Chapter Four.Baby.A very quiet life was led by Avice and Bertha. The house work was done by the two in the early morning—cleaning, washing, baking, churning, and brewing, as they were severally needed; and in the afternoon they sat down to their work, enlivened either by singing or conversation. Sometimes both were silent, and when that was the case, unknown to Avice, Bertha was generally watching her features, and trying to read their meaning. At length, one evening after a long silence, she suddenly broke the stillness with a blunt question.“Aunt, I wish you would tell me what you are thinking of when you look so.”“How do I look, Bertha?”“As if you were looking at something which nobody could see but yourself. Sometimes it seems to be something pretty, and sometimes something shocking; but oftener than either, something just a little sad, and yet as if there were pleasantness about it. I don’t know exactly how to describe it.”“That will do. When a woman comes to fifty years, little Bertha, there are plenty of things in the past of her life, which nobody can see who did not go through them with her. And often those who did so cannot see them. That will leave a scar upon one which makes not a scratch upon another.”“But of what were you thinking, Aunt, if I may know?”“That thou mayest. I fancy, when thou spakest, I was thinking—as I very often do—about my little Lady.”“Now, if Aunt Avice isverygood,” said Bertha insinuatingly, and with brightened eyes, “that means a story.”Aunt Avice smiled. “Ay, thou shalt have thy story. Only let us be sure first that all is done which need be. Cast a few more chips on the fire, and light another pine-torch; that is burnt nigh out. And see thy bodkin on the floor—careless child!”Bertha jumped up and obeyed. From one corner of the room, where lay a heap of neatly-cut faggots, she brought a handful, and threw it into the wide fire-place, which stretched across half one side of the room, and had no grate, the fire burning on the stone hearth: then from a pile of long pointed stakes of pitch pine, she brought one, lighted it, and set it in an iron frame by the fire-place made for that purpose; and lastly, she picked up from the brick floor an article of iron, about a foot in length, and nearly as thick as her little finger, which she called a bodkin, but which we should think very rude and clumsy indeed.“Hast thou heard, Bertha,” said Avice, “that when I was young, I dwelt for a season in the Castle of Windsor, and my mother was nurse to some of the children of the Lord King that then was? Brothers and sister they were of our Lord King Edward that reigns now.”Bertha’s eyes brightened. She liked, as all girls do, to hear a story which had to do with great people.“No, Aunt Avice, I never knew that. Won’t you tell me all about it?”So Avice began and told her what we know already—how the Bishop had recommended Agnes to the Queen, and all about the journey, and the Castle, and the Queen herself. Then she went on to tell the rest of the story.“We lived nigh five years,” said Avice, “in the Castle of Windsor—until the Lord Richard was dead, and the Lord William was nearly four years old. Then the Lady Queen removed to the royal Palace of Westminster, for the Lord King was gone over seas, and she with Earl Richard his brother was left to keep England. It was in August, the year of our Lord 1253, at we took up our abode in Thorney Island, where the Palace of Westminster stands. It is a marshy place—not over healthy, some folks say; but I never was ill while we dwelt there. And it was there, on Saint Katherine’s Day”—which is the 25th of November—“that our little Lady was born. Her royal mother named her Katherine, after the blessed saint. She was the loveliest babe that eye could rest on, and she was christened with great pomp. And on Saint Edward’s Day, when the Lady Queen was purified”—namely, churched—“there was such a feast as I never saw again while I dwelt with her. The provisions brought in for that feast were fourteen wild boars, twenty-four swans, one hundred and thirty-five rabbits, two hundred and fifty partridges, sixteen hundred and fifty fowls, fifty hares, two hundred and fifty wild ducks, thirty-six geese, and sixty-one thousand eggs.”“Only think!” cried Bertha. “Did you get some, Aunt?”“Surely I did, child. The Lady Queen, I told thee, was then keeper of England, for the Lord King was away across the seas; and good provision she made. Truly, she was free-handed enough at spending. Would she had been as just in the way she came by her money!”“Why, Aunt, what mean you?” asked Bertha, when Avice expressed her wish that Queen Eleanor had been as just in gaining money as she was liberal in spending it.“Why, child, taxes came heavy in those days. When the Lord King needed money, he sent home to his treasurer, and it was had as he could get it—sometimes by selling up divers rich folks, or by levying a good sum from the Jews, or any way man could; not always by equal tenths or fifteenths, as now, which comes not nigh so heavy on one or two when it is equally meted out to all. But never was there king like our late Lord King Henry (whom God pardon) for squeezing money out of his poor subjects. Yet old folks did use to say his father King John was as ill or worse.”Taxes, in those days, were a very different thing from what they are now, and were far more at the mere pleasure of the King, not only as to the collecting of them, but as to the spending. Ignorant people fancy that this is the case still; but it is not so. Queen Victoria has no money from the taxes for her private spending. When she became Queen, she gave up all the land belonging to her as Queen, on condition that her daughters should be portioned, and that she should receive a certain sum of money every year, of less value than the land she gave up; so that it would be fraud and breach of trust in the people if they did not keep their word to pay the sum agreed on to the Queen. There is so much misunderstanding on this point that it is worth while to mention it.“Then were the King and Queen—” Bertha began.Avice answered the half-asked question. “They were like other folks, child. They liked their own way, and tried to get it. And they liked fine clothes, and great feasts, and plenty of company, and so forth; so they spent their money that way. I’ll not say they were bad folks, though they did some bad things they were folks that only thought what they liked, and did it; and folks that do that are sure to bring sorrow to themselves and others too, whether they be kings and queens or cooks and haymakers. The kings and queens can do it on a larger scale; that is all the difference. There are few enough that think what God likes, as holy Bishop Robert did, and like to do His will better than their own; those that do scatter happiness around them, as the other sort scatter misery.“Well, after a while, the Lady Queen left England, to join the Lord King across seas; but before she went, she took our little Lady down to the Castle of Windsor to the rest of the King’s children. There was first the Lady Beatrice, who was a maiden of twelve years; and the Lord Edmund, a very pretty little boy of nine; and the Lord William, who was but four; and there were also with them other children of different ages that were brought up with them; but only one was near our little Lady’s age, or had much to do with her. That was Alianora de Montfort, daughter of Earl Simon of Leicester, that bold baron that headed the lords against the King; and her mother was the King’s own sister, the Lady Alianora. She was fifteen months older than our little Lady, and being youngest of all, the two used to play together. A sweet child she was, too; but not like my own little Lady—there never was a child like her.”“What was she like, Aunt?”“Tell me what the angels are like in Heaven, and thou shalt hear then. She is an angel now—she hath been one these three-and-twenty years. But methinks there can have been little to change in her face when she blossomed into a cherub, and the wings would unfold themselves from her as by nature. Never a child like her!—no, there never was one. She had bright, dark eyes, wonderful eyes—eyes that her whole soul shone in, and that took in everything which passed. She spoke with her eyes; she had no other way. The souls of other children came out of their lips; but she had not spent many months in this lower world, before we saw with bitter apprehension and deep sorrow that God had sealed her sweet lips with eternal silence. She saw all; she heard nothing; she could never speak. My darling was deaf and dumb.”“O Aunt Avice!”“Ay, verily at times I wondered if she were indeed an angel that God had sent down to earth, for whose pure lips our English was too rough, and our French too rude, and who could only speak the tongue they speak in Heaven. She went back but whence she came; we were not fit company for her. Methinks she was sent to let our earthbound hearts have one glimpse of that upper world; and when her work was done, her Father sent for her back home.“Though our little Lady could never speak, yet long before we discovered that, we found how lively, and earnest, and intelligent she was. As I told thee, she talked with her eyes. Nothing could be done in her presence but she must see and know all about it. A little pull at my gown would tell me she was there; and then I turned to see the bright eager eyes looking into mine, and asking me as plainly as eyes could ask to let her know all about it. She would never rest till she knew what she wanted. Ay me, those eager eyes look into angels’ faces now, and maybe into the face of God upon the throne.”“But, Aunt, how could she understand, if she could not hear?”“God told her somehow, child. He taught her, not we. We did our best, truly; but our best would have been a poor business, if He had not taken her in hand. Many a time, before I had finished trying to explain something to her, that quick little nod would come which meant, ‘I understand.’ Then she had certain signs for different things. She made those herself; we never taught them to her. She stroked what she liked, as man would stroke a dog; when she disliked anything, she made a feint of throwing her open hand out from her, as though she were pushing it away. She had odd little ways of indicating different persons, by something in them which struck her. Master Russell, the Queen’s clerk, and keeper of the royal children, used often to have a sprig of mint or thyme in his lips as he went about; her sign for him was a bit of stick or thread between her lips. For the priest, she tolled a bell. For the Lady Beatrice, her sister, who had a little airy way of putting her head on one side when anything vexed her, and my Lord Henry de Lacy, who pouted if he were cross (which he was pretty often)—my little Lady imitated them exactly. The Lady Alianora flourished her hands when she spoke; that was the sign for her. For the Lord King, her father, whose left eyelid drooped over his eye, she pulled her own down. She had some such sign for everybody. She noticed everything.”“Could she not say one word, Aunt?”“Yes, she could say three. Verily, sometimes I marvelled if she might not have been taught more; but we knew not how, and how she got hold of those three we could never tell.”“What were they?”“They were, ‘up,’ ‘who,’ and ‘poor.’”“Well, she could not do much with those.”“Could she not! ‘Who’ asked all her questions. It answered for who, what, where, when, how, and why. She went on saying it until we understood and replied to the sense in which she meant it. ‘Poor’ was the word of emotion; it signified ‘I pity you,’ ‘I love you,’ ‘I am sorry,’ and ‘Forgive me.’ And sometimes it meant, ‘Forgive him,’ or ‘Don’t you feel sorry for her?’ And I think ‘up’ served for everything else.”“Aunt,” said Bertha softly, “how did you teach the little Lady to pray? She could tell her beads, I suppose; but would she know what they meant?”For Bertha, like everybody else at that time, thought it necessary to keep count of her prayers. Prayer, in her eyes, was not so much communion with God, as it was a kind of charm which in some unaccountable way brought you good luck.“Beads would have meant nothing to her but toys,” was Avice’s reply. “The Lady de la Mothe taught her the holy sign”—by which Avice meant the cross—“and led her to the image of blessed Mary, that she might do it before her. But I do not think she ever properly understood that She seemed only to have an idea that it was something she must do when she saw an image; and she did it to the statue of the Lady Queen in the great hall. We could not make her understand that one image was not the same thing as another image. But I fancy she had some idea—strange and dim it might be—of what we meant when we knelt and put our hands together and looked up. I know she did it very often, without telling—always at night, before she slept. But it was strange that she never went to the holy images at that time; she always seemed to go away from them, and kneel down in a corner. And in her last illness, several times, coming into the chamber, I found her lying with her hands folded in prayer, and her eyes lifted up to Heaven. Perhaps God Himself told her how to speak to Him. One of the strangest things of all was when the little Lord William died; she was nearly three years old then. She had been very fond of her little brother; he was nearest her age of all her brothers and sisters, though he was almost four years older than herself. She came to me sobbing bitterly, and with her little cry of ‘Who? who?’ I took it to mean ‘What has happened to him?’ and I was completely puzzled how to explain it to her. But all at once, while I was beating my brains to think what I could say that would make her comprehend it, she told me herself what I could not tell her. Making the sign for the little Lord who was dead, she laid her headupon her hand, and closed her eyes; and then all at once, with a peculiar grace that I never saw in any child but herself, she lifted her arms, fluttering her fingers like a bird flaps its wings, and gazing up into the sky, while she said, ‘Up! up!’ in a kind of rapture. And I could only smile and bow my head to the truth which God had told her.” (See Note 1.)“But how could she know it?” asked astonished Bertha.Avice shook her head. “I cannot explain it; I can only tell what happened. She was always very tender-hearted; she never could bear to see any quarrelling, or cruelty, or injustice. If two of the children strove together, our little Lady would run to them with a face of deep distress, and take a hand of each and draw them together, as though she were begging them to be friends; and if she could not get them to kiss each other, she would kiss first one and then the other. I missed her one day, and, after hunting a long while, I found her in the gallery before a fresco of our Lord upon the Cross. She was stroking it and kissing it, with tears in her eyes; and she turned to me saying, ‘Poor! poor!’ Her eyes always filled with tears when she saw the crucifix. The moon used to interest her exceedingly; she would sit and watch it, and kiss her hand to it. But, dear me! how the time must be getting on! Jump up, Bertha, and prepare supper.”Bertha folded up her work and put it aside. She drew one of the high stools between her aunt and herself, and put out upon it the two wooden trenchers and two tin mugs. Going to a corner cupboard, Bertha brought out a few cakes of black bread, which she set on a smaller stool beside the other; and then, lifting a pan upon the fire, she threw into it some pieces of mutton fat. As soon as these were melted, Bertha broke four eggs into them, stirring this indigestible mixture with a wooden thible—an article of which my northern readers will not require a description, but the southern must be told that it is a long flat instrument with which porridge is stirred. For the eggs were not merely fried in the fat, but were beaten up with it, the dish when finished bearing the name of franche-mule. A sprig or two of dried herbs were then shred into the pan, and the whole poured out, half on each of the trenchers. It is more than possible that the extraordinarily rich, incongruous, indigestible dishes wherein our fathers delighted, may have something to do with the weaker digestions of their children. The tin mugs were filled with weak ale from a barrel which stood under the ladder. It was an oddity at that time to drink water.When supper was finished, Bertha washed the mugs and scraped the trenchers clean (water never touched those), putting them back in their places. She had scarcely ended when a tap was heard at the door.“Step in, Hildith,” said Bertha, as she opened it. “Christ give thee a good even!”“The like to thee,” was the answer, as a rather worn-looking woman came in. “Mistress Avice, your servant. Pray you, would you lend me the loan of a tinder-box? I am but now come home from work, and am that weary I may scarce move; and yon careless Jaket hath let the fire out, and I must needs kindle the same again ere I may dress supper for the children.”It was no wonder if Hildith looked worn out, or if she could not afford a tinder-box. That precious article cost a penny, and her wages were fifteen pence a year. If we do a sum to find out what that would be now, when money is much more plentiful, we shall find that Hildith’s wages come to twenty-two shillings and sixpence, and the tinder-box was worth eighteen-pence. We should fancy that nobody could live on such a sum. But we must remember two things: first, they then did a great deal for themselves which we pay for; they spun and wove their own linen and woollen, did their own washing, brewed their own ale and cider, made their own butter and cheese, and physicked themselves with herbs. Secondly, prices were very much lower as respected the necessaries of life; bread was four loaves, or cakes, for a penny, of the very best quality; a lamb or a goose cost fourpence, eight chickens were sold for fivepence, and twenty-four eggs for a penny. Clothing stuffs were dear, but then (as people sometimes say) they wore “for everlasting,” and ladies of rank would send half-worn gowns to one another as very handsome presents. Fourpence was a good price to give for a pair of shoes, and a halfpenny a day for food was a liberal allowance.“Any news to-night, Hildith?” asked Avice, as she handed her neighbour the tinder-box.“Well, nay; without you call it news that sheriffs man brought word this morrow that the Lord King had granted the half of her goods to old Barnaba o’ the Lichgate.”“She that was a Jew, and was baptised at Whitsuntide? I am glad to hear that.”“Ay, she. I am not o’er sorry; she is a good neighbour, Jew though she be.”“Then I reckon she will tarry here, and not go to dwell in the House of Converts in London town?”“Marry, she will so, if she have any wisdom teeth left. I would not like to be carried away from all I know, up to yon big town, though they do say the houses be made o’ gold and silver.”Avice smiled, for she knew better.“Nay, Hildith, London town is built of brick and stone like Lincoln.”“Is it, now? I always heard it was made o’ gold. But aren’t there a vast sight o’ folk there? nigh upon ten thousand?”“Ay, and more.”“However do they get victuals for them all?”“I got mine when I lived there,” said Avice, laughing.“And don’t they burn sea-coal?”“They did once; it is forbidden now.”“Dirty, poisonous stuff! I wouldn’t touch it. Well, good-even. Shut the door quick, Bertha, and don’t watch me out o’ sight; ’tis the unluckiest thing man can do.”And Bertha believed it, as she showed by shutting the door.Old Barnaba, the Jewess, had been dealt with tenderly. In those days, if a Jew were baptised, he forfeited all he had to the King. Most unaccountable it is that any Christian country should have let such a law exist for an hour! These destitute Jews, however, were provided for in the House of Converts, in London, which stood at the bottom of Chancery Lane, between it and Saint Dunstan’s Church.It was bed-time soon after. Avice put away her distaff, Bertha folded up her sewing, and they mounted the ladder. This was about seven o’clock, which was then as late an hour as it was thought that respectable people ought to be about. But by two o’clock the next morning, Bertha was sweeping the kitchen, and Avice carding flax in the corner. They did not trouble themselves about breakfast; it was an unknown luxury, except for people who were very old or very delicate. Two meals a day were the rule: dinner, at nine in the morning: supper, at three in the afternoon. In those days they lived in a far harder and less comfortable way than we do, and they had generally better health. But, it must be admitted, they did not live nearly so long, and the infant mortality among them was very great.Morning was no time for story-telling. The rooms had to be swept, the bread to be baked, the clothes to be washed, the pigs and chickens to be fed. Moreover, to-day was the first day of the Michaelmas fair, and things must be bought in to last till Christmas. The active work was finished by about seven o’clock. Dinner was now got ready. It consisted of two bowls of broth, then boiled dumplings, and lastly some stewed giblets. Having made things tidy, our friends now tied on woollen hoods, and each taking down from the rafter-hooks a capacious basket, they went forth to do their shopping.Note 1. The peculiar ways attributed to the little Princess, and especially this incident, are taken from an account of a real deaf and dumb child, published many years ago. There was certainly something about the Princess which her attendants considered wonderful and beautiful.
A very quiet life was led by Avice and Bertha. The house work was done by the two in the early morning—cleaning, washing, baking, churning, and brewing, as they were severally needed; and in the afternoon they sat down to their work, enlivened either by singing or conversation. Sometimes both were silent, and when that was the case, unknown to Avice, Bertha was generally watching her features, and trying to read their meaning. At length, one evening after a long silence, she suddenly broke the stillness with a blunt question.
“Aunt, I wish you would tell me what you are thinking of when you look so.”
“How do I look, Bertha?”
“As if you were looking at something which nobody could see but yourself. Sometimes it seems to be something pretty, and sometimes something shocking; but oftener than either, something just a little sad, and yet as if there were pleasantness about it. I don’t know exactly how to describe it.”
“That will do. When a woman comes to fifty years, little Bertha, there are plenty of things in the past of her life, which nobody can see who did not go through them with her. And often those who did so cannot see them. That will leave a scar upon one which makes not a scratch upon another.”
“But of what were you thinking, Aunt, if I may know?”
“That thou mayest. I fancy, when thou spakest, I was thinking—as I very often do—about my little Lady.”
“Now, if Aunt Avice isverygood,” said Bertha insinuatingly, and with brightened eyes, “that means a story.”
Aunt Avice smiled. “Ay, thou shalt have thy story. Only let us be sure first that all is done which need be. Cast a few more chips on the fire, and light another pine-torch; that is burnt nigh out. And see thy bodkin on the floor—careless child!”
Bertha jumped up and obeyed. From one corner of the room, where lay a heap of neatly-cut faggots, she brought a handful, and threw it into the wide fire-place, which stretched across half one side of the room, and had no grate, the fire burning on the stone hearth: then from a pile of long pointed stakes of pitch pine, she brought one, lighted it, and set it in an iron frame by the fire-place made for that purpose; and lastly, she picked up from the brick floor an article of iron, about a foot in length, and nearly as thick as her little finger, which she called a bodkin, but which we should think very rude and clumsy indeed.
“Hast thou heard, Bertha,” said Avice, “that when I was young, I dwelt for a season in the Castle of Windsor, and my mother was nurse to some of the children of the Lord King that then was? Brothers and sister they were of our Lord King Edward that reigns now.”
Bertha’s eyes brightened. She liked, as all girls do, to hear a story which had to do with great people.
“No, Aunt Avice, I never knew that. Won’t you tell me all about it?”
So Avice began and told her what we know already—how the Bishop had recommended Agnes to the Queen, and all about the journey, and the Castle, and the Queen herself. Then she went on to tell the rest of the story.
“We lived nigh five years,” said Avice, “in the Castle of Windsor—until the Lord Richard was dead, and the Lord William was nearly four years old. Then the Lady Queen removed to the royal Palace of Westminster, for the Lord King was gone over seas, and she with Earl Richard his brother was left to keep England. It was in August, the year of our Lord 1253, at we took up our abode in Thorney Island, where the Palace of Westminster stands. It is a marshy place—not over healthy, some folks say; but I never was ill while we dwelt there. And it was there, on Saint Katherine’s Day”—which is the 25th of November—“that our little Lady was born. Her royal mother named her Katherine, after the blessed saint. She was the loveliest babe that eye could rest on, and she was christened with great pomp. And on Saint Edward’s Day, when the Lady Queen was purified”—namely, churched—“there was such a feast as I never saw again while I dwelt with her. The provisions brought in for that feast were fourteen wild boars, twenty-four swans, one hundred and thirty-five rabbits, two hundred and fifty partridges, sixteen hundred and fifty fowls, fifty hares, two hundred and fifty wild ducks, thirty-six geese, and sixty-one thousand eggs.”
“Only think!” cried Bertha. “Did you get some, Aunt?”
“Surely I did, child. The Lady Queen, I told thee, was then keeper of England, for the Lord King was away across the seas; and good provision she made. Truly, she was free-handed enough at spending. Would she had been as just in the way she came by her money!”
“Why, Aunt, what mean you?” asked Bertha, when Avice expressed her wish that Queen Eleanor had been as just in gaining money as she was liberal in spending it.
“Why, child, taxes came heavy in those days. When the Lord King needed money, he sent home to his treasurer, and it was had as he could get it—sometimes by selling up divers rich folks, or by levying a good sum from the Jews, or any way man could; not always by equal tenths or fifteenths, as now, which comes not nigh so heavy on one or two when it is equally meted out to all. But never was there king like our late Lord King Henry (whom God pardon) for squeezing money out of his poor subjects. Yet old folks did use to say his father King John was as ill or worse.”
Taxes, in those days, were a very different thing from what they are now, and were far more at the mere pleasure of the King, not only as to the collecting of them, but as to the spending. Ignorant people fancy that this is the case still; but it is not so. Queen Victoria has no money from the taxes for her private spending. When she became Queen, she gave up all the land belonging to her as Queen, on condition that her daughters should be portioned, and that she should receive a certain sum of money every year, of less value than the land she gave up; so that it would be fraud and breach of trust in the people if they did not keep their word to pay the sum agreed on to the Queen. There is so much misunderstanding on this point that it is worth while to mention it.
“Then were the King and Queen—” Bertha began.
Avice answered the half-asked question. “They were like other folks, child. They liked their own way, and tried to get it. And they liked fine clothes, and great feasts, and plenty of company, and so forth; so they spent their money that way. I’ll not say they were bad folks, though they did some bad things they were folks that only thought what they liked, and did it; and folks that do that are sure to bring sorrow to themselves and others too, whether they be kings and queens or cooks and haymakers. The kings and queens can do it on a larger scale; that is all the difference. There are few enough that think what God likes, as holy Bishop Robert did, and like to do His will better than their own; those that do scatter happiness around them, as the other sort scatter misery.
“Well, after a while, the Lady Queen left England, to join the Lord King across seas; but before she went, she took our little Lady down to the Castle of Windsor to the rest of the King’s children. There was first the Lady Beatrice, who was a maiden of twelve years; and the Lord Edmund, a very pretty little boy of nine; and the Lord William, who was but four; and there were also with them other children of different ages that were brought up with them; but only one was near our little Lady’s age, or had much to do with her. That was Alianora de Montfort, daughter of Earl Simon of Leicester, that bold baron that headed the lords against the King; and her mother was the King’s own sister, the Lady Alianora. She was fifteen months older than our little Lady, and being youngest of all, the two used to play together. A sweet child she was, too; but not like my own little Lady—there never was a child like her.”
“What was she like, Aunt?”
“Tell me what the angels are like in Heaven, and thou shalt hear then. She is an angel now—she hath been one these three-and-twenty years. But methinks there can have been little to change in her face when she blossomed into a cherub, and the wings would unfold themselves from her as by nature. Never a child like her!—no, there never was one. She had bright, dark eyes, wonderful eyes—eyes that her whole soul shone in, and that took in everything which passed. She spoke with her eyes; she had no other way. The souls of other children came out of their lips; but she had not spent many months in this lower world, before we saw with bitter apprehension and deep sorrow that God had sealed her sweet lips with eternal silence. She saw all; she heard nothing; she could never speak. My darling was deaf and dumb.”
“O Aunt Avice!”
“Ay, verily at times I wondered if she were indeed an angel that God had sent down to earth, for whose pure lips our English was too rough, and our French too rude, and who could only speak the tongue they speak in Heaven. She went back but whence she came; we were not fit company for her. Methinks she was sent to let our earthbound hearts have one glimpse of that upper world; and when her work was done, her Father sent for her back home.
“Though our little Lady could never speak, yet long before we discovered that, we found how lively, and earnest, and intelligent she was. As I told thee, she talked with her eyes. Nothing could be done in her presence but she must see and know all about it. A little pull at my gown would tell me she was there; and then I turned to see the bright eager eyes looking into mine, and asking me as plainly as eyes could ask to let her know all about it. She would never rest till she knew what she wanted. Ay me, those eager eyes look into angels’ faces now, and maybe into the face of God upon the throne.”
“But, Aunt, how could she understand, if she could not hear?”
