Chapter Four.The White Lady.“The future is all dark,And the past a troubled sea,And Memory sits in the heart,Wailing where Hope should be.”Supper was ready in the hall at four o’clock, and Amphillis found herself seated next below Agatha, the younger of Lady Foljambe’s damsels. It was a feast-day, so that meat was served—a boar’s head, stewed beef, minced mutton, squirrel, and hedgehog. The last dainty is now restricted to gypsies, and no one eats our little russet friend of the bushy tail; but our forefathers indulged in both. There were also roast capons, a heron, and chickens dressed in various ways. Near Amphillis stood a dish of beef jelly, a chowet or liver-pie, a flampoynt or pork-pie, and a dish of sops in fennel. The sweets were Barlee and Mon Amy, of which the first was rice cream, and the second a preparation of curds and cream.Amphillis looked with considerable interest along the table, and at her opposite neighbours. Lady Foljambe she recognised at once; and beside her sat a younger lady whom she had not seen before. She applied to her neighbour for information.“She?” said Agatha. “Oh, she’s Mistress Margaret, my Lady’s daughter-in-law; wife to Master Godfrey, that sits o’ t’ other side of his mother; and that’s Master Matthew, o’ this side. The priest’s Father Jordan—a fat old noodle as ever droned a psalm through his nose. Love you mirth and jollity?”“I scarce know,” said Amphillis, hesitatingly. “I have had so little.”Agatha’s face was a sight to see.“Good lack, but I never reckoned you should be a spoil-sport!” said she, licking her spoon as in duty bound before she plunged it in the jelly—a piece of etiquette in which young ladies at that date were carefully instructed. The idea of setting a separate spoon to help a dish had not dawned upon the mediaeval mind.“I shall hate you, I can tell you, if you so are. Things here be like going to a funeral all day long—never a bit of music nor dancing, nor aught that is jolly. Mistress Margaret might be eighty, so sad and sober is she; and as for my Lady and Mistress Perrote, they are just a pair of old jog-trots fit to run together in a quirle (the open car then used by ladies, something like a waggonette). Master Godfrey’s all for arms and fighting, so he’s no better. Master Matthew’s best of the lot, but bad’s the best when you’ve a-done. And he hasn’t much chance neither, for if he’s seen laughing a bit with one of us, my Lady’s a-down on him as if he’d broke all the Ten Commandments, and whisks him off ere you can say Jack Robinson; and if she whip you not, you may thank the saints or your stars, which you have a mind. Oh, ’tis a jolly house you’ve come to, that I can tell you! I hoped you’d a bit more fun in you than Clarice—she wasn’t a scrap of good. But I’m afraid you’re no better.”“I don’t know, really,” said Amphillis, feeling rather bewildered by Agatha’s reckless rattle, and remembering the injunction not to make a friend of her. “I suppose I have come here to do my duty; but I know not yet what it shall be.”“I detest doing my duty!” said Agatha, energetically.“That’s a pity, isn’t it?” was the reply.Agatha laughed.“Come, you can give a quip-word,” said she. “Clarice was just a lump of wood, that you could batter nought into,—might as well sit next a post. Marabel has some brains, but they’re so far in, there’s no fetching ’em forth. I declare I shall do somewhat one o’ these days that shall shock all the neighbourhood, only to make a diversion.”“I don’t think I would,” responded Amphillis. “You might find it ran the wrong way.”“You’ll do,” said Agatha, laughing. “You are not jolly, but you’re next best to it.”“Whose is that empty place on the form?” asked Amphillis, looking across.“Oh, that’s Master Norman’s—Sir Godfrey’s squire—he’s away with him.”And Agatha, without any apparent reason, became suddenly silent.When supper was over, the girls were called to spin, which they did in the large hall, sitting round the fire with the two ladies and Perrote. Amphillis, as a newcomer, was excused for that evening; and she sat studying her neighbours and surroundings till Mistress Perrote pronounced it bed-time. Then each girl rose and put by her spindle; courtesied to the ladies, and wished them each “Good-even,” receiving a similar greeting; and the three filed out of the inner door after Perrote, each possessing herself of a lighted candle as she passed a window where they stood. At the solar landing they parted, Perrote and Amphillis turning aside to their own tower, Marabel and Agatha going on to the upper floor. (The solar was an intermediate storey, resembling the Frenchentresol.) Amphillis found, as she expected, that she was to share the large blue bed and the yellow griffins with Perrote. The latter proved a very silent bedfellow. Beyond showing Amphillis where she was to place her various possessions, she said nothing at all; and as soon as she had done this, she left the room, and did not reappear for an hour or more. As Amphillis lay on her pillow, she heard an indistinct sound of voices in an adjoining room, and once or twice, as she fancied, a key turned in the lock. At length the voices grew fainter, the hoot of the white owl as he flew past the turret window scarcely roused her, and Amphillis was asleep—so sound asleep, that when Perrote lay down by her side, she never made the discovery.The next morning dawned on a beautiful summer day. Perrote roused her young companion about four o’clock, with a reminder that if she were late it would produce a bad impression upon Lady Foljambe. When they were dressed, Perrote repeated the Rosary, Amphillis making the responses, and they went down to the hall.Breakfast was at this time a luxury not indulged in by every one, and it was not served before seven o’clock. Lady Foljambe patronised it. At that hour it was accordingly spread in the hall, and consisted of powdered beef, boiled beef, brawn, a jug of ale, another of wine, and a third of milk. The milk was a condescension to a personal weakness of Perrote; everybody else drank wine or ale.Amphillis was wondering very much, in the private recesses of her mind, how it was that no lady appeared whom she could suppose to be her own particular mistress; and had she not received such strict charges on the subject, she would certainly have asked the question. As it was, she kept silence; but she was gratified when, after breakfast, having been bidden to follow Perrote, that worthy woman paused to say, as they followed the passage which led to their own turret—“Now, Amphillis Neville, you shall see your Lady.”She stopped before the locked and barred door opposite to their own, unfastened it, and led Amphillis into the carefully-guarded chamber.The barred room proved to be an exceedingly pleasant one, except that it was darker than the other, for it looked into the inner garden, and therefore much less sun ever entered it. A heavy curtain of black worsted, whereon were depicted golden vines and recumbent lions, stretched across the room, shutting off that end which formed the bedchamber. Within its shelter stood a bed of green silk wrought with golden serpents and roses; a small walnut-wood cabinet against the wall; two large chests; a chair of carved walnut-wood, upholstered in yellow satin; a mirror set in silver; and two very unusual pieces of furniture, which in those days they termed folding-chairs, but which we should call a shut-up washstand and dressing-table. The former held an ewer and basin of silver-gilt, much grander articles than Amphillis had ever seen, except in the goldsmith’s shop. In front of the curtain was a bench with green silk cushions, and two small tables, on one of which lay some needlework; and by it, in another yellow satin chair, sat the solitary inhabitant of the chamber, a lady who appeared to be about sixty years of age. She was dressed in widow’s mourning, and in 1372 that meant pure snowy white, with chin and forehead so covered by barb and wimple that only the eyes, nose, and mouth were left visible. This lady’s face was almost as white as her robes. Even her lips seemed colourless; and the fixed, weary, hopeless expression was only broken by two dark, brilliant, sunken eyes, in which lay a whole volume of unread history—eyes that looked as if they could flash with fury, or moisten with pity, or grow soft and tender with love; eyes that had done all these, long, long ago! so long ago, that they had forgotten how to do it. Sad, tired, sorrowful eyes—eyes out of which all expectation had departed; which had nothing left to fear, only because they had nothing left to hope. They were turned now upon Amphillis.“Your Grace’s new chamber-dame,” said Mistress Perrote, “in the room of Clarice. Her name is Amphillis Neville.”The faintest shadow of interest passed over the sorrowful eyes.“Go near,” said Perrote to Amphillis, “and kiss her Grace’s hand.”Amphillis did as she was told. The lady, after offering her hand for the kiss, turned it and gently lifted the girl’s face.“Dost thou serve God?” she said, in a voice which matched her eyes.“I hope so, Dame,” replied Amphillis.“I hope nothing,” said the mysterious lady. “It is eight years since I knew what hope was. I have hoped in my time as much as ever woman did. But God took away from me one boon after another, till now He hath left me desolate. Be thankful, maid, that thou canst yet hope.”She dropped her hand, and went back to her work with a weary sigh.“Dame,” said Perrote, “your Grace wot that her Ladyship desires not that you talk in such strain to the damsels.”The white face changed as Amphillis had thought it could not change, and the sunken eyes shot forth fire.“Her Ladyship!” said the widow. “Who is Avena Foljambe, that she looketh to queen it over Marguerite of Flanders? They took my lord, and I lived through it. They took my daughter, and I bare it. They took my son, my firstborn, and I was silent, though it brake my heart. But by my troth and faith, they shall not still my soul, nor lay bonds upon my tongue when I choose to speak. Avena Foljambe! the kinswoman of a wretched traitor, that met the fate he deserved—why, hath she ten drops of good blood in her veins? And she looks to lord it over a daughter of Charlemagne, that hath borne sceptre ere she carried spindle!”Mistress Perrote’s calm even voice checked the flow of angry words.“Dame, your Grace speaks very sooth (truth). Yet I beseech you remember that my Lady doth present (represent) an higher than herself—the King’s Grace and no lesser.”The lady in white rose to her feet.“What mean you, woman? King Edward of Windsor may be your master and hers, but he is not mine! I owe him no allegiance, nor I never sware any.”“Your son hath sworn it, Dame.”The eyes blazed out again.“My son is a hound!—a craven cur, that licks the hand that lashed him!—a poor court fool that thinks it joy enough to carry his bauble, and marvel at his motley coat and his silvered buttons! That he should be my son,—andhis!”The voice changed so suddenly, that Amphillis could scarcely believe it to be the same. All the passionate fury died out of it, and instead came a low soft tone of unutterable pain, loneliness, and regret. The speaker dropped down into her chair, and laying her arm upon the little table, hid her face upon it.“My poor Lady!” said Perrote in tender accents—more tender than Amphillis had imagined she could use.The lady in white lifted her head.“I was not so weak once,” she said. “There was a time when man said I had the courage of a man and the heart of a lion. Maiden, never man sat an horse better than I, and no warrior ever fought that could more ably handle sword. I have mustered armies to the battle ere now; I have personally conducted sieges, I have headed sallies on the camp of the King of France. Am I meek pigeon to be kept in a dovecote? Look around thee! This is my cage. Ha! the perches are fine wood, sayest thou? the seed is good, and the water is clean! I deny it not. I say only, it is a cage, and I am a royal eagle, that was never made to sit on a perch and coo! The blood of an hundred kings is thrilling all along my veins, and must I be silent? The blood of the sovereigns of France, the kingdom of kingdoms,—of the sea-kings of Denmark, of the ancient kings of Burgundy, and of the Lombards of the Iron Crown—it is with this mine heart is throbbing, and man saith, ‘Be still!’ How can I be still, unless I were still in death? And man reckoneth I shall be a-paid for my lost sword with a needle, and for my broken sceptre he offereth me a bodkin!”With a sudden gesture she brushed all the implements for needlework from the little table to the floor.“There! gather them up, which of you list. I lack no such babe’s gear. If I were but now on my Feraunt, with my visor down, clad in armour, as I was when I rode forth of Hennebon while the French were busied with the assault on the further side of the town,—forth I came with my three hundred horse, and we fired the enemy’s camp—ah, but we made a goodly blaze that day! I reckon the villages saw it for ten miles around or more.”“But your Grace remembereth, we won not back into the town at after,” quietly suggested Perrote.“Well, what so? Went we not to Brest, and there gathered six hundred men, and when we appeared again before Hennebon, the trumpets sounded, and the gates were flung open, and we entered in triumph? Thy memory waxeth weak, old woman! I must refresh it from mine own.”“Please it, your good Grace, I am nigh ten years younger than yourself.”