Chapter Seven.Via Dolorosa.“We bless Thee for the quiet rest Thy servant taketh now,We bless Thee for his blessedness, and for his crowned brow;For every weary step he trod in faithful following Thee,And for the good fight foughten well, and closed right valiantly.”The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin was filled to overflowing, but it was not the church we know as such now. That more ancient edifice had been built in the days of Alfred, and its nave was closely packed with the clergy of Oxford and the neighbourhood, save a circle of curule chairs reserved for the members of the Council. Into the midst of the excited crowd of clergy—among whom were sprinkled as many laymen, chiefly of the upper class, as could find room to squeeze in—filed an imposing procession of dignitaries—priests, archdeacons, bishops—all robed in full canonicals; the Bishop of the diocese being preceded by his crucifer. There was as yet no bishopric of Oxford, and the diocese was that of Lincoln. It was a point of the most rigid ecclesiastical etiquette that no prelate should have his official cross borne before him in the diocese of another: and the standing quarrel between the two archbishops on that point was acute and long lasting. The clerical procession was closed by the Dean of Saint Mary’s—John de Oxineford—a warm opponent of Becket, the exiled and absent Primate. After the clergy came a number of the chief officers of state, and lastly, King Henry the Second, who took his seat in the highest of the curule chairs, midmost among the others.The first of the Plantagenets was no common man. Like most of his race, he was a born statesman; and also like most of them, he allowed his evil passions and natural corruption such free scope that his talents were smothered under their weight. In person he was of middle stature, somewhat thickly built, with a large round head covered by curly hair, cut square upon the forehead. Long arms ended in large hands, the care of which he entirely neglected, never wearing gloves save when he carried a hawk. His complexion was slightly florid, his eyes small but clear and sparkling, dove-like when he was pleased, but flashing fire in his anger. Though his voice was tremulous, yet he could be an eloquent speaker. He rarely sat down, but commonly stood, whether at mass, council, or meals. Except on ceremonial occasions, he was extremely careless in his attire, wearing short clothes of a homely cut, and requiring some persuasion to renew them. He detested every thing that came in the way of his convenience, whether long skirts, hanging sleeves, royal mantles, or boots with folding tops. He was (for his time) a great reader, a “huge lover of the woods” and of all sylvan sports, fond of travelling, a very small eater, a generous almsgiver, a faithful friend—and a good hater. The model example which he set before him as a statesman was that of his grandfather, Henry First. The Empress Maud, his mother, was above all things Norman, and was now living in Normandy in peaceful old age. Perhaps her stormy and eventful life had made herfeelweary of storms, for she rarely emerged from her retirement except in the character of a peacemaker. Certainly she had learnt wisdom by adversity. Her former supercilious sternness was gone, and a meek and quiet spirit, which earned the respect of all, had taken its place. She may have owed that change, and her quiet close of life, instrumentally, in some measure to the prayers of the good Queen Maud, that sweet and saintly mother to whom Maud the Empress had in her childhood and maturity been so complete a contrast, and whom she now resembled in her old age. Her son was unhappily not of her later tone, but rather of the earlier, though he rarely reached those passionate depths of pride and bitterness through which his aged mother had struggled into calm. He did not share her Norman proclivities, but looked back—as the mass of his people did with him—to the old Saxon laws of Alfred and of Athelstan, which he called the customs of his grandfather. In a matter of trial for heresy, or a question of doctrine, he was the obedient servant of Rome; but when the Pope laid officious hands on the venerable customs of England, and strove to dictate in points of state law, he found no obedient servant in Henry of Anjou.This morning, being a ceremonial occasion, His Majesty’s attire had risen to it. He wore a white silken tunic, the border richly embroidered in gold; a crimson dalmatic covered with golden stars; a mantle of blue samite, fastened on the right shoulder with a golden fermail set with a large ruby; and red hose, crossed by golden bands all up the leg. The mantle was lined with grey fur; golden lioncels decorated the fronts of the black boots; and a white samite cap, adorned with ostrich feathers, and rising out of a golden fillet, reposed on the King’s head.When the members of the Council had taken their seats, and the Bishop of Lichfield had offered up sundry Latin prayers which about one in ten of the assembled company understood, the King rose to open the Council.“It is not unknown to you, venerable Fathers,” he said, “for what purpose I have convened this Council. There have come into my kingdom certain persons, foreigners, from the dominions of the Emperor, who have gone about the country preaching strange doctrines, and who appear to belong to some new foreign sect. I am unwilling to do injustice, either by punishing them without investigation, or by dismissing them as harmless if they are contaminating the faith and morals of the people. But inasmuch as it appertains to holy Church to judge questions of that nature, I have here summoned you, my Fathers in God, and your clergy, that you may examine these persons, and report to me how far they are innocent or guilty of the false doctrines whereof they are suspected. I pray you therefore so to do: and as you shall report, so shall I know how to deal with them.”His Majesty reseated himself, and the Bishop of the diocese rose, to deliver a long diatribe upon the wickedness of heresy, the infallibility of the Church, and the necessity for the amputation of diseased limbs of the body politic. As nobody disagreed with any of his sentiments, the harangue was scarcely necessary; but time was of small value in the twelfth century. Two other Bishops followed, with long speeches: and then the Council adjourned for dinner, the Earl of Oxford being their host.On re-assembling about eleven o’clock, the King commanded the prisoners to be brought up. Up they came, the company of thirty—men, women, and children, Gerhardt the foremost at the bar.“Who are thou?” he was asked.“I am a German named Gerhardt, born in the dominions of the Duke of Francia, an elector of the Empire.”“Art thou the leader of this company?”“I am.”“Wherefore earnest thou to this land?”“Long ago, in my childhood, I had read of the blessed Boniface, who, being an Englishman, travelled into Almayne to teach our people the faith of Christ. I desired to pay back to your land something of the debt we owed her, by bringing back to her the faith of Christ.”“Didst thou ignorantly imagine us without it?”“I thought,” replied Gerhardt in his quiet manner, “that you could scarcely have too much of it.”“What is thy calling?”“While in this country, I have followed the weaver’s craft.”“Art thou a lettered man?”“I am.”“Try him,” said one of the Bishops. A Latin book was handed up to Gerhardt, from which he readily construed some sentences, until the Council declared itself satisfied on that point. This man before them, whatever else he might be, was no mere ignorant peasant.“Are the rest of thy company lettered men?”“No. They are mostly peasants.”“Have they gone about preaching, as thou hast?”“The men have done so.”“And how can ignorant peasants teach abstruse doctrines?”“I do not think they attempted that. They kept to the simple doctrines.”“What understandest thou by that?” Gerhardt was beginning to answer, when the Bishop of Winchester interposed with another question. He was Prince Henry of Blois, the brother of King Stephen, and a better warrior than a cleric. “Art thou a priest?”“I am not.”“Go on,” said the Bishop of Lincoln, who led the examination. “What meanest thou by the faith of Christ? What dost thou believe about Christ?”Gerhardt’s reply on this head was so satisfactory that the Bishop of Worcester—not long appointed—whispered to his brother of Winchester, “The man is all right!”“Wait,” returned the more experienced and pugnacious prelate. “We have not come to the crux yet.”“You call yourselves Christians, then?” resumed Lincoln.“Certainly we are Christians, and revere the doctrines of the Apostles.”“What say you of the remedies for sin?”“I know of one only, which is the blood of Christ our Lord.”“How!—are the sacraments no remedies?”“Certainly not.”“Is sin not remitted in baptism?”“No.”“Is not the blood of Christ applied to sinners in the holy Eucharist?”“I utterly refuse such a doctrine.”“What say you of marriage? is that a sacrament?”“I do not believe it.”“Ha! the man is all right, is he?” whispered old Winchester satirically to his young neighbour, Worcester.“Doth not Saint Paul term marriage ‘sacramentum magnum’?”“He did not write in Latin.”This was awkward. The heretic knew rather too much.“Are you aware that all the holy doctors are against you?”“I am not responsible for their opinions.”“Do you not accept the interpretation of the Church?”What his Lordship meant by this well-sounding term was a certain bundle of ideas—some of them very illiterate, some very delicate hair-splitting, some curious even to comicality,—gathered out of the writings of a certain number of men, who assuredly were not inspired, since they often travesty Scripture, and at times diametrically contradict it. Having lived in the darkest times of the Church, they were extremely ignorant and superstitious, even the best of them being enslaved by fancies as untrue in fact as they were unspiritual in tone. It might well have been asked as the response, Where is it?—for no Church, not even that of Rome herself, has ever put forward an authorised commentary explanatory of holy Scripture. Her “interpretation of the Church” has to be gathered here and there by abstruse study, and so far as her lay members are concerned, is practically received from the lips of the nearest priest. Gerhardt, however, did not take this line in replying, but preferred to answer the Bishop’s inaccurate use of the word Church, which Rome impudently denies to all save her corrupt self. He replied—“Of the true Church, which is the elect of God throughout all ages, fore-ordained to eternal life? I see no reason to refuse it.”The Scriptural doctrine of predestination has been compared to “a red rag” offered to a bull, in respect of its effect on those—whether votaries of idols or latitudinarianism—who are conscious that they are not the subjects of saving grace. To none is it more offensive than to a devout servant of the Church of Rome. The Bishop took up the offence at once.“You hold that heresy—that men are fore-ordained to eternal life?”“I follow therein the Apostle Paul and Saint Austin.”This was becoming intolerable.“Doth not the Apostle command his hearers to ‘work out their own salvation’?”“Would it please my Lord to finish the verse?”It did not please my Lord to finish the verse, as that would have put an extinguisher on his interpretation of it.“These heretics refuse to be corrected by Scripture!” he cried instead, as a much more satisfactory thing to say.Gerhardt’s quiet answer was only heard by those near him—“I have not been so yet.”This aggravating man must be put down. The Bishop raised his voice.“Speak, ye that are behind this man. Do ye accept the interpretation of Scripture taught by the Church our mother, to whom God hath committed the teaching of all her children?”Old Berthold replied. “We believe as we have been taught, but we do not wish to dispute.”“Ye are obstinate in your heresy! Will ye do penance for the same?”“No,” answered Gerhardt.“Let them have one more chance,” said King Henry in a low voice. “If they are unsound on one point only, there might yet be hope of their conversion.”“They are unsound on every point, my Lord,” replied Lincoln irascibly; “but at your desire I will test them on one or two more.—Tell me, do ye believe that the souls of the dead pass into Purgatory?”“We do not.”“Do you pray for the dead?”“No.”“Do you invocate the blessed Mary and the saints, and trust to their merits and intercession?”“Never. We worship God, not men.”At this point Winchester beckoned to Lincoln, and whispered something in his ear.“I am told,” pursued the latter, addressing Gerhardt, “that you hold the priests of holy Church not to be validly consecrated, and have so said in public. Is it so?”“It is so. The temporal power of the Pope has deprived the Church of the true consecration. You have only the shadow of sacraments, and the traditions of men.”“You reject the holy sacraments entirely, then?”“Not so. We observe the Eucharist at our daily meals. Our Lord bade us ‘as oft as we should drink,’ to take that wine in remembrance of Him. We do His bidding.”“Ye presume to profane the Eucharist thus!” cried Lichfield in pious horror. “Ye administer to yourselves—”“As Saint Basil held lawful,” interposed Gerhardt.“Saint Basil spoke of extraordinary occasions when no priest could be had.”“But if it be lawful at any time to receive without priestly consecration, it cannot be unlawful, at every time.”It did not occur to the Bishop to ask the pertinent question, in what passage of Scripture priestly consecration of the Eucharist was required,—nay, in what passage any consecration at all is ever mentioned. For at the original institution of the rite, our Lord consecrated nothing, but merely gave thanks to God (Note 1), as it was customary for the master of the house to do at the Passover feast; and seeing that “if He were on earth, He should not be a priest.” (Note 2.) He cannot have acted as a priest when He was on earth. We have even distinct evidence that He declined so to act (Note 3). And in any subsequent allusions to this Sacrament in the New Testament (Note 4), there is no mention of either priests or consecration. It did not, however, suit the Bishop to pursue this inconvenient point. He passed at once to another item.“Ye dare to touch the sacred cup reserved to the priests—”“When did Christ so reserve it? His command was, ‘Drink ye all of it.’”“To the Apostles, thou foolish man!”“Were they priests at that time?”This was the last straw. The question could not be answered except in the negative, for if the ordination of the Apostles be not recorded after the Resurrection (John twenty 21-23), then there is no record of their having been ordained at all. To be put in a corner in this manner was more than a Bishop could stand.“How darest thou beard me thus?” he roared. “Dost thou not know what may follow? Is not the King here, who has the power of life and death, and is he not an obedient son of holy Church?”The slight smile on Gerhardt’s lips said, “Not very!” But his only words were—“Ay, I know that ye have power. ‘This is your hour, and the power of darkness.’ We are not afraid. We have had our message of consolation. ‘Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.’”“Incredible folly!” exclaimed Lincoln. “That was said to the early Christians, who suffered persecution from the heathen: not to heretics, smarting under the deserved correction of the Church. How dare you so misapply it?”“All the Lord’s martyrs were not in the early Church. ‘We are the circumcision, who worship God in spirit, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.’ Do to us what ye will. ‘Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Living or dying, we are the Lord’s.’”“We solemnly adjudge you false heretics,” was the stern reply, “and deliver you up to our Catholic Prince for punishment. Depart in peace!”Gerhardt looked up. “‘My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you!’ Be it so. We go in peace; we go to peace. Our suffering will soon be over. Already we behold Jesus our Lord at the right hand of God, and we are ready to partake of His sufferings, that we may reign with Him.”King Henry now rose to pronounce sentence. The condemned criminals before him were to be branded on the forehead with a mark of ignominy, to be scourged, and cast forth out of the city. No man might receive them under his roof, relieve them with food, nor administer to them consolation of any sort. And this was the sentence of the King and of holy Church, to the honour and laud of God, and of Mary, His most glorious Mother!The sentence was carried out even more barbarously than it was pronounced. The foreheads of all were branded with hot irons, they were whipped through the city, and their clothes having been cut short to the girdle (John twenty 21-23), they were turned into the snow-covered fields. One of the men appointed to use the branding-irons had just lost a daughter, and moved by a momentary impulse of pity (for which he afterwards blamed himself and did penance), he passed two or three of the younger women—Ermine among them—with a lighter brand than the rest. No such mercy was shown to the men or the elder women, nor would it have been to Ermine, had it not been the case that her extreme fairness made her look much younger than she really was.Gerhardt, being regarded as the ringleader, was also branded on the chin.“Courage, my children!” he said to the shivering, trembling little company, as they were marched down High Street. “We are counted worthy—worthy to suffer shame for Him who suffered dire shame for us. Let us praise God.”And to the amazement, alike of the officials and the crowd of spectators, the song was set up, and echoed into the side streets—“Blessed are ye, when men shall persecute you, for the Son of Man’s sake!” varied every now and then by a joyous chorus of “Glory to God in the highest! on earth peace, goodwill towards men!”The song was heard clearly enough in the Walnut Tree: so clearly, that Flemild even fancied she could distinguish Ermine’s voice from the rest.“Mother, will you go and look?” she asked, tears running down her face.“I’ll not go near,” said Isel, in a tone of defiance very unusual with her. “I’ll not get your father and you into trouble. And if I were to go, much if I didn’t tear somebody a-pieces.”“O Mother! you wouldn’t touch our old friends? They’ve enough to bear, surely.”“I saidsomebody! child!” was the growl in answer: and Flemild did not venture to reply.Fainter and fainter grew the sounds; only strengthened for a minute when the higher notes of the chorus supervened. Then came a great roar of applause from the crowd, as the East Gate was reached, and the heretics were cast out from the priest-ridden city. But they scarcely heard that in Kepeharme Lane.At the window of the anchorhold stood Derette, having sent Leuesa to bring her word what happened. She could see nothing, yet she heard the joyous chant of “Glory to God in the highest!” as the crowd and the condemned swept down the street just beyond her ken. Leuesa did not even try to hide her tears when she reached the shelter of the anchorhold: before that, it would have been perilous to shed them.“Oh, it was dreadful, Lady! Gerard never looked at any one: he walked first, and he looked as if he saw nothing but God and Heaven. Agnes I could not see, nor the child; I suppose they were on the other side. But Ermine saw me, and she gave me a smile for you—I am sure she meant it for you—such as an angel might have given who had been a few hours on earth, and was just going back to his place before the Throne.”Manning and Haimet, who had joined the crowd of sightseers, had not returned when the latch of the Walnut Tree was lifted, and Anania walked in.“What, both stayed at home! O Aunt Isel, you have missed such a sight!”“Well, you’ve got it, then, I suppose,” muttered Isel.“I shall never forget it—not if I live to be a hundred.”“Umph! Don’t think I shall neither.”“Now, didn’t I tell you those foreigners were no good? Osbert always said so. I knew I was right. And I am, you see.”“You’re standing in my light, Anania—that’s all I can see at present.”Anania moved about two inches. “Oh, but it was grand to see the Council come out of Saint Mary’s! All the doctors in their robes, and the Bishops, and last the King—such a lovely shade his mantle was! It’s a pity the Queen was not there too; I always think a procession’s half spoiled when there are no ladies.”“Oh, that’s what you’re clucking about, is it? Processions, indeed!”“Aunt Isel, are you very cross, or what’s the matter with you?”“She’s in pain, I fear,” said Flemild quickly.“Where’s the pain? I’ve gathered some splendid fresh betony and holy-thistle.”“Here!” said Isel, laying her hand on her heart.“Why, then, holy-thistle’s just what you want. I’ll send you some down by Stephen.”“Thank you. But it’ll do me no good.”“Oh, don’t you say that, now.—Flemild, I wonder you did not come to see all the sights. You’ll find you’ve not nearly so much time for pleasure after you’re married; don’t look for it. Have you settled when it’s to be?”“It was to have been last month, you know, but Father wanted it put off.”