“God told her somehow, child. He taught her, not we. We did our best, truly; but our best would have been a poor business, if He had not taken her in hand. Many a time, before I had finished trying to explain something to her, that quick little nod would come which meant, ‘I understand.’ Then she had certain signs for different things. She made those herself; we never taught them to her. She stroked what she liked, as man would stroke a dog; when she disliked anything, she made a feint of throwing her open hand out from her, as though she were pushing it away. She had odd little ways of indicating different persons, by something in them which struck her. Master Russell, the Queen’s clerk, and keeper of the royal children, used often to have a sprig of mint or thyme in his lips as he went about; her sign for him was a bit of stick or thread between her lips. For the priest, she tolled a bell. For the Lady Beatrice, her sister, who had a little airy way of putting her head on one side when anything vexed her, and my Lord Henry de Lacy, who pouted if he were cross (which he was pretty often)—my little Lady imitated them exactly. The Lady Alianora flourished her hands when she spoke; that was the sign for her. For the Lord King, her father, whose left eyelid drooped over his eye, she pulled her own down. She had some such sign for everybody. She noticed everything.”
“Could she not say one word, Aunt?”
“Yes, she could say three. Verily, sometimes I marvelled if she might not have been taught more; but we knew not how, and how she got hold of those three we could never tell.”
“What were they?”
“They were, ‘up,’ ‘who,’ and ‘poor.’”
“Well, she could not do much with those.”
“Could she not! ‘Who’ asked all her questions. It answered for who, what, where, when, how, and why. She went on saying it until we understood and replied to the sense in which she meant it. ‘Poor’ was the word of emotion; it signified ‘I pity you,’ ‘I love you,’ ‘I am sorry,’ and ‘Forgive me.’ And sometimes it meant, ‘Forgive him,’ or ‘Don’t you feel sorry for her?’ And I think ‘up’ served for everything else.”
“Aunt,” said Bertha softly, “how did you teach the little Lady to pray? She could tell her beads, I suppose; but would she know what they meant?”
For Bertha, like everybody else at that time, thought it necessary to keep count of her prayers. Prayer, in her eyes, was not so much communion with God, as it was a kind of charm which in some unaccountable way brought you good luck.
“Beads would have meant nothing to her but toys,” was Avice’s reply. “The Lady de la Mothe taught her the holy sign”—by which Avice meant the cross—“and led her to the image of blessed Mary, that she might do it before her. But I do not think she ever properly understood that She seemed only to have an idea that it was something she must do when she saw an image; and she did it to the statue of the Lady Queen in the great hall. We could not make her understand that one image was not the same thing as another image. But I fancy she had some idea—strange and dim it might be—of what we meant when we knelt and put our hands together and looked up. I know she did it very often, without telling—always at night, before she slept. But it was strange that she never went to the holy images at that time; she always seemed to go away from them, and kneel down in a corner. And in her last illness, several times, coming into the chamber, I found her lying with her hands folded in prayer, and her eyes lifted up to Heaven. Perhaps God Himself told her how to speak to Him. One of the strangest things of all was when the little Lord William died; she was nearly three years old then. She had been very fond of her little brother; he was nearest her age of all her brothers and sisters, though he was almost four years older than herself. She came to me sobbing bitterly, and with her little cry of ‘Who? who?’ I took it to mean ‘What has happened to him?’ and I was completely puzzled how to explain it to her. But all at once, while I was beating my brains to think what I could say that would make her comprehend it, she told me herself what I could not tell her. Making the sign for the little Lord who was dead, she laid her headupon her hand, and closed her eyes; and then all at once, with a peculiar grace that I never saw in any child but herself, she lifted her arms, fluttering her fingers like a bird flaps its wings, and gazing up into the sky, while she said, ‘Up! up!’ in a kind of rapture. And I could only smile and bow my head to the truth which God had told her.” (See Note 1.)
“But how could she know it?” asked astonished Bertha.
Avice shook her head. “I cannot explain it; I can only tell what happened. She was always very tender-hearted; she never could bear to see any quarrelling, or cruelty, or injustice. If two of the children strove together, our little Lady would run to them with a face of deep distress, and take a hand of each and draw them together, as though she were begging them to be friends; and if she could not get them to kiss each other, she would kiss first one and then the other. I missed her one day, and, after hunting a long while, I found her in the gallery before a fresco of our Lord upon the Cross. She was stroking it and kissing it, with tears in her eyes; and she turned to me saying, ‘Poor! poor!’ Her eyes always filled with tears when she saw the crucifix. The moon used to interest her exceedingly; she would sit and watch it, and kiss her hand to it. But, dear me! how the time must be getting on! Jump up, Bertha, and prepare supper.”
Bertha folded up her work and put it aside. She drew one of the high stools between her aunt and herself, and put out upon it the two wooden trenchers and two tin mugs. Going to a corner cupboard, Bertha brought out a few cakes of black bread, which she set on a smaller stool beside the other; and then, lifting a pan upon the fire, she threw into it some pieces of mutton fat. As soon as these were melted, Bertha broke four eggs into them, stirring this indigestible mixture with a wooden thible—an article of which my northern readers will not require a description, but the southern must be told that it is a long flat instrument with which porridge is stirred. For the eggs were not merely fried in the fat, but were beaten up with it, the dish when finished bearing the name of franche-mule. A sprig or two of dried herbs were then shred into the pan, and the whole poured out, half on each of the trenchers. It is more than possible that the extraordinarily rich, incongruous, indigestible dishes wherein our fathers delighted, may have something to do with the weaker digestions of their children. The tin mugs were filled with weak ale from a barrel which stood under the ladder. It was an oddity at that time to drink water.
When supper was finished, Bertha washed the mugs and scraped the trenchers clean (water never touched those), putting them back in their places. She had scarcely ended when a tap was heard at the door.
“Step in, Hildith,” said Bertha, as she opened it. “Christ give thee a good even!”
“The like to thee,” was the answer, as a rather worn-looking woman came in. “Mistress Avice, your servant. Pray you, would you lend me the loan of a tinder-box? I am but now come home from work, and am that weary I may scarce move; and yon careless Jaket hath let the fire out, and I must needs kindle the same again ere I may dress supper for the children.”
It was no wonder if Hildith looked worn out, or if she could not afford a tinder-box. That precious article cost a penny, and her wages were fifteen pence a year. If we do a sum to find out what that would be now, when money is much more plentiful, we shall find that Hildith’s wages come to twenty-two shillings and sixpence, and the tinder-box was worth eighteen-pence. We should fancy that nobody could live on such a sum. But we must remember two things: first, they then did a great deal for themselves which we pay for; they spun and wove their own linen and woollen, did their own washing, brewed their own ale and cider, made their own butter and cheese, and physicked themselves with herbs. Secondly, prices were very much lower as respected the necessaries of life; bread was four loaves, or cakes, for a penny, of the very best quality; a lamb or a goose cost fourpence, eight chickens were sold for fivepence, and twenty-four eggs for a penny. Clothing stuffs were dear, but then (as people sometimes say) they wore “for everlasting,” and ladies of rank would send half-worn gowns to one another as very handsome presents. Fourpence was a good price to give for a pair of shoes, and a halfpenny a day for food was a liberal allowance.
“Any news to-night, Hildith?” asked Avice, as she handed her neighbour the tinder-box.
“Well, nay; without you call it news that sheriffs man brought word this morrow that the Lord King had granted the half of her goods to old Barnaba o’ the Lichgate.”
“She that was a Jew, and was baptised at Whitsuntide? I am glad to hear that.”
“Ay, she. I am not o’er sorry; she is a good neighbour, Jew though she be.”
“Then I reckon she will tarry here, and not go to dwell in the House of Converts in London town?”
“Marry, she will so, if she have any wisdom teeth left. I would not like to be carried away from all I know, up to yon big town, though they do say the houses be made o’ gold and silver.”
Avice smiled, for she knew better.
“Nay, Hildith, London town is built of brick and stone like Lincoln.”
“Is it, now? I always heard it was made o’ gold. But aren’t there a vast sight o’ folk there? nigh upon ten thousand?”
“Ay, and more.”
“However do they get victuals for them all?”
“I got mine when I lived there,” said Avice, laughing.
“And don’t they burn sea-coal?”
“They did once; it is forbidden now.”
“Dirty, poisonous stuff! I wouldn’t touch it. Well, good-even. Shut the door quick, Bertha, and don’t watch me out o’ sight; ’tis the unluckiest thing man can do.”
And Bertha believed it, as she showed by shutting the door.
Old Barnaba, the Jewess, had been dealt with tenderly. In those days, if a Jew were baptised, he forfeited all he had to the King. Most unaccountable it is that any Christian country should have let such a law exist for an hour! These destitute Jews, however, were provided for in the House of Converts, in London, which stood at the bottom of Chancery Lane, between it and Saint Dunstan’s Church.
It was bed-time soon after. Avice put away her distaff, Bertha folded up her sewing, and they mounted the ladder. This was about seven o’clock, which was then as late an hour as it was thought that respectable people ought to be about. But by two o’clock the next morning, Bertha was sweeping the kitchen, and Avice carding flax in the corner. They did not trouble themselves about breakfast; it was an unknown luxury, except for people who were very old or very delicate. Two meals a day were the rule: dinner, at nine in the morning: supper, at three in the afternoon. In those days they lived in a far harder and less comfortable way than we do, and they had generally better health. But, it must be admitted, they did not live nearly so long, and the infant mortality among them was very great.
Morning was no time for story-telling. The rooms had to be swept, the bread to be baked, the clothes to be washed, the pigs and chickens to be fed. Moreover, to-day was the first day of the Michaelmas fair, and things must be bought in to last till Christmas. The active work was finished by about seven o’clock. Dinner was now got ready. It consisted of two bowls of broth, then boiled dumplings, and lastly some stewed giblets. Having made things tidy, our friends now tied on woollen hoods, and each taking down from the rafter-hooks a capacious basket, they went forth to do their shopping.
Note 1. The peculiar ways attributed to the little Princess, and especially this incident, are taken from an account of a real deaf and dumb child, published many years ago. There was certainly something about the Princess which her attendants considered wonderful and beautiful.