“Then shouldest thou be the more ’shamed to have so much worser a memory. Why, hast forgot all those weeks at Hennebon, that we awaited the coming of the English fleet? Dost not remember how I went down to the Council with thyself at mine heels, and the child in mine arms, to pray the captains not to yield up the town to the French, and the lither loons would not hear me a word? And then at the last minute, when the gates were opened, and the French marching up to take possession, mindest thou not how I ran to yon window that giveth toward the sea, and there at last, at last! the English fleet was seen, making straight sail for us. Then flung I open the contrary casement toward the street, and myself shouted to the people to shut the gates, and man the ramparts, and cry, ‘No surrender!’ Ah, it was a day, that! Had there been but time, I’d never have shouted—I’d have been down myself, and slammed that gate on the King of France’s nose! The pity of it that I had no wings! And did I not meet the English Lords and kiss them every one (Note 1), and hang their chambers with the richest arras in my coffers? And the very next day, Sir Walter Mauny made a sally, and destroyed the French battering-ram, and away fled the French King with ours in pursuit. Ha, that was a jolly sight to see! Old Perrote, hast thou forgot it all?”We are accustomed in the present day to speak of the deliverer of Hennebon as Sir Walter Manny. That his name ought really to be spelt and sounded Mauny, is evidenced by a contemporary entry which speaks of his daughter as the Lady of Maweny.Old Perrote had listened quietly, while her mistress poured forth these reminiscences in rapid words. When the long waiting for the English fleet was mentioned, a kind of shudder passed over her, as if her recollection of that time were painful and distinct enough; but otherwise she stood motionless until the concluding question. Then she answered—“Ay, Dame—no, I would say: I mind it well.”“Thou shouldest! Then quote not Avena Foljambe to me. I care not a brass nail for Avena Foljambe. Hand me yonder weary gear. It is better than counting one’s fingers, maybe.”Amphillis stooped and gathered up the scattered broidery, glancing at Perrote to see if she were doing right. As she approached her mistress to offer them, Perrote whispered, hurriedly, “On the knee, child! on the knee!” and Amphillis, blushing for her mistake, dropped on one knee. She was hoping that the lady would not be angry—that she could be severely so, there could be no doubt—and she was much relieved to see her laugh.“Thou foolish old woman!” she said to Perrote, as she took her work back. Then addressing Amphillis, she added,—“Seest thou, my maid, man hath poured away the sparkling wine out of reach of my thirsty lips; and this silly old Perrote reckons it of mighty moment that the empty cup be left to shine on the buffet. What matters it if the caged eagle have his perch gilded or no? He would a thousand times liefer sit of a bare rock in the sun than of a perch made of gold, and set with emeralds. So man granteth me the gilded perch, to serve me on the knee like a queen, and he setteth it with emeralds, to call me Duchess in lieu of Countess, and he reckoneth that shall a-pay the caged eagle for her lost liberty, and her quenched sunlight, and the grand bare rock on the mountain tops. It were good enough for the dove to sit on the pigeon-house, and preen her feathers, and coo, and take decorous little flights between the dovecote and the ground whereon her corn lieth. She cares for no more. The bare rock would frighten her, and the sun would dazzle her eyes. So man bindeth the eagle by a bond long enough for the dove, and quoth he, ‘Be patient!’ I am not patient. I am not a silly dove, that I should be so. Chide me not, old woman, to tug at my bond. I am an eagle.”“Ah, well, Dame!” said Perrote, with a sigh. “The will of God must needs be done.”“I marvel if man’s will be alway God’s, in sooth. Folks say, whatever happeth, ‘God’s will be done.’ Is everything His will?—the evil things no less than the good? Is it God’s will when man speaketh a lie, or slayeth his fellow, or robbeth a benighted traveller of all his having? Crack me that nut, Perrote.”“Truly, Dame, I am no priest, to solve such matters.”“Then leave thou to chatter glibly anentis God’s will. What wist any man thereabout?”Perrote was silent.“Open the window!” said the Countess, suddenly. “I am dying for lack of fresh air.”Lifting her hand to her head, she hastily tore off the barb and wimple, with little respect to the pins which fastened them, and with the result of a long rent in the former.“That’s for one of you to amend,” she said, with a short laugh. “Ye should be thankful to have somewhat to do provided for you. Ay me!”The words were uttered in a low long moan.Perrote made no reply to the petulant words and action. An expression of tender pity crossed her face, as she stooped and lifted the torn barb, and examined the rent, with as much apparent calmness as if it had been damaged in the washing. There was evidently more in her than she suffered to come forth.Note 1. This action, in the estimation of the time, was merely equivalent to a cordial shaking of hands between the Countess and her deliverers.
“The future is all dark,And the past a troubled sea,And Memory sits in the heart,Wailing where Hope should be.”
“The future is all dark,And the past a troubled sea,And Memory sits in the heart,Wailing where Hope should be.”
Supper was ready in the hall at four o’clock, and Amphillis found herself seated next below Agatha, the younger of Lady Foljambe’s damsels. It was a feast-day, so that meat was served—a boar’s head, stewed beef, minced mutton, squirrel, and hedgehog. The last dainty is now restricted to gypsies, and no one eats our little russet friend of the bushy tail; but our forefathers indulged in both. There were also roast capons, a heron, and chickens dressed in various ways. Near Amphillis stood a dish of beef jelly, a chowet or liver-pie, a flampoynt or pork-pie, and a dish of sops in fennel. The sweets were Barlee and Mon Amy, of which the first was rice cream, and the second a preparation of curds and cream.
Amphillis looked with considerable interest along the table, and at her opposite neighbours. Lady Foljambe she recognised at once; and beside her sat a younger lady whom she had not seen before. She applied to her neighbour for information.
“She?” said Agatha. “Oh, she’s Mistress Margaret, my Lady’s daughter-in-law; wife to Master Godfrey, that sits o’ t’ other side of his mother; and that’s Master Matthew, o’ this side. The priest’s Father Jordan—a fat old noodle as ever droned a psalm through his nose. Love you mirth and jollity?”
“I scarce know,” said Amphillis, hesitatingly. “I have had so little.”
Agatha’s face was a sight to see.
“Good lack, but I never reckoned you should be a spoil-sport!” said she, licking her spoon as in duty bound before she plunged it in the jelly—a piece of etiquette in which young ladies at that date were carefully instructed. The idea of setting a separate spoon to help a dish had not dawned upon the mediaeval mind.
“I shall hate you, I can tell you, if you so are. Things here be like going to a funeral all day long—never a bit of music nor dancing, nor aught that is jolly. Mistress Margaret might be eighty, so sad and sober is she; and as for my Lady and Mistress Perrote, they are just a pair of old jog-trots fit to run together in a quirle (the open car then used by ladies, something like a waggonette). Master Godfrey’s all for arms and fighting, so he’s no better. Master Matthew’s best of the lot, but bad’s the best when you’ve a-done. And he hasn’t much chance neither, for if he’s seen laughing a bit with one of us, my Lady’s a-down on him as if he’d broke all the Ten Commandments, and whisks him off ere you can say Jack Robinson; and if she whip you not, you may thank the saints or your stars, which you have a mind. Oh, ’tis a jolly house you’ve come to, that I can tell you! I hoped you’d a bit more fun in you than Clarice—she wasn’t a scrap of good. But I’m afraid you’re no better.”
“I don’t know, really,” said Amphillis, feeling rather bewildered by Agatha’s reckless rattle, and remembering the injunction not to make a friend of her. “I suppose I have come here to do my duty; but I know not yet what it shall be.”
“I detest doing my duty!” said Agatha, energetically.
“That’s a pity, isn’t it?” was the reply.
Agatha laughed.
“Come, you can give a quip-word,” said she. “Clarice was just a lump of wood, that you could batter nought into,—might as well sit next a post. Marabel has some brains, but they’re so far in, there’s no fetching ’em forth. I declare I shall do somewhat one o’ these days that shall shock all the neighbourhood, only to make a diversion.”
“I don’t think I would,” responded Amphillis. “You might find it ran the wrong way.”
“You’ll do,” said Agatha, laughing. “You are not jolly, but you’re next best to it.”
“Whose is that empty place on the form?” asked Amphillis, looking across.
“Oh, that’s Master Norman’s—Sir Godfrey’s squire—he’s away with him.”
And Agatha, without any apparent reason, became suddenly silent.
When supper was over, the girls were called to spin, which they did in the large hall, sitting round the fire with the two ladies and Perrote. Amphillis, as a newcomer, was excused for that evening; and she sat studying her neighbours and surroundings till Mistress Perrote pronounced it bed-time. Then each girl rose and put by her spindle; courtesied to the ladies, and wished them each “Good-even,” receiving a similar greeting; and the three filed out of the inner door after Perrote, each possessing herself of a lighted candle as she passed a window where they stood. At the solar landing they parted, Perrote and Amphillis turning aside to their own tower, Marabel and Agatha going on to the upper floor. (The solar was an intermediate storey, resembling the Frenchentresol.) Amphillis found, as she expected, that she was to share the large blue bed and the yellow griffins with Perrote. The latter proved a very silent bedfellow. Beyond showing Amphillis where she was to place her various possessions, she said nothing at all; and as soon as she had done this, she left the room, and did not reappear for an hour or more. As Amphillis lay on her pillow, she heard an indistinct sound of voices in an adjoining room, and once or twice, as she fancied, a key turned in the lock. At length the voices grew fainter, the hoot of the white owl as he flew past the turret window scarcely roused her, and Amphillis was asleep—so sound asleep, that when Perrote lay down by her side, she never made the discovery.
The next morning dawned on a beautiful summer day. Perrote roused her young companion about four o’clock, with a reminder that if she were late it would produce a bad impression upon Lady Foljambe. When they were dressed, Perrote repeated the Rosary, Amphillis making the responses, and they went down to the hall.
Breakfast was at this time a luxury not indulged in by every one, and it was not served before seven o’clock. Lady Foljambe patronised it. At that hour it was accordingly spread in the hall, and consisted of powdered beef, boiled beef, brawn, a jug of ale, another of wine, and a third of milk. The milk was a condescension to a personal weakness of Perrote; everybody else drank wine or ale.
Amphillis was wondering very much, in the private recesses of her mind, how it was that no lady appeared whom she could suppose to be her own particular mistress; and had she not received such strict charges on the subject, she would certainly have asked the question. As it was, she kept silence; but she was gratified when, after breakfast, having been bidden to follow Perrote, that worthy woman paused to say, as they followed the passage which led to their own turret—
“Now, Amphillis Neville, you shall see your Lady.”
She stopped before the locked and barred door opposite to their own, unfastened it, and led Amphillis into the carefully-guarded chamber.
The barred room proved to be an exceedingly pleasant one, except that it was darker than the other, for it looked into the inner garden, and therefore much less sun ever entered it. A heavy curtain of black worsted, whereon were depicted golden vines and recumbent lions, stretched across the room, shutting off that end which formed the bedchamber. Within its shelter stood a bed of green silk wrought with golden serpents and roses; a small walnut-wood cabinet against the wall; two large chests; a chair of carved walnut-wood, upholstered in yellow satin; a mirror set in silver; and two very unusual pieces of furniture, which in those days they termed folding-chairs, but which we should call a shut-up washstand and dressing-table. The former held an ewer and basin of silver-gilt, much grander articles than Amphillis had ever seen, except in the goldsmith’s shop. In front of the curtain was a bench with green silk cushions, and two small tables, on one of which lay some needlework; and by it, in another yellow satin chair, sat the solitary inhabitant of the chamber, a lady who appeared to be about sixty years of age. She was dressed in widow’s mourning, and in 1372 that meant pure snowy white, with chin and forehead so covered by barb and wimple that only the eyes, nose, and mouth were left visible. This lady’s face was almost as white as her robes. Even her lips seemed colourless; and the fixed, weary, hopeless expression was only broken by two dark, brilliant, sunken eyes, in which lay a whole volume of unread history—eyes that looked as if they could flash with fury, or moisten with pity, or grow soft and tender with love; eyes that had done all these, long, long ago! so long ago, that they had forgotten how to do it. Sad, tired, sorrowful eyes—eyes out of which all expectation had departed; which had nothing left to fear, only because they had nothing left to hope. They were turned now upon Amphillis.
