The Young Lovell: A Romance
by unknown · English · Gutenberg #42801 · 509,556 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Young Lovell: A Romance
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Young Lovell: A Romance
Creator: Ford Madox Ford
Release date: May 24, 2013 [eBook #42801]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42801
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG LOVELL: A ROMANCE ***
Produced by Al Haines.
THE YOUNG LOVELL
A ROMANCE
BY FORD MADOX HUEFFER
"When they were come to Hutton Ha'
They ride that proper place about,
But the laird he was the wiser man,
For he had left nae gear about."
_Border Ballad_.
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1913
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED
LONDON AND BECCLES
_All rights reserved_
HISTORICAL NOVELS BY
FORD MADOX HUEFFER
THE FIFTH QUEEN
PRIVY SEAL
THE FIFTH QUEEN CROWNED
THE HALF MOON
THE PORTRAIT
LADIES WHOSE BRIGHT EYES
THE YOUNG LOVELL
PART I
I
In the darkness Young Lovell of the Castle rose from his knees, and so
he broke his vow. Since he had knelt from midnight, and it was now the
sixth hour of the day, he staggered; innumerable echoes brushed through
the blackness of the chapel; the blood made flames in his eyes and
roared in his ears. It should have been the dawn, or at least the false
dawn, he thought, long since. But he knew that, in that stone place,
like a coffer, with the ancient arched windows set in walls a man's
length deep, it would be infinitely long before the light came to his
eyes. Yet he had vowed to keep his vigil, kneeling till the dawn ...
When the night had been younger it had been easier but more terrible.
Visions had come to him; a perpetual flutter of wings, shuddering
through the cold silence. He had seen through the thick walls, Behemoth
riding amidst crystal seas, Leviathan who threw up the smoke and flames
of volcanoes. Mahound had passed that way with his cortege of pagans and
diamonded apes; Helen of Troy had beckoned to him, standing in the
sunlight, and the Witch of Endor, an exceedingly fair woman, and a naked
one, riding on a shell over a sea with waves like dove's feathers. The
Soldan's daughter had stretched out her arms to him, and a courtesan he
had seen in Venice long ago, but her smile had turned to a skull's
grinning beneath a wimple. He had known all these for demons. The
hermit of Liddeside with his long beard and foul garments, such as they
had seen him when they went raiding up Dunbar way, had swept into that
place and had imperiously bidden him up from his knees to drive the
Scots from Barnside, but he had known that the anchorite had been dead
this three years and, seeing that the Warden of the Eastern Marches and
the Bishop of Durham, with all his own father's forces and all theirs,
lay in the castle and its sheilings, it was not likely that the false
Scots would be so near. Young gallants with staghounds, brachets and
Hamboro dogs had bidden him to the chase; magicians with crucibles had
bidden him come view their alembics where the philosopher's stone stood
revealed; spirits holding flames in their hands had sought to teach him
the sin against the Holy Ghost, and Syrians in robes of gold, strange
sins. There had come cooks with strange and alluring messes whose
odours make you faint with desires, and the buttling friars from
friaries with great wine-skins of sack. But all of them, too, he had
known for demons, though at each apparition desire had shaken him.
All these he had taken to be in the nature of the very old chapel, since
it had stood there over the tiresome and northern sea ever since
Christendom had come to the land, and it was proper to think that, just
as those walls had seen the murdering of blessed saint Oddry by heathens
and Scots whilst he sang mass, and even as pagans and sorcerers had in
the old times contended for that ground, now, having done it in the
body, in their souls they should still haunt that spot and contend for
the soul of a young lording that should be made a knight upon the
morrow. But when the tower-warden had churned out four o'clock the bird
of dawn had crowed twice....
Three times would have been of better omen. At that moment Satan
himself, the master fiend, with legs of scarlet, a bull's hide sweeping
behind and horns all gold and aquamarine, had been dancing with mighty
leaps above a coal fire, up through which, livid and in flaming shrouds,
there had risen the poor souls of folk in purgatory. And with a charter
from which there dangled a seal dripping blood to hiss in the coals and
become each drop a viper--with this charter held out towards Young
Lovell, Satan had offered him any of these souls to be redeemed from
purgatory at the price of selling his own to Satan.
He had been about to say that he knew too much of these temptations and
that the damnation of one soul would be infinitely more grievous to Our
Lady than the temporary sojourn in purgatory of an infinite number. But
at the crowing of the cock Satan and his firelit leer had vanished as if
a candle had been blown out in a cavern....
There had begun an intolerable period of waiting. He tried to say his
sixty Aves, but the perpetual whirling of wings that brushed his brow
took away his thoughts. He knew them now for the wings of anxious bats
that his presence disturbed. When he began upon his Paters, a rat that
had crept into his harness of proof overset his helmet and the prayer
went out of his head. When he would have crossed himself, suddenly his
foster-brother and cousin, Decies of the South, that should have watched
in the chapel porchway, began to snore and cried out in his sleep the
name "Margaret." Three times Decies of the South cried "Margaret."
Then Young Lovell knew that the spirits having power between cockcrow
and dawn, in the period when men die and life ebbs down the sands--that
these spirits were casting their spells upon him.
These were the old, ancient gods of a time unknown--the gods to whom the
baal fires were lit; gods of the giants and heroes of whom even his
confessor spoke with bated breath. Angels, some said they were, not
fallen, but indifferent. And some of the poor would have them to be
little people that dwelt in bogs and raths, and others held them for
great and fair. He could not pray; he could not cross himself; his
tongue clove to his jaws; his limbs were leaden. His mind was filled
with curiosity, with desire, with hope. He had a great thirst and the
cramp in his limbs. He could see a form and he could not see a form.
He could see a light and no light at all.
Yet it was a light. It was a light of a rosy, stealing nature. It fell
through one of the little, rounded windows, the shadows of the
crab-apple branches outside the wall, moving slowly across the floor.
When he looked again it was gone and not gone. Without a doubt some
eyes were peering into the chapel; eyes that could see in the dark were
watching him. Kind eyes; eyes unmoved. His heart beat enormously....
And then he was upon his feet, reeling and stretching out his arms, with
prayers that he had never prayed before upon his lips. Then prudence
came into his heart and he argued with himself. It was to himself and
to no other man or priest that he had vowed to watch above his harness
from midnight to dawning. That was a newish fashion and neither the
Border Warden nor the Prince Bishop would ask him had he done it or no.
They would knight him without this new French manner of it. Then he
might well go to see if the dawn were painting the heavens. He fumbled
at the bar and cast the door open, stepping out.
It was grey; the sea grey and all the rushes of the sands. The foam was
grey where it beat on the islands at sea and in the no-light the great
cliff of his father's castle wall was like grey clouts hung from the
mists. He perceived an old witch toiling up the dunes to come to him.
She had a red cloak and a faggot over her shoulder. She waved her
crutch to make him await her, and suddenly he thought she sailed, high
in the air from the heavy sand to the stone at his feet. He thought
this, but he could not be sure, for at that moment he was rubbing the
heavy sleep from his eyes.
"That ye could do this, well I knew," he said, "but I had not thought to
see ye do it over my ground."
Often he had seen the old witch. Sometimes she was in the form of a
russet hare, slinking into her bed when he had been in harness without
bow or light gun or hounds to chase her with. At other times he had
seen her in her red cloak creeping about her affairs in the grey woods
by Barnside.
Her filthy locks fell across her red eyes and she laughed so that he
repented having spared her life in the woods.
"Gowd ye sall putten across my hand," she said, and her voice was like
the wither of dried leaves and the weary creak of bough on bough in a
great gale when the woods are perilous because of falling oaks. He
answered that he had no gold because he had left his poke in his chest
in the castle.
And with great boldness she bade him give her one of the pearls from the
cap that hung at his belt. He reached to his left side for his sword,
but it lay in the chapel across his armour of damascened steel and
bright gold.
"Ye shall drown in my castle well when I have this business redded up,"
he said, but he wished he had slain her with his sword, for she was a
very evil creature and it was not well in him to let her corrupt the
souls of his poor. He lifted from his girdle his tablets to write down
that the witch must drown, but the tablets the pen and the knife were
tangled with their red silken tassels and skeins. A heavy snore came
from within the chapel porch where Decies of the South was sleeping
against the wall.
"If my bride had not begged your life of me..." the Young Lovell began.
Decies of the South muttered: "Margaret," just at his left hand.
"Bride," the old witch tittered. "Ye shall never plight your troth.
But that sleeper shall be plighted to my lording's bride and take his
gear. And another shall have his lands."
"Get you back to Hell!" the Young Lovell said.
"Look," the witch cried out.
She pointed down the wind, across the miles of dim dunes underneath
where the Cheviots were like ghosts for the snow. The dunes rose in
little hummocks amongst grey fields. A high crag was to the left. It
was all grey over Holy Island; smoke rose from its courtyard.
Dunstanburgh was lost in clouds of white sea spray, and in great clouds
the sea-birds were drifting inland in strings of thousands each. Still
no sun came over the sea.
The witch pointed with her crutch....
A little thing like a rabbit was digging laboriously at the foot of the
crag; it ran here and there, moving a heavy stone.
"That man shall be your master," the witch cried.
A white horse moved slowly across the dunes. It had about it a swirling
cloud of brown and a swirling cloud of the colour of pearly shells.
"And that shall be your bane," the witch said, in a little voice. "Ah
me, for the fine young lording."
Young Lovell coursed to the shed beyond the chapel yew where his horse
whinned at the sound of his voice. He haled out the goodly roan that
was called Hamewarts because they had bought him in Marseilles to ride
homewards through France; his father and he had been to Rome after his
father did the great and nameless sin and expiated it in that journey.
He had ridden Hamewarts up from the Castle of Lovell so that, standing
in the shed whilst his master kept his vigil, the horse might share his
benediction.
The roan stallion lifted his head to gaze down the wind. He drew in the
air through his nostrils that were as broad as your palm; he sprang on
high and neighed as he had done at the battle of Kenchie's Burn.
The horse had no need of spurs, and young Lovell had none. It ran like
the wind in the direction of the white steed at a distance.
Nevertheless, the rider heard through the muffled sound of hoofs on the
heavy sand the old witch who cried out, "Eya," to show that she had more
to say, and he drew the reins of his charger. The sand flew all over
him from beneath the horse's feet, and he heard the witch's voice cry
out:
"To-day your dad shall die, but you's get none of his lands nor gear.
From the now you shall be a houseless man."
But when he turned in his saddle he could see no old beldam in a scarlet
cloak. Only a russet hare ran beneath the belly of Hamewarts and
squealed like a new-born baby.
Whilst he rode furiously as if he were in chase of the grey wolf Young
Lovell had leisure to reflect, he had ample time in which to inspect the
early digger and the beclouded horse. At eight o'clock he was to be
knighted by the double accolade of the Warden of the Eastern Marches and
of the Prince Bishop, following a custom that was observed in cases of
great eminence or merit in the parties. And not only was Young Lovell
son to Lord Lovell of the Castle, but he had fought very well against
the Scots, in the French wars and in Border tulzies. So at eight, that
he might not fast the longer, he was to be knighted. It was barely six,
for still no sun showed above the long horizon of the northern sea.
It was bitter cold and the little digger, with his back to the rider,
was blowing on his fingers and muttering over a squared stone that had
half of it muddied from burial. At first Young Lovell took the little
man for a brownie, then for an ape. Then he knew him for Master Stone,
the man of law.
He cried out:
"Body of God, Master Furred Cat, where be's thy gown?"
And the little man span round, spitting and screaming, with his spade
raised on high. But his tone changed to fawning and then to a
complacence that would have done well between two rogues over a booty.
"Worshipful Knight," he brought out, and his voice was between the creak
of a door and the snarl of a dog fox, though his thin knees knocked
together for fear. "A man must live, I in my garret as thou in thy
castle bower with the pretty, fair dames."
"Ay, a man mun live," the Young Lovell answered. "But what sort of
living is this to be seeking treasure trove on my land before the sun be
up?"
"Treasure trove?" the lawyer mumbled. "Well, it is a treasure."
"It is very like black Magic," Young Lovell said harshly. "A
mislikeable thing to me. I must have thee burnt. What things a man
sees upon his lands before the sun is up!"
"Magic," the lawyer screamed in a high and comic panic. "God help me, I
have nothing of Mishego and Mishago. This is plain lawyer's work and if
your honour will share, one half my fees you shall have from the
improvident peasants."
At the high sound of his voice Hamewarts, who all the while was
straining after the white horse, bounded three strides; when Young
Lovell took him strongly back, he had the square stone at another angle.
Upon its mossed side he saw a large "S" carved that had two crosses in
its loops, upon the side that was bare was one "S" with the upper loop
struck through.
"Body of God, a boundary stone," he cried out. "And you, Furred Cat, are
removing it." He had got the epithet of Furred Cat from talking to the
Sire de Montloisir whilst they played at the dice.
"Indeed it is more profitable than treasure-troving and seeking the
philosopher's stone," the lawyer tittered, and he rubbed, from habit,
his hands together, so that little, triturated grains of mud fell from
them into the peasant's poor, boggy grass. "This is Hal o' the Mill's
land, and I have moved the stone a furlong into the feu of Timothy
Wynvate. There shall arise from this a lawsuit that shall last the
King's reign out. Aye, belike, one of the twain shall slay the other.
His land your honour may take back as forfeit, and the other's as
deodand. I will so contrive it, for I will foment these suits and have
the handling of them. By these means, in time, your lordingship may
have back all the lands ye ever feu'd. In time. Only give me time...."
The Young Lovell lifted up his fist to the sky. The most violent rage
was in his heart.
"Now by the paps of Venus and the thunder of Jove, I have forgotten the
penalty of him that removeth his neighbour's landmark! But if I do not
die before night, and I think I shall not, that death you shall die.
Say your foul prayers, filth, your doom is said...."
Master Stone lifted up both his hands, clasped together, to beg his life
of this hot but charitable youth. But Young Lovell had leaped his horse
across a dune faster than the words could follow him.
He came upon a narrow strip of nibbled turf running down a valley of
rushy sand-hills. Hamewarts guided him. They went over one ridge and
had sight of the white horse; they sank into another dale and lost it.
On the summit of the next ridge Hamewarts became suddenly like a horse
of bronze and the Young Lovell had a great dizziness. He had a sense of
brown, of pearly blue, of white, of many colours, of many great flowers
as large as millstones. With a heavy sense of reluctance he looked
behind him. The mists were rising like curtains from over Bamborough;
since the tide was falling the pall of spray was not so white on
Dunstanburgh. Upon his own castle, covering its promontory near at
hand, they were hoisting a flag, so that from there the tower warden
must have already perceived the sun. From over the castle on Holy
Island the pall of smoke was drifting slowly to sea. No doubt in the
courtyard they had been roasting sheep and kine whole against the visit
of the Warden and the Prince Bishop who would ride on there with all
their men by nine of the clock.
In every bay and reedy promontory the cruel surf gnawed the sand; the
ravens were flying down to the detritus of the night, on the wet margins
of the tide. The lawyer was climbing over the shoulder of a dune, a
sack upon his back; a shepherd, for the first time that spring, was
driving a flock of sheep past the chapel yew. There was much surf on
Lindisfarne.
Suddenly, from the middle of the bow of the grey horizon there shot up a
single, broadening beam. Young Lovell waved his arm to the golden disk
that hastened over the grey line.
"If you had come sooner," he said to the sun, "you might have saved me
from this spell. Now these fairies have me."
Slowly, with mincing and as if shy footsteps, Hamewarts went down
through the rushes from that very real world. Young Lovell perceived
that the brown was a carpeting that fluttered, all of sparrows. It had a
pearly and restless border of blue doves, and in this carpet the white
horse stepped ankle-deep without crushing one little fowl. He perceived
the great-petalled flowers, scarlet and white and all golden. On a
green hill there stood a pink temple, and the woman on the back of the
white horse held a white falcon. She smiled at him with the mocking
eyes of the naked woman that stood upon the shell in the picture he had
seen in Italy.
"But for you," he heard himself think, "I might have been the prosperest
knight of all this Northland and the world, for I have never met my
match in the courteous arts, the chase or the practice and exercises of
arms."
And he heard her answering thoughts:
"Save for that I had not called thee from the twilight."
II
The Warden of the Eastern Marches, who was Henry Percy, fourth Earl of
Northumberland, said that there was too much of this silken flummery. He
desired to get back to the affairs of King Henry VII and a plain world
where there were too many false Scots. The Lord Lovell of the Castle
agreed with him, but said that the women would so have it. He was an
immense, gross man, the rolls of fat behind his head, growing black
curly hair that ran into his black and curly beard, mantled high up on
his neck. His eyes were keen, peeble-blue, sagacious and mocking. The
Lady Rohtraut, his wife, a fair, thin woman of forty-three, one of the
Dacres of the North, leaned across the Bishop Palatine to disagree with
the Warden. Thin as she was she wore an immense gown of red damask
worked with leaves, birds and pomegranates. Her sleeves brushed the
ground, her hood of black velvet had a diamond-shaped front, like the
gable of a house, and was framed in yellow gold set with emeralds that
her lord had brought from Venice to get her back to a good temper,
though he never did. The broad edging of brown fur from her sleeves
caught in a crochet of the gilded steel on the Bishop Palatine's armour
which had been taken from the Saracens in the year 1482, they having
rieved it from the Venetians.
The Lady Rohtraut said that these things had been ordered after the
leaves of a written book that had been sent her by her cousin Alice from
the King's court in London. This book was called "Faicts of Arms," and
the King himself who loved good chivalry had bade it be printed tho'
that would be long in doing. There the order of these things had been
set forth, and she had done her best to have fashion of it right, though
with only men to help her, she imagined that Messire de Montloisir would
laugh if he did not happen to be on his bed of sickness.
But she had them there to the number of eleven score, gentry, priests
and commonalty with many men-at-arms to hold the herd back with their
pike-staves. The great stone hall she had had painted with vermilion,
green and gold. Enormous banners with swallow-tails fell from the
gilded beams of the roof. They displayed the snarling heads of red
tigers, portculles, two-hued roses, and a dun cow on a field of green
sarcenet in honour of the Bishop Palatine. The table at which they sat,
the men divided from the women, had its silken cloth properly tabled out
in chequers of green and vermilion. The pages with their proper badges
walked to and fro before the table as they should do, and, as they
should be, the people of no privilege were penned in behind the columns
of the hall where they made a great noise. She would not have anything
lacking at the sacring of her one son.
Sir Walter Limousin, of Cullerford, who had married her daughter Isopel,
sneered at these words of his mother-in-law. He sat at the right hand
of his father-in-law. Sir Symonde Vesey, of Haltwhistle, who had
married the daughter Douce, and sat beyond Sir Walter, said loudly that
too much gear went to waste over these Frenchifications of the Young
Lovell and his dame. Their two wives said that indeed their mother was
over-fond.
Their mother, who was a proud Dacre with the proudest of them, flushed
vicious red. She said that her daughters were naughty jades, and if
their husbands had not three times each been beggared by Scots raiders
they might have had leave to talk so. But, being what they were, it
would be better if they closed their mouths over one who had paid all
his ransoms, whether to the Scots or on the bloody field of Kenchie's
Burn, with sword-blows solely. She had paid one thousand marks to
artificers of Brussels for stuffs to deck that hall and the street of
the township where it led from the chapel whence her fair, brave son
should come; so that banners and carpets hung from the windows, the
outer galleries, stairways and the roofs where they were low. And she
wished she had spent ten thousand on her son who had won booty enough to
pay all she had laid out on him and her daughters' husbands' ransoms
besides--after the day of Kenchie's Burn.
The Warden said that he wished by the many wounds of God that the
stripling would come. There was too much babble of women there. They
had come into these parts, the Bishop of Durham and he, to see what
levies might be made from castle to castle and so to broom all false
Scots out of the country from thereaways to Dunbar. And there they sate
who should have been on the northward road before sunrise listening to
this clavering of women. The young Lovell was a springald goodly enow,
and the knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle were known to blow on
their fingers when they should be occupied with the heavy swords.
Sir Walter Limousin looked down his nose. He was a grim and silent
craven that did little but sneer. Sir Symonde, who was brave and
barbarous enough, but unlucky, smote so heavily the silver inkhorn
standing before him that it flattened down its supports and stained the
chequered fairness of the table.