“Ay, so as he could know Raven a bit better. Well, when is it to be now?”“March, they say.”“You don’t say it as if you enjoyed it much.”“Maybe she takes her pleasure in different ways from you,” said Isel. “Can’t see any, for my part, in going to see a lot of poor wretches flogged and driven out into the snow. Suppose you could.”“O Aunt!—when they were heretics?”“No,nor murderers neither—without they’d murdered me, and then I reckon I shouldn’t have been there to look at ’em.”“But the priests say they are worse than murderers—they murder men’s souls.”“I’m alive, for aught I know. And I don’t expect to say my Paternoster any worse than I did seven years gone.”“How do you know they haven’t bewitched you?” asked Anania in a solemn tone.“For the best of all reasons—that I’m not bewitched.”“Aunt Isel, I’m not so sure of that. If those wretches—”“O Anania, do let Mother be!” pleaded Flemild. “It is her pain that speaks, not herself. I told you she was suffering.”“You did; but I wonder if her soul isn’t worse than her body. I’ll just give Father Dolfin a hint to look to her soul and body both. They say those creatures only bewitched one maid, and she was but a poor villein belonging to some doctor of the schools: and so frightened was she to see their punishment that she was in a hurry to recant every thing they had taught her. Well! we shall see no more of them, that’s one good thing. I shouldn’t think any of them would be alive by the end of the week. The proclamation was strict—neither food nor shelter to be given, nor any compassion shown. And branded as they are, every body will know them, you see.”Stephen came in while his sister-in-law was speaking.“Come, now, haven’t you had talk enough?” said he. “You’ve a tongue as long as from here to Banbury Cross. You’d best be going home, Anania, for Osbert’s as cross as two sticks, and he’ll be there in a few minutes.”“Oh dear, one never has a bit of peace! I did think I could have sat a while, and had a nice chat.”“It won’t be so nice if you keep Osbert waiting, I can tell you.”Anania rose with evident reluctance, and gathered her mantle round her.“Well, good-day, Aunt Isel! I’ll send you down the holy-thistle. Good-day, Flemild. Aren’t you coming with me, Stephen?”“No; I want to wait for Uncle Manning.”“Stephen, I’m obliged to you for ever and ever! If she’d stayed another minute, I should have flown at her!”“You looked as if you’d come to the end of your patience,” said Stephen, smiling, but gravely; “and truly, I don’t wonder. But what’s this about holy-thistle? Are you sick, Aunt Isel?”Isel looked searchingly into her nephew’s face.“You look true,” she said; “I think you might be trusted, Stephen.”“Oh,ifyou’re grieving overthem, don’t be afraid to tell me so. I did my best to save Gerard, but he would not be warned. I’d have caught up the child and brought him to you, if I’d had a chance; but I was hemmed in the crowd, a burly priest right afore me, and I couldn’t have laid hand on him. Poor souls! I’m sorry for them.”“God bless thee for those words, Stephen! I’m sore for them to the very core of my heart. If they’d been my own father’s children or mine, I couldn’t feel sadder than I do. And to have to listen to those hard, cold, brutal words from that woman—.”“I know. She is a brute. I guessed somewhat how things were going with you, for I saw her turn in here from the end of Saint Edward’s; and I thought you mightn’t be so sorry to have her sent off. Her tongue’s not so musical as might be.”Manning and Haimet came in together. The former went up to Isel, while Haimet began a conversation with his cousin, and after a moment the two young men left the house together. Then Manning spoke.“Wife and children,” said he, “from this day forward, no word is to be uttered in my house concerning these German people. They are heretics, so pronounced by holy Church; and after that, no compassion may be shown to them. Heretics are monsters, demons in human form, who seek the ruin of souls. Remember my words.”Isel looked earnestly in her husband’s face.“No,” said Manning, not unkindly, but firmly; “no excuses for them, Isel. I can quite understand that you feel sorry for those whom you have regarded as friends for seven years: but such sorrow is now sin. You must crush and conquer it. It were rebellion against God, who has judged these miscreants by the lips of His Church.”Isel broke down in a very passion of tears.“I can’t help it, Manning; I can’t help it!” she said, when she could speak. “It may be sin, but I must do it and do penance for it—it’s not a bit of use telling me I must not. I’ll try not to talk if you bid me be silent, but you must give me a day or two to get quieted,—till every living creature round has done spitting venom at them. I don’t promise to hold my tongue to that ninny of an Anania—she aggravates me while it isn’t in human nature to keep your tongue off her; it’s all I can do to hold my hands.”“She is very provoking, Father,” said Flemild in an unsteady voice; “she wears Mother fairly out.”“You may both quarrel with Anania whenever you please,” replied Manning calmly; “I’ve nothing to say against that. But you are not to make excuses for those heretics, nor to express compassion for them. Now those are my orders: don’t let me have to give them twice.”“No, Father; you shall not, to me,” said Flemild in a low tone.“I can’t promise you nothing,” said Isel, wiping her eyes on her apron, “because I know I shall just go and break it as fast as it’s made: but when I can, I’ll do your bidding, Manning. And till then, you’ll have either to thrash me or forgive me—whichever you think the properest thing to do.”Manning walked away without saying more.Snow, snow everywhere!—lying several inches deep on the tracks our forefathers called roads, drifted several feet high in corners and clefts of the rocks. Pure, white, untrodden, in the silent fields; but trampled by many feet upon the road to Dorchester, the way taken by the hapless exiles. No voice was raised in pity, no hand outstretched for help; every door was shut against the heretics. Did those who in after years were burned at the stake on the same plea suffer more or less than this little band of pioneers, as one after another sank down, and died in the white snow? The trembling hands of the survivors heaped over each in turn the spotless coverlet, and then they passed on to their own speedy fate.The snow descended without intermission, driving pitilessly in the scarred faces of the sufferers. Had they not known that it came from the hand of their heavenly Father, they might have fancied that Satan was warring against them by that means, as the utmost and the last thing that he could do. But as the snow descended, the song ascended as unceasingly. Fainter and less full it grew to human ears, as one voice after another was silenced. It may be that the angels heard it richer and louder, as the choristers grew more few and weak.Of the little family group which we have followed, the first to give way was Agnes. She had taken from her own shivering limbs, to wrap round the child, one of the mutilated garments which alone her tormentors had left her. As they approached Nuneham, she staggered and fell. Guelph and Adelheid ran to lift her up.“Oh, let me sleep!” she said. “I can sing no more.”“Ay, let her sleep,” echoed Gerhardt in a quivering voice; “she will suffer least so. Farewell for a moment, my true beloved! We shall meet again ere the hour be over.”Gerhardt held on but a little longer. Doubly branded, and more brutally scourged than the rest, he was so ill from the first that he had to be helped along by Wilhelm and Conrad, two of the strongest in the little company. How Ermine fared they knew not: they could only tell that when they reached Bensington, she was no longer among them. Most of the children sank early. Little Rudolph fared the best, for a young mother who had lost her baby gave him such poor nourishment as she could from her own bosom. It was just as they came out of Dorchester, that they laid him down tenderly on a bed of leaves in a sheltered corner, to sleep out his little life. Then they passed on, still southwards—still singing “Glory to God in the highest!” and “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake!” Oh, what exquisite music must have floated up through the gates of pearl, and filled the heavenly places, from that poor faint song, breathed by those trembling voices that could scarcely utter the notes!A few hours later, and only one dark figure was left tottering through the snow. Old Berthold was alone.Snow everywhere!—and the night fell, and the frost grew keen; and Bensington had not long been left behind when old Berthold lay down in the ditch at the road-side. He had sung his last song, and could go no further. He could only wait for the chariot of God—for the white-winged angels to come silently over the white snow, and carry him Home.“The Lord will not forget me, though I am the last left,” he said to himself. “His blessings are not mere empty words. ‘Glory to God in the highest!’” And Berthold slept.“Rudolph!” The word was breathed softly, eagerly, by some moving thing closely wrapped up, in the dense darkness of the field outside Dorchester. There was no answer.“Rudolph!” came eagerly again.The speaker, who was intently listening, fancied she heard the faintest possible sound. Quickly, quietly, flitting from one point to another, feeling with her hands on the ground, under the bushes, by the walls, she went, till her outstretched hands touched something round and soft, and not quite so chillingly cold as every thing else seemed to be that night.“Rudolph! art thou here?”“Yes, it’s me,” said the faint childish voice. “Where am I?—and who are you?”“Drink,” was the answer; and a bottle of warm broth was held to the boy’s blue lips. Then, when he had drunk, he was raised from the ground, clasped close to a woman’s warm breast, and a thick fur mantle was hastily wrapped round them both.“Who are you?” repeated the child. “And where—where’s Mother?”“I am an old friend, my little child. Hast thou ever heard the name of Countess?”“Yes,” murmured the child feebly. He could not remember yet how or where he had heard it; he only knew that it was not strange to him.“That is well. Glory be to the Blessed that I have found thee in time to save thee!”They were speeding back now into the lighted town—not lighted, indeed, by out-door lamps, but by many an open door and uncovered window, and the lanterns of passengers going up or down the street. Countess carried the child to a stone house—only Jews built stone houses in towns at that day—and into a ground-floor room, where she laid him down on a white couch beside the fire. There were two men in the room—both old, and with long white beards.“Countess! what hast thou there?” sternly asked one of the men.“Father Jacob!—a babe of the Goyim!” exclaimed the other.“Hush!” said Countess in a whisper, as she bent over the boy. “The life is barely in him. May the Blessed (to whom be praise!) help me to save my darling!”“Accursed are all the infidels!” said the man who seemed slightly the younger of the two. “Daughter, how earnest thou by such a child, and how darest thou give him such a name?”Countess made no answer. She was busy feeding little Rudolph with bits of bread sopped in warm broth.“Where am I?” asked the child, as sense and a degree of strength returned to him. “It isn’t Isel’s house.”“Wife, dost thou not answer the Cohen?” said the elder man angrily.“The Cohen can wait for his answer; the child cannot for his life. When I think him safe I will answer all you choose.”At length, after careful feeding and drying, Countess laid down the spoon, and covered the child with a warm woollen coverlet.“Sleep, my darling!” she said softly. “The God of Israel hush thee under His wings!”A few moments of perfect quiet left no doubt that little Rudolph was sound asleep. Then Countess stood up, and turned to the Rabbi.“Now, Cohen, I am ready. Ask me what you will.”“Who and what is this child?”“An exile, as we are. An orphan, cast on the great heart of the All-Merciful. A trust which was given to me, and I mean to fulfil it.”“That depends on the leave of thy lord.”“It depends on nothing of the sort. I sware to the dead father of this boy that I would protect him from all hurt.”“Sware! Well, then—” said the elder Jew—“an oath must be fulfilled, Cohen?”“That depends on circumstances,” returned the Rabbi in Jesuitical wise. “For instance, if Countess sware by any idol of the Goyim, it is void. If she sware by her troth, or faith, or any such thing, it may be doubtful, and might require a synod of the Rabbins to determine it. But if she sware by the Holy One (blessed be He!) then the oath must stand. But of course, daughter, thou wilt have the boy circumcised, and bring him up as a proselyte of Israel.”The expression in the eyes of Countess did not please the Rabbi.“Thus I sware,” she said: “‘God do so to me and more also, if I bring not the child to you unhurt!’ How can I meet that man at the day of doom, if I have not kept mine oath—if I deliver not the boy to him unhurt, as he will deem hurting?”“But that were to teach him the idolatries of the Goyim!” exclaimed the Rabbi in horror.“I shall teach him no idolatry. Only what his father would have taught him—and I know what that was. I have listened to him many a day on Presthey and Pary’s Mead.”“Countess, I shall not suffer it. Such a thing must not be done in my house.”“It has to be done in mine,” said Countess doggedly.“I do not forbid thee to show mercy to the child. If he be, as thou sayest, an orphan and an exile, and thou moreover hast accepted some fashion of trust with regard to him (however foolish it were to do so), I am willing that thou shouldst keep him a day or two, till he has recovered. But then shelter must be sought for him with the Goyim.”“Do you two know,” said Countess, in a low voice of concentrated determination, “that this child’s parents, and all of their race that were with them, have been scourged by the Goyim?—branded, and cast forth as evil, and have died in the night and in the snow, because they wouldnotworship idols? These are not of the brood of the priests, who hate them. The boy is mine, and shall be brought up as mine. I sware it.”“But not for life?”“I sware it.”“Did the child’s father know what thou hadst sworn? as if not, perchance there may be means to release thee.”The black eyes flashed fire.“I tell you, I sware unto him by Adonai, the God of Israel, and He knew it! In the lowest depths and loftiest heights of my own soul I sware, and He heard it. I repeated the vow this night, when I clasped the boy to my heart once more. God will do so to me and more also, if I bring not the boy unhurt to his father and his mother at the Judgment Day!”“But, my daughter, if it can be loosed?”“What do I care for your loosing? He will not loose me. And the child shall not suffer. I will die first.”“Let the child tarry till he has recovered: did I not say so? Then he must go forth.”“If you turn him forth, you turn me forth with him.”“Nonsense!”“You will see. I shall never leave him. My darling, my white snow-bird! I shall never leave the boy.”“My daughter,” said the Rabbi softly, for he thought the oil might succeed where the vinegar had failed, “dost thou not see that Leo’s advice is the best? The child must tarry with thee till he is well; no man shall prevent that.”“Amen!” said Countess.“But that over, is it not far better both for him and thee that he should go to the Goyim? We will take pains, for the reverence of thine oath, to find friends of his parents, who will have good care of him: I promise thee it shall be done, and Leo will assent thereto.”Leo confirmed the words with—“Even so, Cohen!”“But I pray thee, my daughter, remember what will be thought of thee, if thou shouldst act as thou art proposing to do. It will certainly be supposed that thou art wavering in the faith of thy fathers, if even it be not imagined that thou hast forsaken it. Only think of the horror of such a thing!”“I have not forsaken the faith of Abraham.”“I am sure of that; nevertheless, it is good thou shouldst say it.”“If the Cohen agree,” said Leo, stroking his white beard, “I am willing to make a compromise. As we have no child, and thou art so fond of children, the child shall abide with thee, on condition that thou take a like oath to bring him up a proselyte of Israel: and then let him be circumcised on the eighth day after his coming here. But if not, some friend of his parents must be found. What say you, Cohen?”“I am willing so to have it.”“I am not,” said Countess shortly. “As to friends of the child’s parents, there are none such, save the God for whom they died, and in whose presence they stand to-night. I must keep mine oath. Unhurt in body, unhurt in soul, according to their conception thereof, and according to my power, will I bring the boy to his father at the coming of Messiah.”“Wife, wouldst thou have the Cohen curse thee in the face of all Israel?”“These rash vows!” exclaimed the Rabbi, in evident uneasiness. “Daughter, it is written in the Thorah that if any woman shall make a vow, her husband may establish it or make it void, if he do so in the day that he hear it; and the Blessed One (unto whom be praise!) shall forgive her, and she shall not perform the vow.”“The vow was made before I was Leo’s wife.”“Well, but in the day that he hath heard it, it is disallowed.”“There is something else written in the Thorah, Cohen. ‘Every vow of a widow, or of her that is divorced, shall stand.’”“Father Isaac! when didst thou read the Thorah? Women have no business to do any such thing.”“It is there, whether they have or not.”“Then it was thy father’s part to disallow it.”“I told him of my vow, and he did not.”“That is an awkward thing!” said Leo in a low tone to the Rabbi.“I must consult the Rabbins,” was the answer. “It may be we shall find a loophole, to release the foolish woman. Canst thou remember the exact words of thy vow?”“What matter the exact words? The Holy One (blessed be He!) looketh on the heart, and He knew what I meant to promise.”“Yet how didst thou speak?”“I have told you. I said, ‘God do so to me and more also, if I bring not the child to you unhurt!’”“Didst thou say ‘God’? or did the man say it, and thy word was only ‘He’?” asked the Rabbi eagerly, fancying that he saw a way of escape.“What do I know which it was? I meant Him, and that is in His eyes as if I had said it.”“Countess, if thou be contumacious, I cannot shelter thee,” said Leo sternly.“My daughter,” answered the Rabbi, still suavely, though he was not far from anger, “I am endeavouring to find thee a way of escape.”“I do not wish to escape. I sware, and I will do it. Oh, bid me depart!” she cried, almost fiercely, turning to Leo. “I cannot bear this endless badgering. Give me my raiment and my jewels, and bid me depart in peace!”There was a moment’s dead silence, during which the two old men looked fixedly at each other. Then the Rabbi said—“It were best for thee, Leo. Isaac the son of Deuslesalt (probably a translation of Isaiah or Joshua) hath a fair daughter, and he is richer than either Benefei or Jurnet. She is his only child.”“I have seen her: she is very handsome. Yet such a winter night! We will wait till morning, and not act rashly.”“No: now or not at all,” said Countess firmly.“My daughter,” interposed the Rabbi hastily, “there is no need to be rash. If Leo give thee now a writing of divorcement, thou canst not abide in his house to-night. Wait till the light dawns. Sleep may bring a better mind to thee.”Countess vouchsafed him no answer. She turned to her husband.“I never wished to dwell in thy house,” she said very calmly, “but I have been a true and obedient wife. I ask thee now for what I think I have earned—my liberty. Let me go with my little child, whom I love dearly,—go to freedom, and be at peace. I can find another shelter for to-night. And if I could not, it would not matter—for me.”She stooped and gathered the sleeping child into her arms.“Speak the words,” she said. “It is the one boon that I ask of you.”Leo rose—with a little apparent reluctance—and placed writing materials before the Rabbi, who with the reed-pen wrote, or rather painted, a few Hebrew words upon the parchment. Then Leo, handing it to his wife, said solemnly—“Depart in peace!”The fatal words were spoken. Countess wrapped herself and Rudolph in the thick fur mantle, and turned to leave the room, saying to the man whose wife she was no longer—“I beseech you, send my goods to my father’s house. Peace be unto you!”“Peace be to thee, daughter!” returned the Rabbi.Then, still carrying the child, she went out into the night and the snow.Note 1. See Matthew 27 verses 26, 27; Mark fourteen verses 22, 23; Luke twenty-two verses 17, 20; One Corinthians eleven verse 24, when it will be seen that “blessed” means gave thanks to God, not blessed the elements.Note 2. Hebrews Seven verse 14; Eight verse 4.Note 3. Matthew Eight verse 4.Note 4. Acts two verse 46; twenty-seven verse 11; One Corinthians eleven verses 20-34.Note 5. Diceto makes this barbarity a part of the sentence passed on the Germans. Newbury mentions it only as inflicted.