“Your Grace’s new chamber-dame,” said Mistress Perrote, “in the room of Clarice. Her name is Amphillis Neville.”
The faintest shadow of interest passed over the sorrowful eyes.
“Go near,” said Perrote to Amphillis, “and kiss her Grace’s hand.”
Amphillis did as she was told. The lady, after offering her hand for the kiss, turned it and gently lifted the girl’s face.
“Dost thou serve God?” she said, in a voice which matched her eyes.
“I hope so, Dame,” replied Amphillis.
“I hope nothing,” said the mysterious lady. “It is eight years since I knew what hope was. I have hoped in my time as much as ever woman did. But God took away from me one boon after another, till now He hath left me desolate. Be thankful, maid, that thou canst yet hope.”
She dropped her hand, and went back to her work with a weary sigh.
“Dame,” said Perrote, “your Grace wot that her Ladyship desires not that you talk in such strain to the damsels.”
The white face changed as Amphillis had thought it could not change, and the sunken eyes shot forth fire.
“Her Ladyship!” said the widow. “Who is Avena Foljambe, that she looketh to queen it over Marguerite of Flanders? They took my lord, and I lived through it. They took my daughter, and I bare it. They took my son, my firstborn, and I was silent, though it brake my heart. But by my troth and faith, they shall not still my soul, nor lay bonds upon my tongue when I choose to speak. Avena Foljambe! the kinswoman of a wretched traitor, that met the fate he deserved—why, hath she ten drops of good blood in her veins? And she looks to lord it over a daughter of Charlemagne, that hath borne sceptre ere she carried spindle!”
Mistress Perrote’s calm even voice checked the flow of angry words.
“Dame, your Grace speaks very sooth (truth). Yet I beseech you remember that my Lady doth present (represent) an higher than herself—the King’s Grace and no lesser.”
The lady in white rose to her feet.
“What mean you, woman? King Edward of Windsor may be your master and hers, but he is not mine! I owe him no allegiance, nor I never sware any.”
“Your son hath sworn it, Dame.”
The eyes blazed out again.
“My son is a hound!—a craven cur, that licks the hand that lashed him!—a poor court fool that thinks it joy enough to carry his bauble, and marvel at his motley coat and his silvered buttons! That he should be my son,—andhis!”
The voice changed so suddenly, that Amphillis could scarcely believe it to be the same. All the passionate fury died out of it, and instead came a low soft tone of unutterable pain, loneliness, and regret. The speaker dropped down into her chair, and laying her arm upon the little table, hid her face upon it.
“My poor Lady!” said Perrote in tender accents—more tender than Amphillis had imagined she could use.
The lady in white lifted her head.
“I was not so weak once,” she said. “There was a time when man said I had the courage of a man and the heart of a lion. Maiden, never man sat an horse better than I, and no warrior ever fought that could more ably handle sword. I have mustered armies to the battle ere now; I have personally conducted sieges, I have headed sallies on the camp of the King of France. Am I meek pigeon to be kept in a dovecote? Look around thee! This is my cage. Ha! the perches are fine wood, sayest thou? the seed is good, and the water is clean! I deny it not. I say only, it is a cage, and I am a royal eagle, that was never made to sit on a perch and coo! The blood of an hundred kings is thrilling all along my veins, and must I be silent? The blood of the sovereigns of France, the kingdom of kingdoms,—of the sea-kings of Denmark, of the ancient kings of Burgundy, and of the Lombards of the Iron Crown—it is with this mine heart is throbbing, and man saith, ‘Be still!’ How can I be still, unless I were still in death? And man reckoneth I shall be a-paid for my lost sword with a needle, and for my broken sceptre he offereth me a bodkin!”
With a sudden gesture she brushed all the implements for needlework from the little table to the floor.
“There! gather them up, which of you list. I lack no such babe’s gear. If I were but now on my Feraunt, with my visor down, clad in armour, as I was when I rode forth of Hennebon while the French were busied with the assault on the further side of the town,—forth I came with my three hundred horse, and we fired the enemy’s camp—ah, but we made a goodly blaze that day! I reckon the villages saw it for ten miles around or more.”
“But your Grace remembereth, we won not back into the town at after,” quietly suggested Perrote.
“Well, what so? Went we not to Brest, and there gathered six hundred men, and when we appeared again before Hennebon, the trumpets sounded, and the gates were flung open, and we entered in triumph? Thy memory waxeth weak, old woman! I must refresh it from mine own.”
“Please it, your good Grace, I am nigh ten years younger than yourself.”
“Then shouldest thou be the more ’shamed to have so much worser a memory. Why, hast forgot all those weeks at Hennebon, that we awaited the coming of the English fleet? Dost not remember how I went down to the Council with thyself at mine heels, and the child in mine arms, to pray the captains not to yield up the town to the French, and the lither loons would not hear me a word? And then at the last minute, when the gates were opened, and the French marching up to take possession, mindest thou not how I ran to yon window that giveth toward the sea, and there at last, at last! the English fleet was seen, making straight sail for us. Then flung I open the contrary casement toward the street, and myself shouted to the people to shut the gates, and man the ramparts, and cry, ‘No surrender!’ Ah, it was a day, that! Had there been but time, I’d never have shouted—I’d have been down myself, and slammed that gate on the King of France’s nose! The pity of it that I had no wings! And did I not meet the English Lords and kiss them every one (Note 1), and hang their chambers with the richest arras in my coffers? And the very next day, Sir Walter Mauny made a sally, and destroyed the French battering-ram, and away fled the French King with ours in pursuit. Ha, that was a jolly sight to see! Old Perrote, hast thou forgot it all?”
We are accustomed in the present day to speak of the deliverer of Hennebon as Sir Walter Manny. That his name ought really to be spelt and sounded Mauny, is evidenced by a contemporary entry which speaks of his daughter as the Lady of Maweny.
Old Perrote had listened quietly, while her mistress poured forth these reminiscences in rapid words. When the long waiting for the English fleet was mentioned, a kind of shudder passed over her, as if her recollection of that time were painful and distinct enough; but otherwise she stood motionless until the concluding question. Then she answered—
“Ay, Dame—no, I would say: I mind it well.”
“Thou shouldest! Then quote not Avena Foljambe to me. I care not a brass nail for Avena Foljambe. Hand me yonder weary gear. It is better than counting one’s fingers, maybe.”
Amphillis stooped and gathered up the scattered broidery, glancing at Perrote to see if she were doing right. As she approached her mistress to offer them, Perrote whispered, hurriedly, “On the knee, child! on the knee!” and Amphillis, blushing for her mistake, dropped on one knee. She was hoping that the lady would not be angry—that she could be severely so, there could be no doubt—and she was much relieved to see her laugh.
“Thou foolish old woman!” she said to Perrote, as she took her work back. Then addressing Amphillis, she added,—“Seest thou, my maid, man hath poured away the sparkling wine out of reach of my thirsty lips; and this silly old Perrote reckons it of mighty moment that the empty cup be left to shine on the buffet. What matters it if the caged eagle have his perch gilded or no? He would a thousand times liefer sit of a bare rock in the sun than of a perch made of gold, and set with emeralds. So man granteth me the gilded perch, to serve me on the knee like a queen, and he setteth it with emeralds, to call me Duchess in lieu of Countess, and he reckoneth that shall a-pay the caged eagle for her lost liberty, and her quenched sunlight, and the grand bare rock on the mountain tops. It were good enough for the dove to sit on the pigeon-house, and preen her feathers, and coo, and take decorous little flights between the dovecote and the ground whereon her corn lieth. She cares for no more. The bare rock would frighten her, and the sun would dazzle her eyes. So man bindeth the eagle by a bond long enough for the dove, and quoth he, ‘Be patient!’ I am not patient. I am not a silly dove, that I should be so. Chide me not, old woman, to tug at my bond. I am an eagle.”
“Ah, well, Dame!” said Perrote, with a sigh. “The will of God must needs be done.”
“I marvel if man’s will be alway God’s, in sooth. Folks say, whatever happeth, ‘God’s will be done.’ Is everything His will?—the evil things no less than the good? Is it God’s will when man speaketh a lie, or slayeth his fellow, or robbeth a benighted traveller of all his having? Crack me that nut, Perrote.”
“Truly, Dame, I am no priest, to solve such matters.”
“Then leave thou to chatter glibly anentis God’s will. What wist any man thereabout?”
Perrote was silent.
“Open the window!” said the Countess, suddenly. “I am dying for lack of fresh air.”
Lifting her hand to her head, she hastily tore off the barb and wimple, with little respect to the pins which fastened them, and with the result of a long rent in the former.
“That’s for one of you to amend,” she said, with a short laugh. “Ye should be thankful to have somewhat to do provided for you. Ay me!”
The words were uttered in a low long moan.
Perrote made no reply to the petulant words and action. An expression of tender pity crossed her face, as she stooped and lifted the torn barb, and examined the rent, with as much apparent calmness as if it had been damaged in the washing. There was evidently more in her than she suffered to come forth.
Note 1. This action, in the estimation of the time, was merely equivalent to a cordial shaking of hands between the Countess and her deliverers.