The Percy cast his old glance aside on Sir Symonde.
"Aye, Haltwhistle," he said drily, "ye will break more than ye will
take." And he went on to say that, in his day, he having been dubbed
knight on the field, it had been done with a broken sword and the wet on
it wiped across his chops to blood him the better. And he wished that
Young Lovell would come.
The Lady Rohtraut said that without doubt her son was saying some very
long and very precious prayers. The Warden said that belike, and more
likely, the young fellow was unable to fasten the whimsy-marees of his
new-fashioned harness and was stuck up there in the old chapel like a
fool amid the evidences of his folly. The Lord Lovell said nay then,
that a band of youngsters had gone up to the chapel, and the little Hal
his son's page had reported that his master would soon be there, the
page having run, whilst the Young Lovell was riding at a foot pace.
"He had better have kept his page to buckle his harness," the Border
Warden harped on.
"Nay then," the Lady Rohtraut said with a flushed and angry face--no
person nor page could enter into the sacred chapel till her son should
be issued out in his panoply least they should disturb the angels of God
who would invisibly assist her son at his harnessing.
The Bishop, whose dark head came out of its steel armour like a
cormorant's out of a hole, looked all down that board to find a
sympathetic soul. He had a lean, Italianate face, and had pleased the
King Richard the Third--then Duke of Gloucester--rather because of a
complaisance than a burly strength. He was very newly come to the
Palatine Country. For he had been the King's Friend in Rome many years
and, in fear of King Henry the Seventh--because the Bishop was reputed a
friend of Richard Crookback after Bosworth--he had gone across the seas
until now.
So that what with the clerkly details of his coming into the bishopric,
this was his first tour of those parts and he did not well know those
people. Therefore he had spoken very little.
This John Bishop Palatine was, in short, a cautious and well-advised
churchman, well-read not only in the patristic books but in some of the
poets, for in his day he had been long in Rome and later dwelt in
Westminster, where the printing was done, though the King was even then
pulling down Caxton's chapel to build his own more gorgeous fane.
This bishop then, set first the glory of God, good doctrine and his see,
as his duty was. And after that he hoped that he might leave renown as
a great clerk who had added glory, credit, power and wealth, whether of
copes of gold or of lands, to his most famous bishopric.
That was why, throughout this discussion he had observed the face of a
young woman that sat beyond the ladies Rohtraut, Isopel and Douce. She
was the Lady Margaret of the Wear, coming from the neighbouring tower of
Glororem, and that day he was to bless her betrothal to Young Lovell of
the Castle. She was a dark girl, rising twenty, and with brownish
features, open nostrils, a flush on her face and dark eyes of a
coaly-sheen, all of one piece of black, so that you could not tell pupil
from iris.
She had never spoken, as became her station, since she was the youngest
woman there. But the Bishop Palatine had observed her looks as each
uttered his or her thoughts, and from this he knew that she regarded the
Lady Rohtraut with tender veneration, and the lower classes behind the
pillars with dislike and contempt, for when their voices became loud she
had lowered her black brows and clenched her hand that lay along the
table.
Upon the Border Warden and upon the gross Lord Lovell she had gazed with
a tolerant contempt, upon the Knight of Cullerford with a bitter scorn,
upon Haltwhistle with irony, and upon their two wives that should be her
sisters-in-law, with high dislike. He perceived that, like the Lady
Rohtraut, she had read the book called "Faicts of Arms," for, when the
lady Rohtraut had been speaking of it, she had leaned sideways over the
table, her lips parted as if she could hardly contain herself. He saw
also that she was of great piety, since every time Our Lady was
mentioned in that debate she inclined, and when it was Our Lord, she did
the like and crossed herself. And this pleased the Bishop Palatine, for
these observances were not so often seen as could be done with.
Moreover, he knew that, plainly to the eye she had given all her
heart--and it was a proud and hot one--to the Young Lovell. At each
mention of his deeds her dusky cheeks would flush up to her white
forehead and she would pass her gemmed hands before her eyes as if they
saw a mist of gladness.
The Bishop was glad that the will of God and the bent of his own mind
could let his speech, that he was thinking upon, jump so well with that
lady's desires, and so he addressed himself at first to the Lady
Rohtraut, young Lovell's proud mother.
He had not, he said, spoken before in that high assembly because he was
so newly come among them that, although he well knew that he was their
father in God and in a sense their temporal protector, yet he did not
wish to show himself to them as a rash and ardent fool by dictating upon
matters that he might well know little of.
But still, having listened a decent while to their minds he would say
something. Of facts and the practice of arms he would not declare
himself all ignorant. He was a churchman, but he was of that church
militant that should one day be the Church Triumphant--triumphant there
in Heaven, but here in Northumberland, militant very fully. It was true
that it would not much become him in those days of comparative peace to
strike blows with the iron mace. It was rather his part to stand upon a
high place observant of battles and sieges. And, if he wore arms, it
was rather as a symbol than as of use. He hoped that, as his reverend
and sainted predecessors in the see had done, he might confer on such
arms a grace of holiness, and therefore with much travel and research,
he had arms as golden as might be found for him by his trusty
messengers, that their fair richness might shine to the greater glory of
God. For himself he would as lief wear sackcloth and rusty pots.
In most things he must bow to the wiseness of the Earl of
Northumberland. Being blooded upon a hot field with spurs gilded with
the tide from the veins of men had produced very good men. It had
doubtless produced better men than to-day might see the doubles and
counterparts of. Those days before had been simpler and better. These
days were very evil. There was in the land a spirit of luxury, sinful
unless it had guidance, bestial unless it had control, and for want of
counsel horrid, lecherous and filthy by turns. Theirs, by the will and
blessing of God and by the wise rule of His vice-gerent--for so he would
style their good King, though it was not the habit--theirs were days of
near peace. The kingdom was no longer rent by dissensions; famine and
pestilence came more seldom nigh them than in the days of their fathers
of which they had read. In consequence, they had great wealth such as
had never before been seen. Where their fathers had had woollens they
had silks, satins and patterned damasks beyond compare for lascivious
allurements; where their fathers had eaten off trenchers of bread, they
had plates of silver, of gold, of parcel gilt or at the very least of
latten.
Now all these things were the blessing of God in the highest, but they
might well become the curse of Satan that dwelleth in the Pit. God had
given them bread, but they might turn it to bitter stone; He had given
them peace, but it might turn to a sword more sharp than that of
Apollyon or Geryon. Arma virumque cano, the profane poet said, but the
man he sang of was blessed and so his arms.
Therefore he, the Bishop Palatine, since he would not see all this
splendour of God go down, as again Vergil saith, sicut flos purpurea
aratro succisa, leant all his weight in the scale for the blessing and
the sacring of arms. In the books of chivalry they should read not of
vain pomps, but of how arms should be laid upon altars; not of luxurious
feasts, but of how good knights held vigils and fasts and kept
themselves virgin of heart to go upon quests that the blessed angels of
God did love. So they might read of the blessed blood in its censor and
of the lily-pure knights that sought it through forest and brake. And
these books were very good reading.
The Warden suddenly laughed aloud.
"God keep your washed capons from a border fray!" he exclaimed, and
shook his lean sides. The Bishop looked sideways upon him.
"I have not heard that Sir Artus of Bretagne slew the less pagans
because he was of a cleaned heart, nor Sir Hugon of Bordeaux neither."
"I do not know those knights," the Percy said grimly. "Maybe they would
have slain less if it had been Douglases and Murrays and other homely
names."
"Nay, it was fell pagans," the Bishop said seriously. "You may read of
it in virtuous and true histories it were a sin to doubt of, so greatly
does the virtue of God and His glory shine through them."
"Well, if it be matter of doctrine my mouth is shut," the Warden said
good humouredly. "I did not know it had been more than a matter of
fashion. Yet I think it is early days to prate of our peaceful times.
It is but three months since Kenchie's Burn and not three years since
the false Scots had their smoke flying over the walls of Durham."
The Bishop bent his head obediently before the Warden.
"In these matters I will learn of you," he said; and the Warden
answered:
"They are all I have to teach you. In my high day there were none of
your books and stories."
It was agreed that the Bishop and the Warden came off with level arms,
the Bishop having spoken the more, but the Warden had sent in heavier
stone shot. And all people were agreed that the Bishop was a worthy and
proud prince.
At that moment the Almoner whispered in the Bishop's ear and laid a
parchment before him. He begged the Bishop to sign this appointment. For
the day drew on, they must ride very soon and might not again be in
those parts for a year or more. It was to make the worthy Magister
Stone, of Barnside, bailiff for the Palatinate in those parts, this side
of Alnwick to the sea. This lawyer was a very skilled chicaner and
there were suits to come very soon between the see and the Lords Ogle
and Mitford, touching the Bishop's mills at Witton and on Wearside. The
Bishop was aware that one of the Almoner's clerks must have had money of
the lawyer; nevertheless he signed the appointment, for he knew they
would never let him have any other man. A Prince Bishop cannot go
searching for scriveners of honesty like Diogenes lacking a lanthorn.
The dispute as to the rules of chivalry went on in spite of the Bishop's
abstraction from it. Indeed, the Lord Lovell of the Castle, who had not
much reason for loving churchmen, spoke the more loudly because the
Bishop was occupied with his papers. He was a jovial man, not much loved
by his wife whom he delighted to tease. If he had any grief it was that
his natural son, Decies of the South, had never shown himself a lad of
any great parts. This lad was reputed to be his natural son, though he
was called Young Lovell's foster brother. Nevertheless who was his
mother no man knew.
What was known was this.
Six years before the Lord Lovell did some grievous sin, but what that
too was, no men knew. He had been called before the former Bishop of
Durham; the Lady Rohtraut had, then and afterwards, been heard to rate
him soundly. He had given five farms to the Bishopric and had then gone
on a Romer's journey, by way, it was considered, of penance. At any
rate, he had gone to Rome in sackcloth, taking with him his son, the
Young Lovell, who travelled very well appointed and, on the homeward
way, had acted as his page. They had taken ship from the New Castle to
Bordeaux and from Bordeaux to Genoa, where, falling in with a party of
English _Condottieri_ in the pay of the Holy Father, they had travelled
in safety to the city of the seven hills.
On the homeward road they had travelled more like great lords, having
enlisted a train of followers, and staying in the courts of Princes of
Italy until they came again to Marseilles. The Young Lovell, who was
then sixteen, had been permitted, by way of fleshing his sword, to fight
with the captains of the Prince of Fosse Ligato against the men of the
Princess of Escia. He had slept in pavilions of silk and saw the sack
of two very rich walled cities whilst his easy father, who had seen
fighting enough in his day, dallied over the sweet wines, lemons and the
women with dyed hair of the Prince's Court.
In Venice, whilst his father had toyed with similar cates, the young
Lovell had been present at a conclave, between the turbaned envoys of
the Soldan and the Venetian council, over the exchange of prisoners
taken in galleys of the one side and the other.
Therefore as travelling went, the young man had voyaged with his eyes
open, having made friends of several youths of Italy and learned some
pretty tricks of fence as well as sundry ways of dalliance.
The father regarded his son with not disagreeable complacency, like a
carthorse who had begotten a slight and swift barb. The boy's soft ways
and gentle speeches amused him till he laughed tears at times; his
daring and hot, rash passions pleased his father still more. He had
challenged six Italian squires on the Lido to combat with the rapier,
the long sword, the axe and the dagger, and only with the rapier had he
been twice worsted--and this quite well contented his father, who
regarded him as a queer, new-fangled growth, but in no wise a
disgraceful one. He set the boy, in fact, down to his mother's account.
And this he did with some warrant, for the boy was the first blond child
that had been born to the Lovells in a hundred years.
Further back than that the Lovells could not go. They were descended
from one Ruthven, a Welsh brigand of whom, a hundred and twenty years
before, it was written that he and his companions kept the country
between the Rivers Seine and Loire so that none dare ride between Paris
and Orleans, nor between Paris and Montargis. These robbers had made
that Ruthven a knight and their captain. There were no towns in that
district that did not suffer pillage and over-running from them, not
Saint Arnold, Gaillardon, Chatillon or even Chartres itself. In that
way Ruthven had amassed a marvellous great booty until, the country of
France having been submitted to the English, he had set sail, with much
of his wealth, for Edinburgh, but liking the Scots little, after he had
married a Scots woman called Lovell, he had come south into the Percies'
country. It had happened that the Percies had at that date five squires
of their house in prison to the Douglas and had little money for their
ransoming. So this Ruthven had bought of them seventy farms and land on
which to build an outer wall round the fortress that, boastfully, he
called the Castle, as if there had been no other castle in that land.
And indeed, it was a marvellously strong place, over the sea on its
crags of basalt.
Thus had arisen, from huge wealth, the great family of the Lovells of
the Castle. For Ruthven had not wished to be known by his name, and
indeed King Henry V swore that none of that name should have Lordship
nor even Knighthood, though the Ruthven of that day fought well at
Agincourt, losing three horses, two of which he had taken from French
lords. So, since that day they had been the Lords Lovell of the Castle
with none to gainsay them, though till latterly they had been held for
rough lords and not over-reverend. The Percies looked down their noses
when they met them, and so did the captains of Bamburgh and Holy Island.
However, in the year 1459 the Lord Lovell had found the Lady Rohtraut of
the Dacres to marry him and, having had three daughters, she bore him
the Young Lovell though one of the daughters died.
At any rate; they had travelled home from Marseilles, father and son,
very peaceably together, going from castle to castle of the French lords
and knights, under a safe-conduct that had been granted them by the
French envoy to the Holy Father in Rome, though there was war between
the countries of France and England, the King Edward the Fourth having
suddenly made a raid into the country of the lilies. And the courteous
way with which the French lords treated them made them much wonder
because they did not think a Scots lord would have so easily travelled
through the Border Country or a Border lord through Scotland.
Therefore, when they came to Calais, they went quietly home to England
without turning back to war in France. That was according to their oath
to Messire Parrolles at Rome, though some of King Edward's lords and
courtiers mocked at them and it was said to be in the King's mind to
have fined them, not for having observed, but for having taken such an
oath. However, when they came into the North parts, at Northallerton,
they met with the Duke of Gloucester, the King's brother, who treated
them very courteously and absolved them of ill intentions because at the
time they had taken the oath peace had been between England and France,
or at least no news of the war had reached Rome. This Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, brother of King Edward, was much loved in the North, of
which region he was then Lord-General. He dealt with all men
courteously, giving simple and smiling answers to simple questions and
never failing to answer favourably any petition that he could grant, or
refusing others with such phrases of regret as made the refusal almost a
boon of itself. He inflicted also no harsh taxes and took off many
others, so that in those parts he was known as the good Duke of
Gloucester.
He treated the Lord Lovell and his son with such smiling courtesy that
they very willingly went with him, before ever their home saw them, on a
journey that he was making towards Dunbar, and it was in the battle that
some Scots lords made against them on the field of Kenchie's Burn that
the Young Lovel did such great things. He took prisoner with his own
hands a great Scots lord, own cousin to Douglas, in a hot melee, where,
before he was taken, the Scots lord, being otherwise disarmed by the
Young Lovell, knocked with his clenched fist, nine teeth down the throat
of Richard Raket, that was the Young Lovell's horse boy. And this lord
having cried mercy, the Young Lovell pursued so furiously against the
Scots that he slew many of them before nightfall and was lost in a great
valley between moors and slept on the heather. There he heard many
strange sounds, such as a great cry of dogs hunting overhead, which was
said by those who had read in books to be the goddess Diana chasing
still through the night the miserable shade of the foolish Actaeon. And
between two passages of sleep, he perceived a fair kind lady looking
down upon him, but before he was fully awake she was no longer there,
and this was thought to be the White Lady of Spindleston, though it was
far from her country. But still that spirit might have loved that
lording and have sought his company in the night for he was very fair of
his body. And it was held to be a sign that he was a good Christian,
that this lady vanished upon his awakening, for in that way spirits have
been known to follow Good Knights from place to place for love of them,
and in the end to work them very great disaster.
So at least that was interpreted by the young monk Francis of the order
of St. Cuthbert who was with the army when, in the morning, Young Lovell
came to it again after he had been held for dead. But the monk Francis
had read in no books, having been an ignorant rustic knight of that
country-side, that had become a monk for a certain sin. The Young
Lovell found, indeed, that, whilst he had been so held for dead this
young monk had much befriended him. For his father, the Lord Lovell,
had shewn a disposition to adopt that Decies of the South and to give
him the fruits of the young Lovell's deeds, such as the ransoming of the
Scots lord and the knighthood that the Duke should have given him had he
been found on the field at the closing of the day. The young monk had
however protested so strongly that the Young Lovell was not dead, but
had in his face the presage of great and strange deeds, whether of arms
or other things--so hotly had the young monk made a clamour, that the
old lord was shamed and had for the time desisted.
That Decies of the South was a son much more after the old lord's heart
than ever the Young Lovell, for all his prowess, could be. He loved the
one son whilst he dreaded the other, since he was too like his mother
that was a Dacre and despised the Lovells or the Ruthvens.
This Decies the Lord Lovell had picked up at Nottingham on their
homeward road, and, finding him a true Lovell, had made no bones about
acknowledging him for a son though he never would say who his mother was
or how he should come by the name of Decies. But he was rising
twenty-one, like the Young Lovell, heavy, clumsy, very strong and an
immense feeder. He was dark and red-cheeked and cunning and he fitted
his father as a hand fits a glove. Nevertheless he had done little at
Kenchie's Burn, he had slept so heavily. It had been no man's affair to
waken him, he having drunk very deeply of sweet wines the night before.
That battle began at dawn and travelled over many miles of land, so that
when Decies of the South came up the Scots were already fleeing.
The old lord did no more than laugh, but he felt it bitter in his heart.
And, as it had been on that day, so it continued, the one half-brother
being always up in the morning too early for the other. They made very
good companions hunting together, though it was always the Young Lovell
that had his dagger first in the throat of the grey wolf or the red
deer, and the Decies who came second when outlaws, or else when the
false Scots, must be driven off from peel towers that had the byres
alight beneath them and the farmers at death's door above, for the smoke
and reek. Nor was it because the Decies lacked courage, but because he
was slow in the uptake and, although cunning, not cunning enough.
Or it may have been that he was too cunning and just left the honours to
the Young Lovell who was haughty and avid of the first place. For the
Lady Rohtraut took very unkindly to the Decies and made him suffer what
insults she could; only the lower sort of the castle-folk willingly had
his company, and the old lord was growing so monstrous heavy that it was
considered that his skin could not much longer contain him. He had led
a life of violence, sloth, great appetites and negligent shamelessness,
so that the Decies considered that he would soon have need of protectors
in their place. The old lord might leave his lands, but much of his
lands were the dower of his wife and upon his death would go back to her
hands alone. For the lands of the Castle and the gear and gold and
silver that were in the White Tower under the night and day guard of
John Bulloc, the old lord might leave the Decies what he would, but the
Young Lovell could take it all.
The Decies would find neither lord nor lord bishop nor lawyer to espouse
his cause. Moreover, though his father might give him gold and gear
whilst he lived, the Decies had no means whereby to convey it to a
distance and no place in the distance in which to store it, besides it
would surely be taken by moss-troopers and little cry made about it.
For in those days all the North parts were full of good, small gentry
robbing whom they would, like the Selbys of Liddell, the Eures of Witton
or Adam Swinburn.
For the times were very unsettled, and no man could well tell, in
robbing another, whether he were a knight of King Richard's despoiling
the King's enemies or a traitor to King Henry robbing that King's
lieges, and there was little for the livelihood of proper gentry but
harrying whether in the King's cause or in rebellion. So that if the
Decies' money on its way to safe quarters should be taken, there would
be little or no outcry since he was nothing to those parts. So he was a
very good brother to the Young Lovell and followed him like his shadow.
III
So there they all sat at the chequered table and the Lord Lovell watched
them with his cunning eyes and speculated upon the dissensions that lay
beneath all their fair shew of courtesy. And he wondered how, from one
or the other, he might gain advantage for his son Decies. It was not
that he hated the Young Lovell, but he wished Decies to have all that he
might and something might come of these people's misliking of each
other.