“We bless Thee for the quiet rest Thy servant taketh now,We bless Thee for his blessedness, and for his crowned brow;For every weary step he trod in faithful following Thee,And for the good fight foughten well, and closed right valiantly.”
“We bless Thee for the quiet rest Thy servant taketh now,We bless Thee for his blessedness, and for his crowned brow;For every weary step he trod in faithful following Thee,And for the good fight foughten well, and closed right valiantly.”
The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin was filled to overflowing, but it was not the church we know as such now. That more ancient edifice had been built in the days of Alfred, and its nave was closely packed with the clergy of Oxford and the neighbourhood, save a circle of curule chairs reserved for the members of the Council. Into the midst of the excited crowd of clergy—among whom were sprinkled as many laymen, chiefly of the upper class, as could find room to squeeze in—filed an imposing procession of dignitaries—priests, archdeacons, bishops—all robed in full canonicals; the Bishop of the diocese being preceded by his crucifer. There was as yet no bishopric of Oxford, and the diocese was that of Lincoln. It was a point of the most rigid ecclesiastical etiquette that no prelate should have his official cross borne before him in the diocese of another: and the standing quarrel between the two archbishops on that point was acute and long lasting. The clerical procession was closed by the Dean of Saint Mary’s—John de Oxineford—a warm opponent of Becket, the exiled and absent Primate. After the clergy came a number of the chief officers of state, and lastly, King Henry the Second, who took his seat in the highest of the curule chairs, midmost among the others.
The first of the Plantagenets was no common man. Like most of his race, he was a born statesman; and also like most of them, he allowed his evil passions and natural corruption such free scope that his talents were smothered under their weight. In person he was of middle stature, somewhat thickly built, with a large round head covered by curly hair, cut square upon the forehead. Long arms ended in large hands, the care of which he entirely neglected, never wearing gloves save when he carried a hawk. His complexion was slightly florid, his eyes small but clear and sparkling, dove-like when he was pleased, but flashing fire in his anger. Though his voice was tremulous, yet he could be an eloquent speaker. He rarely sat down, but commonly stood, whether at mass, council, or meals. Except on ceremonial occasions, he was extremely careless in his attire, wearing short clothes of a homely cut, and requiring some persuasion to renew them. He detested every thing that came in the way of his convenience, whether long skirts, hanging sleeves, royal mantles, or boots with folding tops. He was (for his time) a great reader, a “huge lover of the woods” and of all sylvan sports, fond of travelling, a very small eater, a generous almsgiver, a faithful friend—and a good hater. The model example which he set before him as a statesman was that of his grandfather, Henry First. The Empress Maud, his mother, was above all things Norman, and was now living in Normandy in peaceful old age. Perhaps her stormy and eventful life had made herfeelweary of storms, for she rarely emerged from her retirement except in the character of a peacemaker. Certainly she had learnt wisdom by adversity. Her former supercilious sternness was gone, and a meek and quiet spirit, which earned the respect of all, had taken its place. She may have owed that change, and her quiet close of life, instrumentally, in some measure to the prayers of the good Queen Maud, that sweet and saintly mother to whom Maud the Empress had in her childhood and maturity been so complete a contrast, and whom she now resembled in her old age. Her son was unhappily not of her later tone, but rather of the earlier, though he rarely reached those passionate depths of pride and bitterness through which his aged mother had struggled into calm. He did not share her Norman proclivities, but looked back—as the mass of his people did with him—to the old Saxon laws of Alfred and of Athelstan, which he called the customs of his grandfather. In a matter of trial for heresy, or a question of doctrine, he was the obedient servant of Rome; but when the Pope laid officious hands on the venerable customs of England, and strove to dictate in points of state law, he found no obedient servant in Henry of Anjou.
This morning, being a ceremonial occasion, His Majesty’s attire had risen to it. He wore a white silken tunic, the border richly embroidered in gold; a crimson dalmatic covered with golden stars; a mantle of blue samite, fastened on the right shoulder with a golden fermail set with a large ruby; and red hose, crossed by golden bands all up the leg. The mantle was lined with grey fur; golden lioncels decorated the fronts of the black boots; and a white samite cap, adorned with ostrich feathers, and rising out of a golden fillet, reposed on the King’s head.
When the members of the Council had taken their seats, and the Bishop of Lichfield had offered up sundry Latin prayers which about one in ten of the assembled company understood, the King rose to open the Council.
“It is not unknown to you, venerable Fathers,” he said, “for what purpose I have convened this Council. There have come into my kingdom certain persons, foreigners, from the dominions of the Emperor, who have gone about the country preaching strange doctrines, and who appear to belong to some new foreign sect. I am unwilling to do injustice, either by punishing them without investigation, or by dismissing them as harmless if they are contaminating the faith and morals of the people. But inasmuch as it appertains to holy Church to judge questions of that nature, I have here summoned you, my Fathers in God, and your clergy, that you may examine these persons, and report to me how far they are innocent or guilty of the false doctrines whereof they are suspected. I pray you therefore so to do: and as you shall report, so shall I know how to deal with them.”
His Majesty reseated himself, and the Bishop of the diocese rose, to deliver a long diatribe upon the wickedness of heresy, the infallibility of the Church, and the necessity for the amputation of diseased limbs of the body politic. As nobody disagreed with any of his sentiments, the harangue was scarcely necessary; but time was of small value in the twelfth century. Two other Bishops followed, with long speeches: and then the Council adjourned for dinner, the Earl of Oxford being their host.
On re-assembling about eleven o’clock, the King commanded the prisoners to be brought up. Up they came, the company of thirty—men, women, and children, Gerhardt the foremost at the bar.
“Who are thou?” he was asked.
“I am a German named Gerhardt, born in the dominions of the Duke of Francia, an elector of the Empire.”
“Art thou the leader of this company?”
“I am.”
“Wherefore earnest thou to this land?”
“Long ago, in my childhood, I had read of the blessed Boniface, who, being an Englishman, travelled into Almayne to teach our people the faith of Christ. I desired to pay back to your land something of the debt we owed her, by bringing back to her the faith of Christ.”
“Didst thou ignorantly imagine us without it?”
“I thought,” replied Gerhardt in his quiet manner, “that you could scarcely have too much of it.”
“What is thy calling?”
“While in this country, I have followed the weaver’s craft.”
“Art thou a lettered man?”
“I am.”
“Try him,” said one of the Bishops. A Latin book was handed up to Gerhardt, from which he readily construed some sentences, until the Council declared itself satisfied on that point. This man before them, whatever else he might be, was no mere ignorant peasant.
“Are the rest of thy company lettered men?”
“No. They are mostly peasants.”
“Have they gone about preaching, as thou hast?”
“The men have done so.”
“And how can ignorant peasants teach abstruse doctrines?”
“I do not think they attempted that. They kept to the simple doctrines.”
“What understandest thou by that?” Gerhardt was beginning to answer, when the Bishop of Winchester interposed with another question. He was Prince Henry of Blois, the brother of King Stephen, and a better warrior than a cleric. “Art thou a priest?”
“I am not.”
“Go on,” said the Bishop of Lincoln, who led the examination. “What meanest thou by the faith of Christ? What dost thou believe about Christ?”
Gerhardt’s reply on this head was so satisfactory that the Bishop of Worcester—not long appointed—whispered to his brother of Winchester, “The man is all right!”
“Wait,” returned the more experienced and pugnacious prelate. “We have not come to the crux yet.”
“You call yourselves Christians, then?” resumed Lincoln.
“Certainly we are Christians, and revere the doctrines of the Apostles.”
“What say you of the remedies for sin?”
“I know of one only, which is the blood of Christ our Lord.”
“How!—are the sacraments no remedies?”
“Certainly not.”
“Is sin not remitted in baptism?”
“No.”
“Is not the blood of Christ applied to sinners in the holy Eucharist?”
“I utterly refuse such a doctrine.”
“What say you of marriage? is that a sacrament?”
“I do not believe it.”
“Ha! the man is all right, is he?” whispered old Winchester satirically to his young neighbour, Worcester.
“Doth not Saint Paul term marriage ‘sacramentum magnum’?”
“He did not write in Latin.”
This was awkward. The heretic knew rather too much.
“Are you aware that all the holy doctors are against you?”
“I am not responsible for their opinions.”
“Do you not accept the interpretation of the Church?”
What his Lordship meant by this well-sounding term was a certain bundle of ideas—some of them very illiterate, some very delicate hair-splitting, some curious even to comicality,—gathered out of the writings of a certain number of men, who assuredly were not inspired, since they often travesty Scripture, and at times diametrically contradict it. Having lived in the darkest times of the Church, they were extremely ignorant and superstitious, even the best of them being enslaved by fancies as untrue in fact as they were unspiritual in tone. It might well have been asked as the response, Where is it?—for no Church, not even that of Rome herself, has ever put forward an authorised commentary explanatory of holy Scripture. Her “interpretation of the Church” has to be gathered here and there by abstruse study, and so far as her lay members are concerned, is practically received from the lips of the nearest priest. Gerhardt, however, did not take this line in replying, but preferred to answer the Bishop’s inaccurate use of the word Church, which Rome impudently denies to all save her corrupt self. He replied—
“Of the true Church, which is the elect of God throughout all ages, fore-ordained to eternal life? I see no reason to refuse it.”
The Scriptural doctrine of predestination has been compared to “a red rag” offered to a bull, in respect of its effect on those—whether votaries of idols or latitudinarianism—who are conscious that they are not the subjects of saving grace. To none is it more offensive than to a devout servant of the Church of Rome. The Bishop took up the offence at once.
“You hold that heresy—that men are fore-ordained to eternal life?”
“I follow therein the Apostle Paul and Saint Austin.”
This was becoming intolerable.
“Doth not the Apostle command his hearers to ‘work out their own salvation’?”
“Would it please my Lord to finish the verse?”
It did not please my Lord to finish the verse, as that would have put an extinguisher on his interpretation of it.
“These heretics refuse to be corrected by Scripture!” he cried instead, as a much more satisfactory thing to say.
Gerhardt’s quiet answer was only heard by those near him—“I have not been so yet.”
This aggravating man must be put down. The Bishop raised his voice.
“Speak, ye that are behind this man. Do ye accept the interpretation of Scripture taught by the Church our mother, to whom God hath committed the teaching of all her children?”
Old Berthold replied. “We believe as we have been taught, but we do not wish to dispute.”
“Ye are obstinate in your heresy! Will ye do penance for the same?”
“No,” answered Gerhardt.
“Let them have one more chance,” said King Henry in a low voice. “If they are unsound on one point only, there might yet be hope of their conversion.”
“They are unsound on every point, my Lord,” replied Lincoln irascibly; “but at your desire I will test them on one or two more.—Tell me, do ye believe that the souls of the dead pass into Purgatory?”
“We do not.”
“Do you pray for the dead?”
“No.”
“Do you invocate the blessed Mary and the saints, and trust to their merits and intercession?”
“Never. We worship God, not men.”
At this point Winchester beckoned to Lincoln, and whispered something in his ear.
“I am told,” pursued the latter, addressing Gerhardt, “that you hold the priests of holy Church not to be validly consecrated, and have so said in public. Is it so?”
“It is so. The temporal power of the Pope has deprived the Church of the true consecration. You have only the shadow of sacraments, and the traditions of men.”
“You reject the holy sacraments entirely, then?”
“Not so. We observe the Eucharist at our daily meals. Our Lord bade us ‘as oft as we should drink,’ to take that wine in remembrance of Him. We do His bidding.”
“Ye presume to profane the Eucharist thus!” cried Lichfield in pious horror. “Ye administer to yourselves—”
“As Saint Basil held lawful,” interposed Gerhardt.
“Saint Basil spoke of extraordinary occasions when no priest could be had.”
“But if it be lawful at any time to receive without priestly consecration, it cannot be unlawful, at every time.”
It did not occur to the Bishop to ask the pertinent question, in what passage of Scripture priestly consecration of the Eucharist was required,—nay, in what passage any consecration at all is ever mentioned. For at the original institution of the rite, our Lord consecrated nothing, but merely gave thanks to God (Note 1), as it was customary for the master of the house to do at the Passover feast; and seeing that “if He were on earth, He should not be a priest.” (Note 2.) He cannot have acted as a priest when He was on earth. We have even distinct evidence that He declined so to act (Note 3). And in any subsequent allusions to this Sacrament in the New Testament (Note 4), there is no mention of either priests or consecration. It did not, however, suit the Bishop to pursue this inconvenient point. He passed at once to another item.
“Ye dare to touch the sacred cup reserved to the priests—”
“When did Christ so reserve it? His command was, ‘Drink ye all of it.’”
“To the Apostles, thou foolish man!”
“Were they priests at that time?”
This was the last straw. The question could not be answered except in the negative, for if the ordination of the Apostles be not recorded after the Resurrection (John twenty 21-23), then there is no record of their having been ordained at all. To be put in a corner in this manner was more than a Bishop could stand.
“How darest thou beard me thus?” he roared. “Dost thou not know what may follow? Is not the King here, who has the power of life and death, and is he not an obedient son of holy Church?”