Chapter Five.New and Strange.“I stretched mine empty hands for bread,And see, they have given me stones instead!”“B.M.”Before anything more could be said, the door opened, and Lady Foljambe came in. She addressed herself at once to Perrote.“Did I not bid you alway to lock the door when you should enter? Lo, here it is unlocked. Wherefore have you a key apart from mine, but that you should so do?”“I cry you mercy, Dame,” said Perrote, meekly. “Did you ever this before?”“I mind not well, Dame.”“Well, of a surety! Call you this guarding a prisoner? Mind you not that which happed at Tickhill, when she ’scaped forth by aid of that knight—his name I forget—and had nigh reached the border of the liberties ere it was discovered? Is this your allegiance and duty? Dame, I bid you good morrow.”“Better late than never, Avena,” said the Countess, a little satirically. “Thou fond thing, there, lie over twenty years betwixt yon night at Tickhill and this morrow. And if the night were back, where is the knight? Nay, Avena Foljambe, I have nought to escape for, now.”“Dame, I must needs say you be rare unbuxom and unthankful.”“Ay, so said the fox to the stork, when he ’plained to be served with thin broth.”“Pray you, look but around. You be lodged fit for any queen, be she the greatest in Christendom; you need but speak a wish, and you shall have it fulfilled—”“Namely, thou shalt not put me off with red silk to my broidery when I would have blue.”“You eat of the best, and lie of the softest, and speak with whom you would—”“Hold there!” The fire had come back to the sunken eyes. “I would speak with some that come never anigh me, mine own children, that have cast me off, or be kept away from me; they never so much as ask the old mother how she doth. And I slaved and wrought and risked my life for them, times out of mind! And here you keep me, shut up in four walls,—never a change from year end to year end; never a voice to say ‘Mother!’ or ‘I love thee;’ never a hope to look forward to till death take me! No going forth of my cage; even the very air of heaven has to come in to me. And I may choose, may I, whether my bed shall be hung with green or blue? I may speak my pleasure if I would have to my four-hours macaroons or gingerbread? and be duly thankful that this liberty and these delicates are granted me! Avena Foljambe, all your folly lieth not in your legs.”Lady Foljambe evidently did not appreciate this pun upon her surname.“Dame!” she said, severely.“Well? I can fare forth, if you have not had enough. What right hath your King thus to use me? I never was his vassal. I entreated his aid, truly, as prince to prince; and had he kept his bond and word, he had been the truer man. I never brake mine, and I had far more need than he. Wherefore played he at see-saw, now aiding me, and now Charles, until none of his knights well knew which way he was bent? I brought Charles de Blois to him a prisoner, and he let him go for a heap of yellow stuff, and fiddled with him, off and on, till Charles brake his pledged word, and lost his life, as he deserved, at Auray. I desire to know what right King Edward had, when I came to visit him after I had captured mine enemy, to makemea prisoner, and keep me so, now and then suffering me, like a cat with a mouse, to escape just far enough to keep within his reach when he list to catch me again. But not now, for eight long years—eight long years!”“Dame, I cannot remain here to list such language of my sovereign.”“Then don’t. I never asked you. My tongue is free, at any rate. You can go.”And the Countess turned back to the black satin on which she was embroidering a wreath of red and white roses.“Follow me, Amphillis,” said Lady Foljambe, with as much dignity as the Countess’s onslaught had left her.She led the way into the opposite chamber, the one shared by Perrote and Amphillis.“It were best, as this hath happed, that you should know quickly who this lady is that wotteth not how to govern her tongue. She is the Duchess of Brittany. Heard you ever her story?”“Something, Dame, an’ it please you; yet not fully told. I heard, as I think, of some quarrel betwixt her and a cousin touching the succession to the duchy, and that our King had holpen her, and gave his daughter in wedlock to the young Duke her son.”“So did he, in very deed; and yet is she thus unbuxom. Listen, and you shall hear the inwards thereof. In the year of our Lord 1341 died Duke John of Brittany, that was called the Good, and left no child. Two brothers had he—Sir Guy, that was his brother both of father and mother, and Sir John, of the father only, that was called Count de Montfort. Sir Guy was then dead, but had left behind him a daughter, the Lady Joan, that man called Joan the Halting, by reason she was lame of one leg. Between her and her uncle of Montfort was the war of succession—she as daughter of the brother by father and mother, he as nearer akin to Duke John, being brother himself. (Note 1.) Our King took part with the Count de Montfort, and the King of France espoused the cause of the Lady Joan.”Lady Foljambe did not think it necessary to add that King Edward’s policy had been of the most halting character in this matter—at one time fighting for Jeanne, and at another for Montfort, until his nobles might well have been pardoned, if they found it difficult to remember at any given moment on which side their master was.“Well, the King of France took the Count, and led him away captive to Paris his city. Whereupon this lady, that is now here in ward, what did she but took in her arms her young son, that was then a babe of some few months old, and into the Council at Rennes she went—which city is the chief town of Brittany—and quoth she unto the nobles there assembled, ‘Fair Sirs, be not cast down by the loss of my lord; he was but one man. See here his young son, who shall ’present him for you; and trust me, we will keep the stranger out of our city as well without him as with him.’ Truly, there was not a man to come up to her. She handled sword as well as any marshal of the King’s host; no assault could surprise her, no disappointment could crush her, nor could any man, however wily, take her off her guard. When she had gone forward to Hennebon—for Rennes surrendered ere help could come from our King—man said she rade all up and down the town, clad in armour, encouraging the townsmen, and moving the women to go up to the ramparts and thence to hurl down on the besiegers the stones that they tare up from the paved streets. Never man fought like her!”“If it please you, Dame, was her lord never set free?” asked Amphillis, considerably interested.“Ay and no,” said Lady Foljambe. “Set free was he never, but he escaped out of Louvre (Note 2) in disguise of a pedlar, and so came to England to entreat the King’s aid; but his Grace was then so busied with foreign warfare that little could he do, and the poor Count laid it so to heart that he died. He did but return home to die in his wife’s arms.”“Oh, poor lady!” said Amphillis.“Three years later,” said Lady Foljambe, “this lady took prisoner Sir Charles de Blois, the husband of the Lady Joan, and brought him to the King; also bringing her young son, that was then a lad of six years, and was betrothed to the King’s daughter, the Lady Mary. The King ordered her residence in the Castle of Tickhill, where she dwelt many years, until a matter of two years back, when she was brought hither.”Amphillis felt this account exceedingly unsatisfactory.“Dame,” said she, “if I may have leave to ask at you, wherefore is this lady a prisoner? What hath she done?”Lady Foljambe’s lips took a stern set. She was apparently not pleased with the freedom of the question.“She was a very troublesome person,” said she. “Nothing could stay her; she was ever restless and interfering. But these be matters too high for a young maid such as thou. Thou wert best keep to thy broidery and such-like duties.”Harvest Home—the sixteenth of August—arrived when Amphillis had been a week at Hazelwood. She had not by any means concluded that process which is known as “settling down.” On the contrary, she had never felt so unsettled, and the feeling grew rather than diminished. Even Alexandra and Ricarda had tried her less than her present companions, in one sense; for they puzzled her less, though they teased her more. She was beginning to understand her mistress, whose mood was usually one of weary lack of interest and energy, occasionally broken either by seasons of acute sorrow, or by sudden flashes of fiery anger: and the last were less trying than the first—indeed, it seemed sometimes to Amphillis that they served as a vent and a relief; that for a time after them the weariness was a shade less dreary, and the languor scarcely quite so overpowering.Late in the evening, on the night before Harvest Home, Sir Godfrey returned home, attended by his squire, Master Norman Hylton. The impression received by Amphillis concerning the master of the house was that he was a fitting pendant to his wife—tall, square, and stern. She did not know that Sir Godfrey had been rather wild in his youth, and, as some such men do, had become correspondingly severe and precise in his old age. Not that his heart had changed; it was simply that the sins of youth had been driven out by the sins of maturer life. And Satan is always willing to let his slaves replace one sin by another, for it makes them none the less surely his. Sir Godfrey suffered under no sense of inconsistency in sternly rebuking, when exhibited by Agatha or Matthew, slight tendencies to evil of the same types as he had once been addicted to himself. Had he not sown his wild oats, and become a reformed character? The outside of the cup and platter were now so beautifully clean, that it never so much as occurred to him to question the condition of the inside. Yet within were some very foul things—alienation from God, and hardness of heart, and love of gold, that grew upon him year by year. And he thought himself a most excellent man, though he was only a whitewashed sepulchre. He lifted his head high, as he stood in the court of the temple, and effusively thanked God that he was not as other men. An excellent man! said everybody who knew him—perhaps a little too particular, and rather severe on the peccadilloes of young people. But when the time came that another Voice pronounced final sentence on that whitewashed life, the verdict was scarcely “Well done!”Norman Hylton sat opposite to Amphillis at the supper-table, in the only manner in which people could sit opposite to each other at a mediaeval table—namely, when it was in the form of a squared horseshoe. The table, which was always one or more boards laid across trestles, was very narrow, the inside of the horseshoe being reserved for the servants to hand the dishes. There were therefore some yards of distance between opposite neighbours. Amphillis studied her neighbour, so far as an occasional glance in his direction allowed her to do so, and she came to the conclusion that there was nothing remarkable about him except the expression of his face. He was neither tall nor short, neither handsome nor ugly, neither lively nor morose. He talked a little with his next neighbour, Matthew Foljambe, but there was nothing in the manner of either to provoke curiosity as to the subject of their conversation. But his expression puzzled Amphillis. He had dark eyes—like the Countess’s, she thought; but the weary and sometimes fiery aspect of hers was replaced in these by a look of perfect contentment and peace. Yet it was utterly different from the self-satisfied expression which beamed out of Sir Godfrey’s eyes.“What manner of man is Master Hylton?” she asked of Agatha, who always sat next her. Precedence at table was regulated by strict rules.“The youngest of six brethren; prithee, trouble not thine head over him,” was that young lady’s answer.“But that doth me not to wit what manner of man he is,” responded Amphillis, turning to the sewer or waiter, who was offering her some rissoles of lamb.Agatha indulged in a little explosion of laughter under cover of her handkerchief.“Oh, Amphillis, where hast thou dwelt all thy life? Thou art the full seliest (simplest, most unconventional) maid ever I did see.”Amphillis replied literally. “Why, in Hertfordshire was I born, but I dwelt in London town a while ere I came hither.”“A jolly townswoman must thou have made! Canst not conceive what I mean? Why, the youngest of six brethren hath all his fortune to make, and cannot be no catch at all for a maid, without he be full high of rank, and she have gold enough to serve her turn without.”“But I don’t want to catch him,” said Amphillis, innocently.Agatha burst out laughing, and Lady Foljambe, from the middle of the horseshoe table, looked daggers at her. Unrestrained laughter at table, especially in a girl, was a serious breach of etiquette.“I say, you shouldn’t be so funny!” remonstrated Agatha. “How shall man help to laugh if you say so comical words?”“I wist not I was thus comical,” said Amphillis. “But truly I conceive you not. Wherefore should I catch Master Hylton, and wherewith, and to what end?”“Amphillis, you shall be the death of me! My Lady shall snap off my head at after supper, and the maid is not born that could help to laugh at you. To what end? Why, for an husband, child! As to wherewith, that I leave to thee.” And Agatha concluded with another stifled giggle.“Agatha!” was all that the indignant Amphillis could say in answer. She could hardly have told whether she felt more vexed or astonished. The bare idea of such a thing, evidently quite familiar to Agatha, was utterly new to her. “You never, surely, signify that any decent maid could set herself to seek a man for an husband, like an angler with fish?”“They must be uncommon queer folks in Hertfordshire if thou art a sample thereof,” was the reply. “Why, for sure, I so signified. Thou must have been bred up in a convent, Phyllis, or else tied to thy grandmother’s apron-string all thy life. Shall a maid ne’er have a bit of fun, quotha?”Amphillis made no answer, but finished her rissoles in silence, and helped herself to a small pound-cake.“Verily, some folks be born as old as their grandmothers,” said Agatha, accepting a fieldfare from the sewer, and squeezing a lemon over it. “I would fain enjoy my youth, though I’m little like to do it whilst here I am. Howbeit, it were sheer waste of stuff for any maid to set her heart on Master Norman; he wist not how to discourse with maids. He should have been a monk, in very sooth, for he is fit for nought no better. There isn’t a sparkle about him.”“He looks satisfied,” said Amphillis, rather wistfully. She was wishing that she felt so.Agatha’s answer was a puzzled stare, first at Amphillis, and then at Mr Hylton.“‘Satisfied!’” she repeated, as if she wondered what the word could mean. “Aren’t we all satisfied?”“Maybe you are,” replied Amphillis, “though I reckon I have heard you say what looked otherwise. You would fain have more life and jollity, if I err not.”“Truly, therein you err not in no wise,” answered Agatha, laughing again, though in a more subdued manner than before. “I never loved to dwell in a nunnery, and this house is little better. ‘Satisfied!’” she said again, as though the word perplexed her. “I never thought of no such a thing. Doth Master Norman look satisfied? What hath satisfied him, trow?”“That is it I would fain know,” said Amphillis.“In good sooth, I see not how it may be,” resumed Agatha. “He has never a penny to his patrimony. I heard him to say once to Master Godfrey that all he had of his father was horse, and arms, and raiment. Nor hath he any childless old uncle, or such, that might take to him, and make his fortune. He lives of his wits, belike. Now, I am an only daughter, and have never a brother to come betwixt me and the inheritance; I shall have a pretty penny when my father dies. So I have some right to be jolly. Ay, and jolly I’ll be when I am mine own mistress, I warrant you! I’ve no mother, so there is none to oversee me, and rule me, and pluck me by the sleeve when I would go hither and thither, so soon as I can be quit of my Lady yonder. Oh, there’s a jolly life aforeme.”It was Amphillis’s turn to be astonished.“Dear heart!” she said. “Why, I have no kindred nearer than uncle and cousins, but I have ever reckoned it a sore trouble to lose my mother, and no blessing.”“Very like it was to you!” said Agatha. “You’d make no bones if you were ruled like an antiphonarium (music-book for anthems and chants), I’ll be bound, I’m none so fond of being driven in harness. I love my own way, and I’ll have it, too, one of these days.”“But then you have none to love you! That is one of the worst sorrows in the world, I take it.”“Love! bless you, I shall have lovers enough! I’ve three hundred a year to my fortune.”Three hundred pounds in 1372 was equal to nearly five thousand now.“But what good should it do you that people wanted your money?” asked Amphillis. “That isn’t lovingyou.”“Amphillis, I do believe you were born a hundred years old! or else in some other world, where their notions are quite diverse from this,” said Agatha, taking a candied orange from the sewer. “I never heard such things as you say.”“But lovers who only want your money seem to me very unsatisfying folks,” replied Amphillis. “Will they smooth your pillows when you are sick? or comfort you when your heart is woeful?”“I don’t mean my heart to be woeful, and as to pillows, there be thousands will smooth them for wages.”“They are smoother when ’tis done for love,” was the answer.Agatha devoted herself to her orange, and in a few minutes Lady Foljambe gave the signal to rise from table. The young ladies followed her to her private sitting-room, where Agatha received a stern reprimand for the crime of laughing too loud, and was told she was no better than a silly giglot, who would probably bring herself some day to dire disgrace. Lady Foljambe then motioned her to the spindle, and desired her not to leave it till the bell rang for evening prayers in the chapel, just before bed-time. Agatha pulled a face behind Lady Foljambe’s back, but she did not dare to disobey.Note 1. It seems very strange to us that the Count de Montfort should have imagined himself to have a better claim to the crown than his niece; but the principle under which he claimed was the law of non-representation, which forbade the child of a deceased son or brother to inherit; and this, little as it is now allowed or even understood, was not only the custom of some Continental states, but was the law of succession in England, itself until 1377. The struggle between Stephen and the Empress Maud, and that between King John and his nephew Arthur, were fought upon this principle.Note 2. The Louvre, then considerednearParis, was usually mentioned without the article.