For all Bishop Sherwood's praising of the security of the times under a
beneficent vice-gerent of God, he knew that the Bishop little loved King
Henry the Seventh, and the King trusted him so very little that never
once would that King send to the Bishop the proper letters of array that
should empower him to raise forces along the Borders. Thus the Bishop
could raise men only in his own dominions between Tees and Tyne and
westward into Cumberland.
The Bishop had made his speech and shewed great courtesy only for the
benefit of the Earl of Northumberland, whilst for that Border Warden he
felt really little but contempt and some dislike. For this Henry, Earl
Percy, Warden of the Eastern Marches and Governor of Berwick Town, had
deserted King Richard very treacherously on the field of Bosworth, for
all he spoke and posed as a bluff and bloody soldier who should be a
trusty companion.
Thus the Bishop feared the Percy, regarding him as a spy of the King's,
for King Richard was much beloved in the North and the Bishop of Durham
had been one of the only two Bishops that had upheld him at the
coronation, which was why his banner of the dun cow upon a field of
green sarcenet had then been carried before that King. And after
Bosworth where King Richard was slain, the Bishop had fled to France,
from which he had only ventured back the August before. There had been
many rebellions in the North and they were not yet done with;
nevertheless the Bishop feared that the cause of the King Usurper would
prevail.
The Earl Percy, on the other hand, distrusted the Bishop, since, unlike
the Duke of Gloucester, he knew himself to be hated by gentle and simple
in those parts, and more by simple than the others. Many poor men--even
all of the countryside--had sworn to murder him, for he was very
arrogant and oppressive, inflicting on those starving and disturbed
parts, many and weary taxes for the benefit of his lord, King Henry the
Seventh, and the wars that he waged in other places. This was a thing
contrary to the law and custom of the North. For those parts considered
that they had enough on their hands if they protected their own lands
and kept the false Scots out of the rest of the realm. Nevertheless,
the Lord Percy continued to impose his unjust taxes, taking even the
horse from the plough and the meat from the salting pots where there was
no money to be had. The Lord Percy knew that he went in great danger of
his life, for when, there, a great lord was widely hated of the
commonalty his life was worth little. Nay, he was almost certain, one
day, to be hewed in pieces by axes or billhooks, since the common
people, assembling in a great number would take him one day, when he
rode back ill-attended from hunting or a raid.
Thus the Percy desired much to gain friendship of the Bishop and his
partisans to save his life. So he shewed him courtesy and spoke in a
pious fashion and had invited him, as if it were his due, to ride on
this numbering of the men-at-arms in Northumberland, although, since the
King had sent the Bishop Palatine no letters of array, it was, strictly
speaking, none of the Bishop's business.
The Lord Lovell himself had taken no part at Bosworth Field, and glad
enough he was that he had not, for he would have been certain to have
been found on the losing side. But he had been sick of a quinsy--a
malady to which very stout men are much subject--and, not willing that
the Young Lovell should gain new credit at his cost--for he must have
gone with his father's men-at-arms, horses and artillery--the Lord
Lovell bade his son stay at home and not venture himself against the
presumptuous Richmond.
And, looking upon the people there, the fat man chuckled, for there was
not one person there who had not lately suffered from one side or the
other. The Lord Percy had spent many years in the Tower under Edward
IV; Henry VII had taken from the Bishop many of his lands and had made
him for a time an exile. His haughty wife had suffered great grief at
the death of her best brother whose head came off on Tower Hill to
please the Duke of Gloucester, and Edward IV had had Sir Symonde Vesey
five years in the Tower and had fined Limousin of Cullerford five
hundred pounds after Towton Field. The proud Lady Margaret had lost her
father and all his lands after the same battle, the lands going to the
Palatinate.
The Lady Margaret and her mother--they were Eures of Wearside--had
sheltered in farms and peel towers, lacking often sheets and bed
covering, until the mother died, and then the Lady Rohtraut had taken
the Lady Margaret, to whom she was an aunt. All these Tyne and Wearside
families were sib and rib. The Lady Rohtraut had had the Lady Margaret
there as her own daughter and kinswoman, and the Lord Lovell had had
nothing against it. For the Eures and Ogles and Cra'sters and Percies
and Widdringtons and all those people, even to the haughty Nevilles and
Dacres of the North, were a very close clan. He himself had married a
Dacre to come nearer it, and it made him all the safer to shelter an
Eure woman-child. And then, in his graciousness at coming into the
North, and afterwards, after the battle at Kenchie's Burn, the Duke of
Gloucester, at first making interest with his brother, King Edward IV.,
and then of his own motion, had pardoned that Lady the sins of her
father, had bidden the Palatinate restore, first the lands on Wearside
and then those near Chester le Street, and also, at the last, those near
Glororem, in their own part, which were the best she had. And, finally,
King Richard had made the Lady Rohtraut her niece's guardian, which was
a great thing, for since she was very wealthy, the fines she would pay
upon her marriage would make a capital sum.
So they had found the Lady Margaret on their coming back from Rome,
wealthy and proud, sewing or riding, hawking, sometimes residing in
their Castle and sometimes in her tower of Glororem which was in sight.
The young Lovell had lost his heart to her and she hers to him between
the flight of her tassel gentle and its return to her glove, so that it
looked as if the name of Lovell bade fair to be exalted in those parts,
by this marriage too, and if the Lord Lovell had anything against it, it
was only that she had not chosen his other son Decies. But there it
was, and he must content himself with paring what he could from her
gear, and his wife's and young Lovell's while he lived, for he intended
to buy Cockley Park Tower of Blubberymires from Lord Ogle of Ogle--and
to set the Decies up in it. And his wife had some outlying land at
Morpeth that he would make shift to convey to his son, so that Decies
would have a goodly small demesne and might hold up his head in that
region of the Merlays, Greystocks and Dacres.
His son should have the lands of Blubberymires and part of Morpeth;
furnishings for his tower to the worth of near a thousand pounds, jewels
worth nine hundred and more, fifty horses and the arms for fifty men,
and for his sustenance firstly his particular and feudal rights, market
fees, tenths, millings, wood-rights, farmings, rents and lastly such
profits of the culture of his lands as it is proper for every gentleman
to draw from them. And, considering what he could draw from his own
Castle, he thought that the Decies should have such beds, linen, vessels
of latten and of silver, chests and carvings in wood, tapestries,
utensils, and all other furnishings as should make him have a very
proper tower. From his wife's castle at Cramlin, or her houses at
Plessey and Killingworth, he could get very little. Upon his marriage
and since, he had stripped them very thoroughly, and when he last rode
that way, he had seen that at Cramlin, the rafters, ceilings, and even
the very roofs had fallen in, so that it had become very fitting
harbourage for foxes. And this consideration grimly amused him, to think
what his lady wife should find when he was dead and her lands came to
her again. For she had not seen them in ten years, and imagined her
houses to be in very good fettle, but he had turned the money to other
uses. It was upon these things that this lord's thoughts ran, since he
had nothing else for their consumption. He was too heavy to mount a
horse in those days; he could read no books, and talking troubled him.
Even the lewd stories of his son Decies in his cups sent him latterly to
sleep; he could get no more much enjoyment from teasing his proud wife
by filthy ways and blasphemy, and he hated to be with his daughters or
their two husbands. Thus, nothing amused or comforted him any longer
save watching contests of ants and spiders, and even these were hard to
come by in winter, as it was then in those parts where spring comes ever
late.
There penetrated into the babble of their voices slight sounds from the
open air, and a hush fell in the place. Without doubt they heard
cheering, and quickly the pages of all the company ranged themselves in
a parti-coloured and silken fringe before the steel of the men at arms
that held the commonalty behind the pillars. The great oaken doors
wavered slowly backwards at the end of the hall, and they perceived the
road winding down from them through the grass on the glacis, the
greyness of the sea and sky, and the foam breaking on the rocks of the
Farne Islands. A ship, whose bellying sails appeared to be almost
black, was making between the islands and the shore. At times she stood
high on a roller, at times she was so low amongst the tumble that they
could hardly see more than the barrels at the mastheads and the red
cross of St. Andrew on her white flag. The Border Warden said that this
was the ship of Barton, the Scots pirate, and some held that this was a
great impudence of him, but others said that the weather was so heavy
outside that he was seeking the shelter of the islands, and certainly
none of their boats could come at him in the sea there was. And this
topic held their attentions until the sound of a horn reached them.
This was certainly the Young Lovell's page seeking admission to the
Castle, so that he was near enough.
The monstrous head of a caparisoned horse, held back by ribands of green
and vermilion silk, came into view by the arch. It rose on high and
disappeared, so that they knew it was rearing. Then it came all down
again and forged slowly into view, the little page Hal and Young
Lovell's horse boy, Richard Raket, that had lost his teeth at Kenchie's
Burn, holding the shortened ribands now near the bit on either side.
The common men threw up their bonnets and took the chance of finding
them again; the ladies waved scarves, the Bishop made a benediction.
The man in shining steel was high up in the archway against the sea.
Such bright armour was never seen in those parts before, the light
poured off it in sheathes, like rain. The head was quite round, the
visor fluted and down, at the saddle bow the iron shaft of the partisan
was gilded; the swordbelt and the scabbard were of scarlet velvet set
with emeralds. This was the gift of the Lady Rohtraut, and those were
the Lovell colours. The shield showed a red tiger's head, snarling and
dimidiated by the black and silver checkers of the Dacres of Morpeth;
the great lance was of scarlet wood tipped with shining steel.
Those of them who had never seen the Young Lovell ride before, said that
this vaunted paragon might have done better. For, when the horse was
just half within the hall, and after the rider had lowered his lance at
once to salute the company, and to get it between the archway, and had
raised it again, the horse, enraged by the shout that went up from that
place like a cavern, sprang back so that its mailed stern struck the
rabble of grey fellows and ragged children that were following close on.
The steel lance-point jarred against the stone of the arch, and the
round and shining helmet bumped not gracefully forward over the shield.
This was held for no very excellent riding, and some miscalled the
horse. But others said that it was no part of a knight's training to
manage a horse going rearwards, and no part of a horse's to face
festivals and cheers. A knight should go forward, a horse face
war-cries and hard blows rather than the waving of silken scarves.
But they got the horse forward into the middle of the hall, where it
stood, a mass of steel, as if sullenly, on the great carpet of buff and
rose and greens. This marvel that covered all the clear space hung
usually on the wall to form a dais, and the Young Lovell had bought it
in Venice with one half of the booty that he had made in the little war
against the Duchess of Escia. It weighed as much as four men and four
horses in armour, and had made the whole cargo of a little cogger from
Calais that brought it to Hartlepool harbour, whence, rolled up, it had
been conveyed to the castle upon timber-trugs. Few men there had seen
the whole of it. It had been taken by Venetians from a galley of the
Soldan's, and was said to be a sacred carpet of Mahound's. Some men
were very glad to see it, but some of the monks there said that it
favoured idolatry and outlandish ways. But these were the very learned
monks of St. Cuthbert that had a monastery at Belford, near there. They
stood to the number of forty behind the Bishop and had habits of undyed
wool. But the young monk, Francis, who had befriended the Young Lovell
before, maintained now stoutly that it was a very good thing that the
gear of Mahound should first be trampled underfoot and then coerced into
a Christian office such as that of the creation of a good knight. The
Lady Rohtraut heard his words, and looking round at him said that he
should have a crucifix of gold for his inner chamber at Belford, if the
rules allowed it, or if not, five pounds of gold and ambergris to anoint
the feet of his poor and bedesmen at Maundy tide. The young monk
lowered his eyes and thanked her. He was a Ridley that had killed his
cousin by a chance arrow sent after a hare, and so he had gone into this
monastery to pray perpetually for his cousin's soul.
That man in armour now delivered his lance to his little page, his
shield to the page of a friend of his, a Widdrington; his sword to
Michael Eure, a cousin of the Lady Margaret, to be an honour to her, and
Richard Raket and other grooms came round the horse while the rider
descended and then they led the horse away. But he never raised the
fluted steel of his visor. And when he was kneeling on high cushions of
black velvet, since his steel shoes of tapering and reticulated rings
were near two foot long, as the fashion was, the Bishop asked him if he
would not uncover his face. But he whispered in the ear of the little
page, and presently that boy said without fear in a high voice that the
worshipful esquire had sworn an oath in the chapel that no woman should
look upon his face or hear his voice until he was both knighted and
betrothed. Those who upheld pure knight errants said that this was a
very good vow, but the Percy laughed till his tears came.
Then, in a high voice, but in an Italian accent, for he had been many
years the King's Advocate and Ambassador at Rome and had there learnt
his latinity and love for the profane poets, Ovid, Vergil the Magician,
and many others--the Bishop recited the words of the oath that this
esquire should take. There was his duty to the Bishop Palatine to find
for him, when he came to be a baron, sixteen knights when letters of
array were sent out, and, by the year, sixty bushels of wheat, one
hundred of oats and peas, ten carts of oat straw and ten of wheat when
the Bishop and his men harboured within ten miles of the Castle, and the
Bishop to have the rights of infangthef throughout his lands. Also he
would observe the privileges of all clerks and of Durham sanctuary
within those lands. The Bishop read also the oath to the King, for the
Lord Percy had little Latin. The Knight, when he came to be a Baron,
should find for the King's service, north of the Humber when the King's
letters of array were read, twenty-two knights, or six only if the
Bishop had before sent his letters calling for sixteen. For such lands
as he should get from his mother he should pay the King four horseshoes
of gold whenever the King lay at Morpeth, and for the Lovell lands a
gold cup filled with snow whenever the King lay within the Cheviot
country. The goods of all those convicted of treason within his
territories at Morpeth should go to the Bishopric; those from the other
parts one-tenth to the King, six-tenths to the Bishop, one-tenth to the
monastery of St. Cuthbert at Belford, and the remainder to himself.
These oaths having been recited, a page of the Bishop's brought a
feretory that had lain on the coffin of St. Cuthbert, and a Percy page a
testament; the esquire laid his right hand first on one and then on the
other, being still on his knees, and then held up his hand whilst the
page recited that that good esquire vowed faithfully all these things.
Then the Bishop drew his sword and touched the steel left shoulder of
the esquire with the hilt that had the form of the cross, this being the
symbol that he would be a good knight and soldier of Christ and Our
Lady. Then all the people cheered and cried out and the Bishop said
loudly--
"Surge et vocabitur in nomine Dei et Regis nostri Sir Paris Lovell
Castelli."
The Percy laughed and asked what those words were, and when the Prince
Bishop had told him, still laughing, he smote the metal in the same
place with the flat of his sword and mocked the Bishop with the words--
"Stand up in the name of God. And in the King's name be called
henceforth, Sir Paris Lovell of the Castle." To name her son Paris had
been a whimsy of the Lady Rohtraut since Paris of Troy was a goodly
knight, and also it stood for a symbol that he might retake Paris Town
if the English had it not at the time when he was a man, and so that
name had pleased the great Talbot which was a good thing at the time of
his birth.
Then the good knight stood up upon his long feet and the Percy cried out
that they should get the business of the betrothal over with speed, and
so they did, the knight and the Lady Margaret who came out, kneeling on
black cushions before the Prince Bishop. She was wearing a great and
long green gown, to the making of which there had gone twenty-six yards
of patterned damask from the city of Bruges. It was worked with leaves
and birds and pomegranates, so that it was very rich in folds. Her
ribbons in her shirt were of scarlet silk and her fur edgings of the red
fox. Her hood was of white and red velvet, the gables at the front
being of silver set with large pearls, and her hair fell in two black
plaits to her heels where she knelt. So when the Bishop had recited
their oaths they stood up and the knight pushed up his visor and looked
at the lady. Those few that could see his face cried out as if they had
seen a ship strike on a rock, so they raised their hands. The others
only marked that haughty lady shrink back upon her feet, with a great
flowing of her garments as she drew them together towards her. She cried
out some words of detestation that no man heard but he, and then with
her fist she struck him in the face.
Then he turned upon the high table, grinning and unashamed, the dark
eyebrows that seemed to have been painted in with tar, the red cheeks
and the lascivious lips of Decies of the South.
All those at the high table stood up on their feet, lifting their hands
above their heads and crying out. The Decies cried towards his father,
lifting also his mailed arm to heaven--
"See justice done to me. My half-brother is gone upon a sorcery. His
lands and gear are forfeit to me that inform against him and his name
and bride have been given me by the Prince Bishop."
Then the lawyer, Magister Stone of Barnsides by Glororem, ran across the
hall from the little door in the great ones. He began, as it were, a
sort of trafficing between the Knight and the Bishop, not neglecting the
Lord Percy and the Knight's father, but running backwards and forwards
between the one and the other, raising his hands to their breasts and
squeaking, though there was no hearing what he said. His weazened face,
his brown furred gown, his chattering voice and his long jaw worked
incessantly so that he resembled a monkey that was chewing straws with
voracity and haste. A Widdrington, a Eure and a Selby, desperate young
men and fast friends of the young Lovell, rushed upon the Decies with
their daggers out. But the Bishop pushed them back and cried out for
silence. And because all there saw that the Lady Rohtraut, upon her
feet, was pointing down at the Lord Lovell and calling out to him, they
held their tongues to hear what she was saying. They caught the end of
a sentence calling upon the Lord Lovell to have that filthy and
blaspheming bastard cast from the top of the White Tower. Then all eyes
saw that the Lord Lovell was laughing.
He had begun with a slow grin: by little and little he had understood
that his son at last had made a fine, impudent stroke. He had struck
his thigh with his hand; he had tried to cry out that this was the
finest stroke of all and that his son had got up early enough, at last.
But he could get no words out.
Then he had begun his laughing. He laughed, rolling from side to side:
he laughed, shaking so that his leathern chair cracked beneath him. His
stomach trembled in an agony of laughter, his eyes gazing painfully and
fixed at the scarlet and green chequers of the tablecloth. Between
tornadoes of shaken laughter he gasped for breath, and all the while the
Lady Rohtraut stood gazing down upon him as if he were a loathsome dog
struck with a fit. All men there stood still to watch him laugh.
And suddenly he threw his arms above his head, his face being purple and
his eyes closed like a drunkard's. With the passion and strength of his
laughter the blood gushed from his mouth and nose like falling scarlet
ribbons. His body came forward on the tablecloth; monks and doctors
craned forwards over him. The Percy moved disdainfully away as if from
a sick and filthy beast, and over the table the body shook and quivered
in the last gusts of laughter.
The Decies, with his sword drawn, moved backwards to the arch at the
door, and first the Lady Isopel of Cullerford, the Lord Lovell's
daughter, came round to speak to him, and then the Lady Douce of
Haltwhistle, her sister. They stood looking back at their mother, and
then they called to them their husbands, Sir Symonde and Sir Walter
Limousin. They stood at talk, Sir Symonde shrugging his shoulders and
Cullerford grunting whilst the ladies caught them earnestly by the arms,
leaning forwards. Then they called to them the lawyer, Magister Stone,
who was no great distance away, and he brought with him the Prince
Bishop's Almoner, a dry man with but one eye who had a furred hood up,
to keep away the draughts, since he suffered from the earache. Then
they beckoned to them certain of their armed men and Sir Henry Vesey of
Wall Houses, a knight of little worth in morals but a great reiver. And
so, by little and little, they had a company, mostly ill-favoured but
violent around them. So they perceived that the Lady Rohtraut had
fallen in a swoon, and the knight of Cullerford went forward and begged
the lords and lordings and the company to avoid that hall and go upon
their errands, since there was sorrow enough, and his brothers-in-law
and their wives would take it kindly if they could be left alone with
their mother. And, since he was the husband of the lady's daughter,
they listened to him and went out, and the Vesey of Haltwhistle saw to
it that they had their horses, and soon there were few left in the hall
but the Lord Lovell, who had a leech, bending over him. The Lady
Rohtraut, having fallen back in her chair, was being tended by the Lady
Margaret and an old woman of seventy called Elizabeth Campstones. Then
the daughters and the Decies went about in the Castle and were very
busy.
IV
The Young Lovell felt as if he had came up out of a deep dream. He knew
that the lady of the white horse thought to him:
"And I have all the time of the sea and the sky and beyond," but she
spoke not at all--no words and no language that he knew. Only it was as
if he saw her thoughts coursing through her mind as minnows swim in
clear water. And he knew that, before that, he had thought, as if
beseechingly:
"Even let me go in Christ's name, for I have many businesses."