The slight smile on Gerhardt’s lips said, “Not very!” But his only words were—
“Ay, I know that ye have power. ‘This is your hour, and the power of darkness.’ We are not afraid. We have had our message of consolation. ‘Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.’”
“Incredible folly!” exclaimed Lincoln. “That was said to the early Christians, who suffered persecution from the heathen: not to heretics, smarting under the deserved correction of the Church. How dare you so misapply it?”
“All the Lord’s martyrs were not in the early Church. ‘We are the circumcision, who worship God in spirit, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.’ Do to us what ye will. ‘Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Living or dying, we are the Lord’s.’”
“We solemnly adjudge you false heretics,” was the stern reply, “and deliver you up to our Catholic Prince for punishment. Depart in peace!”
Gerhardt looked up. “‘My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you!’ Be it so. We go in peace; we go to peace. Our suffering will soon be over. Already we behold Jesus our Lord at the right hand of God, and we are ready to partake of His sufferings, that we may reign with Him.”
King Henry now rose to pronounce sentence. The condemned criminals before him were to be branded on the forehead with a mark of ignominy, to be scourged, and cast forth out of the city. No man might receive them under his roof, relieve them with food, nor administer to them consolation of any sort. And this was the sentence of the King and of holy Church, to the honour and laud of God, and of Mary, His most glorious Mother!
The sentence was carried out even more barbarously than it was pronounced. The foreheads of all were branded with hot irons, they were whipped through the city, and their clothes having been cut short to the girdle (John twenty 21-23), they were turned into the snow-covered fields. One of the men appointed to use the branding-irons had just lost a daughter, and moved by a momentary impulse of pity (for which he afterwards blamed himself and did penance), he passed two or three of the younger women—Ermine among them—with a lighter brand than the rest. No such mercy was shown to the men or the elder women, nor would it have been to Ermine, had it not been the case that her extreme fairness made her look much younger than she really was.
Gerhardt, being regarded as the ringleader, was also branded on the chin.
“Courage, my children!” he said to the shivering, trembling little company, as they were marched down High Street. “We are counted worthy—worthy to suffer shame for Him who suffered dire shame for us. Let us praise God.”
And to the amazement, alike of the officials and the crowd of spectators, the song was set up, and echoed into the side streets—“Blessed are ye, when men shall persecute you, for the Son of Man’s sake!” varied every now and then by a joyous chorus of “Glory to God in the highest! on earth peace, goodwill towards men!”
The song was heard clearly enough in the Walnut Tree: so clearly, that Flemild even fancied she could distinguish Ermine’s voice from the rest.
“Mother, will you go and look?” she asked, tears running down her face.
“I’ll not go near,” said Isel, in a tone of defiance very unusual with her. “I’ll not get your father and you into trouble. And if I were to go, much if I didn’t tear somebody a-pieces.”
“O Mother! you wouldn’t touch our old friends? They’ve enough to bear, surely.”
“I saidsomebody! child!” was the growl in answer: and Flemild did not venture to reply.
Fainter and fainter grew the sounds; only strengthened for a minute when the higher notes of the chorus supervened. Then came a great roar of applause from the crowd, as the East Gate was reached, and the heretics were cast out from the priest-ridden city. But they scarcely heard that in Kepeharme Lane.
At the window of the anchorhold stood Derette, having sent Leuesa to bring her word what happened. She could see nothing, yet she heard the joyous chant of “Glory to God in the highest!” as the crowd and the condemned swept down the street just beyond her ken. Leuesa did not even try to hide her tears when she reached the shelter of the anchorhold: before that, it would have been perilous to shed them.
“Oh, it was dreadful, Lady! Gerard never looked at any one: he walked first, and he looked as if he saw nothing but God and Heaven. Agnes I could not see, nor the child; I suppose they were on the other side. But Ermine saw me, and she gave me a smile for you—I am sure she meant it for you—such as an angel might have given who had been a few hours on earth, and was just going back to his place before the Throne.”
Manning and Haimet, who had joined the crowd of sightseers, had not returned when the latch of the Walnut Tree was lifted, and Anania walked in.
“What, both stayed at home! O Aunt Isel, you have missed such a sight!”
“Well, you’ve got it, then, I suppose,” muttered Isel.
“I shall never forget it—not if I live to be a hundred.”
“Umph! Don’t think I shall neither.”
“Now, didn’t I tell you those foreigners were no good? Osbert always said so. I knew I was right. And I am, you see.”
“You’re standing in my light, Anania—that’s all I can see at present.”
Anania moved about two inches. “Oh, but it was grand to see the Council come out of Saint Mary’s! All the doctors in their robes, and the Bishops, and last the King—such a lovely shade his mantle was! It’s a pity the Queen was not there too; I always think a procession’s half spoiled when there are no ladies.”
“Oh, that’s what you’re clucking about, is it? Processions, indeed!”
“Aunt Isel, are you very cross, or what’s the matter with you?”
“She’s in pain, I fear,” said Flemild quickly.
“Where’s the pain? I’ve gathered some splendid fresh betony and holy-thistle.”
“Here!” said Isel, laying her hand on her heart.
“Why, then, holy-thistle’s just what you want. I’ll send you some down by Stephen.”
“Thank you. But it’ll do me no good.”
“Oh, don’t you say that, now.—Flemild, I wonder you did not come to see all the sights. You’ll find you’ve not nearly so much time for pleasure after you’re married; don’t look for it. Have you settled when it’s to be?”
“It was to have been last month, you know, but Father wanted it put off.”
“Ay, so as he could know Raven a bit better. Well, when is it to be now?”
“March, they say.”
“You don’t say it as if you enjoyed it much.”
“Maybe she takes her pleasure in different ways from you,” said Isel. “Can’t see any, for my part, in going to see a lot of poor wretches flogged and driven out into the snow. Suppose you could.”
“O Aunt!—when they were heretics?”
“No,nor murderers neither—without they’d murdered me, and then I reckon I shouldn’t have been there to look at ’em.”
“But the priests say they are worse than murderers—they murder men’s souls.”
“I’m alive, for aught I know. And I don’t expect to say my Paternoster any worse than I did seven years gone.”
“How do you know they haven’t bewitched you?” asked Anania in a solemn tone.
“For the best of all reasons—that I’m not bewitched.”
“Aunt Isel, I’m not so sure of that. If those wretches—”
“O Anania, do let Mother be!” pleaded Flemild. “It is her pain that speaks, not herself. I told you she was suffering.”
“You did; but I wonder if her soul isn’t worse than her body. I’ll just give Father Dolfin a hint to look to her soul and body both. They say those creatures only bewitched one maid, and she was but a poor villein belonging to some doctor of the schools: and so frightened was she to see their punishment that she was in a hurry to recant every thing they had taught her. Well! we shall see no more of them, that’s one good thing. I shouldn’t think any of them would be alive by the end of the week. The proclamation was strict—neither food nor shelter to be given, nor any compassion shown. And branded as they are, every body will know them, you see.”
Stephen came in while his sister-in-law was speaking.
“Come, now, haven’t you had talk enough?” said he. “You’ve a tongue as long as from here to Banbury Cross. You’d best be going home, Anania, for Osbert’s as cross as two sticks, and he’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Oh dear, one never has a bit of peace! I did think I could have sat a while, and had a nice chat.”
“It won’t be so nice if you keep Osbert waiting, I can tell you.”
Anania rose with evident reluctance, and gathered her mantle round her.
“Well, good-day, Aunt Isel! I’ll send you down the holy-thistle. Good-day, Flemild. Aren’t you coming with me, Stephen?”
“No; I want to wait for Uncle Manning.”
“Stephen, I’m obliged to you for ever and ever! If she’d stayed another minute, I should have flown at her!”
“You looked as if you’d come to the end of your patience,” said Stephen, smiling, but gravely; “and truly, I don’t wonder. But what’s this about holy-thistle? Are you sick, Aunt Isel?”
Isel looked searchingly into her nephew’s face.
“You look true,” she said; “I think you might be trusted, Stephen.”
“Oh,ifyou’re grieving overthem, don’t be afraid to tell me so. I did my best to save Gerard, but he would not be warned. I’d have caught up the child and brought him to you, if I’d had a chance; but I was hemmed in the crowd, a burly priest right afore me, and I couldn’t have laid hand on him. Poor souls! I’m sorry for them.”
“God bless thee for those words, Stephen! I’m sore for them to the very core of my heart. If they’d been my own father’s children or mine, I couldn’t feel sadder than I do. And to have to listen to those hard, cold, brutal words from that woman—.”
“I know. She is a brute. I guessed somewhat how things were going with you, for I saw her turn in here from the end of Saint Edward’s; and I thought you mightn’t be so sorry to have her sent off. Her tongue’s not so musical as might be.”
Manning and Haimet came in together. The former went up to Isel, while Haimet began a conversation with his cousin, and after a moment the two young men left the house together. Then Manning spoke.
“Wife and children,” said he, “from this day forward, no word is to be uttered in my house concerning these German people. They are heretics, so pronounced by holy Church; and after that, no compassion may be shown to them. Heretics are monsters, demons in human form, who seek the ruin of souls. Remember my words.”
Isel looked earnestly in her husband’s face.
“No,” said Manning, not unkindly, but firmly; “no excuses for them, Isel. I can quite understand that you feel sorry for those whom you have regarded as friends for seven years: but such sorrow is now sin. You must crush and conquer it. It were rebellion against God, who has judged these miscreants by the lips of His Church.”
Isel broke down in a very passion of tears.
“I can’t help it, Manning; I can’t help it!” she said, when she could speak. “It may be sin, but I must do it and do penance for it—it’s not a bit of use telling me I must not. I’ll try not to talk if you bid me be silent, but you must give me a day or two to get quieted,—till every living creature round has done spitting venom at them. I don’t promise to hold my tongue to that ninny of an Anania—she aggravates me while it isn’t in human nature to keep your tongue off her; it’s all I can do to hold my hands.”
“She is very provoking, Father,” said Flemild in an unsteady voice; “she wears Mother fairly out.”
“You may both quarrel with Anania whenever you please,” replied Manning calmly; “I’ve nothing to say against that. But you are not to make excuses for those heretics, nor to express compassion for them. Now those are my orders: don’t let me have to give them twice.”
“No, Father; you shall not, to me,” said Flemild in a low tone.
“I can’t promise you nothing,” said Isel, wiping her eyes on her apron, “because I know I shall just go and break it as fast as it’s made: but when I can, I’ll do your bidding, Manning. And till then, you’ll have either to thrash me or forgive me—whichever you think the properest thing to do.”
Manning walked away without saying more.
Snow, snow everywhere!—lying several inches deep on the tracks our forefathers called roads, drifted several feet high in corners and clefts of the rocks. Pure, white, untrodden, in the silent fields; but trampled by many feet upon the road to Dorchester, the way taken by the hapless exiles. No voice was raised in pity, no hand outstretched for help; every door was shut against the heretics. Did those who in after years were burned at the stake on the same plea suffer more or less than this little band of pioneers, as one after another sank down, and died in the white snow? The trembling hands of the survivors heaped over each in turn the spotless coverlet, and then they passed on to their own speedy fate.
The snow descended without intermission, driving pitilessly in the scarred faces of the sufferers. Had they not known that it came from the hand of their heavenly Father, they might have fancied that Satan was warring against them by that means, as the utmost and the last thing that he could do. But as the snow descended, the song ascended as unceasingly. Fainter and less full it grew to human ears, as one voice after another was silenced. It may be that the angels heard it richer and louder, as the choristers grew more few and weak.
Of the little family group which we have followed, the first to give way was Agnes. She had taken from her own shivering limbs, to wrap round the child, one of the mutilated garments which alone her tormentors had left her. As they approached Nuneham, she staggered and fell. Guelph and Adelheid ran to lift her up.
“Oh, let me sleep!” she said. “I can sing no more.”
“Ay, let her sleep,” echoed Gerhardt in a quivering voice; “she will suffer least so. Farewell for a moment, my true beloved! We shall meet again ere the hour be over.”
Gerhardt held on but a little longer. Doubly branded, and more brutally scourged than the rest, he was so ill from the first that he had to be helped along by Wilhelm and Conrad, two of the strongest in the little company. How Ermine fared they knew not: they could only tell that when they reached Bensington, she was no longer among them. Most of the children sank early. Little Rudolph fared the best, for a young mother who had lost her baby gave him such poor nourishment as she could from her own bosom. It was just as they came out of Dorchester, that they laid him down tenderly on a bed of leaves in a sheltered corner, to sleep out his little life. Then they passed on, still southwards—still singing “Glory to God in the highest!” and “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake!” Oh, what exquisite music must have floated up through the gates of pearl, and filled the heavenly places, from that poor faint song, breathed by those trembling voices that could scarcely utter the notes!
A few hours later, and only one dark figure was left tottering through the snow. Old Berthold was alone.
Snow everywhere!—and the night fell, and the frost grew keen; and Bensington had not long been left behind when old Berthold lay down in the ditch at the road-side. He had sung his last song, and could go no further. He could only wait for the chariot of God—for the white-winged angels to come silently over the white snow, and carry him Home.
“The Lord will not forget me, though I am the last left,” he said to himself. “His blessings are not mere empty words. ‘Glory to God in the highest!’” And Berthold slept.
“Rudolph!” The word was breathed softly, eagerly, by some moving thing closely wrapped up, in the dense darkness of the field outside Dorchester. There was no answer.
“Rudolph!” came eagerly again.
The speaker, who was intently listening, fancied she heard the faintest possible sound. Quickly, quietly, flitting from one point to another, feeling with her hands on the ground, under the bushes, by the walls, she went, till her outstretched hands touched something round and soft, and not quite so chillingly cold as every thing else seemed to be that night.
“Rudolph! art thou here?”
“Yes, it’s me,” said the faint childish voice. “Where am I?—and who are you?”
“Drink,” was the answer; and a bottle of warm broth was held to the boy’s blue lips. Then, when he had drunk, he was raised from the ground, clasped close to a woman’s warm breast, and a thick fur mantle was hastily wrapped round them both.
“Who are you?” repeated the child. “And where—where’s Mother?”
“I am an old friend, my little child. Hast thou ever heard the name of Countess?”
“Yes,” murmured the child feebly. He could not remember yet how or where he had heard it; he only knew that it was not strange to him.
“That is well. Glory be to the Blessed that I have found thee in time to save thee!”
They were speeding back now into the lighted town—not lighted, indeed, by out-door lamps, but by many an open door and uncovered window, and the lanterns of passengers going up or down the street. Countess carried the child to a stone house—only Jews built stone houses in towns at that day—and into a ground-floor room, where she laid him down on a white couch beside the fire. There were two men in the room—both old, and with long white beards.
“Countess! what hast thou there?” sternly asked one of the men.
“Father Jacob!—a babe of the Goyim!” exclaimed the other.
“Hush!” said Countess in a whisper, as she bent over the boy. “The life is barely in him. May the Blessed (to whom be praise!) help me to save my darling!”
“Accursed are all the infidels!” said the man who seemed slightly the younger of the two. “Daughter, how earnest thou by such a child, and how darest thou give him such a name?”
Countess made no answer. She was busy feeding little Rudolph with bits of bread sopped in warm broth.
“Where am I?” asked the child, as sense and a degree of strength returned to him. “It isn’t Isel’s house.”
“Wife, dost thou not answer the Cohen?” said the elder man angrily.
“The Cohen can wait for his answer; the child cannot for his life. When I think him safe I will answer all you choose.”
At length, after careful feeding and drying, Countess laid down the spoon, and covered the child with a warm woollen coverlet.
“Sleep, my darling!” she said softly. “The God of Israel hush thee under His wings!”
A few moments of perfect quiet left no doubt that little Rudolph was sound asleep. Then Countess stood up, and turned to the Rabbi.
“Now, Cohen, I am ready. Ask me what you will.”
“Who and what is this child?”
“An exile, as we are. An orphan, cast on the great heart of the All-Merciful. A trust which was given to me, and I mean to fulfil it.”
“That depends on the leave of thy lord.”
“It depends on nothing of the sort. I sware to the dead father of this boy that I would protect him from all hurt.”
“Sware! Well, then—” said the elder Jew—“an oath must be fulfilled, Cohen?”
“That depends on circumstances,” returned the Rabbi in Jesuitical wise. “For instance, if Countess sware by any idol of the Goyim, it is void. If she sware by her troth, or faith, or any such thing, it may be doubtful, and might require a synod of the Rabbins to determine it. But if she sware by the Holy One (blessed be He!) then the oath must stand. But of course, daughter, thou wilt have the boy circumcised, and bring him up as a proselyte of Israel.”