“I stretched mine empty hands for bread,And see, they have given me stones instead!”“B.M.”
“I stretched mine empty hands for bread,And see, they have given me stones instead!”“B.M.”
Before anything more could be said, the door opened, and Lady Foljambe came in. She addressed herself at once to Perrote.
“Did I not bid you alway to lock the door when you should enter? Lo, here it is unlocked. Wherefore have you a key apart from mine, but that you should so do?”
“I cry you mercy, Dame,” said Perrote, meekly. “Did you ever this before?”
“I mind not well, Dame.”
“Well, of a surety! Call you this guarding a prisoner? Mind you not that which happed at Tickhill, when she ’scaped forth by aid of that knight—his name I forget—and had nigh reached the border of the liberties ere it was discovered? Is this your allegiance and duty? Dame, I bid you good morrow.”
“Better late than never, Avena,” said the Countess, a little satirically. “Thou fond thing, there, lie over twenty years betwixt yon night at Tickhill and this morrow. And if the night were back, where is the knight? Nay, Avena Foljambe, I have nought to escape for, now.”
“Dame, I must needs say you be rare unbuxom and unthankful.”
“Ay, so said the fox to the stork, when he ’plained to be served with thin broth.”
“Pray you, look but around. You be lodged fit for any queen, be she the greatest in Christendom; you need but speak a wish, and you shall have it fulfilled—”
“Namely, thou shalt not put me off with red silk to my broidery when I would have blue.”
“You eat of the best, and lie of the softest, and speak with whom you would—”
“Hold there!” The fire had come back to the sunken eyes. “I would speak with some that come never anigh me, mine own children, that have cast me off, or be kept away from me; they never so much as ask the old mother how she doth. And I slaved and wrought and risked my life for them, times out of mind! And here you keep me, shut up in four walls,—never a change from year end to year end; never a voice to say ‘Mother!’ or ‘I love thee;’ never a hope to look forward to till death take me! No going forth of my cage; even the very air of heaven has to come in to me. And I may choose, may I, whether my bed shall be hung with green or blue? I may speak my pleasure if I would have to my four-hours macaroons or gingerbread? and be duly thankful that this liberty and these delicates are granted me! Avena Foljambe, all your folly lieth not in your legs.”
Lady Foljambe evidently did not appreciate this pun upon her surname.
“Dame!” she said, severely.
“Well? I can fare forth, if you have not had enough. What right hath your King thus to use me? I never was his vassal. I entreated his aid, truly, as prince to prince; and had he kept his bond and word, he had been the truer man. I never brake mine, and I had far more need than he. Wherefore played he at see-saw, now aiding me, and now Charles, until none of his knights well knew which way he was bent? I brought Charles de Blois to him a prisoner, and he let him go for a heap of yellow stuff, and fiddled with him, off and on, till Charles brake his pledged word, and lost his life, as he deserved, at Auray. I desire to know what right King Edward had, when I came to visit him after I had captured mine enemy, to makemea prisoner, and keep me so, now and then suffering me, like a cat with a mouse, to escape just far enough to keep within his reach when he list to catch me again. But not now, for eight long years—eight long years!”
“Dame, I cannot remain here to list such language of my sovereign.”
“Then don’t. I never asked you. My tongue is free, at any rate. You can go.”
And the Countess turned back to the black satin on which she was embroidering a wreath of red and white roses.
“Follow me, Amphillis,” said Lady Foljambe, with as much dignity as the Countess’s onslaught had left her.
She led the way into the opposite chamber, the one shared by Perrote and Amphillis.
“It were best, as this hath happed, that you should know quickly who this lady is that wotteth not how to govern her tongue. She is the Duchess of Brittany. Heard you ever her story?”
“Something, Dame, an’ it please you; yet not fully told. I heard, as I think, of some quarrel betwixt her and a cousin touching the succession to the duchy, and that our King had holpen her, and gave his daughter in wedlock to the young Duke her son.”
“So did he, in very deed; and yet is she thus unbuxom. Listen, and you shall hear the inwards thereof. In the year of our Lord 1341 died Duke John of Brittany, that was called the Good, and left no child. Two brothers had he—Sir Guy, that was his brother both of father and mother, and Sir John, of the father only, that was called Count de Montfort. Sir Guy was then dead, but had left behind him a daughter, the Lady Joan, that man called Joan the Halting, by reason she was lame of one leg. Between her and her uncle of Montfort was the war of succession—she as daughter of the brother by father and mother, he as nearer akin to Duke John, being brother himself. (Note 1.) Our King took part with the Count de Montfort, and the King of France espoused the cause of the Lady Joan.”
Lady Foljambe did not think it necessary to add that King Edward’s policy had been of the most halting character in this matter—at one time fighting for Jeanne, and at another for Montfort, until his nobles might well have been pardoned, if they found it difficult to remember at any given moment on which side their master was.
“Well, the King of France took the Count, and led him away captive to Paris his city. Whereupon this lady, that is now here in ward, what did she but took in her arms her young son, that was then a babe of some few months old, and into the Council at Rennes she went—which city is the chief town of Brittany—and quoth she unto the nobles there assembled, ‘Fair Sirs, be not cast down by the loss of my lord; he was but one man. See here his young son, who shall ’present him for you; and trust me, we will keep the stranger out of our city as well without him as with him.’ Truly, there was not a man to come up to her. She handled sword as well as any marshal of the King’s host; no assault could surprise her, no disappointment could crush her, nor could any man, however wily, take her off her guard. When she had gone forward to Hennebon—for Rennes surrendered ere help could come from our King—man said she rade all up and down the town, clad in armour, encouraging the townsmen, and moving the women to go up to the ramparts and thence to hurl down on the besiegers the stones that they tare up from the paved streets. Never man fought like her!”
“If it please you, Dame, was her lord never set free?” asked Amphillis, considerably interested.
“Ay and no,” said Lady Foljambe. “Set free was he never, but he escaped out of Louvre (Note 2) in disguise of a pedlar, and so came to England to entreat the King’s aid; but his Grace was then so busied with foreign warfare that little could he do, and the poor Count laid it so to heart that he died. He did but return home to die in his wife’s arms.”
“Oh, poor lady!” said Amphillis.
“Three years later,” said Lady Foljambe, “this lady took prisoner Sir Charles de Blois, the husband of the Lady Joan, and brought him to the King; also bringing her young son, that was then a lad of six years, and was betrothed to the King’s daughter, the Lady Mary. The King ordered her residence in the Castle of Tickhill, where she dwelt many years, until a matter of two years back, when she was brought hither.”
Amphillis felt this account exceedingly unsatisfactory.
“Dame,” said she, “if I may have leave to ask at you, wherefore is this lady a prisoner? What hath she done?”
Lady Foljambe’s lips took a stern set. She was apparently not pleased with the freedom of the question.
“She was a very troublesome person,” said she. “Nothing could stay her; she was ever restless and interfering. But these be matters too high for a young maid such as thou. Thou wert best keep to thy broidery and such-like duties.”
Harvest Home—the sixteenth of August—arrived when Amphillis had been a week at Hazelwood. She had not by any means concluded that process which is known as “settling down.” On the contrary, she had never felt so unsettled, and the feeling grew rather than diminished. Even Alexandra and Ricarda had tried her less than her present companions, in one sense; for they puzzled her less, though they teased her more. She was beginning to understand her mistress, whose mood was usually one of weary lack of interest and energy, occasionally broken either by seasons of acute sorrow, or by sudden flashes of fiery anger: and the last were less trying than the first—indeed, it seemed sometimes to Amphillis that they served as a vent and a relief; that for a time after them the weariness was a shade less dreary, and the languor scarcely quite so overpowering.
Late in the evening, on the night before Harvest Home, Sir Godfrey returned home, attended by his squire, Master Norman Hylton. The impression received by Amphillis concerning the master of the house was that he was a fitting pendant to his wife—tall, square, and stern. She did not know that Sir Godfrey had been rather wild in his youth, and, as some such men do, had become correspondingly severe and precise in his old age. Not that his heart had changed; it was simply that the sins of youth had been driven out by the sins of maturer life. And Satan is always willing to let his slaves replace one sin by another, for it makes them none the less surely his. Sir Godfrey suffered under no sense of inconsistency in sternly rebuking, when exhibited by Agatha or Matthew, slight tendencies to evil of the same types as he had once been addicted to himself. Had he not sown his wild oats, and become a reformed character? The outside of the cup and platter were now so beautifully clean, that it never so much as occurred to him to question the condition of the inside. Yet within were some very foul things—alienation from God, and hardness of heart, and love of gold, that grew upon him year by year. And he thought himself a most excellent man, though he was only a whitewashed sepulchre. He lifted his head high, as he stood in the court of the temple, and effusively thanked God that he was not as other men. An excellent man! said everybody who knew him—perhaps a little too particular, and rather severe on the peccadilloes of young people. But when the time came that another Voice pronounced final sentence on that whitewashed life, the verdict was scarcely “Well done!”
Norman Hylton sat opposite to Amphillis at the supper-table, in the only manner in which people could sit opposite to each other at a mediaeval table—namely, when it was in the form of a squared horseshoe. The table, which was always one or more boards laid across trestles, was very narrow, the inside of the horseshoe being reserved for the servants to hand the dishes. There were therefore some yards of distance between opposite neighbours. Amphillis studied her neighbour, so far as an occasional glance in his direction allowed her to do so, and she came to the conclusion that there was nothing remarkable about him except the expression of his face. He was neither tall nor short, neither handsome nor ugly, neither lively nor morose. He talked a little with his next neighbour, Matthew Foljambe, but there was nothing in the manner of either to provoke curiosity as to the subject of their conversation. But his expression puzzled Amphillis. He had dark eyes—like the Countess’s, she thought; but the weary and sometimes fiery aspect of hers was replaced in these by a look of perfect contentment and peace. Yet it was utterly different from the self-satisfied expression which beamed out of Sir Godfrey’s eyes.
“What manner of man is Master Hylton?” she asked of Agatha, who always sat next her. Precedence at table was regulated by strict rules.
“The youngest of six brethren; prithee, trouble not thine head over him,” was that young lady’s answer.
“But that doth me not to wit what manner of man he is,” responded Amphillis, turning to the sewer or waiter, who was offering her some rissoles of lamb.