She had a crooked and voluptuous mouth, mocking eyes of a shade of
green, a little nose, a figure of waves, a high breast crossed with
scarlet ribbons, and hair the colour of the yellow gold, shining with
the sun, each hair separate and inclining to little curls. In short she
was all white and gold save for her red and alluring lips that smiled
askant, and he thought that he had never seen so bright a lady, no, not
among the courtesans of Venice. His heart at the sight of her hair beat
in great, stealthy pulses; his throat was dry and the flowers grew all
about her. And she sat there smiling, with the side of her face to him,
and he heard her think--
"This mortal man shall be mine."
It had been then that he had prayed her in Christ's name to let him go,
and that she had answered that she had all the time of this earth and
beyond it.
He turned Hamewarts slowly down the dune, though his heart lay behind
him, and, like a mortally wounded man upon a dying horse, he rode
towards his Castle where it towered upon the crag. The day was very
bright, in the white sand the wind played with the ribbed rushes, and
very slowly Hamewarts went. To judge by the sun he had not stayed more
than a half-hour in that place, if so long, for it was very little above
the horizon. He had not thought the day would prove so bright. The sea
was very blue: the foam sparkled and was churned to curds, and the
little wind was warm from sunwards. He saw the shepherd coming down a
very green slope below the chapel, and the white sheep, with whiter
lambs, spreading, like a fan below him. Behind him, over that shoulder,
Meggot, their goose girl, was driving her charges, a great company of
grey with but three white ones amongst them.
In a stupid way he thought that this great brightness in an early and
raw spring day must come from having seen so beautiful a lady; so, it
was said in stories, were good knights' hearts elated after such a
sight. But he was aware that his heart was like the grey lead in his
side, and leaden sighs came heavily from him.
When he came to the gate in the outermost wall he tirled wearily at the
pin. He was aware of a monstrous heaviness and tire in all his limbs.
A man opened the little grating; loud yawns came from him and, very
sleepily, he let down bars and chains and the gate back. From this
gateway a short, white road went slantwise, up a green bank, to the
chief gate of the Castle.
Young Lovell never looked at this man's face, and slowly he rode up the
steep. He heard the man say:
"What lording be ye?" but he rode on mute. The man came running after
him, his armour rattling like pot-lids. He caught Hamewarts by the
bridle and, looking earnestly at Young Lovell's face, he said:
"Master, I mauna let ye pass only I ken your name." And then he cried
out, and his eyes were almost out of his head:
"The Young Lovell!" He ran like a hare up the broad road; his hose were
russet coloured.
Young Lovell grumbled to himself that it was strange to set so new a man
to the gate that he should not know his master's son, and stranger still
that the man should be of the men of his sister's husband of Cullerford,
for all their followers had russet beneath their steel facings.
And then he saw old Elizabeth Campstones that had been help-maid to his
mother's nurse, coming out of the littlest door of the inner castle wall
and down the path across the green grass of the glacis. She was all in
hodden grey, she carried a great basket of tumbled clouts upon her head,
and so the tears poured from her red eyes that at the first she did not
see him though she came into the road at his horse's forefoot. But when
he said:
"Why greet ye, Elizabeth?" she looked up at him on high as he sat there,
as if the sun dazzled her eyes. And then she screamed, a high long
scream. She caught at her basket and she ran to his bridle.
"Come away," she cried out. "Cullerford and Haltwistle have ta'en your
bonny Castle. Your father's dead. Your mother's jailed. There is no
soul of yours true to you here."
If there was one thing that distinguished the Young Lovell amongst the
captains of the North--and his name was very well known to the Scots of
the Border--it was that he was quick in thinking. And now, the kindling
passion of war being the one thing that could drive away the thirst of
love, made him see, as if it were a clear table laid out before him, the
minds of his sisters that he knew very well and the dispositions of his
brothers-in-law as well as the reed of the Decies that was not concealed
from him. And, there being very little decency in his age, he knew that
an hour or so in the Castle with his father dead and his mother no doubt
grieved and shut in her bower, the men leaderless, since he, that had
been his father's lieutenant and ancient was absent--that short hour or
two that had gone by--and it might well have been that his father had
died over his cups at the board whilst he himself, the night before, was
a-watch over his arms--would very well suffice to put Cullerford and
Haltwhistle in possession of his Castle with all his own men butchered
during their sleep. In those days it was grab while you could and get
back at your leisure.
With the pressure of his knee, he moved Hamewarts a yard forward and
aside; he leant over his saddle bow and caught the old woman under the
shoulders. He lifted her, basket and all--for in the midst of grief,
fear and danger, she would cling first to the clouts that were her
feudal duty--and the great horse with the pressure on his mouth, cast up
his head and wheeled round again towards the gate at which they had
entered. There came the bang of a saker, but without doubt it was
rather to rouse the Castle than aimed at them, for they heard no ball go
by them. Then there was a sharp scratch as if a cat had spat, and just
above his head an arrow stuck itself through the basket of clouts.
Hamewarts went back downwards in long bounds.
Three other arrows set themselves in the grass beside their course; one
fell on the road, one carried off his scarlet cap with its frontal and
jewel of pearls. But that arrow too transfixed itself in the basket and
pinned the cap there; so it was not lost, and that was a good thing, for
the pearls were worth two hundred pounds. And as he rode he thought
that that was not very good shooting.
The men-at-arms, wakened from sleep, had gummy and unclear eyes; their
bows, too, must have been strung all night and that had made the strings
slacken and be uncertain. It was an evil and untidy practice, but it
showed him firstly that fear of attack must be in that place, and
secondly that some of his own men might be without the castle and apt to
essay to take it again. Moreover, though he had not time to turn, he
knew that they must have fired from the meurtrieres of the guard house;
if they had taken time to open the great doors they must have struck him
like a hare, for he had not been thirty yards from the walls.
Hamewarts clattered in his heavy gallop under the archway of the gate
out into the village street, and the Young Lovell thanked our Saviour
that the porter had been too amazed to go back and close it, but had run
to warn the Castle. Without that he had been caught like a fox in a
well. When he was through and well outside, he caught up his horse, and
turning, gazed in again under the arch. The inner walls of the Castle
rose immense and pinkish, with their pale stone, above the green grass.
The sun shone on such of the windows--about twenty--that had glass in
them. One of these casements opened and he saw the naked shoulders of
his sister Douce, holding a sheet over her breasts as she gazed out to
mark why the tumult was raised. He observed thus that, in one night, as
he thought it, his sister had taken their mother's bower for herself.
It was no more than he would have awaited of her.
He perceived then the large gate of the Castle on top of the mound
roughly burst open and there came running out thirty men in russet who
ranged themselves in a fan-shape on the slope. Last came a man in his
shirt and shoes--Limousin of Haltwhistle. The men in russet held bows in
their hands and the man in his shirt waved his hands downwards. The
archers began to come down, but not very fast and with caution. The
Young Lovell knew they thought that very belike he had already raised
the country against them and had men posted in ambush behind the outer
walls.
He rode slowly away with the old woman before him. The street was very
broad and empty in the morning sun. The cottages were all thatched with
sea-rushes and kelp, all the doors stood open and the swine moved in and
out. Two cottages had been burnt to the ground and lay, black heaps,
sparkling here and there with the wetness of the dew. He marvelled a
little that they did not still smoke, for they must have been set alight
since last nightfall. He considered the sleeve of his scarlet cloak
that was very brave, being open at the throat to shew his shirt of white
lawn tied with green ribbons. He saw that the scarlet was faded to the
colour of pink roses. He looked before him and, on a green hill-side,
he was aware of a great gathering of men and women bearing scythes whose
blades shone like streaks of flame in the sun. Also, at their head went
priests and little boys with censers and lit candles. The day was so
clear that, though they were already far away, he could see the blue
smoke of the incense.
He rode slowly forward, pensive and observing all that he might. The
old woman sat before him, but she was breathing so fast with the late
galloping of the horse that she could not yet speak. The windows of the
one stone house in that place were still shuttered and barred, so that
without doubt the lawyer still slept. Then he remembered that he would
have that man hanged without delay. Without doubt he left his windows
shuttered to give false news, for certainly, that morning, he had seen
him moving those stones. He looked about him to see if in the open
barns and byres he could not see any horse of the Prince Bishop or the
Percy or any of their men polishing their head-pieces or their pikes.
But, though many of the barns stood open, none could he observe.
He looked over his shoulder and saw that the archers were come to the
gateway and were peering sideways out, with a due caution. Then some of
them came through and stood with their backs to the wall, waving at him
their hands and shouting foul words. They would not come any further
for fear he had an ambush hidden amongst the byres and middens of the
village. So, still slowly, he rode on between heaps of garbage where
the street was narrow and a filthy runnel went down.
At the top the street grew very wide till it was a green swarded place
with many slender, sea-bent trees to make a darkened shade up against
the walls of the small monastery of Saint Edmund. He considered whether
he should go in there, but he remembered that there were only a few
monks and they had no men-at-arms to guard those who sought sanctuary
with them from pursuers not afraid of sacrilege. He determined,
however, to make his way to another monastery--the great and powerful
one of Belford, where they had fifty bowmen and two hundred men-at-arms
to guard them against the Scots. There he would go, unless the old
woman told him other news when her breath came back. Then the old thing
whimpered:
"Set me down, master. I cannot speak on horse-back." He let her slide
to the ground and, with the basket transfixed by the two arrows, she
fell on her knees. And then she crossed herself and gave thanks to God
for his coming so well off, and afterwards, his long-toed shoes being
just on a level with her lips and she on her knees, she set her mouth to
the shoe that was on the right side where she was, and then placed it
over her head as far as the basket gave her space. He wondered a moment
that this old woman should be so humble that was used to treat him as a
dirty little boy, long after he had fought in great fights, she having
nursed his mother before and him afterwards. But then he considered
that she was doing homage for such small goods as she had and this was
the first of his vassals to do this thing. And again he observed that
the bright scarlet of his shoe and the bright green--it being
particoloured and running all up his leg to his thigh--these were dull
pink and dull brown. They had been the brightest colours that you could
find in the North.
Elizabeth Campstones stood up.
"Where will you go to, my master Paris?" she asked. "Woeful lording,
where will you find shelter?"
"The Belford monks, I think, will give me the best rede and admonition,"
he said. "There I am minded to ride now."
"Then come you down from the brown horse," she said, "and walk beside me
on Belford road, for ye could go no better journey, only I cannot speak
up to you with this basket on my poll."
He came down from the brown horse, and as he did so his stirrup leather
cracked and that was more than passing strange for he had had them new
two days before. So when he was come round Hamewarts' head and had the
reins through his arm, he said to the old woman:
"Now tell me, truly, what day is this?"
"This day is the last day of June," she answered. "My master Paris, it
is three months from the day that you gat you gone, and ye are a very
ruined lord and the haymakers have gone to the high hills."
He answered only, "Ah," and walked thoughtfully forward. He had known
that that lady was a fairy....
He walked with the old woman beside him, through the little grove of
thin trees, by the bridle gate into the yard of the square, brown church
with the leaden roof, and so out into the field where it mounted towards
the Spindleston Hills.
Halfway up the low hillside there was a spring with blackthorn bushes,
sea-holly and broom in thick tufts about it. The sun fell hot here,
early as it was. A grey goat wandered through the rough and flowery
thicket and many great bees buzzed. He sat himself down upon a
soft-turfed molehill and left Hamewarts to crop the bushes. The old
woman stood looking at him curiously and with a sort of dread, for a
minute. Then she took the basket from her head and began to lament over
it.
The two arrows transfixed it through and through, so that it was
impossible for her to draw out her cloths and linen. Lord Lovell came
out of his trance of thought a moment. He looked upon the woman, and
then, taking the basket from her, he broke off the feathered end of each
arrow and so drew them right through the basket. The old woman pulled
out her clouts and said, "Eyah, eyah." Through each clout one arrow or
the other had made one, two or many round holes.
"These," she lamented, "are all that your mother has for her bed or her
body. All her others your sisters have taken."
"I am considering," he answered her, "how I best may save my mother."
She took her linen to the spring which was deep and clear, and began
sedulously to soak piece after piece, rinsing it over and over as she
knelt, and beating it with an oaken staff upon an oaken board that she
had in her basket bottom. And as she hung each piece over the bramble
bushes she looked diligently into the scene below her to see what was
stirring in the Castle or the village. Young Lovell had selected that
high spot so that they might know what was agate by way of a pursuit.
She saw, at intervals, three men on horseback go spurring up the street
from the Castle arch, but she did not disturb her master with the news.
She thought it better to leave him to his thinking, for she considered
that he would hit upon some magic way out of it. She imagined that he
had dwelt that three months amongst wizards and sorcerers that he should
have met during his vigil in the little old chapel that was a very
haunted place.
At last he raised his head and said:
"Old woman, tell me truly now, all your news."
What she knew first was that, on the morning when the Lord Lovell had
died, all the lords and knights and the Prince Bishop and the others
being gone from the hall, there remained only the dead lord, his wife in
a swound, the Lady Margaret Eure and her. Then Sir Walter Limousin of
Cullerford with his wife Isopel and the other sister had approached with
several men of theirs in arms and had carried the good body of her
senseless lady up to a little chamber in the tower called Wanshot, in
the very top of it. She, Elizabeth Campstones, had carried her lady's
feet, but all the rest of her bearers had been men-at-arms. The Lady
Margaret had followed them up into that little stone cell and asked them
what they would do with that lady in that place. But no one of them
answered her a word, high and haughty as she was, and at last they went
away and left them, the Lady Rohtraut just coming to herself on a
little, rotting frame bed that had no coverings but the strings that
held it together.
The Lady Margaret had sought to go out with them, calling them all proud
and beastly names and she was determined to set her own men that she had
there, to the number of twenty, all well armed, to make war upon these
and to raise the Castle. But when she came to the doorway that was
little and low Sir Simonde Vesey set his hand upon her chest and thrust
her back so hard into the room that she fell against the wall and lost
her breath. When she had it again the door was locked and it was of
thick oak, studded deep with nails.
Finely she raved, but when she came to, the Lady Rohtraut was in a sort
of stupour, sitting still and shaking her head at all that they said.
She thought this must be a dream that would vanish upon her awakening,
and so it was lost labour to talk.
So they remained until well on into the afternoon, seeing nothing but
the ceaseless run of the clouds and the sky and the gulls upon the Farne
Islands and the restless sea, from their little window. Then there came
three weeping maids of their lady's, bearing bedding that they set down
on the floor, and a little food and some wine that were placed upon the
window-sill. But these girls spoke no word, for Sir Simonde Vesey stood
outside and looked awfully upon them. The Lady Margaret made to run
from the room, but two men that stood hidden put their pikes to her
breast so that she ran upon them, and would have been sore hurt only
they were somewhat blunted.
The Lady Rohtraut sat for a long while eating a little white bread that
she crumbled in her fingers, and sipping at the wine from the black
leather bottle, but still she said little, which was a great pity.
Towards four of the afternoon, to judge by the shadows, Sir Simonde let
himself in at the door and asked the Lady Margaret if she would
forthwith marry the Decies. She said no, not if Sathanas himself
branded her with hot irons to make her do it. Sir Simonde said she
might as lief do it since she was betrothed to that good knight and that
could never be altered. Then she caught at the little dagger with which
she was wont to mend her pens. It hung in her girdle, and Sir Simonde
went swiftly enough out at the little door.
The Lady Margaret chafed up and down that small place, but those women
said little, for they knew well what this all meant in the way of
robbery and pillage and bending them to their wills. But the Lady
Margaret swore that she would have the Eures of Witton and the
Widdringtons and the Nevilles themselves--aye and the spy Percies--who
were all her good cousins, and they should hang the Decies and do much
worse to the Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle.
And no doubt she had the right of it, for long after it was dark they
saw a glow of light illumining in a dreary way the face of the White
Tower, so that the Lady Margaret thought it was a fire of joy or at
least a baal-blaze, but Elizabeth Campstones said that it was houses
burning in the township. Then a man with a torch came through the
little doorway and lighted in the Magister, or as he now was, the
Bailiff Stone, since the Prince Bishop had signed the appointment for
him that morning. This rendered him safe against any persecution or
processes of laymen in those parts, nevertheless, when the torch-bearer
had stuck his torch in a ring by the door and gone away, the lawyer
would have the little door left open, and they knew afterwards that it
was done so that the men without might rescue him if the Lady Margaret
meant to strike or slay him, for she could have slain five of such lean
cats.
Before the Lady Margaret could bring out a question, for she was
astonished and could not think why such a person should come there, he
broke into a trembling gibber:
"Oh, good kind ladies; oh, gentle sweet and noble dames, for God His
love and sufferings, save all our lives and houses of which two are
burning!"
The Lady Margaret asked highly what all this claver was and what he
wanted.
"These are very violent and high-stomached people," the lawyer babbled
quaveringly on. "Two houses of the township they have burned, and
hanged the husbandmen for an example. So that if you do not save
us...."
He stretched his hands to the Lady Rohtraut, but she looked before her
and said nothing.
"Well, go you and make common cause with them," the Lady Margaret said
to him contemptuously. "So you will save your neck.
"Ah, but no," he answered miserably but with a sort of professional and
cunning air. "I must be on the side of the law."
"Then what does the law say?" she asked as bitterly. "I will warrant
you will not be far from the top dog."
He began, however, to whine and wring his hands and said that he had not
long to live if he could not win these ladies to do the wills of the
violent people who had taken that Castle, not but what it might not be
said that they had not some shew of equity on their sides.
"I thought we should come near there," the Lady Margaret said; "come,
Master, what is the worst on 't?"
"Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer said, "this is at the best a grievous
matter; at the worst it is...." And he waved his hand as if there were
no speaking of it.
"Go on," the Lady Margaret said grimly.
"I have been so confused," the lawyer answered, "with much running here
and there and seeing such blood flow and the hearing of such
threats...."
"Come, come," the lady said, "you are a man of law and such a clever one
that if I threw you out of this window you could tell the law of it or
ever you fell to the ground."
"I am not saying," he retorted, with a sort of relish, "that I go in
doubts concerning the law. What perplexes and affrights me is the fall
of great and powerful lords. As to the torts, replevins, fines,
amercements and the other things too numerous to recite, I am clear
enough."
"Well, it is in the fall of mighty lords that the rats of your trade
find bloody bones to gnaw," she answered him. "But if you are too
amazed at the contemplation of the wealth that you shall make out of
this to tell me, get you gone. If not, speak shortly, or I warrant you
a few cousins of mine shall burn this Castle and you in a little space."
The lawyer shrank at these words and she went on:
"I trysted with my cousin Widdrington to meet him at Glororem at six
to-night and bade him fetch me hence with what companions he needed at
twelve if I were not home, so you have but an hour."
"Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer said, "it is three hours."
"Well then, you have kept me twelve hours here," the lady said; "I shall
pay you in full for your entertainment."
"Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer sighed, "not me, not me!"
She answered only: "Out with your tale."
He hesitated for a moment, and then began with another sigh:
"For your noble cousin Paris, Lord Lovell, I fear it is all done with
him."
"I think he may be dead that he did not come to his betrothal with me,"
the lady said. "If that is so you have my leave to tell me."
"It is worse than that," he groaned. "Woe is me, that noble lordings
should bend to violent passions."
The Lady Margaret looked at him with disdain.
"If ye would tell me," she said, "that the Young Lovell is gone upon a
sorcery, ye lie."
Again the lawyer sighed.
"It is too deeply proven," he said. "These poor eyes did see him and
two other pairs--both his well-wishers, even as I am."
"Even whose?" she asked. "And what saw ye?"
"For the eyes," the lawyer said, "they were those of the Decies and of
an ancient goody called Meg of the Foul Tyke."
"For well-wishers," the Lady Margaret answered, "you well-wish whence
your money comes; the Decies would claim my cousin's land and gear: and
Meg of the Foul Tyke, though the best of the three is a naughty witch in
a red cloak. I have twice begged her life of my lording."
"The more reason," Master Stone said, "why you should not doubt she is
your well-wisher, even more than the young lording's. And that is why
she would see you have a better mate."
The lady said: "Aha!"
"I will tell you how it was," the lawyer said. "I could not very well
sleep that night because I had been turning of old parchments, where, to
make a long story short, I had found that if the Lord Lovell should, on
the next day, swear to give the Bishop the rights of ingress and
fire-feu over his lands in Barnside he should do himself a wrong. For,
since the days of that blessed King, Edward the Second, those lands have
been held by _carta directa_..."