The expression in the eyes of Countess did not please the Rabbi.
“Thus I sware,” she said: “‘God do so to me and more also, if I bring not the child to you unhurt!’ How can I meet that man at the day of doom, if I have not kept mine oath—if I deliver not the boy to him unhurt, as he will deem hurting?”
“But that were to teach him the idolatries of the Goyim!” exclaimed the Rabbi in horror.
“I shall teach him no idolatry. Only what his father would have taught him—and I know what that was. I have listened to him many a day on Presthey and Pary’s Mead.”
“Countess, I shall not suffer it. Such a thing must not be done in my house.”
“It has to be done in mine,” said Countess doggedly.
“I do not forbid thee to show mercy to the child. If he be, as thou sayest, an orphan and an exile, and thou moreover hast accepted some fashion of trust with regard to him (however foolish it were to do so), I am willing that thou shouldst keep him a day or two, till he has recovered. But then shelter must be sought for him with the Goyim.”
“Do you two know,” said Countess, in a low voice of concentrated determination, “that this child’s parents, and all of their race that were with them, have been scourged by the Goyim?—branded, and cast forth as evil, and have died in the night and in the snow, because they wouldnotworship idols? These are not of the brood of the priests, who hate them. The boy is mine, and shall be brought up as mine. I sware it.”
“But not for life?”
“I sware it.”
“Did the child’s father know what thou hadst sworn? as if not, perchance there may be means to release thee.”
The black eyes flashed fire.
“I tell you, I sware unto him by Adonai, the God of Israel, and He knew it! In the lowest depths and loftiest heights of my own soul I sware, and He heard it. I repeated the vow this night, when I clasped the boy to my heart once more. God will do so to me and more also, if I bring not the boy unhurt to his father and his mother at the Judgment Day!”
“But, my daughter, if it can be loosed?”
“What do I care for your loosing? He will not loose me. And the child shall not suffer. I will die first.”
“Let the child tarry till he has recovered: did I not say so? Then he must go forth.”
“If you turn him forth, you turn me forth with him.”
“Nonsense!”
“You will see. I shall never leave him. My darling, my white snow-bird! I shall never leave the boy.”
“My daughter,” said the Rabbi softly, for he thought the oil might succeed where the vinegar had failed, “dost thou not see that Leo’s advice is the best? The child must tarry with thee till he is well; no man shall prevent that.”
“Amen!” said Countess.
“But that over, is it not far better both for him and thee that he should go to the Goyim? We will take pains, for the reverence of thine oath, to find friends of his parents, who will have good care of him: I promise thee it shall be done, and Leo will assent thereto.”
Leo confirmed the words with—“Even so, Cohen!”
“But I pray thee, my daughter, remember what will be thought of thee, if thou shouldst act as thou art proposing to do. It will certainly be supposed that thou art wavering in the faith of thy fathers, if even it be not imagined that thou hast forsaken it. Only think of the horror of such a thing!”
“I have not forsaken the faith of Abraham.”
“I am sure of that; nevertheless, it is good thou shouldst say it.”
“If the Cohen agree,” said Leo, stroking his white beard, “I am willing to make a compromise. As we have no child, and thou art so fond of children, the child shall abide with thee, on condition that thou take a like oath to bring him up a proselyte of Israel: and then let him be circumcised on the eighth day after his coming here. But if not, some friend of his parents must be found. What say you, Cohen?”
“I am willing so to have it.”
“I am not,” said Countess shortly. “As to friends of the child’s parents, there are none such, save the God for whom they died, and in whose presence they stand to-night. I must keep mine oath. Unhurt in body, unhurt in soul, according to their conception thereof, and according to my power, will I bring the boy to his father at the coming of Messiah.”
“Wife, wouldst thou have the Cohen curse thee in the face of all Israel?”
“These rash vows!” exclaimed the Rabbi, in evident uneasiness. “Daughter, it is written in the Thorah that if any woman shall make a vow, her husband may establish it or make it void, if he do so in the day that he hear it; and the Blessed One (unto whom be praise!) shall forgive her, and she shall not perform the vow.”
“The vow was made before I was Leo’s wife.”
“Well, but in the day that he hath heard it, it is disallowed.”
“There is something else written in the Thorah, Cohen. ‘Every vow of a widow, or of her that is divorced, shall stand.’”
“Father Isaac! when didst thou read the Thorah? Women have no business to do any such thing.”
“It is there, whether they have or not.”
“Then it was thy father’s part to disallow it.”
“I told him of my vow, and he did not.”
“That is an awkward thing!” said Leo in a low tone to the Rabbi.
“I must consult the Rabbins,” was the answer. “It may be we shall find a loophole, to release the foolish woman. Canst thou remember the exact words of thy vow?”
“What matter the exact words? The Holy One (blessed be He!) looketh on the heart, and He knew what I meant to promise.”
“Yet how didst thou speak?”
“I have told you. I said, ‘God do so to me and more also, if I bring not the child to you unhurt!’”
“Didst thou say ‘God’? or did the man say it, and thy word was only ‘He’?” asked the Rabbi eagerly, fancying that he saw a way of escape.
“What do I know which it was? I meant Him, and that is in His eyes as if I had said it.”
“Countess, if thou be contumacious, I cannot shelter thee,” said Leo sternly.
“My daughter,” answered the Rabbi, still suavely, though he was not far from anger, “I am endeavouring to find thee a way of escape.”
“I do not wish to escape. I sware, and I will do it. Oh, bid me depart!” she cried, almost fiercely, turning to Leo. “I cannot bear this endless badgering. Give me my raiment and my jewels, and bid me depart in peace!”
There was a moment’s dead silence, during which the two old men looked fixedly at each other. Then the Rabbi said—
“It were best for thee, Leo. Isaac the son of Deuslesalt (probably a translation of Isaiah or Joshua) hath a fair daughter, and he is richer than either Benefei or Jurnet. She is his only child.”
“I have seen her: she is very handsome. Yet such a winter night! We will wait till morning, and not act rashly.”
“No: now or not at all,” said Countess firmly.
“My daughter,” interposed the Rabbi hastily, “there is no need to be rash. If Leo give thee now a writing of divorcement, thou canst not abide in his house to-night. Wait till the light dawns. Sleep may bring a better mind to thee.”
Countess vouchsafed him no answer. She turned to her husband.
“I never wished to dwell in thy house,” she said very calmly, “but I have been a true and obedient wife. I ask thee now for what I think I have earned—my liberty. Let me go with my little child, whom I love dearly,—go to freedom, and be at peace. I can find another shelter for to-night. And if I could not, it would not matter—for me.”
She stooped and gathered the sleeping child into her arms.
“Speak the words,” she said. “It is the one boon that I ask of you.”
Leo rose—with a little apparent reluctance—and placed writing materials before the Rabbi, who with the reed-pen wrote, or rather painted, a few Hebrew words upon the parchment. Then Leo, handing it to his wife, said solemnly—
“Depart in peace!”
The fatal words were spoken. Countess wrapped herself and Rudolph in the thick fur mantle, and turned to leave the room, saying to the man whose wife she was no longer—
“I beseech you, send my goods to my father’s house. Peace be unto you!”
“Peace be to thee, daughter!” returned the Rabbi.
Then, still carrying the child, she went out into the night and the snow.
Note 1. See Matthew 27 verses 26, 27; Mark fourteen verses 22, 23; Luke twenty-two verses 17, 20; One Corinthians eleven verse 24, when it will be seen that “blessed” means gave thanks to God, not blessed the elements.
Note 2. Hebrews Seven verse 14; Eight verse 4.
Note 3. Matthew Eight verse 4.
Note 4. Acts two verse 46; twenty-seven verse 11; One Corinthians eleven verses 20-34.
Note 5. Diceto makes this barbarity a part of the sentence passed on the Germans. Newbury mentions it only as inflicted.
Chapter Eight.In the White Witch’s Hut.“But all my years have seemed so long;And toil like mine is wondrous dreary;And every body thinks me strong:And I’m aweary.”M.A. Chaplin.“Heigh-Ho! It’s a weary life, Gib—a weary life!”The words came from an old woman, and were addressed to a cat. Neither of them was an attractive-looking object. The old woman was very old, having a face all over minute wrinkles, a pair of red eyes much sunken, and the semblance of a beard under her chin. The cat, a dark tabby, looked as if he had been in the wars, and had played his part valiantly. His coat, however, was less dilapidated than the old woman’s garments, which seemed to be composed mainly of disconnected rags of all colours and shapes. She sat on a three-legged stool, beside a tiny hearth, on which burned a small fire of sticks.“Nobody cares for us, Gib: nobody! They call me a witch—the saints know why, save that I am old and poor. I never did hurt to any, and I’ve given good herb medicines to the women about; and if I do mutter a few outlandish words over them, what harm does it do? They mean nothing; and they make the foolish girls fancy I know something more than they do, and so I get a silver penny here, or a handful of eggs there, and we make shift to live.”She spoke aloud, though in a low voice, as those often do who live alone; and the cat rose and rubbed himself against her, with a soft “Me-ew!”“Well, Gib! Didst thou want to remind me that so long as thou art alive, I shall have one friend left? Poor puss!” and she stroked her uncomely companion.“How the wind whistles! Well, it is cold to-night! There’ll be nobody coming now to consult the Wise Woman. We may as well lie down, Gib—it’s the only warm place, bed is. Holy saints! what’s that?”She listened intently for a moment, and Gib, with erect tail, went to the door and smelt under it. Then he looked back at his mistress, and said once more,—“Me-ew!”“Somebody there, is there? A bit frightened, I shouldn’t wonder. Come in, then—there’s nought to fear,”—and she opened the crazy door of her hut. “Well, can’t you come in—must I lift you up? Why, what—Mary, Mother!”Half lifting, half dragging, for very little strength was left her, the old woman managed to pull her visitor inside. Then she bolted the door, and stooping down, with hands so gentle that they might have been an infant’s, softly drew away from a young scarred face the snow-saturated hair.“Ay, I see, my dear, I see! Don’t you try to speak. I can guess what you are, and whence you come. I heard tell what had happened. Don’t you stir, now, but just drink a drop of this warm mallow tea—the finest thing going for one in your condition. I can’t give you raiment, for I’ve none for myself, but we’ll see to-morrow if I can’t get hold o’ somewhat: you’ve not been used to wear rags. I’ll have ’em, if I steal ’em. Now, don’t look at me so reproachful-like! well, then, I’ll beg ’em, if it worries you. Oh, you’re safe here, my dear! you’ve no need to look round to see if no villains is a-coming after you. They’ll not turn up in these quarters, take my word for it. Not one o’ them would come near the witch’s hut after nightfall. But I’m no witch, my dearie—only a poor old woman as God and the blessed saints have quite forgot, and folks are feared of me.”“The Lord never forgets,” the parched lips tried to say.“Don’t He? Hasn’t He forgot both you and me, now?”“No—never!”“Well, well, my dear! Lie still, and you shall tell me any thing you will presently. Have another sup!—just one at once, and often—you’ll soon come round. I know some’at about herbs and such-like, if I know nought else. See, let me lay this bundle of straw under your head; isn’t that more comfortable, now? Poor thing, now what are you a-crying for?—does your face pain you bad? I’ll lay some herbs to it, and you won’t have so much as a scar there when they’ve done their work. Ay, I know some’at about herbs, I do! Deary me, for sure!—poor thing, poor thing!”“The Lord bless you!”“Child, you’re the first that has blessed me these forty years! and I never hearthatname. Folks take me for one of Sathanas’ servants, and they never speak to me of—that Other. I reckon they fancy I should mount the broomstick and fly through the chimney, if they did. Eh me!—and time was I was a comely young maid—as young and well-favoured as you, my dear: eh dear, dear, to think how long it is since! I would I could pull you a bit nearer the fire; but I’ve spent all my strength—and that’s nought much—in hauling of you in. But you’re safe, at any rate; and I’ll cover you up with straw—I’ve got plenty of that, if I have not much else. Them villains, to use a young maid so!—or a wife, whichever you be. And they say I’m in league with the Devil! I never got so near him as they be.”“I am a maid.”“Well, and that’s the best thing you can be. Don’t you be in a hurry to change it. Come, now, I’ll set on that sup o’ broth was given me at the green house; you’ll be ready to drink it by it’s hot. Well, now, it’s like old times and pleasant, having a bit o’ company to speak to beside Gib here. What’s your name, now, I wonder?”“Ermine.”“Ay, ay. Well, mine’s Haldane—old Haldane, the Wise Woman—I’m known all over Oxfordshire, and Berkshire too. Miles and miles they come to consult me. Oh, don’t look alarmed, my pretty bird! you sha’n’t see one of them if you don’t like. There’s a sliding screen behind here that I can draw, and do by times, when I want to fright folks into behaving themselves; I just draw it out, and speak from behind it, in a hollow voice, and don’t they go as white!—I’ll make a cosy straw bed for you behind it, and never a soul of ’em ’ll dare to look in on you—no, not the justice himself, trust me. I know ’em: Lords, and constables, and foresters, and officers—I can make every mother’s son of ’em shiver in his shoes, till you’d think he had the ague on him. Butyousha’n’t, my dear: you’re as safe as if the angels was rocking you. Maybe they’ll want to come with you: but they’ll feel strange here. When you can talk a bit without hurting of you, you shall tell me how you got here.”“I lost my way in the snow.”“Well, no wonder! Was there many of you?”“About thirty.”“And all served like you?”“Yes, except my brother: he was our leader, and they served him worse. I do not think the children were branded.”“Children!”“Ay, there were eight children with us.”“One minds one’s manners when one has the angels in company, or else maybe I should speak my mind a bit straight. And what was it for, child?”“They said we were heretics.”“I’ll be bound they did! But what had you done?”“My brother and some others had preached the Gospel of Christ in the villages round, and further away.”“What mean you by that, now?”“The good news that men are sinners, and that Jesus died for sinners.”“Ah! I used to know all about that once. But now—He’s forgotten me.”“No, never, never, Mother Haldane! It is thou who hast forgotten Him. He sent me to thee to-night to tell thee so.”“Gently now, my dear! Keep still. Don’t you use up your bit of strength for a worthless old woman, no good to any body. There ain’t nobody in the world as cares for me, child. No, there ain’t nobody!”“Mother Haldane, I think Christ cared for you on His cross; and He cares for you now in Heaven. He wanted somebody to come and tell you so; and nobody did, so he drove me here. You’ll let me tell you all about it, won’t you?”“Softly, my dear—you’ll harm yourself! Ay, you shall tell me any thing you will, my snow-bird, when you’re fit to do it; but you must rest a while first.”There was no sleep that night for Mother Haldane. All the long winter night she sat beside Ermine, feeding her at short intervals, laying her herb poultices on the poor brow, covering up the chilled body from which it seemed as if the shivering would never depart. More and more silent grew the old woman as time went on, only now and then muttering a compassionate exclamation as she saw more clearly all the ill that had been done. She kept up the fire all night, and made a straw bed, as she had promised, behind the screen, where the invalid would be sheltered from the draught, and yet warm, the fire being just on the other side of the screen. To this safe refuge Ermine was able to drag herself when the morning broke.“You’ll be a fine cure, dearie!” said the old woman, looking on her with satisfaction. “You’ll run like a hare yet, and be as rosy as Robin-run-by-the-hedge.”“I wonder why I am saved,” said Ermine in a low voice. “I suppose all the rest are with God now. I thought I should have been there too by this time. Perhaps He has some work for me to do:—it may be that He has chosen you, and I am to tell you of His goodness and mercy.”“You shall tell any thing you want, dearie. You’re just like a bright angel to old Mother Haldane. I’m nigh tired of seeing frightened faces. It’s good to have one face that’ll look at you quiet and kind; and nobody never did that these forty years. Where be your friends, my maid? You’ll want to go to them, of course, when you’re fit to journey.”“I have no friends but One,” said the girl softly: “and He is with me now. I shall go to Him some day, when He has done His work in me and by me. As to other earthly friends, I would not harm the few I might mention, by letting their names be linked with mine, and they would be afraid to own me. For my childhood’s friends,theyare all over-sea. I have no friend save God and you.”When Ermine said, “He is with me now,” the old woman had glanced round as if afraid of seeing some unearthly presence. At the last sentence she rose—for she had been kneeling by the girl—with a shake of her head, and went outside the screen, muttering to herself.“Nobody but the snow-bird would ever link them two together! Folks think I’m Sathanas’ thrall.”She put more sticks on the fire, muttering while she did so.“‘Goodness and mercy!’ Eh, deary me! There’s not been much o’ that for the old witch. Folks are feared of even a white witch, and I ain’t a black ’un. Ay, feared enough. They’ll give me things, for fear. But nobody loves me—no, nobody loves me!”With a vessel of hot broth in her hands, she came back to the niche behind the screen.“Now, my dearie, drink it up. I must leave you alone a while at after. I’m going out to beg a coverlet and a bit more victuals. You’re not afeared to be left? There’s no need, my dear—never a whit. The worst outlaw in all the forest would as soon face the Devil himself as look behind this screen. But I’ll lock you in if you like that better.”“As you will, Mother Haldane. The Lord will take care of me, in the way He sees best for me, and most for His glory.”“I’ll lock you in. It’ll not be so hard for Him then. Some’at new, bain’t it, for the like o’ me to think o’ helping Him?”Ermine answered only by a smile. Let the old woman learn to come nigh to God, she thought, however imperfectly; other items could be put right in time.It was nearly three hours before Haldane returned, and she came so well laden that she had some work to walk. A very old fur coverlet hung over her left arm, while on her right was a basket that had seen hard service in its day.“See you here, dearie!” she said, holding them up to the gaze of her guest. “Look you at all I’ve got for you. I didn’t steal a bit of it—I saw from your face you wouldn’t like things got that way. Here’s a fine happing of fur to keep you warm; and I’ve got a full dozen of eggs given me, and a beef-bone to make broth, and a poke o’ meal: and they promised me a cape at the green house, if I bring ’em some herbs they want. We shall get along grandly, you’ll see. I’ve picked up a fine lot of chestnuts, too,—but them be for me; the other things be for you. I’ll set the bone on this minute; it’s got a goodly bit o’ meat on it.”“You are very good to me, Mother Haldane. But you must take your share of the good things.”“Never a whit, my dearie! I got ’em all for you. There, now!”She spread the fur coverlet over Ermine, wrapping her closely in it, and stood a moment to enjoy the effect.