Chapter Five.The Dumb Playmates.Out into the Michaelmas fair our friends went.In these days, when fairs have quite changed their character, we cannot easily form a notion of what they once were. The fair, held in every town four times a year, was a very important matter. There were much fewer shops than now; and not only in the town, but from all the surrounding villages people flocked to the fair, to lay in food and clothes and all sorts of necessaries, enough to last till the next fair-day. They had very little fresh butcher’s meat, and very few vegetables except what they grew themselves; so they ate numbers of things salted which we have fresh. Not only salt fish and salt neat, but salt cabbage formed a great part of their diet. The consequence of all this salt food was that they suffered dreadfully from scurvy. But they did not run to the doctor, for except in rare instances there was no doctor to run to! All doctors were clergymen then, and there were very few of them. In the large towns there were apothecaries, or chemists, who often prescribed for people; and there were “wise women” who knew a good deal about herbs, and sometimes gave good medicines, along with a great deal of foolish nonsense in the way of charms and all sorts of silly fancies. At that time, ladies were taught a good deal about medicine, and a benevolent lady was often the doctor for a large neighbourhood. But we are wandering away from the Michaelmas fair, and we must come back.The fair was a very busy scene. In some places it was hard work to get along at all. The booths were set up, not in the streets but in the churchyards, the market place, and on any waste space available. And what with the noise of business, the hum of gossip, the shouts of competing sellers, and the sound of hundreds of clogs on the round paving-stones, it may be readily supposed that quiet was far away.Avice’s first business was to lay in a stock of salt meat and salt fish. Very little of either was used fresh, for it was not obtainable: and still less would have been used so far as fish is concerned, had not the law, alike of the Church and of the State, compelled it to be eaten throughout Lent, and on every Friday in the year. Little enough fish would anybody have touched then, but for that provision. Avice bought half of a salted calf, which cost a shilling; five hundred herrings, at half-a-crown; a bushel of salt, at threepence (which was dear); twenty-five stock-fish, at two shillings; a quarter of a sheep, at fourpence; a quarter of wheat, at six shillings; a quarter of oats, at five shillings; half a quarter of salt cabbage, at five shillings; and five pounds of figs, at three-halfpence a pound. This was her provision for the three months which would elapse before the Christmas fair. She then went to the drapery stalls, and laid in two hoods, for herself and Bertha, at a shilling each; ten ells of russet, to serve for two gowns, at eighteen-pence the ell; twelve ells of serge, at three-halfpence the ell; two pairs of shoes, at fourpence each. The russet was intended for their best dresses; the serge for common. Considering how very little went to make a garment, it seems likely that our ancestors wove their stuff a good deal wider than we do. Avice also laid in a few other articles of different kinds: a brass pot, which cost her 2 shillings 2 pence; five pounds of tallow, at three-halfpence a pound, and as many of wax at sixpence; wax was largely used for a variety of objects. Her last and costliest purchase she would have been better without. It was a painted and gilded image of Saint Katherine, and cost fifteen shillings. But Avice, though a good woman according to her light, had enjoyed very little light, and did not understand half so well as we do that she might go straight to God through the new and living way opened upon the cross, without the intervention of any mediator except the Lord Jesus. She thought she must pray through a saint; and she had no idea of praying unless she could see something to pray to. Her old image had lost much of its paint, and half an arm, and its nose was hopelessly damaged. Therefore, as she must have one, poor Avice thought it best to buy a new one, rather than have her old saint tinkered up. Alas for the gods or the mediators who require to be tinkered!By the time that these purchases were made, and the goods brought home, it was not far from the supper hour; and Bertha prepared that meal by boiling a dish of salt cabbage from one of the barrels. This, with black bread and ale, made their supper.The meal was just ready, and Avice had put away her carding, having finished that kind of work for the day, when a rap at the door was followed by the lifting of the latch, and the old smith put in his head.“Any room for a man, have ye?”“Plenty for you, Uncle Dan,” answered Avice heartily; and Bertha’s eyes lighted up at the sight of her father.Dan came forward and sat down on the stool which Bertha set for him.“Has it not been a charming day?” said Avice.“Ay, it’s fine weather i’ Lincoln,” was Dan’s dry answer. “Up at smithy, it’s none so bad neither—yet. Just a touch of thunder we had this morning,—a bit of a grumble i’ th’ distance like: but I’ve known worser storms a deal. Ay, I have so!”Avice quite understood what kind of storm he meant.“How do you get on without me, Father?” asked Bertha.“Well, I’ll not say I don’t miss thee, my singing bird; but I’m willing, when it’s for thy good. I’ve got—let me see—two buttons left o’ my blouse, and I think there’s one o’ my flannel shirt, but I’m none so sure. It’s rather troublesome, for sure, when there’s none o’ th’ sleeves; they keep for ever a-slippin’ up man’s arm; but I could put up wi’ that easy if there was nought more. It’s true I don’t want to pull ’em down while even comes.”“Oh, Father, let me sew you some on!” cried Bertha.“So thou shall,” said Dan. “But I’ve a bit o’ news for thee, lass. Susanna’s to be wed.”“With whom, Uncle?”“Michael, cartwright, at corner.”“Is it a good match?”“He’s got his match, and she’s got hern.”“They are well matched, then,” said Bertha, laughing.“They’re a pair,” said Dan, grimly. “He’s eagre, and she’s mustard; and they’ll none mix ill—but they’ll set folks’ throats a-fire as meddles wi’ ’em.”Eagre is the old English word for vinegar, which is just “wine-eagre.” It means anything sharp and acid.“Is Aunt Filomena pleased?” asked Avice.“She’s never pleased wi’ nothing,” was the reply of her unfortunate husband. “She give him lots o’ sauce when he first come, and he’s had another spoonful every time since. He gives it her every bit as hot—I will say that for him. His mother went by name o’ old Maud Touchup, and he doth her no disfavour. She knew how to hit folks—shedid. And Michael’s a chip o’ th’ old block.”“A little more cabbage, Uncle Dan?”“Nay, I thank thee. I must be going home, I reckon. Eh, but you’re peaceable here! I reckon man could sleep i’ this house, and not be waked up wi’ jarring and jangling. I tell thee what, Avice—when the big folks up to London town runs short o’ money, I wonder they don’t clap a bit of a tax on women’s tongues! It’d bring ’em in a tunful in a week,thatwould.”“How would you collect it, Uncle Dan?”“Nay, there thou floors me. They’d best send down a chap all over steel to th’ smithy, He’d get plucked o’ pieces else. Well, God be wi’ thee, Avice. God bless thee, Bertha, my lass. Good-night!”And Uncle Dan disappeared into the darkness. There were no street lamps then. Every man had to carry his own lantern, unless he chose to run the risk of breaking his neck over the round stones which formed the streets, or the rough ground, interspersed with holes and pits, to be found everywhere else.They now sat down to work for the rest of the evening, Avice on the settle in the corner, Bertha on one of the low stools which she brought up to the hearth.“Lack-a-day! what have I forgot!” said Avice as Bertha drew up her stool and unfolded the apron she was making. “I thought to have asked Nora Goldhue for a sprig of betony, or else purslane. ’Tis o’er late to-night, and verily I am too weary to go forth again.”“Have you bad dreams, Aunt?” asked Bertha, knowing that a sprig of either of those herbs under the pillow was believed to drive them away.“Ay, child; they have troubled me these four nights past, but last night more especially.”No wonder, after a supper on franche-mule! But it never occurred to ignorant Avice that supper and dreams could have anything to do with one another.“Shall I fetch you a laurel leaf, Aunt?” suggested Bertha.“Ay, do, child; maybe that shall change the luck. Best go ere it rain, too; and that will not be long, for I saw a black snail in the channel as we came in.”Bertha tied on her hood, and ran out to the house of the next-door neighbour, who had a laurel in her garden, to beg a few of its leaves, which were supposed to bring pleasant dreams. Having placed these under her aunt’s bolster, she sat down again to her work, and Avice resumed her interrupted story.“It was in July, 1254, when our little Lady was but eight months old, that the Lady Queen set forth to join the Lord King in Gascony. There were many ships taken up for her voyage, amongst which were theSavoy, theFalcon, and theBaroness, that was my Lord of Leicester’s ship. In the ship wherein the Lady Queen sailed, was built a special chamber for her, of polished wood, for the which three hundred planks were sent from the forest to Portsmouth. But so short was she of money, that she was compelled to bid the Treasurer to send her all the cups and basins which the King had of silver, and all gold in coin or leaf that could be found in the treasuries. Moreover, the Jews throughout England were distrained for five thousand marks, for the ransom of their bodies, and their wives and little ones, and by sale of their lands and houses. The Lady Queen took with her divers pieces of English cloth for the Lord King, seeing that French cloth is not nigh so good. Some things also she commanded for the children, who were to tarry at Windsor during her absence. Twenty-four silver spoons were made, and fifty wild animals taken for their provision in the park at Guildford. Robes were served out, furred with hare’s fur, for Edmund the King’s son and Henry de Lacy; four robes for the gentlewomen that had the care of the children; and for Richard the chaplain, Master Simon de Wycumb the keeper, and Master Godwyn the cook: these were of sendal. And there were robes furred with lamb for the King’s wards, and for John the Varlet, and Julian the Rocker, and my mother, and me thine aunt.” (See Note 1.)Both to Avice and Bertha it seemed quite a matter of course that the Jews should find the money when the King wanted silk, or the King’s children silver spoons.“But it seems to me, Aunt,” suggested Bertha, “that the Lady Queen must have spent all her money before she started.”“Oh no! the money was for the Lord King. In truth, I know not whether she paid for the other things. But I did hear that as soon as the Lord King knew she would come, and that she was bringing with her so much money and plate, he began to spend with both hands on his side of the sea. He sent at once for six cloths of gold that the Queen and Lord Edward might offer in the churches of Bordeaux when they should arrive there; he commanded to be made ready a fair jewel for Saint Edward the Martyr, and a hundred pounds of jewels for Saint Edward the King, and divers more for Saint Thomas of Canterbury, all which were offered when he and the Queen returned home in December. There came in also, for the King’s coming back, many frails of figs, raisins, dates, cinnamon, saffron, pepper, ginger, and such like; I remember seeing them unpacked in Antioch Chamber, the little chamber by the garden.”“And what did it all cost, Aunt?”“I know not, child. Maybe he never paid for those. He used to pay for such things as he offered to the holy saints; but for debts to tradesfolk and such, they took their chance. If he had money, he might pay some of them or no, at his pleasure; and if not, then of course they had to wait. Very sure am I that many a pound of musk came into the wardrobe more than was paid for. Never was such a Prince for scents. He loved musk as much as he feared lightning; and there was only one thing in all this world that he feared more, and that was Earl Simon of Leicester.”“And did the Lady Queen squander her money as much as the Lord King, Aunt Avice?”“She was every bit as bad. She always seemed to me as if a piece of her brains had never grown up along with the rest. Some folks are like that. In respect of money, she was a very child. She had not a notion how far it would go, and she never would wait to have it before she spent it. She always appeared to think it would come somehow: and so far as she was concerned, it often did. But then she never saw the homeless Jews who were sold up to furnish it, nor the ruined tradesmen who had to wait till they could not pay their own way, and were sent to prison for debt. I think she might have been sorry, if she had done. I suppose we should all be sorry, if we knew half the evil we do. Well, God pardon her!—she is a holy sister now in the priory at Amesbury. And our present Queen always pays her bills, I have heard say. Long may she live to do it!”“How old was the little Lady when her parents came back?”“She was just over a year old. I waited on her from the Castle of Windsor to the Palace at Westminster, for the Lord King desired to behold her at once. And was not he delighted with her! I doubt if any of the royal children were as dear to the hearts of their parents as our little Lady.”“Was she pleased to go?”“Pleased!—she gave nobody a bit of rest,” said Avice, laughing. “All the journey through she was plucking at my gown, and pointing, first here and then there, with her little cry of ‘Who? who?’—for she talked at fifteen months old as much as she ever spoke in this world. And before I could find out what she meant, she was pointing to something else, and ‘Who? who?’ came over again.”“Did you know then that she was deaf and dumb?”“No! nor for months after. Truly, all her ways were so bright, and her sense so keen, and her laugh so gladsome, that we never thought of such a thing till she was long past the age when children ought to speak freely. But when at last they began to fear the truth, it was indeed a bitter grief to the royal parents. The Lord King offered five cloths of gold at Saint Edward’s shrine for the children, and specially for our little Lady, in hope that the Divine mercy might be moved to have pity on her. But it was all in vain.”Avice sighed heavily. And there was no one to say to her, O woman,smallis thy faith! Was the Divine mercy no greater, which called that little child, unspotted by the world, to tread the fair streets of the Golden City, than the mercy thou wouldst have had instead of it?“It was not long after that,” said Avice, slowly drawing out the white threads, “that our little Lady’s health began to fail. The heats of summer tried her sorely. She drooped like a flower that had no water. Instead of playing with the other children, her gleeful laughter ringing through the galleries of the Castle, she would come and draw her little velvet stool to my side, and lay her head on my knee as if she were very weary. And when I looked down and smiled on her, instead of smiling back as she was wont, the great, dark wistful eyes used to look up so sadly, as if her soul were looking out of them. Oh, it was pitiful to read the dear eyes, when they said, ‘I am suffering: cannot you help me?’ And as time went on, they said it more and more. When the Lady Queen came to Windsor, she was shocked at the sad change in our darling little Lady. She called in Master Thomas, the King’s surgeon, and he advised that our little Lady should be removed from Windsor to some country place, where the air was good, and where she could play about in the fields. So she was put in charge of Emma La Despenser, Lady de Saint John, at her manor of Swallowfield, in Berkshire. Of course I went with her, and her cousin Alianora also, who was her favourite playfellow, for it was not thought well she should be entirely with older people, though I cannot say I was sorry to get rid of all those rough boys. The Lord King also commanded that a kid should be taken in the forest, as small and fair as might be found, for our little Lady to play with: and very fond she was of it. It was a lovely little creature, and grew as tame as possible. Ah, they were much alike, those two little things!—both young, soft, lovely—and both dumb! I marvelled sometimes whether they understood each other.”“And did she not get any better, Aunt?”“Yes; for a time she did. The country air and food and quiet did seem to do her good. She was so much better that she came back to Windsor for the winter. But it was not thought well by Master Thomas that she should go to London to be present at the great rejoicings that were made when the Lady Alianora came from Spain—our Queen that now is, the holy saints bless her! There were grand doings then, I heard; all London city was curtained in her honour, and processions in every church, and all superbly decorated; and the poor fed in the halls at Westminster, as many as could get in; and the Lord King presented a silver cross to the Abbey, and a golden plate of an ounce weight. Oh, it must have been a grand sight!”“Who paid that bill, I wonder?” said Bertha, laughing.“Bless thee, child! how do I know? That was the autumn when there was so much ado here at Lincoln touching the crucifixion of the blessed Hugh, son of Beatrice, by the wicked Jews; one hundred and more of them were brought to prison, first here, and afterwards at Westminster; and when eighteen had been hanged, the rest were graciously allowed to buy their lives for eighteen thousand marks. I daresay some of that went for it—that is, for as much of it as got paid for.”That sum would now be equal to about two hundred and sixteen thousand pounds. It never came into Avice’s head to doubt whether the Jews had crucified little Hugh. Such charges were often enough brought against them—when those who called themselves Christians wanted an excuse for stealing the jews’ money and jewels. There has never been a single instance, in this country or any other, in which the charge has been proved true. A further favourite accusation, that the Jews used the blood of Christian children to make their passover cakes, we know cannot have been true; for the Bible tells us that the Jews were strictly forbidden to eat blood. But what absurdity might not be expected from people who had no Bibles, and of whom not more than one in a thousand could have read it if he had had one? Are we half thankful enough for our own privileges?“Well!” continued Avice, “after this, the Lady Alianora came down to Windsor with the Lady Queen, and our little Lady and she took to one another wonderfully. And, indeed, it was little wonder, for she was as fair and sweet a damsel as ever tripped over the greensward. Our little Lady would run to her whenever she sat down in the children’s chamber, and say, ‘Up! up!’ and then the Lady Alianora would smile sweetly, and take her up beside her in the great state chair; and there they sat with their arms round one another, looking like two doves with their heads resting on each other’s necks. And the Lady Alianora once said to me, stroking our little Lady’s hair—‘I hope, Avice, thou givest her plenty of love. She can understand that, if she cannot anything else.’ Ay, and so she could! She fretted sadly over the Lady Alianora when she went away from Windsor. I think she and the little kid were more than ever together after that. I have found them both asleep in a corner of the chamber, resting on one another.”“Was she fond of pets?”“She loved her little kid dearly, and she seemed to go to it for comfort. I do not know that she cared much for anything else. The Lord King was the one for gathering curious animals of all sorts. He had three leopards in the Tower, and a white bear, which was taken out to fish in the Thames; the citizens of London paid fourpence a day for the bear’s keep, and had to provide a chain and muzzle for it, and a long cord whereby it was held when it fished in the river. And in the spring, before the coming of the Lady Alianora, the French King sent to our King a very strange animal, the like of which was never before seen in England. It had scarcely any eyes that man might see, and not much of a tail; but great flapping ears, and a most extraordinary thing that hung down from its face, which was hollow like a pipe, and it could pick things up with it as thou dost with thy fingers. It was a lead-coloured beast, and ate nought but grass and hay and such-like; it would not touch meat nor bones. They called it an oliphant,”—for so in old time people pronounced elephant. “The Lord King thought great things of this beast, and had a house built for it, forty feet by twenty, at the Tower: it was made very strong, lest the great beast should break forth and slay men. But truly it seemed a peaceable beast enough.“We dwelt much more quietly at Windsor, after the departure of the Lady Alianora. For she went abroad with the Lord Edward her husband, and Mariot de Ferrars, who had been there for some time—she went too; and the King’s son Edmund was made King of Sicily by the Lord Pope, and he and the other lads were taken away; our little Lady and her cousin Alianora de Montfort alone were left. The King thought to have made money by Edmund his son; he was a fair boy in very truth, and he clad him in Sicilian dress, which was graceful and comely, and showed him before the Parliament, entreating them to find him money for all these many expenses. But the Parliament did not seem disposed to pay for seeing the young Lord. And, indeed, I heard Master Russell say that he thought it strange the Lord King should make merchandise of his child’s beauty, as though he were some curious animal to be seen in a show. But Bertha, my dear heart! we clean forgot to buy any honey—and only this minute is it come to my mind. Tie on thine hood, I pray thee, and run to the druggist for an half-dozen pounds.”When it is understood that honey held in Avice’s cookery and diet the place that sugar does in ours, the necessity of remedying this mistake will be seen. Sugar was much too expensive to be used by any but wealthy people.Note 1. The robes provided for Agnes and Avice are the sole imaginary items in this account. Sendal was a very thin silk.
