bertram, who thought he had the advantage here, "but an' it
be well to confess at all, it is good to confess unto any: and if to
any, to a woman; or if to a woman, to a man; or to a man, then to a
priest."

Hugh gave a soft little laugh.

"Good friend, I could prove any gear in the world by that manner of
reasoning.  If it be good to confess unto any, then unto anything that
liveth; and if so, then to a beast; and if to a beast, then to yonder
cat.  Come hither, Puss, and hear this my friend his confession!"

"Have done with thy mocking!" cried Bertram.  "And mind thou, the Lord
did charge the holy apostles with power to forgive sins."

"Granting that so be--what then?"

"What then?  Why, that priests have now the like power."

"But what toucheth it the priests?"

"In that they be successors unto the apostles."

"In what manner?"

Hugh was evidently not disposed to take any links of the chain for
granted.

"Man!" exclaimed Bertram, almost in a pet, "wist not that Paul did
ordain Timothy Bishop of Ephesus, and bade him do the like to other,--
and so from each to other was the blessed grace handed down, till it gat
at the priests that now be?"

"Was it so?" said Hugh coolly.  "But when and where bade Paul that
Timothy should forgive sins?"

Bertram found it much harder to prove his assertion than to state it.
He could only answer that he did not know.

"Nor I neither," returned Hugh.  "Nor Timothy neither, without I much
mistake."

"I must needs give thee up.  Thou art the worst caitiff to reason
withal, ever mortal man did see!"

Hugh laughed.

"Lo' you, friend, I ask but for one instance of authority.  Show unto me
any passage of authority in God's Word, whereby any priest shall forgive
sins; or show unto me any priest that now liveth, which shall bring
forth his letters of warrant by healing a man all suddenly of his
sickness whatsoever, and I am at a point.  Bring him forth, prithee; or
else confess thou hast no such to bring."

"Hold thy peace, for love of Mary Mother!" said Bertram, passing his
irrepressible opponent a plateful of smoking pasty, for the party were
at supper; "and fill thy jaws herewith, the which is so hot thou shalt
occupy it some time."

"My words being, somewhat too hot for thee, trow?" rejoined Hugh
comically.  "Good.  I can hold my peace right well when I am wanted so
to do."

When Constance returned home to Cardiff, she remained there for some
little time without any further visit to Court.  She alone of all the
Princesses was absent from the Church of Saint Nicholas at Calais, when
the King was married there to the Princess Isabelle of France--a child
of only eight years old.  Something far more interesting to herself
detained her at Cardiff; where, on the 30th of November, 1396, an heir
was born to the House of Le Despenser.

That the will of "the Lady" stood paramount we see in the name given to
the infant.  He was christened after her favourite brother, Richard--a
name unknown in his father's line, whose family names were always Hugh
and Edward.

In their unfeigned admiration of this paragon of babies, its mother and
grandmother sank all their previous differences.  But when the difficult
question of education arose, the differences reappeared as strongly as
ever.  The only notion which Constance had of bringing up a child was to
give it everything it cried for; while the Dowager was prepared to go a
long way in the opposite direction, and give it nothing in respect to
which it showed the slightest temper.  The practical result was that the
boy was committed to the care of Maude, whom both agreed in trusting,
with the most contradictory orders concerning his training.  Maude
followed the dictates of her own common sense, and implicitly obeyed the
commands of neither of the rival authorities; but as little Richard
throve well under her care, she was never called to account by either.

The year 1397 brought a political earthquake, which ended in the
destruction of three of the five grand traitors, the Lords Appellants.
The commons had at last opened their eyes to the real state of affairs.
The conspirators were meditating fresh projects of treachery, when by
the advice of the Dukes of Lancaster and York, Gloucester was arrested
and imprisoned at Calais, where he died on the 15th of September, either
from apoplexy or by a private execution.  Richard Earl of Arundel, the
tool of his priestly brother, was beheaded six days later.  The Earl of
Warwick, who had been merely the blind dupe of the others, was banished
to the Isle of Man.  The remaining two--the ambitious Derby, and the
conceited Nottingham--contrived in the cleverest manner, not only to
escape punishment, but to obtain substantial rewards for their loyalty!
Derby presented a very humble petition on behalf of both, in which he
owned, with so exquisite a show of penitence, to having _listened_ to
the suggestions of the deceased traitors, and been concerned in "several
riotous disturbances"--professed himself and his friend to be so
abjectly repentant, and so irrevocably faithful for ever henceforward--
that King Richard, as easily deceived as usual, hastened to pardon the
repenting sinners.  But there was one man in the world who was not
deceived by Derby's plausible professions.  Old Lancaster shook his
white head when he heard that his son was not only pardoned, but
restored to favour.