“Ain’t that warm, now? Oh, I know where to go for good things! Trust the Wise Woman for that! Can you sleep a while, my dear? Let me put you on a fresh poultice, warm and comforting, and then you’ll try, won’t you? I’ll not make no more noise than Gib here, without somebody comes in, and then it’s as may be.”She made her poultice, and put it on, covered Ermine well, made up the fire, and took her seat on the form, just outside the screen, while Ermine tried to sleep. But sleep was coy, and would not visit the girl’s eyes. Her state of mind was strangely quiescent and acquiescent in all that was done to her or for her. Perhaps extreme weakness had a share in this; but she felt as if sorrow and mourning were as far from her as was active, tumultuous joy. Calm thankfulness and satisfaction with God’s will seemed to be the prevailing tone of her mind. Neither grief for the past nor anxiety for the future had any place in it. Her soul was as a weaned child.As Haldane sat by the fire, and Ermine lay quiet but fully awake on the other side of the screen, a low tap came on the door.“Enter!” said Haldane in a hollow voice, quite unlike the tone she used to Ermine: for the Wise Woman was a ventriloquist, and could produce terrifying effects thereby.The visitor proved to be a young woman, who brought a badly-sprained wrist for cure. She was treated with an herb poultice, over which the old woman muttered an inaudible incantation; and having paid a bunch of parsnips as her fee, she went away well satisfied. Next came a lame old man, who received a bottle of lotion. The third applicant wanted a charm to make herself beautiful. She was desired to wash herself once a day in cold spring water, into which she was to put a pinch of a powder with which the witch furnished her. While doing so, she was to say three times over—“Win in, white! Wend out, black!Bring to me that I do lack.Wend out, black! Win in, white!Sweet and seemly, fair to sight.”The young lady, whose appearance might certainly have been improved by due application of soap and water, departed repeating her charm diligently, having left behind her as payment a brace of rabbits.A short time elapsing, before any fresh rap occurred, Haldane went to look at her patient.“Well, my dear, and how are you getting on? Not asleep, I see. Look at them rabbits! I can make you broth enough now. Get my living this way, look you. And it’s fair too, for I gives ’em good herbs. Fine cures I make by times, I can tell you.”“I wondered what you gave the last,” said Ermine.The old woman set her arms akimbo and laughed.“Eh, I get lots o’ that sort. It’s a good wash they want, both for health and comeliness; and I make ’em take it that way. The powder’s nought—it’s the wash does it, look you: but they’d never do it if I told ’em so. Mum, now! there’s another.”And dropping her voice to a whisper, Haldane emerged from the screen, and desired the applicant to enter.It was a very handsome young woman who came in, on whose face the indulgence of evil passions—envy, jealousy, and anger—had left as strong a mark as beauty. She crossed herself as she stepped over the threshold.“Have you a charm that will win hearts?” she asked.“Whose heart do you desire to win?” was the reply.“That of Wigan the son of Egglas.”“Has it strayed from you?”“I have never had it. He loves Brichtiva, on the other side of the wood, and he will not look on me. I hate her. I want to beguile his heart away from her.”“What has she done to you?”“Done!” cried the girl, with a flash of her eyes. “Done! She is fair and sweet, and she has won Wigan’s love. That is what she has done to me.”“And you love Wigan?”“I care nothing for Wigan. I hate Brichtiva. I want to be revenged on her.”“I can do nothing for you,” answered Haldane severely. “Revenge is the business of the black witch, not the Wise Woman who deals in honest simples and harmless charms. Go home and say thy prayers, Maiden, and squeeze the black drop out of thine heart, that thou fall not into the power of the Evil One. Depart!”This interview quite satisfied Ermine that Haldane was no genuine witch of the black order. However dubious her principles might be in some respects, she had evidently distinct notions of right and wrong, and would not do what she held wicked for gain.Other applicants came at intervals through the day. There were many with burns, scalds, sprains, or bruises, nearly all of which Haldane treated with herbal poultices, or lotions; some with inward pain, to whom she gave bottles of herbal drinks. Some wanted charms for all manner of purposes—to make a horse go, induce plants to grow, take off a spell, or keep a lover true. A few asked to have their fortunes told, and wonderful adventures were devised for them. After all the rest, when it began to grow dusk, came a man muffled up about the face, and evidently desirous to remain unknown.The White Witch rested her hands on the staff which she kept by her, partly for state and partly for support, and peered intently at the half-visible face of the new-comer.“Have you a charm that will keep away evil dreams?” was the question that was asked in a harsh voice.“It is needful,” replied Haldane in that hollow voice, which seemed to be her professional tone, “that I should know what has caused them.”“You a witch, and ask that?” was the sneering answer.“I ask it for your own sake,” said Haldane coldly. “Confession of sin is good for the soul.”“When I lack shriving, I will go to a priest. Have you any such charm?”“Answer my question, and you shall have an answer to yours.”The visitor hesitated. He was evidently unwilling to confess.“You need not seek to hide from me,” resumed Haldane, “that the wrong you hold back from confessing is a deed of blood. The only hope for you is to speak openly.”The Silence continued unbroken for a moment, during which the man seemed to be passing through a mental conflict. At length he said, in a hoarse whisper—“I never cared for such things before. I have done it many a time,—not just this, but things that were quite as—well, bad, if you will. They never haunted me as this does. But they were men, and these—Get rid of the faces for me! I must get rid of those terrible faces.”“If your confession is to be of any avail to you, it must be complete,” said Haldane gravely. “Of whose faces do you wish to be rid?”“It’s a woman and a child,” said the man, his voice sinking lower every time he spoke, yet it had a kind of angry ring in it, as if he appealed indignantly against some injustice. “There were several more, and why should these torment me? Nay, why should they hauntmeat all? I only did my duty. There be other folks they should go to—them that make such deeds duty. I’m not to blame—but I can’t get rid of those faces! Take them away, and I’ll give you silver—gold—only take them away!”The probable solution of the puzzle struck Haldane as she sat there, looking earnestly into the agitated features of her visitor.“You must confess all,” she said, “the names and every thing you know. I go to mix a potion which may help you. Bethink you, till I come again, of all the details of your sin, that you may speak honestly and openly thereof.”And she passed behind the screen. One glance at the white face of the girl lying there told Haldane that her guess was true. She knelt down, and set her lips close to Ermine’s ear.“You know the voice,” she whispered shortly. “Who is he?”“The Bishop’s sumner, who arrested us.”“And helped to thrust you forth at the gate?”Ermine bowed her head. Haldane rose, and quickly mixing in a cup a little of two strong decoctions of bitter herbs, she returned to her visitor.“Drink that,” she said, holding out the cup, and as he swallowed the bitter mixture, she muttered—“Evil eye be stricken blind!Cords about thy heart unwind!Tell the truth, and shame the fiend!”The sumner set down the cup with a wry face.“Mother, I will confess all save the names, which I know not. I am sumner of my Lord of Lincoln, and I took these German heretics four months gone, and bound them, and cast them into my Lord’s prison. And on Sunday, when they were tried, I guarded them through the town, and thrust them out of the East Gate. Did I do any more than my duty? There were women and little children among them, and they went to perish. They must all be dead by now, methinks, for no man would dare to have compassion on them, and the bitter cold would soon kill men so weak already with hunger. Yet they were heretics, accursed of God and men: but their faces were like the faces of the angels that are in Heaven. Two of those faces—a mother and a little child—will never away from me. I know not why nor how, but they made me think of another winter night, when there was no room for our Lady and her holy Child among men on earth. Oh take away those faces! I can bear no more.”“Did they look angrily at thee?”“Angry! I tell you they were like the angels. I was pushing them out at the gate—I never thought of any thing but getting rid of heretics—when she turned, and the child looked up on me—such a look! I shall behold it till I die, if you cannot rid me of it.”“My power extends not to angels,” replied Haldane.“Can you do nought for me, then?” he asked in hopeless accents. “Must I feel for ever as Herod the King felt, when he had destroyed the holy innocents? I am not worse than others—why should they torture me?”“Punishment must always follow sin.”“Sin! Is it any sin to punish a heretic? Father Dolfin saith it is a shining merit, because they are God’s enemies, and destroy men’s souls. I have not sinned. It must be Satan that torments me thus; it can only be he, since he is the father of heretics, and they go straight to him. Can’t you buy him off? I ’ll give you any gold to get rid of those faces! Save me from them if you can!”“I cannot. I have no power in such a case as thine. Get thee to the priest and shrive thee, thou miserable sinner, for thy help must come from Heaven and not from earth.”“The priest!Shriveme for obeying the Bishop, and bringing doom upon the heretics! Nay, witch!—art thou so far gone down the black road that thou reckonest such good works to be sins?”And the sumner laughed bitterly.“It is thy confession of sin wherewith I deal,” answered Haldane sternly. “It is thy conscience, not mine, whereon it lieth heavy. Who is it that goeth down the black road—the man that cannot rest for the haunting of dead faces, or the poor, harmless, old woman, that bade him seek peace from the Church of God?”“The Church would never set that matter right,” said the sumner, half sullenly, as he rose to depart.“Then there is but one other hope for thee,” said a clear low voice from some unseen place: “get thee to Him who is the very Head of the Church of God, and who died for thee and for all Christian men.”The sumner crossed himself several times over, not waiting for the end of one performance before he began another.“Dame Mary, have mercy on us!” he cried; “was that an angel that spake?”“An evil spirit would scarcely have given such holy counsel,” gravely responded Haldane.“Never expected to hear angels speak in a witch’s hut!” said the astonished sumner. “Pray you, my Lord Angel—or my Lady Angela, if so be—for your holy intercession for a poor sinner.”“Better shalt thou have,” replied the voice, “if thou wilt humbly rest thy trust on Christ our Lord, and seek His intercession.”“You see well,” added Haldane, “that I am no evil thing, else would good spirits not visit me.”The humbled sumner laid two silver pennies in her hand, and left the hut with some new ideas in his head.“Well, my dear, you’ve a brave heart!” said Haldane, when the sound of his footsteps had died away. “I marvel you dared speak. It is well he took you for an angel; but suppose he had not, and had come round the screen to see? When I told you the worst outlaw in the forest would not dare to look in on you, I was not speaking ofthem. They stick at nothing, commonly.”“If he had,” said Ermine quietly, “the Lord would have known how to protect me. Was I to leave a troubled soul with the blessed truth untold, because harm to my earthly life might arise thereby?”“But, my dear, you don’t think he’ll be the better?”“If he be not, the guilt will not rest on my head.”The dark deepened, and the visitors seemed to have done coming. Haldane cooked a rabbit for supper for herself and Ermine, not forgetting Gib. She had bolted the door for the night, and was fastening the wooden shutter which served for a window, when a single tap on the door announced a late applicant for her services. Haldane opened the tiny wicket, which enabled her to speak without further unbarring when she found it convenient.“Folks should come in the day,” she said.“Didn’t dare!” answered a low whisper, apparently in the voice of a young man. “Can you find lost things?”“That depends on the planets,” replied Haldane mysteriously.“But can’t you rule the planets?”“No; they rule me, and you too. However, come within, and I will see what I can do for you.”Unbarring the door, she admitted a muffled man, whose face was almost covered by a woollen kerchief evidently arranged for that purpose.“What have you lost?” asked the Wise Woman.“The one I loved best,” was the unexpected answer.“Man, woman, or child?”“A maiden, who went forth the morrow of Saint Lucian, by the East Gate of Oxford, on the Dorchester road. If you can, tell me if she be living, and where to seek her.”Haldane made a pretence of scattering a powder on the dying embers of her wood-fire. (Note 1.)“The charm will work quicker,” she said, “if I know the name of the maiden.”“Ermine.”Haldane professed to peer into the embers.“She is a foreigner,” she remarked.“Ay, you have her.”“A maiden with fair hair, a pale soft face, blue eyes, and a clear, gentle voice.”“That’s it!—where is she?”“She is still alive.”“Thanks be to all the saints! Where must I go to find her?”“The answer is, Stay where you are.”“Stay! I cannot stay. I must find and succour her.”“Does she return your affection?”“That’s more than I can say. I’ve never seen any reason to think so.”“But you love her?”“I would have died for her!” said the young man, with an earnest ring in his voice. “I have perilled my life, and the priests say, my soul. All this day have I been searching along the Dorchester way, and have found every one of them but two—her, and one other. I did my best, too, to save her and hers before the blow fell.”“What would you do, if you found her?”“Take her away to a safe place, if she would let me, and guard her there at the risk of my life—at the cost, if need be.”“The maid whom you seek,” said Haldane, after a further examination of the charred sticks on the hearth, “is a pious and devout maiden; has your life been hitherto fit to mate with such?”“Whatever I have been,” was the reply, “I would give her no cause for regret hereafter. A man who has suffered as I have has no mind left for trifling. She should do what she would with me.”Haldane seemed to hesitate whether she should give further information or not.“Can’t you trust me?” asked the young man sorrowfully. “I have done ill deeds in my life, but one thing I can say boldly,—I never yet told a lie. Oh, tell me where to go, if my love yet lives? Can’t you trust me?”“I can,” said a voice which was not Haldane’s. “I can, Stephen.”Stephen stared round the hut as if the evidence of his ears were totally untrustworthy. Haldane touched him on the shoulder with a smile.“Come!” she said.The next minute Stephen was kneeling beside Ermine, covering her hand with kisses, and pouring upon her all the sweetest and softest epithets which could be uttered.“They are all gone, sweet heart,” he said, in answer to her earnest queries. “And the priests may say what they will, but I believe they are in Heaven.”“But that other, Stephen? You said, me and one other. One of the men, I suppose?”“That other,” said Stephen gently, “that other, dear, is Rudolph.”“What can have become of him?”“He may have strayed, or run into some cottage. That I cannot find him may mean that he is alive.”“Or that he died early enough to be buried,” she said sadly.“The good Lord would look to the child,” said Haldane unexpectedly. “He is either safe with Him, or He will tell you some day what has become of Him.”“You’re a queer witch!” said Stephen, looking at her with some surprise.“I’m not a witch at all. I’m only a harmless old woman who deals in herbs and such like, but folks make me out worse than I am. And when every body looks on you as black, it’s not so easy to keep white. If others shrink from naming God to you, you get to be shy of it too. Men and women have more influence over each other than they think. For years and years I’ve felt as if my soul was locked up in the dark, and could not get out: but this girl, that I took in because she needed bodily help, has given me better help than ever I gave her—she has unlocked the door, and let the light in on my poor smothered soul. Now, young man, if you’ll take an old woman’s counsel—old women are mostly despised, but they know a thing or two, for all that—you’ll just let the maid alone a while. She couldn’t be safer than she is here; and she’d best not venture forth of the doors till her hurts are healed, and the noise and talk has died away. Do you love her well enough to deny yourself for her good? That’s the test of real love, and there are not many who will stand it.”“Tell me what you would have me do, and I’ll see,” answered Stephen with a smile.“Can you stay away for a month or two?”“Well, that’s ill hearing. But I reckon I can, if it is to do any good to Ermine.”“If you keep coming here,” resumed the shrewd old woman, “folks will begin to ask why. And if they find out why, it won’t be good for you or Ermine either. Go home and look after your usual business, and be as like your usual self as you can. The talk will soon be silenced if no fuel be put to it. And don’t tell your own mother what you have found.”“I’ve no temptation to do that,” answered Stephen gravely. “My mother has been under the mould this many a year.”“Well, beware of any friend who tries to ferret it out of you—ay, and of the friends who don’t try. Sometimes they are the more treacherous of the two. Let me know where you live, and if you are wanted I will send for you. Do you see this ball of grey wool? If any person puts that into your hand, whenever and however, come here as quick as you can. Till then, keep away.”“Good lack! But you won’t keep me long away?”“I shall think of her, not of you,” replied Haldane shortly. “And the more you resent that, the less you love.”After a moment’s struggle with his own thoughts, Stephen said, “You’re right, Mother. I’ll stay away till you send for me.”“Those are the words of a true man,” said Haldane, “if you have strength to abide by them. Remember, the test of love is not sweet words, but self-sacrifice; and the test of truth is not bold words, but patient endurance.”“I’m not like to forget it. You bade me tell you where I live? I am one of the watchmen in the Castle of Oxford; but I am to be found most days from eleven to four on duty at the Osney Gate of the Castle. Only, I pray you to say to whomsoever you make your messenger, that my brother’s wife—he is porter at the chief portal—is not to be trusted. She has a tongue as long as the way from here to Oxford, and curiosity equal to our mother Eve’s or greater. Put yon ball of wool inherhand, and she’d never take a wink of sleep till she knew all about it.”“I trust no man till I have seen him, and no woman till I have seen through her,” said Haldane.“Well, she’s as easy to see through as a church window. Ermine knows her. If you must needs trust any one, my cousin Derette is safe; she is in Saint John’s anchorhold. But I’d rather not say too much of other folks.”“O Stephen, Mother Isel!”“Aunt Isel would never mean you a bit of harm, dear heart, I know that. But she might let something out that she did not mean; and if a pair of sharp ears were in the way, it would be quite as well she had not the chance. She has carried a sore heart for you all these four months, Ermine; and she cried like a baby over your casting forth. But Uncle Manning and Haimet were as hard as stones. Flemild cried a little too, but not like Aunt Isel. As to Anania, nothing comes amiss to her that can be sown to come up talk. If an earthquake were to swallow one of her children, I do believe she’d only think what a fine thing it was for a gossip.”“I hope she’s not quite so bad as that, Stephen.”“Hope on, sweet heart, and farewell. Here’s Mother Haldane on thorns to get rid of me—that I can see. Now, Mother, what shall I pay you for your help, for right good it has been?”Haldane laid her hand on Stephen’s, which was beginning to unfasten his purse—a bag carried on the left side, under the girdle.“Pay me,” she said, “in care for Ermine.”“There’s plenty of that coin,” answered Stephen, smiling, as he withdrew his hand. “You’ll look to your half of the bargain, Mother, and trust me to remember mine.”Note 1. The ordinary fire at this time was of wood. Charcoal, the superior class of fuel, cost from 5 shillings to 10 shillings per ton (modern value from six to twelve guineas).