Agatha indulged in a little explosion of laughter under cover of her handkerchief.
“Oh, Amphillis, where hast thou dwelt all thy life? Thou art the full seliest (simplest, most unconventional) maid ever I did see.”
Amphillis replied literally. “Why, in Hertfordshire was I born, but I dwelt in London town a while ere I came hither.”
“A jolly townswoman must thou have made! Canst not conceive what I mean? Why, the youngest of six brethren hath all his fortune to make, and cannot be no catch at all for a maid, without he be full high of rank, and she have gold enough to serve her turn without.”
“But I don’t want to catch him,” said Amphillis, innocently.
Agatha burst out laughing, and Lady Foljambe, from the middle of the horseshoe table, looked daggers at her. Unrestrained laughter at table, especially in a girl, was a serious breach of etiquette.
“I say, you shouldn’t be so funny!” remonstrated Agatha. “How shall man help to laugh if you say so comical words?”
“I wist not I was thus comical,” said Amphillis. “But truly I conceive you not. Wherefore should I catch Master Hylton, and wherewith, and to what end?”
“Amphillis, you shall be the death of me! My Lady shall snap off my head at after supper, and the maid is not born that could help to laugh at you. To what end? Why, for an husband, child! As to wherewith, that I leave to thee.” And Agatha concluded with another stifled giggle.
“Agatha!” was all that the indignant Amphillis could say in answer. She could hardly have told whether she felt more vexed or astonished. The bare idea of such a thing, evidently quite familiar to Agatha, was utterly new to her. “You never, surely, signify that any decent maid could set herself to seek a man for an husband, like an angler with fish?”
“They must be uncommon queer folks in Hertfordshire if thou art a sample thereof,” was the reply. “Why, for sure, I so signified. Thou must have been bred up in a convent, Phyllis, or else tied to thy grandmother’s apron-string all thy life. Shall a maid ne’er have a bit of fun, quotha?”
Amphillis made no answer, but finished her rissoles in silence, and helped herself to a small pound-cake.
“Verily, some folks be born as old as their grandmothers,” said Agatha, accepting a fieldfare from the sewer, and squeezing a lemon over it. “I would fain enjoy my youth, though I’m little like to do it whilst here I am. Howbeit, it were sheer waste of stuff for any maid to set her heart on Master Norman; he wist not how to discourse with maids. He should have been a monk, in very sooth, for he is fit for nought no better. There isn’t a sparkle about him.”
“He looks satisfied,” said Amphillis, rather wistfully. She was wishing that she felt so.
Agatha’s answer was a puzzled stare, first at Amphillis, and then at Mr Hylton.
“‘Satisfied!’” she repeated, as if she wondered what the word could mean. “Aren’t we all satisfied?”
“Maybe you are,” replied Amphillis, “though I reckon I have heard you say what looked otherwise. You would fain have more life and jollity, if I err not.”
“Truly, therein you err not in no wise,” answered Agatha, laughing again, though in a more subdued manner than before. “I never loved to dwell in a nunnery, and this house is little better. ‘Satisfied!’” she said again, as though the word perplexed her. “I never thought of no such a thing. Doth Master Norman look satisfied? What hath satisfied him, trow?”
“That is it I would fain know,” said Amphillis.
“In good sooth, I see not how it may be,” resumed Agatha. “He has never a penny to his patrimony. I heard him to say once to Master Godfrey that all he had of his father was horse, and arms, and raiment. Nor hath he any childless old uncle, or such, that might take to him, and make his fortune. He lives of his wits, belike. Now, I am an only daughter, and have never a brother to come betwixt me and the inheritance; I shall have a pretty penny when my father dies. So I have some right to be jolly. Ay, and jolly I’ll be when I am mine own mistress, I warrant you! I’ve no mother, so there is none to oversee me, and rule me, and pluck me by the sleeve when I would go hither and thither, so soon as I can be quit of my Lady yonder. Oh, there’s a jolly life aforeme.”
It was Amphillis’s turn to be astonished.
“Dear heart!” she said. “Why, I have no kindred nearer than uncle and cousins, but I have ever reckoned it a sore trouble to lose my mother, and no blessing.”
“Very like it was to you!” said Agatha. “You’d make no bones if you were ruled like an antiphonarium (music-book for anthems and chants), I’ll be bound, I’m none so fond of being driven in harness. I love my own way, and I’ll have it, too, one of these days.”
“But then you have none to love you! That is one of the worst sorrows in the world, I take it.”
“Love! bless you, I shall have lovers enough! I’ve three hundred a year to my fortune.”
Three hundred pounds in 1372 was equal to nearly five thousand now.
“But what good should it do you that people wanted your money?” asked Amphillis. “That isn’t lovingyou.”
“Amphillis, I do believe you were born a hundred years old! or else in some other world, where their notions are quite diverse from this,” said Agatha, taking a candied orange from the sewer. “I never heard such things as you say.”
“But lovers who only want your money seem to me very unsatisfying folks,” replied Amphillis. “Will they smooth your pillows when you are sick? or comfort you when your heart is woeful?”
“I don’t mean my heart to be woeful, and as to pillows, there be thousands will smooth them for wages.”
“They are smoother when ’tis done for love,” was the answer.
Agatha devoted herself to her orange, and in a few minutes Lady Foljambe gave the signal to rise from table. The young ladies followed her to her private sitting-room, where Agatha received a stern reprimand for the crime of laughing too loud, and was told she was no better than a silly giglot, who would probably bring herself some day to dire disgrace. Lady Foljambe then motioned her to the spindle, and desired her not to leave it till the bell rang for evening prayers in the chapel, just before bed-time. Agatha pulled a face behind Lady Foljambe’s back, but she did not dare to disobey.
Note 1. It seems very strange to us that the Count de Montfort should have imagined himself to have a better claim to the crown than his niece; but the principle under which he claimed was the law of non-representation, which forbade the child of a deceased son or brother to inherit; and this, little as it is now allowed or even understood, was not only the custom of some Continental states, but was the law of succession in England, itself until 1377. The struggle between Stephen and the Empress Maud, and that between King John and his nephew Arthur, were fought upon this principle.
Note 2. The Louvre, then considerednearParis, was usually mentioned without the article.
Chapter Six.A Thankless Child.“We will not come to TheeTill Thou hast nailed us to some bitter crossAnd made us look on Thee.”“B.M.”Amphillis took her own spindle, and sat down beside Marabel, who was just beginning to spin.“What was it so diverted Agatha at supper?” inquired Marabel.“She laughs full easily,” answered Amphillis; and told her what had been the subject of discourse.“She is a light-minded maid,” said Marabel. “So you thought Master Norman had a satisfied look, trow? Well, I count you had the right.”“Agatha said she knew not of nought in this world that should satisfy him.”Marabel smiled. “I misdoubt if that which satisfieth him ever came out of this world. Amphillis, whenas you dwelt in London town, heard you at all preach one of the poor priests?”“What manner of folks be they?”“You shall know them by their raiment, for they mostly go clad of a frieze coat, bound by a girdle of unwrought leather.”“Oh, ay? I heard once a friar so clad; and I marvelled much to what Order he belonged. But it was some while gone.”“What said he?”“Truly, that cannot I tell you, for I took not but little note. I was but a maidling, scarce past my childhood. My mother was well pleased therewith. I mind her to have said, divers times, when she lay of her last sickness, that she would fain have shriven her of the friar in the frieze habit. Wherefore, cannot I say.”“Then perchance I can say it for you:—for I reckon it was because he brought her gladder tidings than she had heard of other.”Amphillis looked surprised. “Why, whatso? Sermons be all alike, so far as ever I could tell.”“Be they so? No, verily, Amphillis. Is there no difference betwixt preaching of the law—‘Do this, and thou shalt live,’ and preaching of the glad gospel of the grace of God—‘I give unto them everlasting life?’”“But we must merit Heaven!” exclaimed Amphillis.“Our Lord, then, paid not the full price, but left at the least a few marks over for us to pay? Nay, He bought Heaven for us, Amphillis: and only He could do it. We have nothing to pay; and if we had, how should our poor hands reach to such a purchase as that? It took God to save the world. Ay, and it took God, too, to love the world enough to save it.”“Why, but if so be, we are saved—not shall be.”“We are, if we ever shall be.”“But is that true Catholic doctrine?”“It is the true doctrine of God’s love. Either, therefore, it is Catholic doctrine, or Catholic doctrine hath erred from it.”“But the Church cannot err!”“Truth, so long as she keep her true to God’s law. The Church is men, not God! and God must be above the Church. But what is the Church? Is it this priest or that bishop? Nay, verily; it is the congregation of all the faithful elect that follow Christ, and do after His commandments. So long, therefore, as they do after His commands, and follow Him, they be little like to err. ‘He that believeth in the Sonhatheverlasting life.’”“But we all believe in our Lord!” said Amphillis, feeling as if so many new ideas had never entered her head all at once before.“Believe what?” said Marabel, and she smiled.“Why, we believe that He came down from Heaven, and died, and rose again, and ascended, and such-like.”“Wherefore?”“Wherefore came He? Truly, that know I not. By reason that it liked Him, I count.”“Ay, that was the cause,” said Marabel, softly. “He came because—shall we say?—He so loved Amphillis Neville, that He could not do without her in Heaven: and as she could win there none other way than by the laying down of His life, He came and laid it down.”“Marabel! Never heard I none to speak after this manner! Soothly, our Lord died for us: but—”“But—yet was it not rightly for us, thee and me, but for some folks a long way off, we cannot well say whom?”Amphillis span and thought—span fast, because she was thinking hard: and Marabel did not interrupt her thoughts.“But—we must merit it!” she urged again at last.“Dost thou commonly merit the gifts given thee? When man meriteth that he receiveth—when he doth somewhat, to obtain it—it is a wage, not a gift. The very life and soul of a gift is that it is not merited, but given of free favour, of friendship or love.”“I never heard no such doctrine!”Marabel only smiled.“Followeth my Lady this manner?”“A little in the head, maybe; for the heart will I not speak.”“And my La—I would say, Mistress Perrote?” Amphillis suddenly recollected that her mistress was never to be mentioned.“Ask at her,” said Marabel, with a smile.“Then Master Norman is of this fashion of thinking?”“Ay. So be the Hyltons all.”“Whence gat you the same?”“It was learned me of my Lady Molyneux of Sefton, that I served as chamberer ere I came hither. I marvel somewhat, Amphillis, that thou hast never heard the same, and a Neville. All the Nevilles of Raby be of our learning—well-nigh.”“Dear heart, but I’m no Neville of Raby!” cried Amphillis, with a laugh at the extravagance of the idea. “At the least, I know not well whence my father came; his name was Walter Neville, and his father was Ralph, and more knew I never. He bare arms, ’tis true—gules, a saltire argent; and his device, ‘Ne vile velis.’”“The self arms of the Nevilles of Raby,” said Marabel, with an amused smile. “I marvel, Amphillis, thou art not better learned in thine own family matters.”“Soothly. I never had none to learn me, saving my mother; and though she would tell me oft of my father himself, how good and true man he were, yet she never seemed to list to speak much of his house. Maybe it was by reason he came below his rank in wedding her, and his kin refused to acknowledge her amongst them. Thus, see you, I dropped down, as man should say, into my mother’s rank, and never had no chance to learn nought of my father’s matters.”“Did thine uncle learn thee nought, then?”“He learned me how to make patties of divers fashions,” answered Amphillis, laughing. “He was very good to me, and belike to my mother, his sister; but I went not to dwell with him until after she was departed to God. And then I was so slender (insignificant) a country maid, with no fortune, ne parts (talents), that my cousins did somewhat slight me, and keep me out of sight. So never met I any that should be like to wise me in this matter. And, the sooth to say, but I would not desire to dwell amongst kin that had set my mother aside, and reckoned her not fit to company with them, not for no wickedness nor unseemly dealing, but only that she came of a trading stock. It seemeth me, had such wist our blessed Lord Himself, they should have bidden Him stand aside, for He was but a carpenter’s son. That’s the evil of being in high place, trow.”