"Get on; get on," the Lady Margaret cried.
"But this is in the essence of the thing," the lawyer protested, "for a
_carta directa_..."
"I will not hear this whigamaree," the lady said, "Let us take it,
though no doubt you lie, that you had found certain parcels of
sheepskin. But understand that we have stomachs for other things than
that dry haggis."
"That is a lamentable frame of mind," the lawyer said, "for look you, a
carta of that tenure is the best that can be come by." But, at a
gesture of the lady's hand, he began again very quickly: "I spent a
night of groaning and sighing, for it was a grievous dilemma. On the one
hand, my beloved young lord might do himself a wrong by swearing away
his chartered rights. On the other hand, if I should tell him that I
had found them, this might be deemed foul play by the Pro-proctor Regis
Rushworth, who is a lawyer for the house of Lovell in the Palatine
districts. Though how it is that Rushworth knoweth not of this charter
I cannot tell."
"How came you by them?" the lady asked. "Without a doubt you stole them
to make work."
"They were old papers that were there when I bought the study of my
master that was Magister Greenwell," the lawyer answered, and again the
lady said: "Get on; get on."
"So, at the last," Stone continued, "I made, after prayer, the
resolution and firm intent to tell my lord. And so I arose, remembering
how he would be praying in the chapel, and gat me into the street. And
there, in the grey dawn, I lighted upon Meg of the Foul Tyke, who was
returning from gathering of simples by the light of the moon in the
kirkyard."
"There was no moon last night," the Lady Margaret said.
"Then, by the light of the star Arcturus," the lawyer claimed. "Well,
my first motion was to rate her for a naughty witch. And so I did full
roundly till that woman fell a-weeping and vowed to reform."
"Well, you were more powerful than the prophets with the Witch of
Endor," the lady mocked him.
"And, seeing her in that good mind," Stone went on with his tale, "I
remembered that she was a very old woman--the oldest of all these parts.
So I told her that if she could remember matters of Barnside years
agone, since she was in a holier mind, without doubt the young lording
would be gracious to her and would grant her a halfpenny a day to live
by; so she might live godly, after repenting in a sheet.... So she
remembered very clearly that one Hindhorn of Barnsides, Henrice Quinto
Rege, had been used, once a year, at Shrovetide, to drag with three
bullocks, an oaken log bound with yellow ribbons to the Castle. This was
direct and blinding evidence that the right of fire-feu ..."
"Well, you went with the old hag to the chapel," the Lady Margaret said.
"I can follow the cant of your mind and spring before it."
"But you may miss many and valuable things," he retorted. "As thus....
Whilst we went up the hill, this old goody, being repentant and weeping,
cried out when she heard whither we were bound: 'Alas! Horror! Woe is
me!" and other cries. And, when I pressed for a reason, she said that
the young lording was a damned soul and that was one of her sins. For
she had taught him magic and the meeting-places of warlocks; one of
which was that chapel that was an ill-haunted spot, and that was why the
lording was there at night. And she was afraid to go near the chapel;
for the warlocks would tear her limb from limb. And the familiar and
succubus of the Young Lovell was the toad that was, in afore time, the
step-mother of the Laidly Worm of Spindleston, that to this day spits
upon maidens, so much she hateth the estate of virginity, as often you
will have heard."
The lawyer paused and looked long at that lady.
"So that old witch repented?" she said at last, but she gave no sign of
her feelings.
"There was never a more beautiful repentance seen," the lawyer said.
"So she sighed and groaned and the tears poured off her face to think
that she had corrupted that poor lording...." And it had been her
repentance, he went on, that had let them see what they had seen, and so
made it possible for them to save him.
Now when they came to the chapel, said the lawyer, the young lording, as
if he were demented, came rushing out from the door, and the Decies who
had watched all night in the porch came out after him, and asked him
what he would. But he answered nothing to the Decies and nothing to
them, but, with a marvellous fury, like a man rushing in a dream, he ran
into the shed where his horse was tethered, and bringing it out, so he
galloped away that his long curls of gold flapped in the wind. It was
not yet cockcrow, but pretty clear.
Thus those three, standing there and lamenting, saw how, at no great
distance, but just under Budle Crags, there was a fire lit, and round it
danced wonderful fair women and some old hags and witch-masters, but
most fair women.
The lawyer, saying this, gazed hard at the Lady Margaret, but once again
the lady said no more than--
"Aye, my cousin was always one for fair women."
"So he kissed and fondled them; it was so horrid a sight...." the lawyer
went on.
"Now is it a horrid thing," the lady asked, "to see a fine lording kiss
a fair woman?"
"I only know," the lawyer said, "that at once all we three fell to
devising how you, ah, most gentle lady, might be saved from the embrace
of this lost man; and how that poor lording might be saved from his evil
ways, and have his lands and all his heritage preserved to him."
"And the upshot," the lady asked, with a dry pleasantness, "was what the
Decies did in the Great Hall."
When the Young Lovell, sitting amongst the furze and broom, had heard so
far, he sighed with a deep satisfaction. The old Elizabeth had told her
tale of sorcery alleged against himself at an intolerable length,
dwelling on the nature of linen clouts here and there, and upon all that
she had said to the Lady Rohtraut when she lay in the swoon. But he kept
himself quiet and did not interrupt her; he had listened to her tales
since he had been a young boy, and knew that if you hastened her they
took five times as long. Yet he sat all the while on tenterhooks for
fear she should say they had seen his meeting with the lady that sat
upon a white horse amongst doves and sparrows. Had they seen that it
might have gone ill with him in a suit at law. For, if they had seen
it, it was twenty to one that there would be other witnesses; the place
was well frequented by people journeying from Bamburgh to Holy Island.
Nay, he would have been visible to the very fishers upon the sea, and to
stay with such a lady, he well knew--though at the moment he sighed
deeply--would be accounted a felony of the deepest magic kind in any
ecclesiastical court.
But now he knew that this lawyer was simply lying, and that was an
easier thing. He saw, and so he told Elizabeth Campstones, how they had
hit upon that tale. The lawyer coming by the chapel, after the Young
Lovell had threatened him with death for the moving of his neighbour's
landstones, and the old witch meeting with him, after she had been
threatened with drowning for her wicked ways; both trembling with fear,
since they knew him for a man of his word and a weighty but just lord in
those lands, had come together to the chapel door. No doubt they had
entered in, meaning to steal his armour that was visible lying there,
and hold it for ransom as the price of their miserable lives. But in
the deep porch they would see the Decies snoring like a hog.
Him they wakened, and, the old witch's mind running on sorcery, the
lawyer's on suits, and the Decies desiring to have his heritage and his
bride, whilst the other two desired to save their lives; all three
together had hit upon this stratagem that would give them what they
desired. For in those days there was in Northumberland a stern hatred
of the black arts, which had grown the greater since the twelve children
of Hexham, two years before, had been slain, that their blood and
members might stew in a witch's broth--a thing proven by many competent
witnesses. So that, if the Decies should come in and claim the Young
Lovell's knighthood, name, and the rest, he might, with the support of
his father, make a pretty good suit of it, and, maybe, take the whole.
And, if the Young Lovell should come back soon for his armour, they
would murder him. Thus, the lawyer, and the witch, the one with a rope
to cast over his neck, and the other with a sharp dagger, hid waiting
behind the thick pillars, whilst the Decies dressed in his
half-brother's harness.
And it had worked better for them than they had expected, so that now
they held the Castle, and the law might be very hard set, if it ever
made the essay, to get them out of it.
For, as Elizabeth Campstones presently told him, they had taken all the
charters and the deeds of the Castle to Haltwhistle, where the one
knight had them hidden up, and all the deeds and charters of his
mother's lands and houses to Cullerford, where the other kept them. The
Castle itself they held all three, the Decies and the two knights--or
rather their two ladies--being captains there by turns of three days
each, and dividing the revenues of it very fairly.
They had cast out all the men-at-arms that were any way faithful to the
Young Lovell, taking away their arms too. For they, with their armed
men, had been in possession of the Castle and had taken the keys of the
armoury, whilst the Lovell men were without arms and leaderless. So
that some of the Lovell men had become bedesmen at the monastery at
Belford, and many perished miserably about the country in the great
storm of the second day of April, whilst some had taken to robbery,
which was all that was left them. Those in the Castle had hired men
from the false Scots and other ragged companions of the Vesty that was
Sir Symonde's brother, and there they all dwelt comfortable, having
between them about three hundred men-at-arms and a numerous army of
bowmen, but no cannon. They deemed that they could well await any
assault of the Young Lovell if he should return. They considered that
he had been slain by the outlaw Elliotts, who had been seen to ride by,
three miles north of the Castle, going up into the Cheviots.
But all these things happened only after they had settled with the Lady
Margaret in that little room. And that had happened in this way,
Elizabeth Campstones said:
After the lawyer told her the tale about the fair witches she had broken
into no cries and oaths as he had expected; not even when he had
particularised one witch with red hair and great breasts that danced and
sprang all naked over a broomstick, with her hair tossing, and how the
Young Lovell had singled this witch out for favours apart. The Lady
Margaret said only--
"And so you two and the Decies...."
"We stood there weeping and lamenting," the lawyer said.
"I marvel that not one of you had heart to adventure for the caresses of
such fair women as you have told me of. Had ye been men ye would."
The lawyer answered with an accent of horror:
"But witches and warlocks!"
"Ah, I had forgotten," the lady said. "So ye wept and turned your heads
away. And afterwards?"
"After they were gone," Magister Stone answered, "we fell to devising
how we might rescue you, ah gentle lady, from that lost knight and
himself from himself." That was to be in this way: The Decies should
seek to possess himself of the lands, knighthood and name of the Young
Lovell, and, if he did this with the irrevocable blessing of the Lord
Bishop, the act of the Border Warden, who in those parts stood for the
King, as well as in presence of his father, he might establish a very
good title whether of presumption or possession. And if in the same way
he might be betrothed to the Lady Margaret in the presence of the Lady
Rohtraut to whom she was ward and with the formal rite of the Church,
which like the other is irrevocable, the Young Decies would be in a very
fair way to achieve his pious desires.
"And that should be as how?" the Lady Margaret asked.
He desired, the lawyer said, to hold the Young Lovell's heritage only as
a faithful steward and brother and, so holding it with a very arguable
title, neither Prince Bishop or King could extort from it any very great
fines or amercements. Meanwhile the Decies should consummate that very
night his wedding with the Lady Margaret whom, after the betrothal, he
alone could marry. And they had a good priest there present and himself
ready to draw up marriage charters enough to fill two bridal chests.
And, the more to incline her to this, it was the mind of the gallant
Decies to allow her such marriage lots, dowers and jointures, out of the
heritage of the Young Lovell as together with her own lands of Glororem
and the other places, and by inducing the Lady Rohtraut to forego the
great fine that they should pay her upon her marriage, would leave them
one of the richest married pairs of that part of the King's realms.
And when the Lady Margaret asked how that should be brought about, and
the particulars, feudal and direct, of the deeds he would make, he went
off into a great flood of Latin and Norman words of the law. At last
she said:
"I make out nothing of all this talk. But I think I will not marry with
a great toad that hath a weasel gnawing at his vitals."
"Ah, gentle lady..." the lawyer began, and his voice rose in its tones.
"To put it shortly," the lady continued, "the great toad is the gallant
Decies, for toads do shelter under other men's rocks and stones, and
this gallant--for I will not rob him of the title you give him, and I
know no other by which to call him--is minded to shelter under the
stones and rocks of my cousin's Castle that in God's good time shall be
my cousin's and mine. And for who the weasel is that gnaweth at the
vitals of the gallant Decies I will not further particularise, since I
might well go beyond courtesy. So now get you gone, or I will wave one
of the clouts from this little window which, by the light of the burning
houses, my cousins the Eures and the Widdringtons and the Percy shall
perceive from where they wait upon Budle Crags, and very soon you shall
be hanging from the White Tower to affright the morning sun. And that I
promise you...."
The lawyer protested in various tones, rising to a sick squeak, but she
said no more to him. It was not true what she said, that her cousins
were waiting to fall upon the Castle, though they would well have done
it on the next morning or in two days' time. But the lawyer did not know
that it was not true and so he shivered and went away.
A little later there came Henry Vesey of Wall Houses, the evil knight
that was brother to Sir Symonde. He had a red nose, a roving eye and
staggered a little. He affected a great gravity, but she laughed at
him. His cloak was monstrous and of green, slit all down the great
sleeves to show the little coat of purple damask. His shirt was wrought
up into a frill very low down in his neck, so that it showed much of his
chest, and in his stiff biretta of scarlet he had a jewel of scarlet
that held five white feathers. His hair, which was reddish, fell almost
to his shoulders, for he affected very much to be in the fashions of his
time--more than most lordings and knights of that part. And, indeed,
the Lady Margaret considered him a very proper, impudent gentleman.
"Cousin Meg!" he began, and then he stammered with the liquor that was
in him. But he achieved again an owlish gravity and a sweet reason. His
proposition was that, still, she should marry the Decies and that he
himself would wed the Lady Rohtraut so that he could defend her
interests the better. And so they could all live there comfortably
together, for it was better to live in one great family than scattered
here and there. The Lady Margaret was already laughing, but he
continued with a great gravity, that, as for the Decies, he loved her so
desperately he did not dare to come nigh her, but, now he had no need to
conceal it, was rolling about the carpet in the great hall, bellowing
with the pain of his passion.
"Well, I have been aware of it this many months," the lady said, "and it
is a very comfortable love that will not let him come nigh me. I pray
it may continue."
At that Vesey of Wall Houses fell to laughing.
He tried to explain that he had come to her with the idea that she might
be more apt to wed the Decies if she knew that, by his wedding the Lady
Rohtraut, the Castle should have for its head and guidance, such a
sober, answerable, prudent and valorous head as himself.
"So the cage of apes made the parrot their captain when they went
a-sailing to the Indies," she said, and then he laughed altogether.
"Nay, indeed Meg, sweetmouthed Meg," he said, "will ye still keep troth
to the monstrous wicked, idolatrous, blaspheming lording called Lovell
that dances with fair naked witches and all the other horrid things that
we would all do if we could? Consider your wretched soul!"
But his liquorish manner showed that he believed nothing of that
witches' dance, and indeed he was pretty sure that the Young Lovell had
been carried off by the outlaw Elliotts that had been seen near that
place, and that he would return and send them ransom.
"Friend Henry," the Lady answered, "good Sir Henry, if my love, who is a
gallant gentleman, would not dance and courteously devise with beautiful
women, naked or how they were, I should think the less of him supposing
they entreated it. But I do not believe that he did this thing such as
the calling up of succubi, however fair, since his desire for me only
was so great, and that ye well wis."
"Ah well," the Vesey sighed, "sweet mouth that ye are, if it was I that
had the ordering of this Castle I should not let you go so easily."
"That I well believe and take it kindly," the lady said.
"But, being as it is," he continued, "the poltroons, my brother and
Cullerford and their wives and the Decies and the lawyer tremble so at
the thought of your kinsmen camped on Budle Crags that they are minded
to open the gates on this pretty bird. But well I know that it is a
lie, though they will not hear me."
"In truth there is a monstrous great host awaits the waving of my
kerchief," she said, "with nine culverins planted there and all; and ye
know what the culverins did to Bamburgh?"
He closed one eye slowly and then he sighed. "Well, I must take you
down," he said, "I am a reckless devil, woe is me, and if there are no
Widdringtons and the rest there now, I know that Wall Houses would burn
to-morrow and I should hang when they caught me.... But oh, I repent me
to let you go...." And he regarded her with very amorous and melancholy
laughing eyes.
"Friend Henry," she laughed, "if you will open the doors for me, for me,
for your good behaviour you may kiss me twice, once here and once at the
gate, for I dare say, if the truth be known, though you are too much
drunk to be clear and not drunk enough to speak the truth, you are more
the friend of me and of my love than any here."
"Well, they are a curst crew," he said, "and I will not hang with them;
only, where there are pickings I must have my poke, and that is good
Latin."
So, approaching and lifting his legs, as high as he might in the politer
fashion of the day, though once in his progress he fell against the
wall, he took her by the hand and kissed her on the cheek. She said she
wondered how a man could make himself smell so like a beast with wine,
and so he led her forth from the room, after he had waved away the
guards and after she had taken leave of the Lady Rohtraut who spoke
never a word. And that was as much as Elizabeth Campstones knew of her
at that time, except that she promised not to rest a night in bed until
she had roused all the Dacres of the North to come to her aunt's
assistance.
But afterwards Elizabeth heard that the Vesey of Wall Houses had
conducted the lady very courteously, not only to the gate, but, having
found her a horse and guards, to her very tower of Glororem. And on the
way he gave her very good counsel as to how she should aid her aunt.
But that had proved a very difficult matter, for the Dacres themselves,
in those disturbed and critical times, lay under such clouds of
suspicion that the best of them were detained in London near the King
and his court; so that, if they were not actually in the Tower or some
other prison, they might as well have been. As for coming to rescue the
Lady Rohtraut by force, they could not do it and, as for aiding her by
any process of law, that was a matter well-nigh impossible for its
slowness and because the Knight of Cullerford had stolen all her deeds
and titles. Moreover, all the middle part of Yorkshire was in a state
of rebellion, so that it was very difficult for messengers to come
through, either the one way or the other. It is true that a lawyer from
Durham came to the Castle and sought an interview with the lady on
behalf of the Prince Palatine, but they pelted him from the archway with
dung at first and then with flint-stones so that they never heard what
his errand was. And although many in that neighbourhood would gladly
have set upon the Castle and sacked it, it was difficult to find a
leader and head. For the Percy was afraid, not knowing how the law was
or how he should best please the King, and the Nevilles were in the
South, so that there was no one left of great eminence.
The Lady Margaret and some young squires of degree raised a force of a
couple of hundred or so and began to march on the Castle. But before
they reached it the men-at-arms repented, saying that they would not be
led by a woman and a parcel of beardless boys; and when the Lady
Margaret beat them with a whip these men shrugged their shoulders and
rode back the faster to their homes. She had two of them led to the
gallows and the ropes round their necks till they fell on their knees
and sued pardons. But that did not mend things much and there the
business sat.
The Lady Rohtraut came to herself one night and knew it was no dream.
And she would have letters written to the Lord of Croy in Germany, that
was her mother's father, that he might come to her rescue. And no doubt
he would have sent ships, though he was a very ancient man. He was a
mighty prince, and had taken prisoner, in the old time, Edward Dacre,
the Lady Rohtraut's father, in a battle that his suzerain the Duke of
Burgundy, who was of uncertain mind, fought against the English in
Flanders. So, waiting in the Castle for his ransom to come, Edward
Dacre loved the Duke's daughter, the Princess Rohtraut, and was beloved
by her. And, at the intercession of the Talbot, for the better
soldering of a new friendship between the English and the Burgundians,
the Duke, though sorely against his will, had given his daughter to
Edward Dacre, he being made a baron of England on the day of the
wedding. Her mother, the Princess Rohtraut, was still alive and lived
with her son, the Lord Dacre, in London. But between mother and
daughter there was a lawsuit about some of these very lands that her
daughters sought to take from her, and in that way there was no commerce
between them.
Thus it was that the Lady Rohtraut was very haughty, and would in no way
submit to the importunities of her daughters and their husbands, for she
had the pride of the Dacres and of a Princess of Low Germany. The
daughters would still have had her marry the Vesey of Wall Houses, so
that they might have the management of her properties, but she answered
that for nothing in the world would she do that thing, and that it would
be to give them both to Satan. She had the right to an annual dower of
3,000 French crowns and to all the furnishings that had been taken by
her husband, upon their marriage, from her Castle at Cramlinton, as well
as her houses at Plessey and Killingworth. And she had the right to
enter again, her husband being dead, into the possession and
administration of those places as well as of her lands by Morpeth.
She was minded to live as a proud and wealthy dowager and she was not
minded to abate one jot of her rights and possessions to buy her
freedom, though her daughters and their husbands came day by day and
clamoured to her to do it.