Out into the Michaelmas fair our friends went.
In these days, when fairs have quite changed their character, we cannot easily form a notion of what they once were. The fair, held in every town four times a year, was a very important matter. There were much fewer shops than now; and not only in the town, but from all the surrounding villages people flocked to the fair, to lay in food and clothes and all sorts of necessaries, enough to last till the next fair-day. They had very little fresh butcher’s meat, and very few vegetables except what they grew themselves; so they ate numbers of things salted which we have fresh. Not only salt fish and salt neat, but salt cabbage formed a great part of their diet. The consequence of all this salt food was that they suffered dreadfully from scurvy. But they did not run to the doctor, for except in rare instances there was no doctor to run to! All doctors were clergymen then, and there were very few of them. In the large towns there were apothecaries, or chemists, who often prescribed for people; and there were “wise women” who knew a good deal about herbs, and sometimes gave good medicines, along with a great deal of foolish nonsense in the way of charms and all sorts of silly fancies. At that time, ladies were taught a good deal about medicine, and a benevolent lady was often the doctor for a large neighbourhood. But we are wandering away from the Michaelmas fair, and we must come back.
The fair was a very busy scene. In some places it was hard work to get along at all. The booths were set up, not in the streets but in the churchyards, the market place, and on any waste space available. And what with the noise of business, the hum of gossip, the shouts of competing sellers, and the sound of hundreds of clogs on the round paving-stones, it may be readily supposed that quiet was far away.
Avice’s first business was to lay in a stock of salt meat and salt fish. Very little of either was used fresh, for it was not obtainable: and still less would have been used so far as fish is concerned, had not the law, alike of the Church and of the State, compelled it to be eaten throughout Lent, and on every Friday in the year. Little enough fish would anybody have touched then, but for that provision. Avice bought half of a salted calf, which cost a shilling; five hundred herrings, at half-a-crown; a bushel of salt, at threepence (which was dear); twenty-five stock-fish, at two shillings; a quarter of a sheep, at fourpence; a quarter of wheat, at six shillings; a quarter of oats, at five shillings; half a quarter of salt cabbage, at five shillings; and five pounds of figs, at three-halfpence a pound. This was her provision for the three months which would elapse before the Christmas fair. She then went to the drapery stalls, and laid in two hoods, for herself and Bertha, at a shilling each; ten ells of russet, to serve for two gowns, at eighteen-pence the ell; twelve ells of serge, at three-halfpence the ell; two pairs of shoes, at fourpence each. The russet was intended for their best dresses; the serge for common. Considering how very little went to make a garment, it seems likely that our ancestors wove their stuff a good deal wider than we do. Avice also laid in a few other articles of different kinds: a brass pot, which cost her 2 shillings 2 pence; five pounds of tallow, at three-halfpence a pound, and as many of wax at sixpence; wax was largely used for a variety of objects. Her last and costliest purchase she would have been better without. It was a painted and gilded image of Saint Katherine, and cost fifteen shillings. But Avice, though a good woman according to her light, had enjoyed very little light, and did not understand half so well as we do that she might go straight to God through the new and living way opened upon the cross, without the intervention of any mediator except the Lord Jesus. She thought she must pray through a saint; and she had no idea of praying unless she could see something to pray to. Her old image had lost much of its paint, and half an arm, and its nose was hopelessly damaged. Therefore, as she must have one, poor Avice thought it best to buy a new one, rather than have her old saint tinkered up. Alas for the gods or the mediators who require to be tinkered!
By the time that these purchases were made, and the goods brought home, it was not far from the supper hour; and Bertha prepared that meal by boiling a dish of salt cabbage from one of the barrels. This, with black bread and ale, made their supper.
The meal was just ready, and Avice had put away her carding, having finished that kind of work for the day, when a rap at the door was followed by the lifting of the latch, and the old smith put in his head.
“Any room for a man, have ye?”
“Plenty for you, Uncle Dan,” answered Avice heartily; and Bertha’s eyes lighted up at the sight of her father.
Dan came forward and sat down on the stool which Bertha set for him.
“Has it not been a charming day?” said Avice.
“Ay, it’s fine weather i’ Lincoln,” was Dan’s dry answer. “Up at smithy, it’s none so bad neither—yet. Just a touch of thunder we had this morning,—a bit of a grumble i’ th’ distance like: but I’ve known worser storms a deal. Ay, I have so!”
Avice quite understood what kind of storm he meant.
“How do you get on without me, Father?” asked Bertha.
“Well, I’ll not say I don’t miss thee, my singing bird; but I’m willing, when it’s for thy good. I’ve got—let me see—two buttons left o’ my blouse, and I think there’s one o’ my flannel shirt, but I’m none so sure. It’s rather troublesome, for sure, when there’s none o’ th’ sleeves; they keep for ever a-slippin’ up man’s arm; but I could put up wi’ that easy if there was nought more. It’s true I don’t want to pull ’em down while even comes.”
“Oh, Father, let me sew you some on!” cried Bertha.
“So thou shall,” said Dan. “But I’ve a bit o’ news for thee, lass. Susanna’s to be wed.”
“With whom, Uncle?”
“Michael, cartwright, at corner.”
“Is it a good match?”
“He’s got his match, and she’s got hern.”
“They are well matched, then,” said Bertha, laughing.
“They’re a pair,” said Dan, grimly. “He’s eagre, and she’s mustard; and they’ll none mix ill—but they’ll set folks’ throats a-fire as meddles wi’ ’em.”
Eagre is the old English word for vinegar, which is just “wine-eagre.” It means anything sharp and acid.
“Is Aunt Filomena pleased?” asked Avice.
“She’s never pleased wi’ nothing,” was the reply of her unfortunate husband. “She give him lots o’ sauce when he first come, and he’s had another spoonful every time since. He gives it her every bit as hot—I will say that for him. His mother went by name o’ old Maud Touchup, and he doth her no disfavour. She knew how to hit folks—shedid. And Michael’s a chip o’ th’ old block.”
“A little more cabbage, Uncle Dan?”
“Nay, I thank thee. I must be going home, I reckon. Eh, but you’re peaceable here! I reckon man could sleep i’ this house, and not be waked up wi’ jarring and jangling. I tell thee what, Avice—when the big folks up to London town runs short o’ money, I wonder they don’t clap a bit of a tax on women’s tongues! It’d bring ’em in a tunful in a week,thatwould.”
“How would you collect it, Uncle Dan?”
“Nay, there thou floors me. They’d best send down a chap all over steel to th’ smithy, He’d get plucked o’ pieces else. Well, God be wi’ thee, Avice. God bless thee, Bertha, my lass. Good-night!”
And Uncle Dan disappeared into the darkness. There were no street lamps then. Every man had to carry his own lantern, unless he chose to run the risk of breaking his neck over the round stones which formed the streets, or the rough ground, interspersed with holes and pits, to be found everywhere else.
They now sat down to work for the rest of the evening, Avice on the settle in the corner, Bertha on one of the low stools which she brought up to the hearth.
“Lack-a-day! what have I forgot!” said Avice as Bertha drew up her stool and unfolded the apron she was making. “I thought to have asked Nora Goldhue for a sprig of betony, or else purslane. ’Tis o’er late to-night, and verily I am too weary to go forth again.”
“Have you bad dreams, Aunt?” asked Bertha, knowing that a sprig of either of those herbs under the pillow was believed to drive them away.
“Ay, child; they have troubled me these four nights past, but last night more especially.”
No wonder, after a supper on franche-mule! But it never occurred to ignorant Avice that supper and dreams could have anything to do with one another.
“Shall I fetch you a laurel leaf, Aunt?” suggested Bertha.
“Ay, do, child; maybe that shall change the luck. Best go ere it rain, too; and that will not be long, for I saw a black snail in the channel as we came in.”
Bertha tied on her hood, and ran out to the house of the next-door neighbour, who had a laurel in her garden, to beg a few of its leaves, which were supposed to bring pleasant dreams. Having placed these under her aunt’s bolster, she sat down again to her work, and Avice resumed her interrupted story.
“It was in July, 1254, when our little Lady was but eight months old, that the Lady Queen set forth to join the Lord King in Gascony. There were many ships taken up for her voyage, amongst which were theSavoy, theFalcon, and theBaroness, that was my Lord of Leicester’s ship. In the ship wherein the Lady Queen sailed, was built a special chamber for her, of polished wood, for the which three hundred planks were sent from the forest to Portsmouth. But so short was she of money, that she was compelled to bid the Treasurer to send her all the cups and basins which the King had of silver, and all gold in coin or leaf that could be found in the treasuries. Moreover, the Jews throughout England were distrained for five thousand marks, for the ransom of their bodies, and their wives and little ones, and by sale of their lands and houses. The Lady Queen took with her divers pieces of English cloth for the Lord King, seeing that French cloth is not nigh so good. Some things also she commanded for the children, who were to tarry at Windsor during her absence. Twenty-four silver spoons were made, and fifty wild animals taken for their provision in the park at Guildford. Robes were served out, furred with hare’s fur, for Edmund the King’s son and Henry de Lacy; four robes for the gentlewomen that had the care of the children; and for Richard the chaplain, Master Simon de Wycumb the keeper, and Master Godwyn the cook: these were of sendal. And there were robes furred with lamb for the King’s wards, and for John the Varlet, and Julian the Rocker, and my mother, and me thine aunt.” (See Note 1.)
Both to Avice and Bertha it seemed quite a matter of course that the Jews should find the money when the King wanted silk, or the King’s children silver spoons.
“But it seems to me, Aunt,” suggested Bertha, “that the Lady Queen must have spent all her money before she started.”
“Oh no! the money was for the Lord King. In truth, I know not whether she paid for the other things. But I did hear that as soon as the Lord King knew she would come, and that she was bringing with her so much money and plate, he began to spend with both hands on his side of the sea. He sent at once for six cloths of gold that the Queen and Lord Edward might offer in the churches of Bordeaux when they should arrive there; he commanded to be made ready a fair jewel for Saint Edward the Martyr, and a hundred pounds of jewels for Saint Edward the King, and divers more for Saint Thomas of Canterbury, all which were offered when he and the Queen returned home in December. There came in also, for the King’s coming back, many frails of figs, raisins, dates, cinnamon, saffron, pepper, ginger, and such like; I remember seeing them unpacked in Antioch Chamber, the little chamber by the garden.”
“And what did it all cost, Aunt?”
“I know not, child. Maybe he never paid for those. He used to pay for such things as he offered to the holy saints; but for debts to tradesfolk and such, they took their chance. If he had money, he might pay some of them or no, at his pleasure; and if not, then of course they had to wait. Very sure am I that many a pound of musk came into the wardrobe more than was paid for. Never was such a Prince for scents. He loved musk as much as he feared lightning; and there was only one thing in all this world that he feared more, and that was Earl Simon of Leicester.”