"'Tis hard matter for father thus to speak of son," he said to his royal
nephew; "nathless, my gracious Lord, I do you to wit that you have done
a fool deed this day.  You shall never have peace while Hal is in this
kingdom."

"Fair Uncle, I am sure he will repay me!" was the response of the
warm-hearted Richard.

"Ha!" said John of Gaunt, and sipped his ipocras with a grim smile.
"_Sans doute, Monseigneur, sans doute_!"

Westminster Hall beheld a grand and imposing ceremony on the Michaelmas
Day of 1397.  The King sat in state upon his throne at the further end,
the little Queen beside him, and the various members of the royal line
on either side--Princes on the right, Princesses on the left.  The
Duchess of Lancaster had the first place; then the Duchess of York,
particularly complacent and resplendent; the Duchess of Gloucester, who
should have sat third, was closely secluded (of her free will) in the
Convent of Bermondsey.  Next sat the Countess of March, the elder sister
of the Duchess Joan, and wife of the Lollard heir of England.  The
daughters of the Princes followed her.  Elizabeth, Countess of
Huntingdon, daughter of the Duke of Lancaster, whom that day was to make
a duchess, and who bore away the palm from the rest as "the best singer
and the best dancer" of all the royal ladies, held her place, beaming
with smiles, and radiant with rubies and crimson velvet.  Next, arrayed
in blue velvet, sat the only daughter of York, Constance Lady Le
Despenser.  Round the hall sat the nobles of England in their
"Parliament robes," each of the married peers with his lady at his side;
while below came the House of Commons, and lower yet, outside the
railing, the people of England, in the shape of an eager, sight-seeing
mob.  There was to be a great creation of peers, and one by one the
names were called.  As each of the candidates heard his name, he rose
from his seat, and was led up to the throne by two nobles of the order
to which he was about to be raised.

"Sir Henry of Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby!"  The gentleman whose
unswerving loyalty was about to be recompensed by the gift of a coronet
(!) rose with his customary grace from his seat, third on the right hand
of the King, and was led up by his father of Lancaster and his uncle of
York.  He knelt, bareheaded, before the throne.  A sword was girt to his
side, a ducal coronet set on his head by the royal hand, and he rose
Duke of Hereford.  As old Lancaster resumed his seat, he smiled grimly
under his white beard, and muttered to himself--"_Sans doute_!"

"Sir Edward of Langley, Earl of Rutland!"

Constance's brother was similarly led up by his father and his cousin,
the newly-created Duke, and he resumed his princely seat, Duke of
Aumerle, or Albemarle.

"Sir Thomas de Holand, Earl of Kent, Baron Wake!"

Hereford and Aumerle were the two to lead up the candidate.  He was the
son of the King's half-brother, and was reputed the handsomest of the
nobles: a tall, finely-developed man, with the shining golden hair of
his Plantagenet ancestors.  He was created Duke of Surrey.

Hereford sat down, and Surrey and Aumerle conducted John Earl of
Huntingdon to the throne.  He was half-brother of the King, uncle of
Surrey, and husband of the royal songstress who sat and smiled in
crimson velvet.  He had stepped out of the family ranks; for instead of
being tall, fair, and good-looking, like the rest of his house, he was a
little dark-haired man, whom no artist would have selected as a model of
beauty.  A strong anti-Lollard was this nobleman, a good hater, a
prejudiced, violent, unprincipled man; possessed of two virtues only--
honesty and loyalty.  He had been cajoled for a time by Gloucester, but
his brother knew him too well to doubt his sincerity or affection.  He
was made Duke of Exeter.