“Ah, no, dear heart! It hath none ado with place, high or low. ’Tis human nature. Thou shalt find a duchess more ready to company with a squire’s wife, oft-times, than the squire’s wife with the bailiff’s wife, and there is a deal further distance betwixt. It hangeth on the heart, not on the station.”“But folks’ hearts should be the better according to their station.”Marabel laughed. “That were new world, verily. The grace of God is the same in every station, and the like be the wiles of Satan—not that he bringeth to all the same temptation, for he hath more wit than so; but he tempteth all, high and low. The high have the fairer look-out, yet the more perilous place; the low have the less to content them, yet are they safer. Things be more evenly parted in this world than many think. Many times he that hath rich food, hath little appetite for it; and he that hath his appetite sharp, can scarce get food to satisfy it.”“But then things fit not,” said Amphillis.“Soothly, nay. This world is thrown all out of gear by sin. Things fitted in Eden, be thou sure. Another reason is there also—that he which hath the food may bestow it on him that can relish it, and hath it not.”The chapel bell tolled softly for the last service of the day, and the whole household assembled. Every day this was done at Hazelwood, for prime, sext, and compline, at six a.m., noon, and seven p.m. respectively, and any member of the household found missing would have been required to render an exceedingly good reason for it. The services were very short, and a sermon was a scarcely imagined performance. After compline came bed-time. Each girl took her lamp, louted to Lady Foljambe and kissed her hand, and they then filed upstairs to bed after Perrote, she and Amphillis going to their own turret.Hitherto Perrote had been an extremely silent person. Not one word unnecessary to the work in hand had she ever uttered, since those few on Amphillis’s first arrival. It was therefore with some little surprise that the girl heard her voice, as she stood that evening brushing her hair before the mirror.“Amphillis, who chose you to come hither?”“Truly, Mistress, that wis I not. Only, first of all, Mistress Chaucer, of the Savoy Palace, looked me o’er to see if I should be meet for taking into account, and then came a lady thence, and asked at me divers questions, and judged that I should serve; but who she was I knew not. She bade me be well ware that I gat me in no entanglements of no sort,” said Amphillis, laughing a little; “but in good sooth, I see here nothing to entangle me in.”“She gave thee good counsel therein. There be tangles of divers sorts, my maid, and those which cut the tightest be not alway the worst. Thou mayest tangle thy feet of soft wool, or rich silk, no less than of rough cord. Ah me! there be tangles here, Amphillis, and hard to undo. There were skilwise fingers to their tying—hard fingers, that thought only to pull them tight, and harried them little touching the trouble of such as should be thus tethered. And there be knots that no man can undo—only God. Why tarry the wheels of His chariot?”Amphillis turned round from the mirror.“Mistress Perrote, may I ask a thing at you?”“Ask, my maid.”“My Lady answered me not; will you? What hath our Lady done to be thus shut close in prison?”“Shedone?” was the answer, with a piteous intonation. Perrote looked earnestly into the girl’s face. “Amphillis, canst thou keep a secret?”“If I know myself, I can well.”“Wilt thou so do, for the love of God and thy Lady? It should harm her, if men knew thou wist it. And, God wot, she hath harm enough.”“I will never speak word, Mistress Perrote, to any other than you, without you bid me, or grant me leave.”“So shall thou do well. Guess, Amphillis, who is it that keepeth this poor lady in such durance.”“Nay, that I cannot, without it be our Lord the King.”“He, surely; yet is he but the gaoler. There is another beyond him, at whose earnest entreaty, and for whose pleasure he so doth. Who is it, thinkest?”“It seemeth me, Mistress, looking to what you say, this poor lady must needs have some enemy,” said Amphillis.“Amphillis, that worst enemy, the enemy that bindeth these fetters upon her, that bars these gates against her going forth, that hath quenched all the sunlight of her life, and hushed all the music out of it—this enemy is her own son, that she nursed at her bosom—the boy for whose life she risked hers an hundred times, whose patrimony she only saved to him, whose welfare through thirty years hath been dearer to her than her own. Dost thou marvel if her words be bitter, and if her eyes be sorrowful? Could they be aught else?”Amphillis looked as horrified as she felt.“Mistress Perrote, it is dreadful! Can my said Lord Duke be Christian man?”“Christian!” echoed Perrote, bitterly. “Dear heart, ay! one of the best Catholics alive! Hath he not built churches with the moneys of his mother’s dower, and endowed convents with the wealth whereof he defrauded her? What could man do better? A church is a great matter, and a mother a full little one. Mothers die, but churches and convents endure. Ah, when such mothers die and go to God, be there no words writ on the account their sons shall thereafter render? Is He all silent that denounced the Jewish priests for their Corban, by reason they allowed man to deny to his father and mother that which he had devote to God’s temple? Is His temple built well of broken hearts, and His altar meetly covered with the rich tracery of women’s tears? ‘The hope of the hypocrite shall perish, when God taketh away his soul.’”Never before had Amphillis seen any one change as Perrote had changed now. The quiet, stolid-looking woman had become an inspired prophetess. It was manifest that she dearly loved her mistress, and was proportionately indignant with the son who treated her so cruelly.“Child,” she said to Amphillis, “she lived for nought save that boy! Her daughter was scarce anything to her; it was alway the lad, the lad! And thus the lad a-payeth her for all her love and sacrifice—for the heart that stood betwixt him and evil, for the gold and jewels that she thought too mean to be set in comparison with him, for the weary arms that bare him, and the tired feet that carried him about, a little wailing babe—for the toil and the labour, the hope and the fear, the waiting and the sorrow! Ay, but I marvel in what manner of coin God our Father shall pay him!”“But wherefore doth he so?” cried Amphillis.“She was in his way,” replied Perrote, in a tone of constrained bitterness. “He could not have all his will for her. He desired to make bargains, and issue mandates, and reign at his pleasure, and she told him the bargains were unprofitable, and the mandates unjust, and it was not agreeable. ’Twas full awkward and ill-convenient, look you, to have an old mother interfering with man’s pleasure. He would, have set her in a fair palace, and given her due dower, I reckon, would she but there have tarried, like a slug on a cabbage-leaf, and let him alone; and she would not. How could she? She was not a slug, but an eagle. And ’tis not the nature of an eagle to hang hour after hour upon a cabbage-leaf. So, as King Edward had at the first kept her in durance for his own ends, my gracious Lord Duke did entreat him to continue the same on his account. As for my Lady Duchess, I say not; I know her not. This only I know, that my Lady Foljambe is her kinswoman. And, most times, there is a woman at the bottom of all evil mischief. Ay, there is so!”“Mistress Perrote, it seemeth me this is worser world than I wist ere I came hither.”“Art avised o’ that? Ay, Phyllis, thou shalt find it so; and the further thou journeyest therein, the worser shalt thou find it.”“Mistress, wherefore is it that this poor lady of ours is kept so secret? It seemeth as though man would have none know where she were.”“Ha, chétife! (Oh, miserable!) I can but avise thee to ask so much at them that do keep her.”“Shall she never be suffered to come forth?”“Ay,” said Perrote, slowly and solemnly. “She shall come forth one day. But I misdoubt if it shall be ere the King come Himself for her.”“The King! Shall his Grace come hither?” inquired Amphillis, with much interest. She thought of no king but Edward the Third.Perrote’s eyes were uplifted towards the stars. She spoke as if she were answering them rather than Amphillis.“He shall deem (judge) the poor men of the people, and He shall make safe the sons of poor men; and He shall make low the false challenger. And He shall dwell with the sun, and before the moon, in generation and in to generation... And He shall be Lord from the sea till to the sea, and from the flood till to the ending of the world... For He shall deliver a poor man from the mighty, and a poor man to whom was none helper. He shall spare a poor man and needy, and He shall make safe the souls of poor men... Blessed be the name of His majesty withouten end! and all earth shall be filled with His majesty. Be it done, be it done!” (Note 1.)Amphillis almost held her breath as she listened, for the first time in her life, to the grand roll of those sonorous verses.“That were a King!” she said.“That shall be a King,” answered Perrote, softly. “Not yet is His kingdom of this world. But He is King of Israel, and King of kings, and King of the everlasting ages; and the day cometh when He shall be King of nations, when there shall be one Lord over all the earth, and His Name one. Is He thy King, Amphillis Neville?”“Signify you our blessed Lord, Mistress Perrote?”“Surely, my maid. Could any other answer thereto?”“I reckon so,” said Amphillis, calmly, as she put away her brush, and began undressing.“I would make sure, if I were thou. For the subjects be like to dwell in the Court when they be preferred to higher place. ‘Ye ben servantis to that thing to which ye han obeisched.’ (Note 2.) Whose servant art thou? Who reigns in thine inner soul, Phyllis?”“Soothly, Mistress, I myself. None other, I ween.”“Nay, one other must there needs be. Thou obeyest the rule of one of two masters—either Christ our Lord, or Satan His enemy.”“In very deed, Mistress, I serve God.”“Then thou art concerned to please God in everything. Or is it rather, that thou art willing to please God in such matters as shall not displease Amphillis Neville?”Amphillis folded up sundry new and not altogether agreeable thoughts in the garments which she was taking off and laying in neat order on the top of her chest for the morning. Perrote waited for the answer. It did not come until Amphillis’s head was on the pillow.“Cannot I please God and myself both?”“That canst thou, full well and sweetly, if so be thou put God first. Otherwise, nay.”“Soothly, Mistress, I know not well what you would be at.”“What our Saviour would be at Himself, which is, thy true bliss and blessedness, Phyllis. My maid, to be assured of fair ending and good welcome at the end of the journey makes not the journeying wearier. To know not whither thou art wending, save that it is into the dark; to be met of a stranger, that may be likewise an enemy; to be had up afore the judge’s bar, with no advocate to plead for thee, and no surety of acquittal,—that is evil journeying, Phyllis, Dost not think so much?”Perrote listened in vain for any answer.Note 1. Psalm seventy-two, verses 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 18, 19; Hereford and Purvey’s version, 1381-8.Note 2. Romans six, verse 16; Wycliffe’s version, 1382.
“We will not come to TheeTill Thou hast nailed us to some bitter crossAnd made us look on Thee.”“B.M.”
“We will not come to TheeTill Thou hast nailed us to some bitter crossAnd made us look on Thee.”“B.M.”
Amphillis took her own spindle, and sat down beside Marabel, who was just beginning to spin.
“What was it so diverted Agatha at supper?” inquired Marabel.
“She laughs full easily,” answered Amphillis; and told her what had been the subject of discourse.
“She is a light-minded maid,” said Marabel. “So you thought Master Norman had a satisfied look, trow? Well, I count you had the right.”
“Agatha said she knew not of nought in this world that should satisfy him.”
Marabel smiled. “I misdoubt if that which satisfieth him ever came out of this world. Amphillis, whenas you dwelt in London town, heard you at all preach one of the poor priests?”
“What manner of folks be they?”
“You shall know them by their raiment, for they mostly go clad of a frieze coat, bound by a girdle of unwrought leather.”
“Oh, ay? I heard once a friar so clad; and I marvelled much to what Order he belonged. But it was some while gone.”
“What said he?”
“Truly, that cannot I tell you, for I took not but little note. I was but a maidling, scarce past my childhood. My mother was well pleased therewith. I mind her to have said, divers times, when she lay of her last sickness, that she would fain have shriven her of the friar in the frieze habit. Wherefore, cannot I say.”
“Then perchance I can say it for you:—for I reckon it was because he brought her gladder tidings than she had heard of other.”
Amphillis looked surprised. “Why, whatso? Sermons be all alike, so far as ever I could tell.”
“Be they so? No, verily, Amphillis. Is there no difference betwixt preaching of the law—‘Do this, and thou shalt live,’ and preaching of the glad gospel of the grace of God—‘I give unto them everlasting life?’”