“But all my years have seemed so long;And toil like mine is wondrous dreary;And every body thinks me strong:And I’m aweary.”M.A. Chaplin.
“But all my years have seemed so long;And toil like mine is wondrous dreary;And every body thinks me strong:And I’m aweary.”M.A. Chaplin.
“Heigh-Ho! It’s a weary life, Gib—a weary life!”
The words came from an old woman, and were addressed to a cat. Neither of them was an attractive-looking object. The old woman was very old, having a face all over minute wrinkles, a pair of red eyes much sunken, and the semblance of a beard under her chin. The cat, a dark tabby, looked as if he had been in the wars, and had played his part valiantly. His coat, however, was less dilapidated than the old woman’s garments, which seemed to be composed mainly of disconnected rags of all colours and shapes. She sat on a three-legged stool, beside a tiny hearth, on which burned a small fire of sticks.
“Nobody cares for us, Gib: nobody! They call me a witch—the saints know why, save that I am old and poor. I never did hurt to any, and I’ve given good herb medicines to the women about; and if I do mutter a few outlandish words over them, what harm does it do? They mean nothing; and they make the foolish girls fancy I know something more than they do, and so I get a silver penny here, or a handful of eggs there, and we make shift to live.”
She spoke aloud, though in a low voice, as those often do who live alone; and the cat rose and rubbed himself against her, with a soft “Me-ew!”
“Well, Gib! Didst thou want to remind me that so long as thou art alive, I shall have one friend left? Poor puss!” and she stroked her uncomely companion.
“How the wind whistles! Well, it is cold to-night! There’ll be nobody coming now to consult the Wise Woman. We may as well lie down, Gib—it’s the only warm place, bed is. Holy saints! what’s that?”
She listened intently for a moment, and Gib, with erect tail, went to the door and smelt under it. Then he looked back at his mistress, and said once more,—“Me-ew!”
“Somebody there, is there? A bit frightened, I shouldn’t wonder. Come in, then—there’s nought to fear,”—and she opened the crazy door of her hut. “Well, can’t you come in—must I lift you up? Why, what—Mary, Mother!”
Half lifting, half dragging, for very little strength was left her, the old woman managed to pull her visitor inside. Then she bolted the door, and stooping down, with hands so gentle that they might have been an infant’s, softly drew away from a young scarred face the snow-saturated hair.
“Ay, I see, my dear, I see! Don’t you try to speak. I can guess what you are, and whence you come. I heard tell what had happened. Don’t you stir, now, but just drink a drop of this warm mallow tea—the finest thing going for one in your condition. I can’t give you raiment, for I’ve none for myself, but we’ll see to-morrow if I can’t get hold o’ somewhat: you’ve not been used to wear rags. I’ll have ’em, if I steal ’em. Now, don’t look at me so reproachful-like! well, then, I’ll beg ’em, if it worries you. Oh, you’re safe here, my dear! you’ve no need to look round to see if no villains is a-coming after you. They’ll not turn up in these quarters, take my word for it. Not one o’ them would come near the witch’s hut after nightfall. But I’m no witch, my dearie—only a poor old woman as God and the blessed saints have quite forgot, and folks are feared of me.”
“The Lord never forgets,” the parched lips tried to say.
“Don’t He? Hasn’t He forgot both you and me, now?”
“No—never!”
“Well, well, my dear! Lie still, and you shall tell me any thing you will presently. Have another sup!—just one at once, and often—you’ll soon come round. I know some’at about herbs and such-like, if I know nought else. See, let me lay this bundle of straw under your head; isn’t that more comfortable, now? Poor thing, now what are you a-crying for?—does your face pain you bad? I’ll lay some herbs to it, and you won’t have so much as a scar there when they’ve done their work. Ay, I know some’at about herbs, I do! Deary me, for sure!—poor thing, poor thing!”
“The Lord bless you!”
“Child, you’re the first that has blessed me these forty years! and I never hearthatname. Folks take me for one of Sathanas’ servants, and they never speak to me of—that Other. I reckon they fancy I should mount the broomstick and fly through the chimney, if they did. Eh me!—and time was I was a comely young maid—as young and well-favoured as you, my dear: eh dear, dear, to think how long it is since! I would I could pull you a bit nearer the fire; but I’ve spent all my strength—and that’s nought much—in hauling of you in. But you’re safe, at any rate; and I’ll cover you up with straw—I’ve got plenty of that, if I have not much else. Them villains, to use a young maid so!—or a wife, whichever you be. And they say I’m in league with the Devil! I never got so near him as they be.”
“I am a maid.”
“Well, and that’s the best thing you can be. Don’t you be in a hurry to change it. Come, now, I’ll set on that sup o’ broth was given me at the green house; you’ll be ready to drink it by it’s hot. Well, now, it’s like old times and pleasant, having a bit o’ company to speak to beside Gib here. What’s your name, now, I wonder?”
“Ermine.”
“Ay, ay. Well, mine’s Haldane—old Haldane, the Wise Woman—I’m known all over Oxfordshire, and Berkshire too. Miles and miles they come to consult me. Oh, don’t look alarmed, my pretty bird! you sha’n’t see one of them if you don’t like. There’s a sliding screen behind here that I can draw, and do by times, when I want to fright folks into behaving themselves; I just draw it out, and speak from behind it, in a hollow voice, and don’t they go as white!—I’ll make a cosy straw bed for you behind it, and never a soul of ’em ’ll dare to look in on you—no, not the justice himself, trust me. I know ’em: Lords, and constables, and foresters, and officers—I can make every mother’s son of ’em shiver in his shoes, till you’d think he had the ague on him. Butyousha’n’t, my dear: you’re as safe as if the angels was rocking you. Maybe they’ll want to come with you: but they’ll feel strange here. When you can talk a bit without hurting of you, you shall tell me how you got here.”
“I lost my way in the snow.”
“Well, no wonder! Was there many of you?”
“About thirty.”
“And all served like you?”
“Yes, except my brother: he was our leader, and they served him worse. I do not think the children were branded.”
“Children!”
“Ay, there were eight children with us.”
“One minds one’s manners when one has the angels in company, or else maybe I should speak my mind a bit straight. And what was it for, child?”
“They said we were heretics.”
“I’ll be bound they did! But what had you done?”
“My brother and some others had preached the Gospel of Christ in the villages round, and further away.”
“What mean you by that, now?”
“The good news that men are sinners, and that Jesus died for sinners.”
“Ah! I used to know all about that once. But now—He’s forgotten me.”
“No, never, never, Mother Haldane! It is thou who hast forgotten Him. He sent me to thee to-night to tell thee so.”
“Gently now, my dear! Keep still. Don’t you use up your bit of strength for a worthless old woman, no good to any body. There ain’t nobody in the world as cares for me, child. No, there ain’t nobody!”
“Mother Haldane, I think Christ cared for you on His cross; and He cares for you now in Heaven. He wanted somebody to come and tell you so; and nobody did, so he drove me here. You’ll let me tell you all about it, won’t you?”
“Softly, my dear—you’ll harm yourself! Ay, you shall tell me any thing you will, my snow-bird, when you’re fit to do it; but you must rest a while first.”
There was no sleep that night for Mother Haldane. All the long winter night she sat beside Ermine, feeding her at short intervals, laying her herb poultices on the poor brow, covering up the chilled body from which it seemed as if the shivering would never depart. More and more silent grew the old woman as time went on, only now and then muttering a compassionate exclamation as she saw more clearly all the ill that had been done. She kept up the fire all night, and made a straw bed, as she had promised, behind the screen, where the invalid would be sheltered from the draught, and yet warm, the fire being just on the other side of the screen. To this safe refuge Ermine was able to drag herself when the morning broke.
“You’ll be a fine cure, dearie!” said the old woman, looking on her with satisfaction. “You’ll run like a hare yet, and be as rosy as Robin-run-by-the-hedge.”
“I wonder why I am saved,” said Ermine in a low voice. “I suppose all the rest are with God now. I thought I should have been there too by this time. Perhaps He has some work for me to do:—it may be that He has chosen you, and I am to tell you of His goodness and mercy.”
“You shall tell any thing you want, dearie. You’re just like a bright angel to old Mother Haldane. I’m nigh tired of seeing frightened faces. It’s good to have one face that’ll look at you quiet and kind; and nobody never did that these forty years. Where be your friends, my maid? You’ll want to go to them, of course, when you’re fit to journey.”
“I have no friends but One,” said the girl softly: “and He is with me now. I shall go to Him some day, when He has done His work in me and by me. As to other earthly friends, I would not harm the few I might mention, by letting their names be linked with mine, and they would be afraid to own me. For my childhood’s friends,theyare all over-sea. I have no friend save God and you.”
When Ermine said, “He is with me now,” the old woman had glanced round as if afraid of seeing some unearthly presence. At the last sentence she rose—for she had been kneeling by the girl—with a shake of her head, and went outside the screen, muttering to herself.
“Nobody but the snow-bird would ever link them two together! Folks think I’m Sathanas’ thrall.”
She put more sticks on the fire, muttering while she did so.
“‘Goodness and mercy!’ Eh, deary me! There’s not been much o’ that for the old witch. Folks are feared of even a white witch, and I ain’t a black ’un. Ay, feared enough. They’ll give me things, for fear. But nobody loves me—no, nobody loves me!”
With a vessel of hot broth in her hands, she came back to the niche behind the screen.
“Now, my dearie, drink it up. I must leave you alone a while at after. I’m going out to beg a coverlet and a bit more victuals. You’re not afeared to be left? There’s no need, my dear—never a whit. The worst outlaw in all the forest would as soon face the Devil himself as look behind this screen. But I’ll lock you in if you like that better.”
“As you will, Mother Haldane. The Lord will take care of me, in the way He sees best for me, and most for His glory.”
“I’ll lock you in. It’ll not be so hard for Him then. Some’at new, bain’t it, for the like o’ me to think o’ helping Him?”
Ermine answered only by a smile. Let the old woman learn to come nigh to God, she thought, however imperfectly; other items could be put right in time.
It was nearly three hours before Haldane returned, and she came so well laden that she had some work to walk. A very old fur coverlet hung over her left arm, while on her right was a basket that had seen hard service in its day.
“See you here, dearie!” she said, holding them up to the gaze of her guest. “Look you at all I’ve got for you. I didn’t steal a bit of it—I saw from your face you wouldn’t like things got that way. Here’s a fine happing of fur to keep you warm; and I’ve got a full dozen of eggs given me, and a beef-bone to make broth, and a poke o’ meal: and they promised me a cape at the green house, if I bring ’em some herbs they want. We shall get along grandly, you’ll see. I’ve picked up a fine lot of chestnuts, too,—but them be for me; the other things be for you. I’ll set the bone on this minute; it’s got a goodly bit o’ meat on it.”
“You are very good to me, Mother Haldane. But you must take your share of the good things.”
“Never a whit, my dearie! I got ’em all for you. There, now!”
She spread the fur coverlet over Ermine, wrapping her closely in it, and stood a moment to enjoy the effect.
“Ain’t that warm, now? Oh, I know where to go for good things! Trust the Wise Woman for that! Can you sleep a while, my dear? Let me put you on a fresh poultice, warm and comforting, and then you’ll try, won’t you? I’ll not make no more noise than Gib here, without somebody comes in, and then it’s as may be.”
She made her poultice, and put it on, covered Ermine well, made up the fire, and took her seat on the form, just outside the screen, while Ermine tried to sleep. But sleep was coy, and would not visit the girl’s eyes. Her state of mind was strangely quiescent and acquiescent in all that was done to her or for her. Perhaps extreme weakness had a share in this; but she felt as if sorrow and mourning were as far from her as was active, tumultuous joy. Calm thankfulness and satisfaction with God’s will seemed to be the prevailing tone of her mind. Neither grief for the past nor anxiety for the future had any place in it. Her soul was as a weaned child.
As Haldane sat by the fire, and Ermine lay quiet but fully awake on the other side of the screen, a low tap came on the door.
“Enter!” said Haldane in a hollow voice, quite unlike the tone she used to Ermine: for the Wise Woman was a ventriloquist, and could produce terrifying effects thereby.
The visitor proved to be a young woman, who brought a badly-sprained wrist for cure. She was treated with an herb poultice, over which the old woman muttered an inaudible incantation; and having paid a bunch of parsnips as her fee, she went away well satisfied. Next came a lame old man, who received a bottle of lotion. The third applicant wanted a charm to make herself beautiful. She was desired to wash herself once a day in cold spring water, into which she was to put a pinch of a powder with which the witch furnished her. While doing so, she was to say three times over—
“Win in, white! Wend out, black!Bring to me that I do lack.Wend out, black! Win in, white!Sweet and seemly, fair to sight.”
“Win in, white! Wend out, black!Bring to me that I do lack.Wend out, black! Win in, white!Sweet and seemly, fair to sight.”
The young lady, whose appearance might certainly have been improved by due application of soap and water, departed repeating her charm diligently, having left behind her as payment a brace of rabbits.
A short time elapsing, before any fresh rap occurred, Haldane went to look at her patient.