“And did the Lady Queen squander her money as much as the Lord King, Aunt Avice?”
“She was every bit as bad. She always seemed to me as if a piece of her brains had never grown up along with the rest. Some folks are like that. In respect of money, she was a very child. She had not a notion how far it would go, and she never would wait to have it before she spent it. She always appeared to think it would come somehow: and so far as she was concerned, it often did. But then she never saw the homeless Jews who were sold up to furnish it, nor the ruined tradesmen who had to wait till they could not pay their own way, and were sent to prison for debt. I think she might have been sorry, if she had done. I suppose we should all be sorry, if we knew half the evil we do. Well, God pardon her!—she is a holy sister now in the priory at Amesbury. And our present Queen always pays her bills, I have heard say. Long may she live to do it!”
“How old was the little Lady when her parents came back?”
“She was just over a year old. I waited on her from the Castle of Windsor to the Palace at Westminster, for the Lord King desired to behold her at once. And was not he delighted with her! I doubt if any of the royal children were as dear to the hearts of their parents as our little Lady.”
“Was she pleased to go?”
“Pleased!—she gave nobody a bit of rest,” said Avice, laughing. “All the journey through she was plucking at my gown, and pointing, first here and then there, with her little cry of ‘Who? who?’—for she talked at fifteen months old as much as she ever spoke in this world. And before I could find out what she meant, she was pointing to something else, and ‘Who? who?’ came over again.”
“Did you know then that she was deaf and dumb?”
“No! nor for months after. Truly, all her ways were so bright, and her sense so keen, and her laugh so gladsome, that we never thought of such a thing till she was long past the age when children ought to speak freely. But when at last they began to fear the truth, it was indeed a bitter grief to the royal parents. The Lord King offered five cloths of gold at Saint Edward’s shrine for the children, and specially for our little Lady, in hope that the Divine mercy might be moved to have pity on her. But it was all in vain.”
Avice sighed heavily. And there was no one to say to her, O woman,smallis thy faith! Was the Divine mercy no greater, which called that little child, unspotted by the world, to tread the fair streets of the Golden City, than the mercy thou wouldst have had instead of it?
“It was not long after that,” said Avice, slowly drawing out the white threads, “that our little Lady’s health began to fail. The heats of summer tried her sorely. She drooped like a flower that had no water. Instead of playing with the other children, her gleeful laughter ringing through the galleries of the Castle, she would come and draw her little velvet stool to my side, and lay her head on my knee as if she were very weary. And when I looked down and smiled on her, instead of smiling back as she was wont, the great, dark wistful eyes used to look up so sadly, as if her soul were looking out of them. Oh, it was pitiful to read the dear eyes, when they said, ‘I am suffering: cannot you help me?’ And as time went on, they said it more and more. When the Lady Queen came to Windsor, she was shocked at the sad change in our darling little Lady. She called in Master Thomas, the King’s surgeon, and he advised that our little Lady should be removed from Windsor to some country place, where the air was good, and where she could play about in the fields. So she was put in charge of Emma La Despenser, Lady de Saint John, at her manor of Swallowfield, in Berkshire. Of course I went with her, and her cousin Alianora also, who was her favourite playfellow, for it was not thought well she should be entirely with older people, though I cannot say I was sorry to get rid of all those rough boys. The Lord King also commanded that a kid should be taken in the forest, as small and fair as might be found, for our little Lady to play with: and very fond she was of it. It was a lovely little creature, and grew as tame as possible. Ah, they were much alike, those two little things!—both young, soft, lovely—and both dumb! I marvelled sometimes whether they understood each other.”
“And did she not get any better, Aunt?”
“Yes; for a time she did. The country air and food and quiet did seem to do her good. She was so much better that she came back to Windsor for the winter. But it was not thought well by Master Thomas that she should go to London to be present at the great rejoicings that were made when the Lady Alianora came from Spain—our Queen that now is, the holy saints bless her! There were grand doings then, I heard; all London city was curtained in her honour, and processions in every church, and all superbly decorated; and the poor fed in the halls at Westminster, as many as could get in; and the Lord King presented a silver cross to the Abbey, and a golden plate of an ounce weight. Oh, it must have been a grand sight!”
“Who paid that bill, I wonder?” said Bertha, laughing.
“Bless thee, child! how do I know? That was the autumn when there was so much ado here at Lincoln touching the crucifixion of the blessed Hugh, son of Beatrice, by the wicked Jews; one hundred and more of them were brought to prison, first here, and afterwards at Westminster; and when eighteen had been hanged, the rest were graciously allowed to buy their lives for eighteen thousand marks. I daresay some of that went for it—that is, for as much of it as got paid for.”
That sum would now be equal to about two hundred and sixteen thousand pounds. It never came into Avice’s head to doubt whether the Jews had crucified little Hugh. Such charges were often enough brought against them—when those who called themselves Christians wanted an excuse for stealing the jews’ money and jewels. There has never been a single instance, in this country or any other, in which the charge has been proved true. A further favourite accusation, that the Jews used the blood of Christian children to make their passover cakes, we know cannot have been true; for the Bible tells us that the Jews were strictly forbidden to eat blood. But what absurdity might not be expected from people who had no Bibles, and of whom not more than one in a thousand could have read it if he had had one? Are we half thankful enough for our own privileges?
“Well!” continued Avice, “after this, the Lady Alianora came down to Windsor with the Lady Queen, and our little Lady and she took to one another wonderfully. And, indeed, it was little wonder, for she was as fair and sweet a damsel as ever tripped over the greensward. Our little Lady would run to her whenever she sat down in the children’s chamber, and say, ‘Up! up!’ and then the Lady Alianora would smile sweetly, and take her up beside her in the great state chair; and there they sat with their arms round one another, looking like two doves with their heads resting on each other’s necks. And the Lady Alianora once said to me, stroking our little Lady’s hair—‘I hope, Avice, thou givest her plenty of love. She can understand that, if she cannot anything else.’ Ay, and so she could! She fretted sadly over the Lady Alianora when she went away from Windsor. I think she and the little kid were more than ever together after that. I have found them both asleep in a corner of the chamber, resting on one another.”
“Was she fond of pets?”
“She loved her little kid dearly, and she seemed to go to it for comfort. I do not know that she cared much for anything else. The Lord King was the one for gathering curious animals of all sorts. He had three leopards in the Tower, and a white bear, which was taken out to fish in the Thames; the citizens of London paid fourpence a day for the bear’s keep, and had to provide a chain and muzzle for it, and a long cord whereby it was held when it fished in the river. And in the spring, before the coming of the Lady Alianora, the French King sent to our King a very strange animal, the like of which was never before seen in England. It had scarcely any eyes that man might see, and not much of a tail; but great flapping ears, and a most extraordinary thing that hung down from its face, which was hollow like a pipe, and it could pick things up with it as thou dost with thy fingers. It was a lead-coloured beast, and ate nought but grass and hay and such-like; it would not touch meat nor bones. They called it an oliphant,”—for so in old time people pronounced elephant. “The Lord King thought great things of this beast, and had a house built for it, forty feet by twenty, at the Tower: it was made very strong, lest the great beast should break forth and slay men. But truly it seemed a peaceable beast enough.
“We dwelt much more quietly at Windsor, after the departure of the Lady Alianora. For she went abroad with the Lord Edward her husband, and Mariot de Ferrars, who had been there for some time—she went too; and the King’s son Edmund was made King of Sicily by the Lord Pope, and he and the other lads were taken away; our little Lady and her cousin Alianora de Montfort alone were left. The King thought to have made money by Edmund his son; he was a fair boy in very truth, and he clad him in Sicilian dress, which was graceful and comely, and showed him before the Parliament, entreating them to find him money for all these many expenses. But the Parliament did not seem disposed to pay for seeing the young Lord. And, indeed, I heard Master Russell say that he thought it strange the Lord King should make merchandise of his child’s beauty, as though he were some curious animal to be seen in a show. But Bertha, my dear heart! we clean forgot to buy any honey—and only this minute is it come to my mind. Tie on thine hood, I pray thee, and run to the druggist for an half-dozen pounds.”
When it is understood that honey held in Avice’s cookery and diet the place that sugar does in ours, the necessity of remedying this mistake will be seen. Sugar was much too expensive to be used by any but wealthy people.
Note 1. The robes provided for Agnes and Avice are the sole imaginary items in this account. Sendal was a very thin silk.
Chapter Six.Set Free.As Bertha came back, carefully carrying her jar of honey, she heard a considerable tumult in a street on her left hand, which led to the Jews’ quarter of the city. In every town, the Jews were shut up in a particular part of it; and after London itself, the towns in which the greatest number of Jews lived were Lincoln, York, Norwich, Oxford, and Northampton. Since the dreadful persecution arising from the (real or supposed) murder of little Hugh, Lincoln had been comparatively quiet from such tumults; and Bertha was too young to know anything about it but from hearsay. Wondering if some fresh commotion was going to arise, and anxious to be safe at home before it should begin, Bertha quickened her steps. There were only three more streets to cross, one of which was a dark, narrow alley leading directly to the Jews’ quarter. As Bertha crossed this, she heard a low, frightened call upon her name, and a slight figure crept out and crouched at her feet.“O Bertha!” said a girl’s voice, broken by sobs and terrified catching of the breath, “you are kind-hearted; I know you are. You saved a little dog that the dreadful boys were trying to drown. Will you save me, though I am beneath a dog in your eyes?”“Who are you?” asked astonished Bertha.“I am Hester, the daughter of Aaron,” said the girl, “and there is a deadly raid on our quarter. They accuse us of poisoning the wells. O Bertha, they lay things to us that we never do! Save me, for my womanhood’s sake!”“Poor soul!” said Bertha, looking down at her. “Come with me to Aunt Avice. Maybe she will let thee tarry in some corner till the tumult is over. I dare say it will not be much.”Bertha spoke in rather contemptuous tones, though they were not wanting in pity. Everybody in England was taught then to rank Jews with vermin, and to look upon it as a weakness to show them any kindness.The two girls reached the door in safety, and Bertha led Hester in.“Aunt Avice,” she said, “there is a commotion in the Jews’ quarter, and here is a Jew maiden that wants to know if we will shelter her. I suppose she won’t hurt us much, will she?”The very breath of a Jew was fancied to be poisonous.Avice looked at the pale, terrified face and trembling limbs of the girl who had cast herself on her mercy.“Well, I dare say not,” said she; “at any rate, we will risk it. Perhaps the good Lord may not be very angry; or if He is, wemust say more prayers, and beg our Lady Saint Mary to intercede for us. Come in, child.”Poor Avice! she knew no better. She had been taught that the Lord who died for her was a stern, angry Judge, and that all the mercy rested in His human mother. And the Jews had crucified Christ; so, thought Avice, He must hate them! Perhaps, of such Christians as she was, He may have said again, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”Hester came in quietly. “May God bless you!” she said. “I will try not to breathe on you, for I know what you think.” And she sat down meekly on the floor, in a dark corner, not daring to offer any help, lest they should imagine that she would pollute anything she touched. Avice threw her a cake of bread, as she might have done to a dog; and Hester knew that it was a kinder act than she would have received from most of the Christians around.It was not yet quite bed-time, and Bertha sat down again to her work, begging her aunt to finish the tale. They took no notice of Hester.“It is almost finished,” said Avice; “there is little more to tell. The winter got over, but spring was scarcely begun when our little Lady’s health failed again. The Lord King was so anxious about her that when he was away from Windsor, he bade the Lady Queen to send him a special messenger with news of her; and so delighted was he to hear of her recovery, that he commanded a good robe to be given to the messenger, and offered in thanksgiving an image of silver, wrought in the form of a woman, to the shrine of Saint Edward.”“Then she did recover, Aunt?”“Ay, but it was for the last time. As the summer drew on, the Lady Queen asked Master Thomas if he thought it well that the little Lady should have change again, and be sent into the country till the heat was past. Master Thomas answered that he reckoned it unnecessary; and the Lady Queen departed, well pleased. But as soon as she was gone, Master Thomas said to me and Julian the Rocker, who were tending our little Lady—‘She will have a better change than to Swallowfield.’ Quoth Julian, ‘Say you so, Master? Whither do you purpose sending her?’ And he said, looking sadly on the child, ‘Ipurpose sending her? Truly, good Julian, no whither. But ere long time be over, the Lord our God will send for her, by that angel that taketh no bribe to delay execution of His mandate.’ And then I knew his meaning: my darling was to die. But the steps of the angel were very slow. The autumn came and went. The child seemed languid and dull, and the Lord King offered a chasuble of samite to the blessed Edmund of Pontigny at his altar at Canterbury.”Edmund Rich, afterwards called Saint Edmund of Pontigny, was an Archbishop of Canterbury with whom King Henry the Third was at variance as long as he lived, much in the same way as Henry the Second had been with Becket. Now he was dead, a banished man, the Pope had declared him a saint, and King Henry made humble offerings at his shrine. But it is amusing to find that with respect to this offering at least, his Majesty’s instructions were to buy the samite of the lowest price that could be found!“It was all of no use,” pursued Avice sorrowfully. “The angel had received the mandate. Great feasts were held at Easter—there were twenty beeves and fifty muttons, fifteen hundred pullets, and six hundred shillings’ worth of bread, beside many other things—but ere one month was over, the feast became a fast. When Saint Philip’s day dawned my darling lay in her bed, with her fair eyes turned up to heaven and her hands folded in prayer; and who may know what she said to God, or yet more what He told to her? She had never been taught to pray; she could not be.” Avice’s only notion of prayer was repeating a form of words, and keeping time by a string of beads. “But I shall always think that in some way beyond our comprehension, my darling could speak to God. And on the evening of the Invention of the Cross”—which is May 3rd—“she spoke to Him in Heaven.”“And did the Lady Queen sorrow very much, Aunt? I suppose, though, great ladies like her would not care as much as poor people.”“Wouldst thou, child? Ah, a mother is a mother, let her be a cottager or a queen. And she sorrowed so sorely that for weeks afterwards she lay ill, and all the skill of her physicians could avail nothing. The Lord King, too, fell sick of a tertian fever, which held him many days, and I believe it was out of sheer anguish for his dearest child. He commanded a brass image of her to be placed on the tomb, but ere it was finished he would have one of silver: and he gave fifty shillings a year to the hermit of Charing, for a priest to pray daily for her in the chapel of the hermitage.”“Do you think she is still in Purgatory, Aunt?”Avice’s religion, as taught not by the Word of God, but the traditions of men, led her to be doubtful on that point. But her heart broke its way through the bonds.“What, my white dove? my little unspotted darling, that never wilfully sinned against God and holy Church? Child, if our holy Father the Pope were to tell me himself that she was there, I would not believe him. Do the angels go to Purgatory? Nay, I do verily believe that, seeing her infirmity, Christ our Lord did all the work of salvation for her, and that she sings now before our Father’s face.”Poor Avice! she could get no further. But we, who know God’s Word, know that there is but one Mediator between God and man, and that He has offered a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. Before Bertha could reply, an answer came unexpectedly from the dark corner.“Your God must be hard to propitiate,” said the young Jewess. “In old times, after the sacrifice was offered, a man was cleansed from sin. He had not to cleanse himself by his own pain.”“But you are heathens,” said Avice, feeling it a condescension to argue with a Jew. “Our religion is better than yours.”“How?” was Hester’s rejoinder.“Because we have been redeemed by our Lord, who died to save us from Hell.”“It does not sound like it. Then why had the little child to go there?”“She did not go there! She went to Purgatory.”“She went to pain, if I understood you rightly. Why did your Messiah not finish His work, and keep her from going to pain altogether?”“I cannot answer such wicked questions,” said Avice. “The Church teaches that God’s love purifies His servants in Purgatory, and as soon as their souls are clean they go to Heaven.”“Our God does better for us than that,” was Hester’s quiet answer. “I do not know what ‘the Church’ is. But I suppose God’s love is not for Gentiles.”And she relapsed into silence. Avice sat and span—and thought. Both of them were terribly ignorant; but Avice did honestly desire to know God’s will, and such truth as was in Hester’s words troubled her. And as she thought, other words came to her, heard years ago from the pulpit of Lincoln Cathedral, and from the long silent lips of that holy Bishop Grosteste whom she so deeply revered.“By leaning on Christ,” the Bishop had said, “every true Christian rises into true life, peace, and joy; he lives in His life, sees light in His light, is invigorated with His warmth, grows in His strength, and leaning on the Beloved, his soul ascends upwards.”Then for those who loved Christ and leaned on Him, either He must be with them in Purgatory, and then it would be no pain at all: or—Avice shrank from the alternative that perhaps there was no Purgatory at all! It is hard to break free from trammels in which we have been held all our lives. Bertha did not follow the course of her aunt’s thoughts, and wondered why she said, after long silence—“Methinks God is enough for His people, wherever they are.”Hester also had been thinking, and to as much purpose.“It is written, ‘In His name shall the Gentiles trust,’” she said. “And I think, if He can love any Gentiles, it must be kindly and merciful hearts like yours. Perhaps the Great Sacrifice—the Messiah Himself—is meant for all men. But I think He will finish His work, and not leave it incomplete, as your priests seem to teach you.”“He will do right by all men, if thou meanest our Lord,” replied Avice gently. “And what was right for all, and best for us, we shall know when we come to Him.”“Then the little Lady knows it now, Aunt,” said Bertha.“Yes, my darling knows it now. It may be she knows why her ears were sealed and her tongue bound, now that they are unstopped and loosed. And I marvel if any voice in the choirs of the angels can be so sweet as hers.”There was silence for a little while. Then Hester rose.“I thank you very much for your kindness,” she said. “I think I might go home. The streets seem quieter now.”Avice went to the door, unlatched it, and peered forth into the night.“Yes, there seems to be no noise in the direction of your quarter now. I think you will be safe. But if you feel uneasy, you can stay the night in this room.”“No, thank you,” replied Hester gratefully. “I will not put you to that trouble. You have been very good to me. May the God of Israel bless you with His blessing!”Avice felt rather uneasy. She had always been taught that Jews were idolaters, and she never imagined that Hester could be blessing her in the name of the one living God. She fancied that the benediction of some horrible Moloch was being called down upon her, and feared it accordingly. But she answered kindly, for unkindness was not in her simple, loving, God-fearing heart. Hester went out, and latched the door behind her.“I am glad she is gone,” said Bertha. “I could not feel easy while she was here. Yet I could not have borne to turn her away without asking you if you would take her in, Aunt. I hope we have not done wrong!”“I hope not, indeed,” replied Avice, who was not quite easy in her own mind. “I wonder why it should be so wrong to pity Jews, and be kind to them. It looks so different from all the other commands of our Lord.”Different, most truly! But such causes for wonder were likely to be frequent enough, so long as men allowed the traditions of men to run alongside of the infallible Word of God. And they had no power to read for themselves the real words of the Lord, who had said to the father of all Israel, “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.”But the influx of visitors was not yet over for the evening. Hester had not been gone long when a heavy rap came on the door. “Come in!” said Avice; and Uncle Dan appeared.“Could you spare a chap a seat, think ye?” said he. “I’ve come for a bit o’ peace. We’ve got thunder and lightning and rain up at smithy.She’sthunder, and Ankaret’s lightning, and Mildred’s rain, for she’s a-crying: and El’nor and me, we ’re wet to skin wi’ ’t. So I put my cap on and come here to dry me a bit.”Avice laughed. “You’re always welcome, Uncle Dan, and I hope you know it,” said she. “Bertha, my maid, bake a short-cake for thy father. There’s enough warmth in the bake-stone.”“Short-cake’s good,” said Dan, “and I’ll not go to deny it; but love and peace are better.Shecan make short-cake wi’ anybody. It’s th’ jam as goes wi’ ’t I don’t like. She makes it so tart, and puts so much on. Sure, if th’ fire had went out, she’d easy bake a cake a-top of her temper, and so could Ankaret. Eh, it do take a whole hive of honey to sweeten some folks. There’s bees in this world, for sure; but there’s many a waps to every bee.”In the present day, “waps” is considered a vulgar way of pronouncing the word; but it was correct English at the time of which I am writing. “Wasp” is really the corrupt pronunciation. In the same way, they said “claps” where we say “clasp.”“Uncle Dan, I sometimes wonder you do not come and live in Lincoln town.”“Dost thee? Think I haven’t noise enough at smithy?”“But I think you would make friends here, and find things pleasanter.”“Humph!” said Dan, laying a big, hardened brown hand upon each knee. “It’s very plain to me, Avice, as thou doesn’t live in a house where everything thou does turns to hot water. Me make friends! She’d have ’em out o’ th’ door afore they’d a-comed in. They wouldn’t come twice, I reckon—nay, they wouldn’t. That’d be end o’ my friend-making, Avice.”“Uncle Dan, did you never try standing up to Aunt Filomena?”“Did I never trywhat? Ay did I, once—and got knocked down as sharp as ninepins. Standing up! I’d love to see thee try it. Thou’d not be right end up long.”Bertha had gone upstairs, or Avice perhaps would not have spoken so plainly, though the smith himself had long passed the stage of ignoring his wife’s failings in the presence of her children.“But you are her husband, Uncle Dan.”“I reckon I know that Thou would, if she’d plucked as much of thy whiskers out as she has o’ mine.”“And wives ought to obey their husbands.”“Thou’ll oblige me by saying so to her, and I’ll be glad to know if thou likes what thou’ll get.”“You think she cannot be managed?”“Not without one o’ th’ archangels likes to try. I’ll not say he wouldn’t be sorry at after.”“It does seem such a sad way for you to live,” said Avice pityingly.“Grin and bide,” said Dan philosophically. “Grin while I can, and bide when I can’t. But I’ll tell thee what—if some o’ them fighting fellows as goes up and down a-seeking for adventures, ’d just take off Ankaret and Mildred—well, I don’t know about El’nor: she’s been better o’ late—and eh, but they couldn’t take Her, or I’d ha’ given th’ cow into th’ bargain, and been right glad on’t—and if me and Emma and Bertha could ha’ settled down in a bit of a house somewhere, and been peaceable— Come, it’s no use hankering over things as can’t be. Elsewise, I’d ha’ said a chap might ha’ had a bit o’ comfort then.”“Uncle Dan, did you ever think of praying that Aunt Filomena might have a better temper?”“Ever think of what?” demanded Uncle Dan in the biggest capitals ever seen on a placard.“You know God could make her temper sweet, Uncle Dan.”“Thou believes that, does thou?”“I do.”“So will I—when I see’t. I reckon I’ll have a rare capful o’ larks by th’ sky falling, first.”“The sky will fall some day, my son,” said the voice of Father Thomas, behind Dan. His soft rap had been unheard through Dan’s bass voice, and he had entered unperceived.“Well, Father, you should know the rights on’t,” was Dan’s answer, with a pull at his hair. “Being a priest, I reckon you’re good friends wi’ th’ angels and th’ sky and all that sort of thing; but—I ask your pardon, Father, but She belongs to t’other lot, and you don’t know her. Eh, you don’t, so!”And with an ominous shake of his head, and a good-night to Avice and Bertha, Dan passed out.“Our Lord could do that, Father?” said Avice softly.“Certainly, my daughter. ‘Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He—in the heavens, and in the earth, and in the sea, and in all depths.’”Father Thomas had not much of the Bible—only one Gospel and a Book of Psalms—but what he had he studied well. And one page of the Word of God will do a great deal for a man, with the Spirit of God to bring it home to a willing ear and a loving heart.“May I pray for Aunt Filomena? I am so sorry for Uncle Dan. He is not a bad man, and she makes his home unbearable.”“God forgive her! By all means pray for both.”
As Bertha came back, carefully carrying her jar of honey, she heard a considerable tumult in a street on her left hand, which led to the Jews’ quarter of the city. In every town, the Jews were shut up in a particular part of it; and after London itself, the towns in which the greatest number of Jews lived were Lincoln, York, Norwich, Oxford, and Northampton. Since the dreadful persecution arising from the (real or supposed) murder of little Hugh, Lincoln had been comparatively quiet from such tumults; and Bertha was too young to know anything about it but from hearsay. Wondering if some fresh commotion was going to arise, and anxious to be safe at home before it should begin, Bertha quickened her steps. There were only three more streets to cross, one of which was a dark, narrow alley leading directly to the Jews’ quarter. As Bertha crossed this, she heard a low, frightened call upon her name, and a slight figure crept out and crouched at her feet.
“O Bertha!” said a girl’s voice, broken by sobs and terrified catching of the breath, “you are kind-hearted; I know you are. You saved a little dog that the dreadful boys were trying to drown. Will you save me, though I am beneath a dog in your eyes?”
“Who are you?” asked astonished Bertha.
“I am Hester, the daughter of Aaron,” said the girl, “and there is a deadly raid on our quarter. They accuse us of poisoning the wells. O Bertha, they lay things to us that we never do! Save me, for my womanhood’s sake!”
“Poor soul!” said Bertha, looking down at her. “Come with me to Aunt Avice. Maybe she will let thee tarry in some corner till the tumult is over. I dare say it will not be much.”
Bertha spoke in rather contemptuous tones, though they were not wanting in pity. Everybody in England was taught then to rank Jews with vermin, and to look upon it as a weakness to show them any kindness.
The two girls reached the door in safety, and Bertha led Hester in.
“Aunt Avice,” she said, “there is a commotion in the Jews’ quarter, and here is a Jew maiden that wants to know if we will shelter her. I suppose she won’t hurt us much, will she?”
The very breath of a Jew was fancied to be poisonous.
Avice looked at the pale, terrified face and trembling limbs of the girl who had cast herself on her mercy.
“Well, I dare say not,” said she; “at any rate, we will risk it. Perhaps the good Lord may not be very angry; or if He is, wemust say more prayers, and beg our Lady Saint Mary to intercede for us. Come in, child.”