So there abode, like a prisoner in that little room, the Lady Rohtraut
till that hour. All of her servants were driven away from her, and she
had only Elizabeth Campstones to dress and undress her: and of linen she
had so little that the old woman must come forth and wash it every three
days. And, when she brought it forth, the daughters searched it into
the very seams to see that there was no letter to the Duke of Croy or to
the Dacres concealed within it. And the Lady Rohtraut fell ill, and she
thought her daughters had poisoned her with a fig laid down in honey,
till the doctor cured her with another such fig, the one poison, if it
were a poison, driving out the other.
PART II
I
So the Young Lovell sat listening to the old Elizabeth in the sun that
grew hottish amongst the flowering bushes. He thought to himself nigh
all the time, and still every second thought was of that lady.
His thoughts went like this--
There could be no doubt that the law would not help him to retake his
Castle; but he longed for her red, crooked, smiling lips. He must
therefore get together a band and besiege that place; and at the thought
of climbing through a breach in great towers whilst the cannon spoke and
the fascines fell into the ditches, arrows clittered on harness, greek
fire rustled down, and the great banners drooped over the tumult, his
blood leapt for a moment. But her hair he remembered in its filaments
and it blotted out the blue sea that lay below his feet and was more
golden than the gold of the broom flowers and the gorse that surrounded
him. He thought that, first, he must have the sanction of the Bishop
Palatine and his absolution from any magic he might in innocence have
witnessed; but, in longing for her queer smile, he could scarcely keep
from springing to his feet. He knew he must be moving over the hills,
but the remembrance of her crossed breasts with her girdle kept him
languishing there in the hot sun as if his limbs had lost their young
strength.
So, when the old woman had finished her story, she sat looking at him
with a queer glance. He spoke no word until she could not but say--
"Master, where did ye bide? Was it with the bonny witch-wives?"
He contemplated her face expressionlessly.
"Tell me truly, old woman," he said, "where will ye say that I did bide,
to save my name?" for he knew that this old woman could tell a very good
tale.
"I will say Gib Elliott took ye up into Chevyside and held ye there in
an old tower, till a scrivener of Embro' could be found to take your
bond for a thousand marks. And ye shall send fifty crowns to Gib by
me--he was my mother's sister's foster son--and he shall say that so it
was."
"Say even that," he answered, without either joy or sorrow in his tone.
"Oh my fair son," she cried out in an unhappy and lamenting voice, "I
knew ye had been among the witch-wives; and shall your face, a young
comely face of a golden lording...."
"What ails my face?" he asked.
"Sirs," she cried out, "his face is like the very still water of old
grey rock-pools, with no dancing before the wind and sun."
"Even let it be so," he answered.
"Ay, ye are in a worse case than your dad," she cried. "All the
Ruthvens had these traffics."
He looked at her hardly.
"My brother Decies was a witch's son?" he said. "That was my father's
sin that sent him roaming?"
"Of a witch that dressed as a nun and stole into a convent," she said,
and rocked herself woefully where she sat beside her washing board at
the edge of the pool. "They found witch marks upon her. They should
have drowned the child, but he took it by force and with great oaths and
sent it into foreign shires. And that made his sin the heavier."
"Ah, well!" the Young Lovell said.
"You Ruffyns," the old woman went on lamenting, "for, call yourselves
never so much Lovells, Ruthvens ye will remain, and ye are never of this
countryside but of the Red Welsh or the Black Welsh or of some heathen
countryside. And always ye have had truck with witches and warlocks.
The first of ye that came into these parts was your grandfather's father
and he had a black stone, like a coal but not like a coal. That was
given him by a witch that loved him, as she went on the way to the
faggots, for they burnt her. And without it, how could he have made his
marvellous booties, riding thro' the land of France, from how 'twas to
how 'twas, and sacking the marvellous rich and walled cities? And I had
thought to have saved you from these hussies, seeing that you might well
be of a better race, your mother being of a German house and the
Almains, as all the world tells, being foul and dirty in their lives,
but almighty pious so that nine crucifixes in ten that we buy come from
there. Therefore as you came first from your mother's womb I put the
fat of good bacon in your mewling mouth, and your sleeves I tied with
green ribbons, and I took you to the low shed in the tennis court and
rolled you down the roof--and the one thing should have saved you from
the fiends and the other from the witches, and the third even from the
fairy people. And these things are older than holy water, though you
had enough of that...."
"May it save me yet!" the Young Lovell said. "But what I now have to
consider is how to take my mother from these people and to get back what
is mine own."
"Aye," the old woman said, "you were ever a good child to your mother;
therefore I had hopes of you. For your sisters, they were all black
Ruffyns, bitter and so curst that they had no need for resort to the
powers of evil to help them."
"Tell me truly now, old woman," her master said, "how long may my mother
live and abide the treatment that she now has and not die?"
"Ah," the old woman lamented, "how altered is now her estate from what
it was, who had the finest bower that was to see in the North Country!
Not a Percy lady nor any Neville nor any mistress of a Canon of Durham
had such a one. Remember the great red curtains there were to the bed,
and the painted windows that showed the story of the man without a coat.
And the great chest carved with curliecues from Flanders, and the other
chest with the figures of holy kings, and the third that was from Almain
and stood as high as my head upon twisted pillars and had angels holding
candles at each corner. And for what was in the chest--the stores of
gowns, the furs of zibelline and of marten, the golden chains joining
diamond to diamond and pearl to pearl! ... And now she lieth upon a
little pallet, and here, upon these bushes, is drying all the linen that
she hath. The one gown of scarlet is all that there is for her back,
except for the great slit coat that they have given her for fear that
she die of the cold. And her little dog Butterfly is all that she hath
for comfort, that sits in her sleeve.... But yet I think she will not
die, and it is certain that none of them wish her death that should
bring against them the mighty house of Dacre to have her heritage. But
day after day they come in, now one, now two, now three and cry out upon
her with great and curious words seeking to gar her give them her lands
and render up her yearly dower. And so she sits still; and sometimes
she gives them back hard words, but most often she says no more than
that they shall give her her due and let her go. And so they rave all
the more. But I do not think that she will die..."
"And has she never sent word to her own mother?" the Young Lovell asked,
"I think that ancient dame could do more than another to save her."
"I think she is too proud," the old woman said. "Of the Duke of Croy she
has spoken often enough, but of her mother never one word, so that, God
forgive me, I had forgotten that she had that mother though it was in
her house I saw the first of God His good light three score and twelve
years was. For you know that these ladies have never spoken together
nor written broad letters since your grandfather Dacre died, and your
father, on the day the funeral was, was sacking the castles and houses
that were your mother's inheritance. And the old lady thought they
should have been hers; so that to this day she is wealthy enough in gold
but hath little or no land and dwells in but a moderate house in the
Bailey at Durham, though when her son, the Dacre, is in London she is
mostly there herself."
The Young Lovell stood up upon his legs.
"Then if there is no great haste to save my mother's life," he said, "it
is the better. I would else very well have hastened to get together
twenty or thirty lusty bachelors and so we might have burst into this
Castle of mine. But if my mother may stay out a fortnight or a month it
is the better. For I will get together money and a host and cannon and
so we may make sure."
"Ay," the old woman said, "but hasten all ye may for the sake of Richard
Bek and Robert Bulmer."
"Now tell me truly what is this?" her master asked.
The old woman burst out into many ejaculations how that with the haste
and her master's strange looks she did not know what she had told him
and what she had missed out.
Certain it was that Richard Bek, Robert Bulmer, and Bertram Bullock held
the White Tower for him, the Young Lovell. The others could not come to
them for the White Tower stood on a rock twenty yards from the Castle
and joined to it by such a narrow stone bridge that it was, as it were,
a citadel. It could stand fast though all the rest of the Castle should
be taken, having been devised for that purpose. Richard Bek and Robert
Bulmer, poor squires, or almost of the degree of yeomen, had always been
captains of the White Tower and in it the dead Lord Lovell had kept his
marvellous store of gold--as much as four score thousand French crowns,
more or less--and all these were theirs still, with such strong cannon
as might well batter down the Castle; only Richard Bek would not do
this. And to him there had resorted from time to time certain strong
fellows that were still faithful to their master, creeping in the night
along the narrow bridge into the tower ... such as Richard Raket, the
Young Lovell's groom that had lost his teeth at the fight of Kenchie's
Burn. There might be a matter of twenty-five of them that held it and
victualled it by boats from the sea at night.
"Old woman," the Young Lovell said, "ye keep the best wine for the last,
but ye have our Lord's warrant for that."
So he got slowly up and put the bit in the mouth of Hamewarts, that had
been grazing, and when he was on that horse's back he looked down on
Elizabeth Campstones and said--
"Old woman, tell me truly, shall I take thee with me upon this great
horse; for I think my kin will very surely hang thee for having talked
and walked with me?"
She looked up at him with a surly, sideways gaze.
"Ah, gentle lording," she said, "if I may not with my tongue save my
neck from thy sisters and their men I may as well go hang, for my
occupation will be gone." He left her straining a twisted and wet clout
over the dark pool.
When he came to the high uplands where there was some heather, he saw a
man with a grey coat with a hood, and as soon as that man was aware of
him, he went away with great bounds like a hare, but casting his arms on
high as he sprang. The Young Lovell was well accustomed to that stretch
of land. It was full of soft, boggy places and he knew therefore that
that man had some money in his poke and desired to betake himself where
no horse could follow. But because the Young Lovell knew that land so
well, he threaded Hamewarts between bog and soft places, calling the
notes of the chase to hasten him. Thus the great horse breathed deep
and made large bounds. And the Young Lovell thought that times were not
all that they should be when every footman must run from every gentle
upon a horse and upon Lovell ground. For either that man was a felon,
which was not unlike, or he feared that the gentleman should rob him,
which was more likely still. The Young Lovell was resolved that these
things should be brought to better order on his lands, for he would
fine, hang, or cut the ears off every felon of simple origin that was
there. To the gentle robbers too, he would not be very easy, though
this was not so light an enterprise, since most of them would prove to
be his cousins or not much further off. Still, they could go harry the
false Scots.
In five minutes he was come up to that man in grey, and that man cast
himself at first on his knees in the heather and then on his face, for
his sides were nearly burst with running and leaping. The Young Lovell
sat still and looked down upon the hind, for he was never a lord of much
haste. And afterwards, the man, with his face still among the heather,
for he was afraid to look at death that might be ready for him--this man
fumbled for the grey woollen poke that lay under him. He pushed it out
and bleated--
"I have but three shillings;" and when the Young Lovell asked him how he
came by his three shillings, he said that he was bound for Belford
neat's fair to buy him a calf.
"Then I wager two cow's tails," the Young Lovell said, "Hugh Raket, you
owe me those shillings; for such a knave as you, for docking me of my
dues, I have never known. You should pay me twelve pence and five hens
and three days' labour a year--yet when did you pay my sire even the
half of the hens in one year?"
This Hugh Raket turned himself right over upon his back and setting his
arm above his head to shield his eyes from the sun he gazed upwards at
the rider's head. His jaw fell though he lay down.
"If I am no Scot," he said, "ye are the Young Lovell."
"I am Lord Lovell," he got his answer, "get up and kiss my foot, for
that is your duty."
He looked down at the man whilst he did his homage and said with an
aspect of grimness:
"Ay, Hugh Raket, if you were not my horse-boy's brother you would be a
poorer man and I a richer!"
The man looked up at his lord with an impudent shade on his face that
had a thin beard. It was true that he had not many times done either
suit or service since the field of Kenchie's Burn, for so surely did a
Court Baron come round so surely would Hugh Raket be away on the hills
after a strayed sow or goose, and Richard, his brother, would beg him
off from the Young Lovell. Nevertheless, from time to time, the Young
Lovell would take a couple or two of hens from him by force, for this
was a very impudent family, and if they had the land scot-free and
lot-free for a few years they were such fellows as would swear it was
their free-holding--gay fellows they were, both brothers, but they had
always a wet mouth for the main chance:
"Friend Raket," his lord said now, "that you are a very capable cozener
I have known very well ever since your brother aided me upon the field.
But, if you are upon Belfordtrod, catch you hold of my stirrup leather
and you may have its aid as far as that town is. And, if hidden
hereabouts--for you hold this land of me--you have any sword or crossbow
or pike or such arms as naughty knaves like you are forbidden to have,
you may go dig it up and bring it to me and I will look the other way.
For, since I came out of my prison I have no arms at all, and it is not
meet or seemly that I should ride unarmed."
The husbandman looked keenly at his lord; for, since Bosworth Field, the
King had ordered that none of the simple people, unless they bought a
licence at the cost of one pound English, should carry more arms than a
short knife.
"Friend Raket," his lord said, "I think I can find thy arms as well as
thou canst, for well I know this terrain, and they lie in a stone chest
over beside that holed rock. But, if you will fetch them for me, giving
me the sword and carrying for me the crossbow and for thyself the pike,
I will call thee my man-at-arms, and so you shall have licence to keep
all the arms you will in your own steading, which shall much comfort you
when you think of the false Scots in the night-time." And at that,
calling out, "O joy!" and ducking his head between his hands, the fellow
ran over the ling to a great stone with a round hole in it that maidens
were accustomed to pass their hands through up to the elbow to show
their lovers or bridegrooms that they were pure. He knelt down beside
this stone.
The Young Lovell sat on his horse in the summer weather. He gave one
great sigh and gazed upon the blue sea behind and below him and the
green plain before and on a level. The husbandman came back to him.
Upon his head he had a cap of steel; over his back a small target was
slung; in his left hand he held a pike with a steel head three foot long
and armed with a hook such as the common sort use in battles to pull
knights from off their horses. Bundled together in his arms were a
Genoese cross-bow, a great sword and a little dagger, whilst slung
across his back was a leather bag filled with such heavy steel quarrels
and bolts as should fit the cross-bow. These arms Hugh Raket and his
fellows used when they went raiding into the Scots or the Middle or the
Western Marches; for they cared little whom they journeyed upon; even,
when they heard that the Scots marched with a strong body upon Carlisle
or the Debateable Lands they would take a hand with the Scots and bring
back what they could.
And without any manner of doubt these arms--the knight's great sword and
dagger which were a pair, and the Genoese bow--had been taken in a foray
when the Lord Dacre was Warden of the Middle Marches and had some
Genoese and many gentlemen to help him, though he had not made much of
it. The little target had certainly been taken from the Scots, for it
was such a one as the Murrays and the Macleods use, being not much
larger than a cheese-top with many bosses and bubbles. But the pike and
the steel cap this fellow might have made himself, for they were rude
enough.
He stood looking up at his lord with a face of anxious roguery, but the
Young Lovell never heeded him till the husbandman spoke; he was gazing
to northward as if his eyes would start from his head.
The man continued watching his lord and thinking his thoughts as to
where that lord had been until he spoke and asked the Young Lovell
whether he should indeed have leave to bear all these weapons and be a
man-at-arms. The Young Lovell came out of his reverie and said:
"Yes, yes; ye shall be my man-at-arms." And then he said: "Give me the
great sword and the dagger. I will make them serve as arms enough till
we come to Belford."
The bondsman was intent upon his own bargaining.
"Then if I be a man-at-arms," he said, "I shall no longer be a
bondsman."
"If you will give me back your lands, that is so," said his lord. He
was buckling on his sword and he hung the dagger from the belt. He drew
the sword from the scabbard to see that it was not rusted in, and it
came out very easily, for it had been lately greased.
"It is not very long since you used this sword in gentle feats of arms,"
the Young Lovell said.
"For using it," the man said, "I will not say that; cudgels and stones
proved enough."
"Well, you shall tell me," Young Lovell said. "But now take my stirrup
leather and let us go to Belford, for the sun is high."
The man took the stirrup, and whilst he ran lightly beside the great
horse over the ling and the mosshags he called, a little coyly, his
story up to his lord. It was a long tale, or he made it so, for there
was a great deal to tell as to how a Milburn called Barty of the Comb
and Corbit Jock had called the bondsmen of the Castle Lovell together,
and of how they had said that in the absence of the Young Lovell they
would pay no heriots, nor yet hens, nor yet bolls of wheat. So, when
the bailiff of the Castle had come among their steadings and had sought
to take heriots for the death of the Lord Lovell and tythes in hens and
pence, they had greeted him at first civilly and had asked to see the
charters and papers of their lands, saying that that was the custom upon
the death of the lord.
That had occasioned some delay, since the charters and papers had all
been taken to Cullerford, to the tower of Sir Walter Limousin that had
married the Young Lovell's sister, the Lady Isopel. So a strong guard
was sent to Cullerford and brought the charters back for the time. At
beat of drum the charters, customs, the number of the rent-hens and such
things had been read out by the bailiff and the lawyer called Stone,
standing upon a little mound at the head of the village. From here
these things had been read from time immemorial, even to the oldest ages
when it had been called the Wise Men's Talking-place. The lawyer Stone
had told them that the heritage of the old Lovell had fallen to those
three, the Decies, called now Young Lovell and the husbands of the
ladies Isopel and Douce. They had, the lawyer read, fyled a suit
against the late Young Lovell for sorcery, at a Warden's Court held in
the Debateable Land on St. Mark's Day last gone. Since the Young Lovell
had not appeared, that bill had been fouled and those three had taken
his lands and all he had. And the lawyer Slone, standing upon that
mound had bidden them go back to their byres and, peaceably, to do suit
and service and pay their heriots and rent-hens and bolls of corn and
the rest.
Then Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock, his friend, and Robert Raket,
had answered for the other bondsmen that they would think upon it. Then
the three of them had ridden to Lucker, where there was a lawyer called
Shurstanes, and had taken counsel with him. So when, upon the morrow,
the bailiff of that Castle came again, those three cunning ones had met
him courteously, and said that, for a suit of sorcery, a Warden's Court
could not foul or find a bill. It must go before a court of the Bishop
Palatine. They had great respect for the Lord Warden, but so it was and
his court was only for raidings in the Marches. And for the
dispossession of a barony that could only be tried (after the Bishop's
Court in Durham had found a true bill of sorcery) in an assize of the
King's justices travelling, Alnwick or wheresoever it might be. And any
such finding of the assize court must be ratified by the most dreadful
King of England in council before ever the Young Lovell could be
dispossessed of his lands.
And those three cunning men had further answered the bailiff that they
were very willing to pay rent-hens and tythes and heriots and pence and
whatever was rightfully to be had of them. But first they must be
assured of what the King said in his council. Else the Young Lovell,
coming again, might have it all of them a second time, and that, being
poor men, they could not well abide.
Then the bailiff went back to the Castle--he was not the old bailiff of
the Lord Lovell who had been cast out of his dwelling in the King's
Tower and had gone to live at Beal--but it was a new bailiff that Sir
Walter Vesey had brought from Haltwhistle, where he had been a
surveyor's clerk.
But, in three days, the bailiff had issued again from the Castle and had
gone to the byres of the poor widow of Martin Taylor, having about him
ten pikemen for his protection.
Then Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock and Richard Raket considered that
if this thing were done, even upon the poorest of them, it might well
serve as a precedent. They had called together all the bondsmen and
their sons, and the number of sixty-seven men and all the women had
come, being ninety in number, and the more noisy because it was a woman
and a widow that the bailiff sought to oppress. So they had thrown
stones at the pikemen who were bearing off the widow's donkey, and had
broken out the bailiff's teeth, and driven them all back to the Castle.
And, in expectation that the bailiff should come again with a greater
force, they had fetched from their hiding-places all their arms, and had
them ready. But the people from the Castle never came again; without
doubt they thought they were not strong enough; the bondsmen of Castle
Lovell were all very notable reivers and fighting men.
Thus, if Sir Walter and Limousin and the Decies came out with such
forces as they had, it was very likely--nay it was certain--that the men
who were in the White Tower and still faithful to the Young Lovell would
issue behind them into the Castle with their cannons, and so, if they
might not take the Castle they might at least set free the Lady
Rohtraut, and have her away by sea; for they of the Castle had no boats,
and no fisherman would help them.
The Young Lovell listened as attentively as he might to what Hugh Raket
had to say, and, at the end of the story, they were come to the hill top
where the heather and marshy ground ceased. They saw before them great
plains of green grass with people going about everywhere, and there
getting their hay. And a little way away there were going, along a
trodden road, some ten armed men and another amongst them, all on
horseback.
So the Lord Lovell kept himself apart, but sent Hugh Raket to look who
these men were that went abroad upon his lands. Before him, but a
little to the right was the town of Belford, but the monastery, with its
great church and its great tower just in building, was a little to the
South, near the wood called Newlands. Further to the South was the
little hamlet of Lucker. He cast his eyes behind him and he frowned.