The next call was for--"Sir Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham!"  And
up came the last of the "Lords Appellants," painfully conscious in his
heart of hearts that while he might have been in his right place on the
scaffold in Cheapside, he was very much out of it in Westminster Hall,
kneeling to receive the coronet of Norfolk.

A coronet was now laid aside, for the recipient was not present.  She
was an old lady of royal blood, above seventy years of age, the second
cousin of the King, and great-grandmother of Nottingham.  Her style and
titles were duly proclaimed as Duchess of Norfolk for life.

But when "Sir John de Beaufort, Earl of Somerset!" was called for, the
peer summoned rose and walked forward alone.  He was to be created a
marquis--a title of King Richard's own devising, and at that moment
borne by no one else.  The Earl came reluctantly, for he was very
unwilling to be made unlike other people; and he dropped his new title,
and returned to the old one, as soon as he conveniently could.  He had a
tall, fine figure, but not a pleasant face; and his religion, no less
than his politics, he wore like a glove--well-fitting when on, but
capable of being changed at pleasure.  Just now, when Lollardism was
"walking in silver slippers," my Lord Marquis of Dorset was a Lollard.
Rome rarely persecutes men of this sort, for she makes them useful in
preference.

And now the herald cried--"Sir Thomas Le Despenser, Baron of Cardiff!"

The Earls of Northumberland and Suffolk were the supporters of Le
Despenser, who walked forward with a slow, graceful step, to receive
from the King's hand an earl's coronet, accompanied by the ominous name
of Gloucester--a title stained by its last bearer beyond remedy.  In
truth, the royal dukedom had been an interpolation of the line, and the
King was merely giving Le Despenser back his own--the coronet which had
belonged to the grand old family of Clare, whose co-heiress was the
great-grandmother of Thomas Le Despenser.  The title had been kept as it
were in suspense ever since the attainder of her husband, the ill-fated
Earl Hugh, though two persons had borne it in the interim without any
genuine right.

Three other peers were created, but they do not concern the story.  And
then the King rose from his throne, the ceremony was over; and Constance
Le Despenser left the hall among the Princesses by right of her birth,
but wearing her new coronet as Countess of Gloucester.

Four months later, the Duke of Hereford knelt before the throne, and
solemnly accused his late friend and colleague, the Duke of Norfolk, of
treason.  He averred that Norfolk had tempted him to join another secret
conspiracy.  Norfolk, when questioned, turned the tables by denying the
accusation, and adding that it was Hereford who had tempted him.  Since
neither of these noble gentlemen was particularly worthy of credit, and
they both swore very hard on this occasion, it is impossible to decide
which (if either) was telling the truth.  The decision finally arrived
at was that both the accusers should settle their quarrel by wager of
battle, for which purpose they were commanded to meet at Coventry in the
following autumn.

Before the duel took place, an important event occurred in the death of
Roger Mortimer, the Lollard Earl of March, whom the King had proclaimed
heir presumptive of England.  He was Viceroy of Ireland, and was killed
in a skirmish by the "wild Irish."  March, who was only 24 years of age,
left four children, of whom we shall hear more anon, to be educated by
their mother, Archbishop Arundel's niece, in her own Popish views.  He
is described by the monkish chroniclers as "very handsome and very
courteous, most dissolute of life, and extremely remiss in all matters
of religion."  We can guess pretty well what that means.  "Remiss in
matters of religion," of course, refers to his Lollardism, while the
accusation of "dissolute life" is notoriously Rome's pet charge against
those who escape from her toils.  Such was the sad and early end of the
first and only Lollard of the House of Mortimer.

The duel between Hereford and Norfolk was appointed to take place on
Gosford Green, near Coventry, on the 16th of September.  The combatants
met accordingly; but before a blow was struck, the King took the matter
upon himself and forbade the engagement.  On the 3rd of October, licence
was granted to Hereford to travel abroad, this being honourable
banishment; no penalty was inflicted upon Norfolk.  But some event--
perhaps never to be discovered--occurred, or came to light during the
following ten days, which altered the whole aspect of affairs.  Either
the King found out some deed of treason, of which he had been previously
ignorant, or else some further offence was committed by both Hereford
and Norfolk.  On the 13th both were banished--Hereford for ten years,
Norfolk for life; the sentence in the former case being afterwards
commuted to six years.  Those who know the Brutus-like character of John
of Gaunt, and his real opinion of his son's proceedings, may accept, if
they can, the representations of the monastic chroniclers that the
commutation of Hereford's sentence was made at his intercession.