Poor Avice! she knew no better. She had been taught that the Lord who died for her was a stern, angry Judge, and that all the mercy rested in His human mother. And the Jews had crucified Christ; so, thought Avice, He must hate them! Perhaps, of such Christians as she was, He may have said again, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
Hester came in quietly. “May God bless you!” she said. “I will try not to breathe on you, for I know what you think.” And she sat down meekly on the floor, in a dark corner, not daring to offer any help, lest they should imagine that she would pollute anything she touched. Avice threw her a cake of bread, as she might have done to a dog; and Hester knew that it was a kinder act than she would have received from most of the Christians around.
It was not yet quite bed-time, and Bertha sat down again to her work, begging her aunt to finish the tale. They took no notice of Hester.
“It is almost finished,” said Avice; “there is little more to tell. The winter got over, but spring was scarcely begun when our little Lady’s health failed again. The Lord King was so anxious about her that when he was away from Windsor, he bade the Lady Queen to send him a special messenger with news of her; and so delighted was he to hear of her recovery, that he commanded a good robe to be given to the messenger, and offered in thanksgiving an image of silver, wrought in the form of a woman, to the shrine of Saint Edward.”
“Then she did recover, Aunt?”
“Ay, but it was for the last time. As the summer drew on, the Lady Queen asked Master Thomas if he thought it well that the little Lady should have change again, and be sent into the country till the heat was past. Master Thomas answered that he reckoned it unnecessary; and the Lady Queen departed, well pleased. But as soon as she was gone, Master Thomas said to me and Julian the Rocker, who were tending our little Lady—‘She will have a better change than to Swallowfield.’ Quoth Julian, ‘Say you so, Master? Whither do you purpose sending her?’ And he said, looking sadly on the child, ‘Ipurpose sending her? Truly, good Julian, no whither. But ere long time be over, the Lord our God will send for her, by that angel that taketh no bribe to delay execution of His mandate.’ And then I knew his meaning: my darling was to die. But the steps of the angel were very slow. The autumn came and went. The child seemed languid and dull, and the Lord King offered a chasuble of samite to the blessed Edmund of Pontigny at his altar at Canterbury.”
Edmund Rich, afterwards called Saint Edmund of Pontigny, was an Archbishop of Canterbury with whom King Henry the Third was at variance as long as he lived, much in the same way as Henry the Second had been with Becket. Now he was dead, a banished man, the Pope had declared him a saint, and King Henry made humble offerings at his shrine. But it is amusing to find that with respect to this offering at least, his Majesty’s instructions were to buy the samite of the lowest price that could be found!
“It was all of no use,” pursued Avice sorrowfully. “The angel had received the mandate. Great feasts were held at Easter—there were twenty beeves and fifty muttons, fifteen hundred pullets, and six hundred shillings’ worth of bread, beside many other things—but ere one month was over, the feast became a fast. When Saint Philip’s day dawned my darling lay in her bed, with her fair eyes turned up to heaven and her hands folded in prayer; and who may know what she said to God, or yet more what He told to her? She had never been taught to pray; she could not be.” Avice’s only notion of prayer was repeating a form of words, and keeping time by a string of beads. “But I shall always think that in some way beyond our comprehension, my darling could speak to God. And on the evening of the Invention of the Cross”—which is May 3rd—“she spoke to Him in Heaven.”
“And did the Lady Queen sorrow very much, Aunt? I suppose, though, great ladies like her would not care as much as poor people.”
“Wouldst thou, child? Ah, a mother is a mother, let her be a cottager or a queen. And she sorrowed so sorely that for weeks afterwards she lay ill, and all the skill of her physicians could avail nothing. The Lord King, too, fell sick of a tertian fever, which held him many days, and I believe it was out of sheer anguish for his dearest child. He commanded a brass image of her to be placed on the tomb, but ere it was finished he would have one of silver: and he gave fifty shillings a year to the hermit of Charing, for a priest to pray daily for her in the chapel of the hermitage.”
“Do you think she is still in Purgatory, Aunt?”
Avice’s religion, as taught not by the Word of God, but the traditions of men, led her to be doubtful on that point. But her heart broke its way through the bonds.
“What, my white dove? my little unspotted darling, that never wilfully sinned against God and holy Church? Child, if our holy Father the Pope were to tell me himself that she was there, I would not believe him. Do the angels go to Purgatory? Nay, I do verily believe that, seeing her infirmity, Christ our Lord did all the work of salvation for her, and that she sings now before our Father’s face.”
Poor Avice! she could get no further. But we, who know God’s Word, know that there is but one Mediator between God and man, and that He has offered a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. Before Bertha could reply, an answer came unexpectedly from the dark corner.
“Your God must be hard to propitiate,” said the young Jewess. “In old times, after the sacrifice was offered, a man was cleansed from sin. He had not to cleanse himself by his own pain.”
“But you are heathens,” said Avice, feeling it a condescension to argue with a Jew. “Our religion is better than yours.”
“How?” was Hester’s rejoinder.
“Because we have been redeemed by our Lord, who died to save us from Hell.”
“It does not sound like it. Then why had the little child to go there?”
“She did not go there! She went to Purgatory.”
“She went to pain, if I understood you rightly. Why did your Messiah not finish His work, and keep her from going to pain altogether?”
“I cannot answer such wicked questions,” said Avice. “The Church teaches that God’s love purifies His servants in Purgatory, and as soon as their souls are clean they go to Heaven.”
“Our God does better for us than that,” was Hester’s quiet answer. “I do not know what ‘the Church’ is. But I suppose God’s love is not for Gentiles.”
And she relapsed into silence. Avice sat and span—and thought. Both of them were terribly ignorant; but Avice did honestly desire to know God’s will, and such truth as was in Hester’s words troubled her. And as she thought, other words came to her, heard years ago from the pulpit of Lincoln Cathedral, and from the long silent lips of that holy Bishop Grosteste whom she so deeply revered.
“By leaning on Christ,” the Bishop had said, “every true Christian rises into true life, peace, and joy; he lives in His life, sees light in His light, is invigorated with His warmth, grows in His strength, and leaning on the Beloved, his soul ascends upwards.”
Then for those who loved Christ and leaned on Him, either He must be with them in Purgatory, and then it would be no pain at all: or—Avice shrank from the alternative that perhaps there was no Purgatory at all! It is hard to break free from trammels in which we have been held all our lives. Bertha did not follow the course of her aunt’s thoughts, and wondered why she said, after long silence—
“Methinks God is enough for His people, wherever they are.”
Hester also had been thinking, and to as much purpose.
“It is written, ‘In His name shall the Gentiles trust,’” she said. “And I think, if He can love any Gentiles, it must be kindly and merciful hearts like yours. Perhaps the Great Sacrifice—the Messiah Himself—is meant for all men. But I think He will finish His work, and not leave it incomplete, as your priests seem to teach you.”
“He will do right by all men, if thou meanest our Lord,” replied Avice gently. “And what was right for all, and best for us, we shall know when we come to Him.”
“Then the little Lady knows it now, Aunt,” said Bertha.
“Yes, my darling knows it now. It may be she knows why her ears were sealed and her tongue bound, now that they are unstopped and loosed. And I marvel if any voice in the choirs of the angels can be so sweet as hers.”
There was silence for a little while. Then Hester rose.
“I thank you very much for your kindness,” she said. “I think I might go home. The streets seem quieter now.”
Avice went to the door, unlatched it, and peered forth into the night.
“Yes, there seems to be no noise in the direction of your quarter now. I think you will be safe. But if you feel uneasy, you can stay the night in this room.”
“No, thank you,” replied Hester gratefully. “I will not put you to that trouble. You have been very good to me. May the God of Israel bless you with His blessing!”
Avice felt rather uneasy. She had always been taught that Jews were idolaters, and she never imagined that Hester could be blessing her in the name of the one living God. She fancied that the benediction of some horrible Moloch was being called down upon her, and feared it accordingly. But she answered kindly, for unkindness was not in her simple, loving, God-fearing heart. Hester went out, and latched the door behind her.
“I am glad she is gone,” said Bertha. “I could not feel easy while she was here. Yet I could not have borne to turn her away without asking you if you would take her in, Aunt. I hope we have not done wrong!”
“I hope not, indeed,” replied Avice, who was not quite easy in her own mind. “I wonder why it should be so wrong to pity Jews, and be kind to them. It looks so different from all the other commands of our Lord.”
Different, most truly! But such causes for wonder were likely to be frequent enough, so long as men allowed the traditions of men to run alongside of the infallible Word of God. And they had no power to read for themselves the real words of the Lord, who had said to the father of all Israel, “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.”
But the influx of visitors was not yet over for the evening. Hester had not been gone long when a heavy rap came on the door. “Come in!” said Avice; and Uncle Dan appeared.
“Could you spare a chap a seat, think ye?” said he. “I’ve come for a bit o’ peace. We’ve got thunder and lightning and rain up at smithy.She’sthunder, and Ankaret’s lightning, and Mildred’s rain, for she’s a-crying: and El’nor and me, we ’re wet to skin wi’ ’t. So I put my cap on and come here to dry me a bit.”
Avice laughed. “You’re always welcome, Uncle Dan, and I hope you know it,” said she. “Bertha, my maid, bake a short-cake for thy father. There’s enough warmth in the bake-stone.”
“Short-cake’s good,” said Dan, “and I’ll not go to deny it; but love and peace are better.Shecan make short-cake wi’ anybody. It’s th’ jam as goes wi’ ’t I don’t like. She makes it so tart, and puts so much on. Sure, if th’ fire had went out, she’d easy bake a cake a-top of her temper, and so could Ankaret. Eh, it do take a whole hive of honey to sweeten some folks. There’s bees in this world, for sure; but there’s many a waps to every bee.”
In the present day, “waps” is considered a vulgar way of pronouncing the word; but it was correct English at the time of which I am writing. “Wasp” is really the corrupt pronunciation. In the same way, they said “claps” where we say “clasp.”
“Uncle Dan, I sometimes wonder you do not come and live in Lincoln town.”
“Dost thee? Think I haven’t noise enough at smithy?”
“But I think you would make friends here, and find things pleasanter.”
“Humph!” said Dan, laying a big, hardened brown hand upon each knee. “It’s very plain to me, Avice, as thou doesn’t live in a house where everything thou does turns to hot water. Me make friends! She’d have ’em out o’ th’ door afore they’d a-comed in. They wouldn’t come twice, I reckon—nay, they wouldn’t. That’d be end o’ my friend-making, Avice.”
“Uncle Dan, did you never try standing up to Aunt Filomena?”
“Did I never trywhat? Ay did I, once—and got knocked down as sharp as ninepins. Standing up! I’d love to see thee try it. Thou’d not be right end up long.”
Bertha had gone upstairs, or Avice perhaps would not have spoken so plainly, though the smith himself had long passed the stage of ignoring his wife’s failings in the presence of her children.
“But you are her husband, Uncle Dan.”
“I reckon I know that Thou would, if she’d plucked as much of thy whiskers out as she has o’ mine.”
“And wives ought to obey their husbands.”
“Thou’ll oblige me by saying so to her, and I’ll be glad to know if thou likes what thou’ll get.”
“You think she cannot be managed?”
“Not without one o’ th’ archangels likes to try. I’ll not say he wouldn’t be sorry at after.”
“It does seem such a sad way for you to live,” said Avice pityingly.
“Grin and bide,” said Dan philosophically. “Grin while I can, and bide when I can’t. But I’ll tell thee what—if some o’ them fighting fellows as goes up and down a-seeking for adventures, ’d just take off Ankaret and Mildred—well, I don’t know about El’nor: she’s been better o’ late—and eh, but they couldn’t take Her, or I’d ha’ given th’ cow into th’ bargain, and been right glad on’t—and if me and Emma and Bertha could ha’ settled down in a bit of a house somewhere, and been peaceable— Come, it’s no use hankering over things as can’t be. Elsewise, I’d ha’ said a chap might ha’ had a bit o’ comfort then.”
“Uncle Dan, did you ever think of praying that Aunt Filomena might have a better temper?”
“Ever think of what?” demanded Uncle Dan in the biggest capitals ever seen on a placard.
“You know God could make her temper sweet, Uncle Dan.”
“Thou believes that, does thou?”
“I do.”
“So will I—when I see’t. I reckon I’ll have a rare capful o’ larks by th’ sky falling, first.”
“The sky will fall some day, my son,” said the voice of Father Thomas, behind Dan. His soft rap had been unheard through Dan’s bass voice, and he had entered unperceived.
“Well, Father, you should know the rights on’t,” was Dan’s answer, with a pull at his hair. “Being a priest, I reckon you’re good friends wi’ th’ angels and th’ sky and all that sort of thing; but—I ask your pardon, Father, but She belongs to t’other lot, and you don’t know her. Eh, you don’t, so!”
And with an ominous shake of his head, and a good-night to Avice and Bertha, Dan passed out.
“Our Lord could do that, Father?” said Avice softly.
“Certainly, my daughter. ‘Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He—in the heavens, and in the earth, and in the sea, and in all depths.’”
Father Thomas had not much of the Bible—only one Gospel and a Book of Psalms—but what he had he studied well. And one page of the Word of God will do a great deal for a man, with the Spirit of God to bring it home to a willing ear and a loving heart.
“May I pray for Aunt Filomena? I am so sorry for Uncle Dan. He is not a bad man, and she makes his home unbearable.”
“God forgive her! By all means pray for both.”