“Well, my dear, and how are you getting on? Not asleep, I see. Look at them rabbits! I can make you broth enough now. Get my living this way, look you. And it’s fair too, for I gives ’em good herbs. Fine cures I make by times, I can tell you.”
“I wondered what you gave the last,” said Ermine.
The old woman set her arms akimbo and laughed.
“Eh, I get lots o’ that sort. It’s a good wash they want, both for health and comeliness; and I make ’em take it that way. The powder’s nought—it’s the wash does it, look you: but they’d never do it if I told ’em so. Mum, now! there’s another.”
And dropping her voice to a whisper, Haldane emerged from the screen, and desired the applicant to enter.
It was a very handsome young woman who came in, on whose face the indulgence of evil passions—envy, jealousy, and anger—had left as strong a mark as beauty. She crossed herself as she stepped over the threshold.
“Have you a charm that will win hearts?” she asked.
“Whose heart do you desire to win?” was the reply.
“That of Wigan the son of Egglas.”
“Has it strayed from you?”
“I have never had it. He loves Brichtiva, on the other side of the wood, and he will not look on me. I hate her. I want to beguile his heart away from her.”
“What has she done to you?”
“Done!” cried the girl, with a flash of her eyes. “Done! She is fair and sweet, and she has won Wigan’s love. That is what she has done to me.”
“And you love Wigan?”
“I care nothing for Wigan. I hate Brichtiva. I want to be revenged on her.”
“I can do nothing for you,” answered Haldane severely. “Revenge is the business of the black witch, not the Wise Woman who deals in honest simples and harmless charms. Go home and say thy prayers, Maiden, and squeeze the black drop out of thine heart, that thou fall not into the power of the Evil One. Depart!”
This interview quite satisfied Ermine that Haldane was no genuine witch of the black order. However dubious her principles might be in some respects, she had evidently distinct notions of right and wrong, and would not do what she held wicked for gain.
Other applicants came at intervals through the day. There were many with burns, scalds, sprains, or bruises, nearly all of which Haldane treated with herbal poultices, or lotions; some with inward pain, to whom she gave bottles of herbal drinks. Some wanted charms for all manner of purposes—to make a horse go, induce plants to grow, take off a spell, or keep a lover true. A few asked to have their fortunes told, and wonderful adventures were devised for them. After all the rest, when it began to grow dusk, came a man muffled up about the face, and evidently desirous to remain unknown.
The White Witch rested her hands on the staff which she kept by her, partly for state and partly for support, and peered intently at the half-visible face of the new-comer.
“Have you a charm that will keep away evil dreams?” was the question that was asked in a harsh voice.
“It is needful,” replied Haldane in that hollow voice, which seemed to be her professional tone, “that I should know what has caused them.”
“You a witch, and ask that?” was the sneering answer.
“I ask it for your own sake,” said Haldane coldly. “Confession of sin is good for the soul.”
“When I lack shriving, I will go to a priest. Have you any such charm?”
“Answer my question, and you shall have an answer to yours.”
The visitor hesitated. He was evidently unwilling to confess.
“You need not seek to hide from me,” resumed Haldane, “that the wrong you hold back from confessing is a deed of blood. The only hope for you is to speak openly.”
The Silence continued unbroken for a moment, during which the man seemed to be passing through a mental conflict. At length he said, in a hoarse whisper—
“I never cared for such things before. I have done it many a time,—not just this, but things that were quite as—well, bad, if you will. They never haunted me as this does. But they were men, and these—Get rid of the faces for me! I must get rid of those terrible faces.”
“If your confession is to be of any avail to you, it must be complete,” said Haldane gravely. “Of whose faces do you wish to be rid?”
“It’s a woman and a child,” said the man, his voice sinking lower every time he spoke, yet it had a kind of angry ring in it, as if he appealed indignantly against some injustice. “There were several more, and why should these torment me? Nay, why should they hauntmeat all? I only did my duty. There be other folks they should go to—them that make such deeds duty. I’m not to blame—but I can’t get rid of those faces! Take them away, and I’ll give you silver—gold—only take them away!”
The probable solution of the puzzle struck Haldane as she sat there, looking earnestly into the agitated features of her visitor.
“You must confess all,” she said, “the names and every thing you know. I go to mix a potion which may help you. Bethink you, till I come again, of all the details of your sin, that you may speak honestly and openly thereof.”
And she passed behind the screen. One glance at the white face of the girl lying there told Haldane that her guess was true. She knelt down, and set her lips close to Ermine’s ear.
“You know the voice,” she whispered shortly. “Who is he?”
“The Bishop’s sumner, who arrested us.”
“And helped to thrust you forth at the gate?”
Ermine bowed her head. Haldane rose, and quickly mixing in a cup a little of two strong decoctions of bitter herbs, she returned to her visitor.
“Drink that,” she said, holding out the cup, and as he swallowed the bitter mixture, she muttered—
“Evil eye be stricken blind!Cords about thy heart unwind!Tell the truth, and shame the fiend!”
“Evil eye be stricken blind!Cords about thy heart unwind!Tell the truth, and shame the fiend!”
The sumner set down the cup with a wry face.
“Mother, I will confess all save the names, which I know not. I am sumner of my Lord of Lincoln, and I took these German heretics four months gone, and bound them, and cast them into my Lord’s prison. And on Sunday, when they were tried, I guarded them through the town, and thrust them out of the East Gate. Did I do any more than my duty? There were women and little children among them, and they went to perish. They must all be dead by now, methinks, for no man would dare to have compassion on them, and the bitter cold would soon kill men so weak already with hunger. Yet they were heretics, accursed of God and men: but their faces were like the faces of the angels that are in Heaven. Two of those faces—a mother and a little child—will never away from me. I know not why nor how, but they made me think of another winter night, when there was no room for our Lady and her holy Child among men on earth. Oh take away those faces! I can bear no more.”
“Did they look angrily at thee?”
“Angry! I tell you they were like the angels. I was pushing them out at the gate—I never thought of any thing but getting rid of heretics—when she turned, and the child looked up on me—such a look! I shall behold it till I die, if you cannot rid me of it.”
“My power extends not to angels,” replied Haldane.
“Can you do nought for me, then?” he asked in hopeless accents. “Must I feel for ever as Herod the King felt, when he had destroyed the holy innocents? I am not worse than others—why should they torture me?”
“Punishment must always follow sin.”
“Sin! Is it any sin to punish a heretic? Father Dolfin saith it is a shining merit, because they are God’s enemies, and destroy men’s souls. I have not sinned. It must be Satan that torments me thus; it can only be he, since he is the father of heretics, and they go straight to him. Can’t you buy him off? I ’ll give you any gold to get rid of those faces! Save me from them if you can!”
“I cannot. I have no power in such a case as thine. Get thee to the priest and shrive thee, thou miserable sinner, for thy help must come from Heaven and not from earth.”
“The priest!Shriveme for obeying the Bishop, and bringing doom upon the heretics! Nay, witch!—art thou so far gone down the black road that thou reckonest such good works to be sins?”
And the sumner laughed bitterly.
“It is thy confession of sin wherewith I deal,” answered Haldane sternly. “It is thy conscience, not mine, whereon it lieth heavy. Who is it that goeth down the black road—the man that cannot rest for the haunting of dead faces, or the poor, harmless, old woman, that bade him seek peace from the Church of God?”
“The Church would never set that matter right,” said the sumner, half sullenly, as he rose to depart.
“Then there is but one other hope for thee,” said a clear low voice from some unseen place: “get thee to Him who is the very Head of the Church of God, and who died for thee and for all Christian men.”
The sumner crossed himself several times over, not waiting for the end of one performance before he began another.
“Dame Mary, have mercy on us!” he cried; “was that an angel that spake?”
“An evil spirit would scarcely have given such holy counsel,” gravely responded Haldane.
“Never expected to hear angels speak in a witch’s hut!” said the astonished sumner. “Pray you, my Lord Angel—or my Lady Angela, if so be—for your holy intercession for a poor sinner.”
“Better shalt thou have,” replied the voice, “if thou wilt humbly rest thy trust on Christ our Lord, and seek His intercession.”
“You see well,” added Haldane, “that I am no evil thing, else would good spirits not visit me.”
The humbled sumner laid two silver pennies in her hand, and left the hut with some new ideas in his head.
“Well, my dear, you’ve a brave heart!” said Haldane, when the sound of his footsteps had died away. “I marvel you dared speak. It is well he took you for an angel; but suppose he had not, and had come round the screen to see? When I told you the worst outlaw in the forest would not dare to look in on you, I was not speaking ofthem. They stick at nothing, commonly.”
“If he had,” said Ermine quietly, “the Lord would have known how to protect me. Was I to leave a troubled soul with the blessed truth untold, because harm to my earthly life might arise thereby?”
“But, my dear, you don’t think he’ll be the better?”
“If he be not, the guilt will not rest on my head.”
The dark deepened, and the visitors seemed to have done coming. Haldane cooked a rabbit for supper for herself and Ermine, not forgetting Gib. She had bolted the door for the night, and was fastening the wooden shutter which served for a window, when a single tap on the door announced a late applicant for her services. Haldane opened the tiny wicket, which enabled her to speak without further unbarring when she found it convenient.
“Folks should come in the day,” she said.
“Didn’t dare!” answered a low whisper, apparently in the voice of a young man. “Can you find lost things?”
“That depends on the planets,” replied Haldane mysteriously.
“But can’t you rule the planets?”
“No; they rule me, and you too. However, come within, and I will see what I can do for you.”
Unbarring the door, she admitted a muffled man, whose face was almost covered by a woollen kerchief evidently arranged for that purpose.
“What have you lost?” asked the Wise Woman.
“The one I loved best,” was the unexpected answer.
“Man, woman, or child?”
“A maiden, who went forth the morrow of Saint Lucian, by the East Gate of Oxford, on the Dorchester road. If you can, tell me if she be living, and where to seek her.”
Haldane made a pretence of scattering a powder on the dying embers of her wood-fire. (Note 1.)
“The charm will work quicker,” she said, “if I know the name of the maiden.”
“Ermine.”
Haldane professed to peer into the embers.
“She is a foreigner,” she remarked.
“Ay, you have her.”
“A maiden with fair hair, a pale soft face, blue eyes, and a clear, gentle voice.”
“That’s it!—where is she?”
“She is still alive.”
“Thanks be to all the saints! Where must I go to find her?”
“The answer is, Stay where you are.”
“Stay! I cannot stay. I must find and succour her.”
“Does she return your affection?”
“That’s more than I can say. I’ve never seen any reason to think so.”
“But you love her?”
“I would have died for her!” said the young man, with an earnest ring in his voice. “I have perilled my life, and the priests say, my soul. All this day have I been searching along the Dorchester way, and have found every one of them but two—her, and one other. I did my best, too, to save her and hers before the blow fell.”
“What would you do, if you found her?”
“Take her away to a safe place, if she would let me, and guard her there at the risk of my life—at the cost, if need be.”
“The maid whom you seek,” said Haldane, after a further examination of the charred sticks on the hearth, “is a pious and devout maiden; has your life been hitherto fit to mate with such?”
“Whatever I have been,” was the reply, “I would give her no cause for regret hereafter. A man who has suffered as I have has no mind left for trifling. She should do what she would with me.”
Haldane seemed to hesitate whether she should give further information or not.
“Can’t you trust me?” asked the young man sorrowfully. “I have done ill deeds in my life, but one thing I can say boldly,—I never yet told a lie. Oh, tell me where to go, if my love yet lives? Can’t you trust me?”
“I can,” said a voice which was not Haldane’s. “I can, Stephen.”
Stephen stared round the hut as if the evidence of his ears were totally untrustworthy. Haldane touched him on the shoulder with a smile.
“Come!” she said.
The next minute Stephen was kneeling beside Ermine, covering her hand with kisses, and pouring upon her all the sweetest and softest epithets which could be uttered.
“They are all gone, sweet heart,” he said, in answer to her earnest queries. “And the priests may say what they will, but I believe they are in Heaven.”
“But that other, Stephen? You said, me and one other. One of the men, I suppose?”
“That other,” said Stephen gently, “that other, dear, is Rudolph.”
“What can have become of him?”
“He may have strayed, or run into some cottage. That I cannot find him may mean that he is alive.”
“Or that he died early enough to be buried,” she said sadly.
“The good Lord would look to the child,” said Haldane unexpectedly. “He is either safe with Him, or He will tell you some day what has become of Him.”
“You’re a queer witch!” said Stephen, looking at her with some surprise.
“I’m not a witch at all. I’m only a harmless old woman who deals in herbs and such like, but folks make me out worse than I am. And when every body looks on you as black, it’s not so easy to keep white. If others shrink from naming God to you, you get to be shy of it too. Men and women have more influence over each other than they think. For years and years I’ve felt as if my soul was locked up in the dark, and could not get out: but this girl, that I took in because she needed bodily help, has given me better help than ever I gave her—she has unlocked the door, and let the light in on my poor smothered soul. Now, young man, if you’ll take an old woman’s counsel—old women are mostly despised, but they know a thing or two, for all that—you’ll just let the maid alone a while. She couldn’t be safer than she is here; and she’d best not venture forth of the doors till her hurts are healed, and the noise and talk has died away. Do you love her well enough to deny yourself for her good? That’s the test of real love, and there are not many who will stand it.”
“Tell me what you would have me do, and I’ll see,” answered Stephen with a smile.
“Can you stay away for a month or two?”
“Well, that’s ill hearing. But I reckon I can, if it is to do any good to Ermine.”
“If you keep coming here,” resumed the shrewd old woman, “folks will begin to ask why. And if they find out why, it won’t be good for you or Ermine either. Go home and look after your usual business, and be as like your usual self as you can. The talk will soon be silenced if no fuel be put to it. And don’t tell your own mother what you have found.”
“I’ve no temptation to do that,” answered Stephen gravely. “My mother has been under the mould this many a year.”
“Well, beware of any friend who tries to ferret it out of you—ay, and of the friends who don’t try. Sometimes they are the more treacherous of the two. Let me know where you live, and if you are wanted I will send for you. Do you see this ball of grey wool? If any person puts that into your hand, whenever and however, come here as quick as you can. Till then, keep away.”
“Good lack! But you won’t keep me long away?”
“I shall think of her, not of you,” replied Haldane shortly. “And the more you resent that, the less you love.”
After a moment’s struggle with his own thoughts, Stephen said, “You’re right, Mother. I’ll stay away till you send for me.”
“Those are the words of a true man,” said Haldane, “if you have strength to abide by them. Remember, the test of love is not sweet words, but self-sacrifice; and the test of truth is not bold words, but patient endurance.”
“I’m not like to forget it. You bade me tell you where I live? I am one of the watchmen in the Castle of Oxford; but I am to be found most days from eleven to four on duty at the Osney Gate of the Castle. Only, I pray you to say to whomsoever you make your messenger, that my brother’s wife—he is porter at the chief portal—is not to be trusted. She has a tongue as long as the way from here to Oxford, and curiosity equal to our mother Eve’s or greater. Put yon ball of wool inherhand, and she’d never take a wink of sleep till she knew all about it.”
“I trust no man till I have seen him, and no woman till I have seen through her,” said Haldane.
“Well, she’s as easy to see through as a church window. Ermine knows her. If you must needs trust any one, my cousin Derette is safe; she is in Saint John’s anchorhold. But I’d rather not say too much of other folks.”
“O Stephen, Mother Isel!”
“Aunt Isel would never mean you a bit of harm, dear heart, I know that. But she might let something out that she did not mean; and if a pair of sharp ears were in the way, it would be quite as well she had not the chance. She has carried a sore heart for you all these four months, Ermine; and she cried like a baby over your casting forth. But Uncle Manning and Haimet were as hard as stones. Flemild cried a little too, but not like Aunt Isel. As to Anania, nothing comes amiss to her that can be sown to come up talk. If an earthquake were to swallow one of her children, I do believe she’d only think what a fine thing it was for a gossip.”
“I hope she’s not quite so bad as that, Stephen.”
“Hope on, sweet heart, and farewell. Here’s Mother Haldane on thorns to get rid of me—that I can see. Now, Mother, what shall I pay you for your help, for right good it has been?”
Haldane laid her hand on Stephen’s, which was beginning to unfasten his purse—a bag carried on the left side, under the girdle.
“Pay me,” she said, “in care for Ermine.”
“There’s plenty of that coin,” answered Stephen, smiling, as he withdrew his hand. “You’ll look to your half of the bargain, Mother, and trust me to remember mine.”
Note 1. The ordinary fire at this time was of wood. Charcoal, the superior class of fuel, cost from 5 shillings to 10 shillings per ton (modern value from six to twelve guineas).