For, apart from the sea and the sky, the two Castles and the islands set
in foam, he had seen mostly the square tower of Glororum. A little
company, in the clear weather, were riding out of this tower, and there
the Lady Margaret dwelt. It seemed a weary thought to him since he
remembered the lady with the crooked smile.
Hugh Raket came back to him and said that those ten men rode with a
prisoner that had been convicted of theft in the Courts of the Nevilles.
He had appealed to the Bishop's Courts in Durham, and so they were
taking him there. Hugh Raket thought that it was a folly to make such
matter of a felon. Let them hang him to the first tree and ride back.
For this appeal, before they had the thief strung up, should cost the
Neville lord, for guards and victual and horsemeat and harbouring,
nothing less than ten pounds which was a great sum of money, and a folly
too.
He was of opinion that, if such great lords as the Nevilles and the
Darceys and the Young Lovell suffered none to appeal from their courts,
but hung every man that came before them, it would be much better; for
then there would be none of this monstrous outlay that was for ever
occurring, and the great lords could excuse their poor bondsmen their
rent-hens and their suit and service.
The Lord Lovell made Hugh Raket tell all over again his story of how
they had contended with the bailiff. For, the first time, he had not
been very attentive. But now he bent his brows firmly on the face of
this cunning bondsman and gave him all his mind. And then it speedily
appeared to him that it was this fellow that had really moved in the
resistance to the bailiff, and that Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock
had had little to do with it, for they were simple, slow fellows. So
the Young Lovell frowned upon Hugh Raket and called him a naughty knave,
for the Young Lovell prized good order in his dominions above
everything.
The bondsman began to cry out then, that if they had paid their
tributes, heriots and what not to the bailiff of the false pretenders,
they would have none wherewith to pay the Young Lovell's bailiff when he
came in turn as come he would.
"Now are you a very naughty fellow," the Young Lovell cut into his
outcry, "for well ye knew ye thought I should never come again, but was
away amongst the false Scots and dead, or amongst the false witches and
worse. So ye were minded to escape all your suits and services for
ever. And, for the bailiff of a great lord, proclaimed with drums upon
his hill, he is no person for such scum and vermin as ye are to protest
against, or against whom to cry out to lawyers. It is for you to do
your services to those whom God for the time sees fit to set over you,
and to our Lord the King and the Prince Bishop and the Lord Warden and
others. For, if such fellows as you are to question whom ye shall pay
and whom ye shall not pay, what peace or order should we have in these
my lands? Nay, we shall see ye rise up against mine own bailiffs, so
that, by God His sorrow, I must speedily come against ye with fire and
brands...."
The Lord Lovell set his teeth and the bondsman shrank back.
Nevertheless, he mumbled that they were very poor folk and could never
pay two sets of masters, the one against the law and the other their
rightful lord.
"Sir, you lie," the Lord Lovell said. "For very well ye know that such
a parcel of rich scoundrels are not between Tweed and Tyne. For my
Castle is a very strong Castle, and I have been and shall be to you a
very powerful lord at whose name all the false Scots do tremble. So
that, from the shadow of that my Castle, ye go burning and reiving into
Scotland and the Marches, whereas none dare ever come against ye to take
what ye have by right or what ye have falsely stolen. I have had
complaints against ye, in my father's time, that, in one winter season,
you and Barty of the Comb and the other Milburns and Jock Corbit and his
fellows and others that are upon my lands, with fellows from
Haltwhistle, and God only knows where or under whose leadership (though
I think it was a Wharton that led ye), you cast down or burned
ninety-two towns, towers, stedes, barnekyns, and parish churches; ye
slew one hundred and seven Scots, and prisoners taken were two hundred
and nine, who were ransomed with whitemail and black; 2,700 horned
cattle ye took, and 3,039 sheep, along with nags, geldings, goats, swine
and eight hundred bolls of corn...."
Hugh Raket mumbled that he had had very little of all this.
"Filthy knave," his lord said, "I know not what you had but you had your
share, you and Barty of the Comb and Jock Corbit. And well I know that
I was--God help and save me--surety for you and my other men at the
Warden's Court where complaint was made against ye. And well I know
that when ye should have assoiled yourselves by arms, it was my armourer
that had made the arms ye wore, and so war-like did ye appear that none
came into the field against ye, the complainers being mostly Scots
widows that ye had made. God keep and save me! now I wish I had never
done those things for you, for you came away with no bills fouled
against ye and ye had the Scots horned cattle, and black and white mail,
and their nags and geldings and goats, and so ye have waxed fat, and
would rise up against your betters."
The bondsman was silent, deeming that the better course before the
visible anger of his lord, and the Young Lovell continued:
"If ye would not pay your just dues to me where then should ye be? If
it were not for the fear of my name how should you be safe in the
nights? And how may I make my name feared but by keeping a great store
of knights and men-at-arms and bondsmen and my Castle very strong?
Where should ye be if I had no lead upon my roofs, and the rain and
frost destroyed my towers? Ye would be men undone, for the false Scots
would come burning and slaying, and the Lords Percy should take all ye
had, and the Bishops Palatine would sell ye into slavery. So I rede ye
well, pay me what ye owe me, or I will be in your steads and barnekyns a
very burning torch, and upon your nags and geldings a death rider such
as ye never saw."
The bondsman fell upon his knees before his lord's horse.
"Ah gentle lording," he cried out, "God forbid that we should not pay ye
all that we owe. Then indeed were we all undone, for no men ever had
lord so gentle and so kind."
"Foul knave," his lord said, "I know that if by my murder ye might well
profit, murder me ye would, you and your fellows; but ye dare not for
fear of the Scots."
The bondsman wept and groaned with his hands held up, and his hood
fallen from his face.
"Now, by God's dreadful grace, that is not so," he cried. "For if I
would have murdered ye--and I tremble at that word--might I not have
done so even now, when I had the arms and weapons that I surrendered to
you so that ye might have killed me? Ye are my very dread lord, and well
I know it. For I have sate under the mass priest and heard his sermons,
and well I know how that the lion is the symbol and token of Antichrist,
the dragon of Satan, the basilisk of death, and the aspic of the sinner
that shut his ears to the teachings of life. And have I not seen all
these trampled beneath the feet of the Saviour in stone set upon the
church door? And shall I be like unto the aspic and pass from life to
hell ... the aspic that shutteth his ears? Alas, no! I do know that
there are set over me, God and the Saints and the most dreadful King
Henry, Seventh of that name, and the Bishop Palatine and the Border
Warden and the monks of St. Radigund. But before all these men and next
only to God, comes my most dread Lord Lovell of the Castle, and that if
I do not serve him with all rights and dues, fire and sword will be my
portion in this life or else the barren hillside and hell-flame in after
time...."
The Lord Lovell said:
"Well, ye have learnt your lesson, the mass priest has taught you well."
Then the crafty bondsman, seeing that his lord's face was softened, and
hoping, by means of his brother, still to escape his due payments,
sighed and said:
"I would indeed, and before the saints, that I must give greater
payments to my lord if there were none to other people. For there is no
end to this payment of taxes and tithes. No sooner is my lord's bailiff
gone than there come my Lord Warden's men seeking to take my horse for
the King's wars in France--God curse that Lord Warden! And he gone,
comes the Bishop Palatine's bailiff seeking payment for the milling of
my corn at his mills on the Wear though the grists were all my own.
Then comes the prior of St. Radigund's for a half tithe; then Sir John,
the mass priest, for a whole. Then there are the market dues of
Belford--for God His piteous sake, ah gentle lording, set us up here in
Castle Lovell a market where we may sell toll free--we of the Castle.
Now if I will sell some bolls of wheat and ship them to the Percies at
King's Lynn, I must pay river dues at Sunderland according to the brass
plate that is set in the Castle wall at Dunstanburgh. And if I pay that
due it is claimed of me again a second time by the Admiral of the
Yorkshire coast, saying that I should not have paid it the first, though
God He knows what maketh the Admiral of Yorkshire in our rivers and
seas. So with wood haulage to Glororem, and maltings to the King's
Castle guard at Bamburgh, and a day's work of service here and two days
in harvest there, God knows there is no end to a poor man's payments.
But this I know..." and the peasant scowled deeply, "that my Lord of
Northumberland may rue the day when he taxed us for the French wars. It
is not that Lord Percy that shall live long."
The bondsman allowed himself these words against the Percy partly out of
his great hatred, and partly because he knew his lord did not love this
Earl of Northumberland for his treachery to King Richard upon Bosworth
Field.
They were still halted at the edge of that plain that the lord might the
better hear his bondsman. But the Young Lovell heard only parts of what
the peasant said, for he was nearly lost in thought whilst the great
white horse cropped the grass. At last the Young Lovell spoke.
"For what you say," he exclaimed, "as to the multiplicity of burdens
there is some sense in it. And it might well be that I could buy some of
these rights from the King, or the Prince Bishop, or others, as it
chances. And, for a market, I am well minded to buy the right to hold
one from the King. And so was my father minded before me. But you know
very well that your gossip, Corbit Jock--like the tough rogues that ye
all are--this Corbit Jock stood in the way of it. For the only piece of
land I have that is fitting for a market lies under the wall of that my
Castle on the way running through that my township of Castle Lovell.
And amid most of that, as ye know, Corbit Jock has a mound of his
holding. How his father got it I know not. But there, running into my
Castle wall, is his mound, and on it a filthy barn leaning against my
Castle wall, and before the barnekyn a heap of dung and a shed that
might harbour five goats. The whole is not worth to him ninepence by
the year, and it is far from his house and of no use to him. Yet,
though I would well and willingly buy this of him, and my father would
have bought it of his father that there we might have a market holden,
ye know very well that this Corbit Jock will not sell and I have no
power to take it from him. For, though I might get a broad letter from
the King in his Council to take this mound by force, and to pay him full
value, yet such a letter must cost me much gold, and it is doubtful if
the King's writ, in such matters, runneth in these North parts. In the
country of France, as I heard when I was there of the Sieur Berthin de
Silly, such things are done every day by the King's letters. Nay, he
was about then engaged in such a matter with a peasant, whom he
dispossessed, but paid well and so has a fair market below his Castle of
La Roche Gayon. And so it may well be in the South of this realm for
aught I know. But here it is different, and I am not minded to have a
hornet's nest of lawyers about my ears in order to give a market
place--that should cost me dear enough when I bought the rights of my
lord the King--to such rogues and cozeners as you and Barty of the Comb
and Corbit Jock and the widow of Martin Taylor. But, if ye will talk of
the matter with Corbit Jock that he may sell his mound to me, I will
promise you this, that you shall have your market. For I am your very
good lord. And so no more of talk for this time."
He set his horse towards Belford, going decently by roundabout ways and
paths from landmark to landmark that he might not trample down the long
grass of which his bondsmen were making their hay all about him. Of
late years, since his father had been too heavy to ride, the Young
Lovell had considered much the matters of his lands, and he had done
certain things, such as selling by the year to third parties of the
rights to collect his dues, whether on malt, hens, salt, housing and of
other things. And these new methods, of which mostly he had heard in
the realms of France, Gascony and Provence, had worked well enough, for
his incomings had been settled and the buyers of his rights had neither
the power to steal his moneys nor so much to oppress the bondsmen as his
own bailiffs had. So that, in one way and another, he could talk of
these things to his bondsman whilst he thought of other matters. And
one of these matters came into his head from that talk of the shed of
Corbit Jock that leant against the very rock below his Castle wall.
From below the flags of the men-at-arms' kitchen, in the solid stone of
the rocks, there ran a passage going finally through the earth not ten
feet from the mound of Corbit Jock. The only persons that might know of
this passage had been the dead lord and Young Lovell himself. The
Decies might know of it, for the dead lord had prated of all things to
his bastard. But it was odds that it would never come into the Decies'
head, for he was a very drunken fellow and remembered most things too
late.
Now if, under cover of night, the Young Lovell could introduce a dozen
or twenty lusty fellows with picks and other instruments into Corbit
Jock's barnekyn, in five hours or less they could dig a way into that
tunnel where it went under the ground. Then it was but pushing up the
flagstones of the kitchen and they would be terrifyingly and
surprisingly within the Castle whilst all the men-at-arms could be drawn
off from those parts with a feigned attack on the outer walls. Or, if
by chance there were men in that passage and guarding it, they could put
into it a great cask of gunpowder and so kill them all. It was a task
much easier than my lord of Derby and Sir Walter Manny had, who
tunnelled under the Castle of la Reole for eleven weeks when Agout de
Baux held it and yet could not take that place which is in Languedoc,
though he had with him three Earls, five hundred knights and two
thousand archers. The young Lovell thought he would have his Castle
more easily.
And as he rode through the fields, the thoughts of war driving out those
of the lady with the crooked smile, the siege of that Castle grew clear
to him and like a picture, red and blue and pink, at the edge, or the
head of a missal. At first, hearing that the White Tower was held for
him with its gold and cannons, he had thought that, going by sea into
that place, which was like a citadel over against a walled city, such as
he had seen at Boulogne and Carcassowne and other places, he would set
the cannon to batter down the walls and so enter in with what many he
could get together.
But then it had seemed to him that that was his own Castle and, if he
beat down its walls, he must build it up again at his own pains and
great cost--for the building of castles is no light work to a lord,
however rich. Moreover, his sisters would certainly set his mother in
whatsoever part of the Castle he began to batter--so that he must either
kill his mother or leave off; for that was the nature of his good
sisters.
And then he began to think of stratagems and devices by which he might,
more readily and at less cost, come to his desires. And so he cast
about for a cunning device by the means of which he might get possession
of the great gate of that Castle. But at that time he thought of none.
So he rode an hour through the fields, diverting himself with that
picture in his mind and with his bondsman stepping beside him. Then
they came to a brook which was a bowshot from the frowning and high
tower of Belford monastery. This was so new that the stones were still
white and the scaffold poles and planks all about its crenellations. The
Young Lovell stayed his horse by the streamside and spoke to his
bondsman.
"Now this I will do," he said, "and you may set it privately about the
countryside. For I know well, Hugh Raket, that it is you that are the
masterful rogue in these affairs. Although in your story you have
sought to make it appear that Barty of the Comb and others had a great
share in devising a mutiny against that bailiff, yet it was you alone
that stirred up the people. So let it be known to my men a fortnight
hence, at nine at night they shall meet me at a certain place of which I
will warn you later. And each man shall be armed as he is when he goes
against the Scots. Then they shall come into my service for four or
five days each, as if it were harvest time and they doing their services
due to me. Then they shall sack a tower and have their sackings. And
of the prisoners that they take in another place they shall have the
ransoming, unless I prefer to hang those prisoners. In that case I will
pay them what the ransoming would have been. And, for the men out of
the sea, they shall be excused all rent-hens and services and heriots
that they owe me. You--that is to say--have called them heriots, but
rather they should be called deodanda. For a heriot is paid, the tenant
being dead, by the tenant's heirs. But in this case it is the lord that
is dead and what is paid is paid by the bondsmen as a fine or a forfeit,
because they did not save the life of their lord."
The bondsman looked upon the face of his lord and marvelled what manner
of man this was that, in the very conception of a martial scheme, could
so hang upon the niceties of words. But the Young Lovell was a very
sober, hardy and cunning lord. In all that he said he had his purpose.
So that, before the peasant could speak and ask him for more particulars
of that bargain, the young lord drew up Hamewarts' mouth from the water
where he had drunk sufficiently and went on, lifting his hand in the
sunlight.
"So that it is in the nature of deodand rather than of heriot. And how
it works is in this wise--that, every tenant having to pay and suffer
upon the death of his lord, so he works very carefully to keep his lord
alive. So mark you well that, Hugh Raket. For, if I succeed in this
enterprise, two out of three of you shall be excused all rent-hens and
deodands due at the death of my father. But if I fail and die--and,
full surely I will not live if I fail--ye must all of you pay double,
rent-hens, deodands and all. For then shall my sisters be my lawful
heiresses and you must pay to them firstly all that you owe upon my
father's death and then all that you owe upon mine who am your rightful
lord. So you will be in a very pitiful case if I die, and it will well
repay you to fight well for me. Mark that very carefully and report it
where you will. But, if you think rather to make favour with my
sisters, you know very well it is not they that will go to the sweat and
cost of getting leave of our lord the King to hold markets. No, but
they will get them to Cullerford and Haltwhistle and strengthen these
places, and the Castle will be thrown down, and the Scots will come in
upon you and you will be in a very lamentable case."
He paused and looked earnestly upon his bondsman. And then he continued:
"So I have spoken what was in my mind very soberly and I think well.
For this business of being a great lord is not merely the riding about
in summer time and the sacking of castles. But I have to think what is
good for me to do for my people. For your good is mine and I study how
to bring it about. And that I learned of the Lord Berthin de Silly when
I was in France. Now think well upon what I have said and give me your
answer, yea or nay. For I know well that the others will be guided by
you."
The bondsman looked upon the stream and upon the monastery whose wall,
like a castle's, lay new and square in the sunlight.
"I take thought," he said, "not that I doubt the upshot, but that I may
find words. For these matters are above my head that you have deigned
to speak of. But of this, gentle lording, you may make sure that, at
eight of the clock a fortnight hence, I will meet you at any place of
which you shall send me the name. And there shall be with me
sixty-eight or seventy stout men and well armed after our fashion."
He went on to try to say that this lording was a soldier so cunning and
so great a knight that all the countryside said they would very gladly
go a-riding or a-foot with bows, into Scotland or Heathenesse or the
South, whatever his enterprise. But, since he was a better hand at
grumbling at taxes than in praising his lord, he got little of it out.
Nevertheless he made it plain that fighting men would be there on the
appointed day, and so they parted--the lord riding across the stream to
the monastery and the hind along it to Belford town.
II
The monk Francis was a small, dark, quiet man and not overlearned. He
was rising thirty and he was always at work. The monastery of Belford
was one given over rather to study and learning so that he, the active
one, had always much upon his hands. But all such time as he could save
from his duties he devoted to praying for the soul of the cousin he had
slain by mischance, taking her for a deer and slaying her with an arrow,
as she came to him amongst thick underwood to tell him that the Scots
were marching southwards through the Debateable Lands.
That had been ten years before; nevertheless he had prayed that morning
very reverently for his cousin's soul, walking up and down between the
rows of haymakers and their cocks, in the sunshine; keeping one finger
between the leaves of his book of prayers and yet marking diligently
that none of the bondsmen slipped away into their own grass to use the
scythe there. For it was marvellously fine weather, and such as had
never in the memory of man been known in those parts for the heat of the
sun and the dry clear nights. So that it was considered that the saints
must be blessing that part. Nevertheless, these naughty bondsmen, owing
some three, some five days' labour of themselves and their wives and
children to the monastery, must needs always be seeking to slip away to
their own lands and doing their scythe work there. This they would do,
if no monk watched them, though by so doing they robbed the monastery
and went in danger of excommunication. But those, as the learned Prior
said, were evil days, so that it might almost be said, as was said
aforetime of the accursed robber who came against the Abbey and Church
of St. Trophime, that he proclaimed that a thousand florins would get
him more soldiers than seven years of plenary absolution from the Pope
at Avignon. As to whom, said the Prior, Froissart, the chronicler
declared that men-at-arms do not live by pardons nor set much store
thereby. And as much might be said of their bondsmen.
For it was to be said for this monastery of Belford that the monks set
more store by a great chronicle that they were assisting the monk Oswald
to write--all of them searching here and there--than by the work done by
their bondsmen, the good estate of the lands of the monastery or even
the saying of the offices. They set more store by learning than by
aught else.
Their lands were administered by laymen, so that they were often robbed,
and when the monk Francis had come amongst them their revenues had been
scarcely an hundred pounds by the year, or very little more. And, even
at the time of his coming, the monks had been against receiving him, for
they said that here was a man, though of piety undoubted, who could not
tell the chronicle of Giraldus Cambrensis from that of the monk
Florence, or Asser from Vergil and Flaccus. But, in those days, the
Prior had over-ridden them, pointing out that this novice was very
wealthy; that their kitchen and dinner tables were in a sad state, that
they had no longer money enough to pursue, upon a princely scale, the
succouring of the poor that sat upon their benches, and that they could
with the greater serenity pursue their studies and sleep after meat, if
they had amongst them a knight who had proven himself diligent upon his
own affairs and had increased his substance in the world. For, though
they had butlers and cellarers amongst their number, yet the butler
thought more of Brute than of his office and the cellarer was more
minded to know where lay the bones of the British Kings than where were
his keys. The ungodly came in and drank their wine in the cellar, yea,
and carried away the mead in black-jacks.