In the interim, between the duel and the sentence, Archbishop Arundel
was formally adjudged a traitor, and the penalty of banishment was
inflicted on him also.

Constance was too busy with her nursery to leave Cardiff, where this
autumn little Richard was joined by a baby sister, who received the name
of Elizabeth after the Dowager Lady.  But the infant was not many weeks
old, when, to use the beautiful phrase of the chroniclers, she
"journeyed to the Lord."  She was taken away from the evil to come.

It was appropriate enough that the last dread year of the fourteenth
century should be ushered in by funeral knells.  And he who died on the
third of February in that year, though not a very sure stay, was the
best and last support of the Gospel and the throne.  It was with
troubled faces and sad tones that the Lollards who met in the streets of
London told one to another that "old John of Gaunt, time-honoured
Lancaster," was lying dead in the Bishop of Ely's Palace.

But the storm was deferred for a few weeks longer.  There were royal
visits to Langley and Cardiff, on the way to Ireland, the Earl of
Gloucester accompanying the King to that country.  And then, when
Richard had left the reins of government in the feeble hands of York,
the tempest burst over England which had been lowering for so long.

The Lady Le Despenser and the Countess of Gloucester were seated at
breakfast in Cardiff Castle, on a soft, bright morning in the middle of
July.  Breakfast consisted of fresh and salt fish, for it was a
fast-day; plain and fancy bread, different kinds of biscuits (but all
made without eggs or butter); small beer, and claret.  Little Richard
was energetically teasing Maude, by whom he sat, for another piece of
red-herring, and the Dowager, deliberate in all her movements, was
slowly helping herself to Gascon wine.  The blast of a horn without the
moat announced the arrival of a guest or a letter, and Bertram Lyngern
went out to see what it was.  Ten minutes later he returned to the hall,
with letters in his hand, and his face white with some terrible news.

"Ill tidings, noble ladies!"

"Is it Dickon?" cried the Countess.

"Is it Tom?" said the Dowager.

"There be no news of my Lord, nor from Langley," said Bertram.  "But my
Lord's Grace of Hereford, and Sir Thomas de Arundel, sometime
Archbishop, be landed at Ravenspur."

"Landed at Ravenspur!--Banished men!"

The loyal soul of Elizabeth Le Despenser could imagine nothing more
atrocious.

"Well, let them land!" she added in a minute.  "The Duke's Grace of York
shall wit how to deal with them.  Be any gathered to them?"

"Hundreds and thousands," was the ominous answer.

"Ay me!" sighed the Dowager.  "Well! `the Lord reigneth.'"

Constance's only comment on the remarks was a quiet, incredulous shrug
of her shoulders.  She knew her father.

And she was right.  Like many another, literally and figuratively, York
went over to the enemy's ground to parley, and ended in staying there.
One of the two was talked over--but that one was not the rebel, but the
Regent.

Poor York!  Looking back on those days, out of the smoke of the battle,
one sees him a man so wretchedly weak and incapable that it is hardly
possible to be angry with him.  It does not appear to have been
conviction, nor cowardice, nor choice in any sense, which caused his
desertion, but simply his miserable incapacity to stand alone, or to
resist the influence of any stronger character on either side.  _He_ go
to parley with the enemy!  He might as well have sent his baby grandson
to parley with a box of sugar-plums.

Fresh news--always bad news--now came into Cardiff nearly every day.

The King hurried back from Ireland to Conway, and there gathered his
loyal peers around him.  There were only sixteen of them.  Dorset,
always on the winning side, deserted the sinking ship at once.  Aumerle
more prudently waited to see which side would eventually prove the
winner.

Exeter and Surrey were sent to parley with the traitors.  They were both
detained, Surrey as a prisoner, Exeter with a show of friendship.  The
latter was too fertile in resources, and too eloquent in speech, not to
be a dangerous foe.  He was therefore secured while the opportunity
offered.

Then came the treacherous Northumberland as ambassador from Heref

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