These monks were portly, learned and somnolent, religious with a solid
contempt for the unlearned--though they would upon occasion, being large
men, line the walls and hew down attacking raiders with balks of timber,
bars of iron and other weapons that drew no blood, those being,
according to the canon, the proper arms for churchmen. These haughty
monks accepted this Francis, who was known to the world as Sir Hugh
Ridley, to be of their holy and learned brotherhood. But yet they
regarded him as little more than a lay brother, though he wore the
monk's frock, and they never voted for his advancement to any office
such as sub-prior or the like.
Yet that day he had said two offices for them, had watched in the hay
fields and was now coming in, at noontide to check accounts with the
bailiff of the Priory about the great tower that was then in building.
Seventeen monks there were and twenty lay brothers who were a lazy band.
Thirty men-at-arms they had for their protection under the leadership of
a knight, Sir Nicholas Ewelme, and they afforded shelter and victuals
for 136 poor men, each of the seventeen monks being the patron of eight
of them. These poor men sat in the sun on benches, each before their
patron's room and should be served by him at meals. But this was
nowadays, mostly done by the lay brothers, the learned monk laying one
finger beneath a dish or vessel served to the poor men, so that it would
not be said that the custom had died out.
The monk Francis, in his grey cloak came in by the little postern gate
from the hayfields. He went to his rooms across the quadrangle; and he
perceived how certain peasants in hoods of black cloth with belts of
yellow leather were bringing in sacks and baskets. These sacks and
baskets, as the monk Francis knew from the dress of those peasants,
contained ammunition, small round balls of lead or, in the alternative,
well-rounded stones from the beach. These peasants were workers in the
lead mines upon the lands of the monastery and it was so they paid
tribute with balls to shoot against the false Scots if they came
a-raiding to Belford.
And, as he was going into his room, before his benchful of poor men that
stretched their legs in the sun, it happened that one of the peasant's
bags burst open and all the round, leaden balls ran out under the
archway. Then there was a great bustle, the guards on duty and the
guards that came out of the chambers in the arch starting to pick up the
balls. And the monk Francis smiled to think how universal is the desire
in men to help in picking up small, round objects that fall out of a
sack. So that if the false Scots had been minded to take that place,
they could have done it very well then, all the guards and peasants and
others being on their hands and knees, huddled together and the gate
open. And it seemed to the monk Francis that that would be a very good
stratagem for the taking of a tower or the gateway of a strong place.
One of the poor men had been a man-at-arms at Castle Lovell, but was put
out now and masterless. He came to the monk Francis as he went in at his
door, and reported that it was said that the young Lord Lovell had been
seen, having come out of captivity of the false Gilbert Elliott. The
monk said he hoped well that that was so, for then all the men-at-arms
from Castle Lovell that were there could go again to his service, and
that he was a very good lording and his good friend in God.
He wished to cut the matter short for that time because he knew that
there awaited him in his outer room John Harbottle an esquire, and the
receiver of many domains of the Earl of Northumberland. This esquire was
come with the accounts for the building of the great new tower that the
Earl had given to the monastery. But the former men of the Lord Lovell
crowded before the monk and after him into his outer room, all bringing
tidings that the Young Lovell had been seen to ride through his
township. And, to the number of thirty or so, they clamoured all at
once, asking for his advice as to how they should find their lord and
what to do when he was found.
The monk Francis was very glad to think that the Young Lovell was come
back, not only because he was his true friend but also because this
rabble of disemployed men-at-arms was a burden to the monastery and he
had it on his conscience that he let them bide there. For that he had
done, so that they might serve his friend if he came back. That
monastery was rather for the relief of poor men ruined by raiders, for
travellers and for criminals seeking sanctuary. He would very gladly
have had news of his friend whom he loved, and have settled the disposal
of these sturdy, idle and hungry men. Yet, being a man of many affairs,
he thought that the day could only be got through by doing all things in
order, and behind all these ragged men in grey, he perceived the
esquire, John Harbottle, a portly, bearded man in a rich cloak of
purple, with a green square cap that had a jewel of gold. This John
Harbottle appeared not greatly pleased at the clamour, for he also was a
man of many affairs, being the Percy's receiver, and a very diligent
one.
So, without many words, but quietly, the monk Francis drove out some of
these fellows, and then, calling to a grizzled and dirty lay brother, he
bade him drive out the rest and bar the door. And so he took John
Harbottle by the sleeve of his purple coat and drew him through the
doorway into his inner room and closed the door. Then there was peace.
This inner cell was a light room with no glass in the windows. Beside
the bed head there was a shelf that had on it the water-bottle of the
monk Francis, his plate, his cup, his napkin and the book of devotions
in which he read during the dinner hour, his needles and bodkins, his
leather book of threads and such things as he needed for the repair of
his clothes. Beneath this shelf was a curtain, and this hid the spare
garments of the monk, as the vestments in which he said the simpler
offices, his spare breeches, stockings, braces, and belt. At the other
side of the bed head was a large crucifix of painted wood, from which
there hung Our Lord who was represented as crying out in a perpetual
agony. Before the crucifix was a fald stool, that had across one
corner, a great rosary of clumsy wooden beads, and upon it a skull whose
top was polished and yellowed by this monk's hands. For he had it there
the better to be reminded of what death is when he prayed for the soul
of the cousin he had slain.
When he had killed that woman he had been possessed rather with the idea
of what he could do for her poor unhanselled soul than with agonies of
ecstasy. And so, with a strong will he prayed, year in, year out, for
her sooner relief from the pains of purgatory, knowing God to be a just
Man and prayer most efficacious.
So, having brought John Harbottle in, he sat himself down on his
three-legged stool of wood before his double pulpit. This had in its
side a round opening, and in the interior such books, papers, or
parchments as the monk Francis had in immediate use. He was of a very
orderly nature, rather like a soldier than a priest.
He reached into the inside of his pulpit for his parchment that he was
to peruse with John Harbottle, and that esquire stood behind him leaning
over his back. Then John Harbottle said:
"Meseems the Master of Lovell has come back?"
"That I hear," the monk Francis answered.
"I think there is heavy trouble in store for him," John Harbottle said.
"I think there is but little," the monk answered. John Harbottle meant
that the Earl Percy, in the Border Warden's Court, had given judgment
against the Young Lovell. The monk meant that the religious of that
countryside were not best pleased with the Earl Percy; they considered
that sorcery was a matter for the courts ecclesiastical. But each was a
man of few words, and without any more, the monk Francis unfolded his
parchment. They went to their accounts, John Harbottle standing behind
the monk and checking each item as he read it:
"And in the like payment of money to the prior of the house of the
Brethren of St. Cuthbert, within the parish of Belford, near the wood
called Newlands, for this year, (as well for that part of the work of
the new tower there as for the carriage of stone and other stuff by the
contract, in gross) 100 shillings...." The Earl was giving the tower to
the monks, they employing two contractors called Richard Chambers and
John Richardson to build it for them and the Earl paying the accounts.
"Just!" John Harbottle said, and the monk read on--
"Carting four loads of lead, 24s. 6d.; bought eight loads of stone,
10d.; iron, with the workmanship of the same, for the doors and windows,
8s.; bought seven locks 4s. 2d., with keys; six latches 12d.; and snecks
and other iron 4s. 2d...." So the monk read on, and the receiver nodded
his head, saying, "Just."
Once he said--
"I wish I could have things so cheap for my lord."
"Then," the monk answered, "you must haggle as I do and in God His high
service."
So they made out between them that all these things, and making the arch
between the great chamber and the tower came to L10 6s. 4d., and since
they owed Robert Chambers and John Richardson already L17 13s. 4d., the
whole payment then to be made was L27 19s. 8d.
The esquire, John Harbottle, pulled his money bag from beneath his
girdle and counted out the money, throwing it on to the bed, for there
was no table in that cell.
Then he drew from his belt two papers and so he said:
"My lord will have you buy from Christiana Paynter the armorial bearings
of my lord to set up upon the tower, and that shall cost you 3s. And
this you shall have carved upon the same stone:
"'In the year of Xt. jhu MCCCCLXXXV
This tower was builded by Sir Henry Percy
The IV. Earl of Northumberland of great honour and worth
That espoused Maud the good lady full of virtue and beauty
... Whose soule's God save.'"
"That shall be set up," the monk said.
"Then," John Harbottle said, "there is this you may do to convenience me
who have been your favourer in all things. That you may the earlier
come to it, read you this paper which I have written out, but in
English, for I have no Latin beyond mass-Latin."
"What we may do to please you," the monk said, gravely, "that we will,
if it be not to the discredit of God."
"It is rather to His greater glory," the esquire said.
So the monk took the paper and read:
"The Prior of Belford, Patent of XX merks by yere. Henry Erle of
Northumberland...." The monk glanced on, and his eye fell upon the
words, "myn armytage builded in a rock of stone against the church of
Castle Lovell," and, later on ... "the gate and pasture of twenty kye
and a bull with their calves sukyng,"--"One draught of fisshe every
Sondaie in the year to be drawen fornenst the said armytage, called the
Trynete draught...."
The monk looked up over his shoulder at the esquire.
"I perceive," he said, "that you would have us to take over the
commandment of my Lord's hermitage at Castle Lovell."
John Harbottle looked down a little nervously at his hands. That was
what he sought.
"I have heard that the holy hermit is dead?" the monk asked.
"It is even that," John Harbottle said. "I am worn with the trouble of
riding over from Alnwick to Castle Lovell. It is a great burden, yet
there is the hermitage that must be kept up for the honour of the
Percies."
"That," the monk said, "was because it was esteemed a privilege to house
a holy anchoret."
"Then," John Harbottle asked, "may not my lord save his soul as well by
making your brotherhood a payment to watch over the holy man?"
"I am not saying that he may not," the monk said.
"Then of your courtesy, do this for me," John Harbottle said, "for it is
a troublesome matter. This last year, once a month, news has been sent
me that this holy man was dead. Then I have ridden over to Castle
Lovell and lost a day, calling into the hole in his cell to see if he
would answer 'Et cum spiritu tuo,' as his manner was. And, after a
whole day lost, he will answer; or maybe not till the next day, and
there are two days lost when I should be getting rents or going upon my
lord's business. And I am not the man to have much dealing with these
holy beings. A plain blunt man! It gives me a grue to be thus calling
in at a little hole. And the stench is very awful. I do my duty by the
blessed sacraments on Sundays and feast days. And if he be dead, I must
find a successor. It will not be very easy for me to find a man to go
into that kennel and be walled up. And never again to come out...."
The monk looked again at the paper with the particulars of the gift.
"Well, I will think of it," he said, "or rather I will commune with the
worshipful Prior and Sub-Prior. But I would have you know that if they
agree to do this thing it is upon me that the pain and labour will fall,
for there is none else in this monastery to do it. So I must go over to
Castle Lovell once by the week at least to see that the holy hermit is
given bread and water. And if he be truly dead it is I that must find
his successor; that will not be easy."
"But twenty marks by the year for doing it," John Harbottle said, "that
is a goodly sum to fall to your brotherhood."
"I do not understand," the monk answered him, "for this patent is not
very clear--whether that twenty marks is in addition to the grassground,
the garden and orchard at Conygarth, the pasturage of kine, bulls,
horses and the draughts of fishes. Or are the draughts of fishes and
the rest to be taken as of the value of twenty marks by the year?"
"It is the last that is meant," John Harbottle answered, a little
dubiously.
"Then it is not enough," the monk said firmly and made to roll up the
paper, "I cannot advise the Prior to accept this gift. For the
monastery must lose so much of my time and prayers, though, God knows,
those are little worth enough; yet I, a not very holy man, am all that
these saintly brothers have to care for their temporalities."
John Harbottle grumbled some retort beneath his breath, and then he
sighed and pushed the paper with his hand.
"Then take and write," he said, and when the monk had mended his pen he
dictated. "'And in addition the said stipend of XX markes by year to be
taken and received of the rent and ferm of my fisshyng of Warkworth, by
thands of my fermour of the same for the tyme beynge, yerly at the times
there used and accustomed to, even portions. In wytnes whereof to these
my letters patentes, I the said erle have set the seale of my names.'
... That," John Harbottle continued, "if you will agree to, you shall
have written out fair on parchment, and so the matter ends."
"I think it will end very well," the monk answered, "and the Earl of
Northumberland shall have honour of it in Heaven. And, since I am about
to do this thing in your service, and to relieve you of travels and the
fear of a holy man, having no advantage myself and seeking none, since I
am a monk, so I will take it as a kindness if you will do, for my sake,
what you can at odd moments to advantage the cause of my friend, this
Young Lovell, who is lately come, as I have heard, from prison amongst
the false thieves of Rokehope and Cheviot."
John Harbottle did not answer this, for he thought there was little love
lost between his lord and that young lording. Within himself he thought
that, if the religious should espouse that lording's cause it would be a
good thing for the Percy to be advised to let him be, and this monk had
great voice with the lower order of people whom the Earl had cause to
fear, since they were sworn to have his blood because of the taxes that,
in the King's name, he laid upon them. But he did not speak upon those
matters, saying aloud:
"It is strange, though I know it to be true, that my lord shall have
honour in heaven by reason that a man be found to be walled up in a
space no larger than the kennel of my hound Diccon and so live out his
life."
"My friend," the monk said, "I may not listen to you further, for that
would come near conversing with a heretic. And the penalty for such
conversation is that at every Easter and high feast I must stand beside
the high altar, in a robe of penitence, having in my hand a rod or
peeled wand ten foot in length and other penances, a many I must do."
"God forbid!" John Harbottle said, "for I am no heretic and no more than
a plain, blunt man. And surely these things are hard to understand."
"My son," that monk said, and by the creasing of his tight lips John
Harbottle knew that he had been pleasant with him before and had not
meant in earnestness to call him a heretic. "Every day you hear of the
ways of God that are hard to understand. You have heard to-day or
yesterday of the miracle that was wrought on Tuesday in the Abbey of our
own town of Alnwick--how that the foot of Sir Simon de Montfort, that
there they have and that is incorruptible, cured a certain very wealthy
burgess of Newcastle called Arnoldus Pickett. For he was not able to
move his foot from his bed or put his hand to his mouth or perform any
bodily function. And so, in a dream he was bidden to go to your Abbey of
the Premonstratensian Brotherhood and the foot of Simon de Montfort
should cure him. Which, when it was known to the canons, there serving
God, in order that this merchant might approach more easily--for as yet
he heavily laboured in his lameness--and lest he should suffer too much,
two of them brought it reverently to him, in its silver shoe. But,
before the patient was able to approach for the purpose of kissing it,
and by the mere sight of the slipper, on account of the merits of Simon
de Montfort, he was restored. And this, to-day, our monks are writing
in their chronicle and praising God. And consider what glory there will
be in this foot of Simon de Montfort when it is reunited to his whole
body after the great judgment, by comparison of its efficacy before
Doomsday, when such healing virtue went out of it as a dead member,
concealing itself in a slipper of silver...."
The monk was determined very thoroughly at once to abash and edify this
minion of the Earl of Northumberland and so to bring that Lord more
thoroughly to the reverence of the Church and more particularly of the
Bishop Palatine with whom these monks had a great friendship. And this
not only in the matter of the Young Lovell, where the Earl had sought to
give judgment in a matter that was full surely ecclesiastical and not
pertaining to the lay Court of the Border Warden. So that monk
continued in a loud voice:
"Shall you seek to understand these miracles that are of daily happening
and occur all round you, God knows, often enough? For in the monastery
or priory of Durham they have not only the most famous bodies of St.
Cuthbert and St. Bede, but the cross of St. Margaret that is well known
to be of avail to women that labour with child. And in the Cella of
Fenkull they have St. Guthric, and in Newminster the zone and mass-book
of St. Robert, and in Blondeland the girdle of St. Mary the Mother of
God. And all these cure, according to their marvellous faculties, the
halt, the blind, those who have the shaking palsy and those with the
falling sickness. And in Hexham they have the Red-book of Hexham, and
at Tynemouth they have not only the body of St. Oswin, King and martyr
in a feretory, but also the spur of St. Cuthbert, the finger of St.
Bartholomew and the girdle of Blessed Margaret.... And all these things
being under your very eyes or at a short day's journey, you will
question the glory and the strangeness of God and you will set yourself
up--oh, stiffnecked generation! ..."
A gentle knocking came at the cell door and the old and dirty
lay-brother who was in the outer room pushed it ajar. They heard
immediately a great outcry from beyond and the lay brother whispered
that, at the outer door stood the Young Lovell asking for admittance
with all his men-at-arms around him.
The monk opened a little door in the wall that gave into a passage
leading to the church of the monastery. Through this he led John
Harbottle, and at the entrance to the church he let him go. For, because
John Harbottle was receiver for the Earl of Northumberland, he was not
much beloved by the Lovell men-at-arms, and the monk Francis feared that
they might offer him some violence now that their spirits were inflamed,
and their stomachs rendered proud and rebellious by the return of their
lord who should take them into his service again. And when the monk had
thrown himself down before the image of the Mother of God that was in
the Lady Chapel near that entrance, and had laid there long enough to
say twelve "Hail Maries," he arose and went back to his cell and bade
the lay brother let in Young Lovell.
III
When the Young Lovell was admitted to the inner cell, a fine smile of
friendship came over the monk's hard face. He loved this young lord for
his open features, his frank voice, his deeds of arms and his great
courage. He stretched forward his hand towards the Young Lovell, but,
in his faded scarlet cloak, and with his pierced cap in his hands the
young lord went down upon his knees and wished to confess himself.
The monk Francis blessed him very lovingly, but said that he did not
wish to hear a confession, and that the Young Lovell should seek a
holier man. But he was ready to hear the Young Lovell's true story, and
to take counsel with him as to how all things might be turned to the
greater glory of the Most High. He observed with concern the saddened
and blank eyes of his friend, his faded clothes, in which he appeared
like a figure in a painted missal that the dampness of a cell had
rendered dim. And he was determined, if he could, to render aid to his
friend, for twice already he had befriended the young man, once after
the battle of Kenchie's Burn, and he had done it since. For indeed,
when he had had time, he had gone to the township of Castle Lovell, and
had talked with the lawyer Stone and with the witch called Meg of the
Foul Tyke. With the Decies he had not talked, but he had heard him on
that day in the Great Hall and knew him for a false knave. He had
observed, too, that the stories of the lawyer Stone and of the old women
did not in all things tally. One talked of the naked witch as having
black hair and six paps; the other said she was most fair and had no
deformity. The lawyer placed the witches' fire to the left of the large
rock called Bondale that was before the chapel, and the old woman said
it was to the right, with the wind from the east, so that if it had been
a real fire there must be the marks of burning upon it.
The monk had asked his questions very cunningly, rather as a religious
anxious for information as to the ways of sinners, in order that he
might the better detect and punish them, than as one desiring to sift
their answers. But he was very certain that they were evil liars, and
he was sure that, were they brought before the Bishop's courts in
Durham, he would be able to bring their perjuries to light. So he was
very certain that the lording had been taken by Gib Elliott and held for
ransom, and well he knew that no one in the Castle would ransom him, so
that it was small wonder if they had heard nothing of it. The Decies and
his confederates would conceal any news they had from Elliott, and
perhaps slay his messenger or keep him jailed that the outlaw might be
angered and slay the Young Lovell. So that it was with a great
cheerfulness that now he offered to have brought to his friend, food and
clean linen and hot, scented water, and a serving man to wash his feet;
for he thought he must be come from far after having fared ill enough.
But the Young Lovell would have none of these things, neither would he
be persuaded to rise from his knees; but, being there, he said a long
prayer to Our Lord that hung from the crucifix and appeared in an agony.
And the monk sat himself at the foot of the box of straw covered with a
rug that was his bed and again marvelled at the face of his friend. For
the long, brown hair was blanched by the sun, the closed eyes were
sunken, the lids gone bluish, the lips parched as if with desire. And
so, whilst the lording prayed, the monk sat on the bed foot
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/42801