“But we must merit Heaven!” exclaimed Amphillis.
“Our Lord, then, paid not the full price, but left at the least a few marks over for us to pay? Nay, He bought Heaven for us, Amphillis: and only He could do it. We have nothing to pay; and if we had, how should our poor hands reach to such a purchase as that? It took God to save the world. Ay, and it took God, too, to love the world enough to save it.”
“Why, but if so be, we are saved—not shall be.”
“We are, if we ever shall be.”
“But is that true Catholic doctrine?”
“It is the true doctrine of God’s love. Either, therefore, it is Catholic doctrine, or Catholic doctrine hath erred from it.”
“But the Church cannot err!”
“Truth, so long as she keep her true to God’s law. The Church is men, not God! and God must be above the Church. But what is the Church? Is it this priest or that bishop? Nay, verily; it is the congregation of all the faithful elect that follow Christ, and do after His commandments. So long, therefore, as they do after His commands, and follow Him, they be little like to err. ‘He that believeth in the Sonhatheverlasting life.’”
“But we all believe in our Lord!” said Amphillis, feeling as if so many new ideas had never entered her head all at once before.
“Believe what?” said Marabel, and she smiled.
“Why, we believe that He came down from Heaven, and died, and rose again, and ascended, and such-like.”
“Wherefore?”
“Wherefore came He? Truly, that know I not. By reason that it liked Him, I count.”
“Ay, that was the cause,” said Marabel, softly. “He came because—shall we say?—He so loved Amphillis Neville, that He could not do without her in Heaven: and as she could win there none other way than by the laying down of His life, He came and laid it down.”
“Marabel! Never heard I none to speak after this manner! Soothly, our Lord died for us: but—”
“But—yet was it not rightly for us, thee and me, but for some folks a long way off, we cannot well say whom?”
Amphillis span and thought—span fast, because she was thinking hard: and Marabel did not interrupt her thoughts.
“But—we must merit it!” she urged again at last.
“Dost thou commonly merit the gifts given thee? When man meriteth that he receiveth—when he doth somewhat, to obtain it—it is a wage, not a gift. The very life and soul of a gift is that it is not merited, but given of free favour, of friendship or love.”
“I never heard no such doctrine!”
Marabel only smiled.
“Followeth my Lady this manner?”
“A little in the head, maybe; for the heart will I not speak.”
“And my La—I would say, Mistress Perrote?” Amphillis suddenly recollected that her mistress was never to be mentioned.
“Ask at her,” said Marabel, with a smile.
“Then Master Norman is of this fashion of thinking?”
“Ay. So be the Hyltons all.”
“Whence gat you the same?”
“It was learned me of my Lady Molyneux of Sefton, that I served as chamberer ere I came hither. I marvel somewhat, Amphillis, that thou hast never heard the same, and a Neville. All the Nevilles of Raby be of our learning—well-nigh.”
“Dear heart, but I’m no Neville of Raby!” cried Amphillis, with a laugh at the extravagance of the idea. “At the least, I know not well whence my father came; his name was Walter Neville, and his father was Ralph, and more knew I never. He bare arms, ’tis true—gules, a saltire argent; and his device, ‘Ne vile velis.’”
“The self arms of the Nevilles of Raby,” said Marabel, with an amused smile. “I marvel, Amphillis, thou art not better learned in thine own family matters.”
“Soothly. I never had none to learn me, saving my mother; and though she would tell me oft of my father himself, how good and true man he were, yet she never seemed to list to speak much of his house. Maybe it was by reason he came below his rank in wedding her, and his kin refused to acknowledge her amongst them. Thus, see you, I dropped down, as man should say, into my mother’s rank, and never had no chance to learn nought of my father’s matters.”
“Did thine uncle learn thee nought, then?”
“He learned me how to make patties of divers fashions,” answered Amphillis, laughing. “He was very good to me, and belike to my mother, his sister; but I went not to dwell with him until after she was departed to God. And then I was so slender (insignificant) a country maid, with no fortune, ne parts (talents), that my cousins did somewhat slight me, and keep me out of sight. So never met I any that should be like to wise me in this matter. And, the sooth to say, but I would not desire to dwell amongst kin that had set my mother aside, and reckoned her not fit to company with them, not for no wickedness nor unseemly dealing, but only that she came of a trading stock. It seemeth me, had such wist our blessed Lord Himself, they should have bidden Him stand aside, for He was but a carpenter’s son. That’s the evil of being in high place, trow.”
“Ah, no, dear heart! It hath none ado with place, high or low. ’Tis human nature. Thou shalt find a duchess more ready to company with a squire’s wife, oft-times, than the squire’s wife with the bailiff’s wife, and there is a deal further distance betwixt. It hangeth on the heart, not on the station.”
“But folks’ hearts should be the better according to their station.”
Marabel laughed. “That were new world, verily. The grace of God is the same in every station, and the like be the wiles of Satan—not that he bringeth to all the same temptation, for he hath more wit than so; but he tempteth all, high and low. The high have the fairer look-out, yet the more perilous place; the low have the less to content them, yet are they safer. Things be more evenly parted in this world than many think. Many times he that hath rich food, hath little appetite for it; and he that hath his appetite sharp, can scarce get food to satisfy it.”
“But then things fit not,” said Amphillis.
“Soothly, nay. This world is thrown all out of gear by sin. Things fitted in Eden, be thou sure. Another reason is there also—that he which hath the food may bestow it on him that can relish it, and hath it not.”
The chapel bell tolled softly for the last service of the day, and the whole household assembled. Every day this was done at Hazelwood, for prime, sext, and compline, at six a.m., noon, and seven p.m. respectively, and any member of the household found missing would have been required to render an exceedingly good reason for it. The services were very short, and a sermon was a scarcely imagined performance. After compline came bed-time. Each girl took her lamp, louted to Lady Foljambe and kissed her hand, and they then filed upstairs to bed after Perrote, she and Amphillis going to their own turret.
Hitherto Perrote had been an extremely silent person. Not one word unnecessary to the work in hand had she ever uttered, since those few on Amphillis’s first arrival. It was therefore with some little surprise that the girl heard her voice, as she stood that evening brushing her hair before the mirror.
“Amphillis, who chose you to come hither?”
“Truly, Mistress, that wis I not. Only, first of all, Mistress Chaucer, of the Savoy Palace, looked me o’er to see if I should be meet for taking into account, and then came a lady thence, and asked at me divers questions, and judged that I should serve; but who she was I knew not. She bade me be well ware that I gat me in no entanglements of no sort,” said Amphillis, laughing a little; “but in good sooth, I see here nothing to entangle me in.”
“She gave thee good counsel therein. There be tangles of divers sorts, my maid, and those which cut the tightest be not alway the worst. Thou mayest tangle thy feet of soft wool, or rich silk, no less than of rough cord. Ah me! there be tangles here, Amphillis, and hard to undo. There were skilwise fingers to their tying—hard fingers, that thought only to pull them tight, and harried them little touching the trouble of such as should be thus tethered. And there be knots that no man can undo—only God. Why tarry the wheels of His chariot?”
Amphillis turned round from the mirror.
“Mistress Perrote, may I ask a thing at you?”
“Ask, my maid.”
“My Lady answered me not; will you? What hath our Lady done to be thus shut close in prison?”
“Shedone?” was the answer, with a piteous intonation. Perrote looked earnestly into the girl’s face. “Amphillis, canst thou keep a secret?”
“If I know myself, I can well.”
“Wilt thou so do, for the love of God and thy Lady? It should harm her, if men knew thou wist it. And, God wot, she hath harm enough.”
“I will never speak word, Mistress Perrote, to any other than you, without you bid me, or grant me leave.”
“So shall thou do well. Guess, Amphillis, who is it that keepeth this poor lady in such durance.”
“Nay, that I cannot, without it be our Lord the King.”
“He, surely; yet is he but the gaoler. There is another beyond him, at whose earnest entreaty, and for whose pleasure he so doth. Who is it, thinkest?”
“It seemeth me, Mistress, looking to what you say, this poor lady must needs have some enemy,” said Amphillis.
“Amphillis, that worst enemy, the enemy that bindeth these fetters upon her, that bars these gates against her going forth, that hath quenched all the sunlight of her life, and hushed all the music out of it—this enemy is her own son, that she nursed at her bosom—the boy for whose life she risked hers an hundred times, whose patrimony she only saved to him, whose welfare through thirty years hath been dearer to her than her own. Dost thou marvel if her words be bitter, and if her eyes be sorrowful? Could they be aught else?”
Amphillis looked as horrified as she felt.
“Mistress Perrote, it is dreadful! Can my said Lord Duke be Christian man?”
“Christian!” echoed Perrote, bitterly. “Dear heart, ay! one of the best Catholics alive! Hath he not built churches with the moneys of his mother’s dower, and endowed convents with the wealth whereof he defrauded her? What could man do better? A church is a great matter, and a mother a full little one. Mothers die, but churches and convents endure. Ah, when such mothers die and go to God, be there no words writ on the account their sons shall thereafter render? Is He all silent that denounced the Jewish priests for their Corban, by reason they allowed man to deny to his father and mother that which he had devote to God’s temple? Is His temple built well of broken hearts, and His altar meetly covered with the rich tracery of women’s tears? ‘The hope of the hypocrite shall perish, when God taketh away his soul.’”
Never before had Amphillis seen any one change as Perrote had changed now. The quiet, stolid-looking woman had become an inspired prophetess. It was manifest that she dearly loved her mistress, and was proportionately indignant with the son who treated her so cruelly.
“Child,” she said to Amphillis, “she lived for nought save that boy! Her daughter was scarce anything to her; it was alway the lad, the lad! And thus the lad a-payeth her for all her love and sacrifice—for the heart that stood betwixt him and evil, for the gold and jewels that she thought too mean to be set in comparison with him, for the weary arms that bare him, and the tired feet that carried him about, a little wailing babe—for the toil and the labour, the hope and the fear, the waiting and the sorrow! Ay, but I marvel in what manner of coin God our Father shall pay him!”
“But wherefore doth he so?” cried Amphillis.
“She was in his way,” replied Perrote, in a tone of constrained bitterness. “He could not have all his will for her. He desired to make bargains, and issue mandates, and reign at his pleasure, and she told him the bargains were unprofitable, and the mandates unjust, and it was not agreeable. ’Twas full awkward and ill-convenient, look you, to have an old mother interfering with man’s pleasure. He would, have set her in a fair palace, and given her due dower, I reckon, would she but there have tarried, like a slug on a cabbage-leaf, and let him alone; and she would not. How could she? She was not a slug, but an eagle. And ’tis not the nature of an eagle to hang hour after hour upon a cabbage-leaf. So, as King Edward had at the first kept her in durance for his own ends, my gracious Lord Duke did entreat him to continue the same on his account. As for my Lady Duchess, I say not; I know her not. This only I know, that my Lady Foljambe is her kinswoman. And, most times, there is a woman at the bottom of all evil mischief. Ay, there is so!”
“Mistress Perrote, it seemeth me this is worser world than I wist ere I came hither.”
“Art avised o’ that? Ay, Phyllis, thou shalt find it so; and the further thou journeyest therein, the worser shalt thou find it.”
“Mistress, wherefore is it that this poor lady of ours is kept so secret? It seemeth as though man would have none know where she were.”
“Ha, chétife! (Oh, miserable!) I can but avise thee to ask so much at them that do keep her.”
“Shall she never be suffered to come forth?”
“Ay,” said Perrote, slowly and solemnly. “She shall come forth one day. But I misdoubt if it shall be ere the King come Himself for her.”
“The King! Shall his Grace come hither?” inquired Amphillis, with much interest. She thought of no king but Edward the Third.
Perrote’s eyes were uplifted towards the stars. She spoke as if she were answering them rather than Amphillis.
“He shall deem (judge) the poor men of the people, and He shall make safe the sons of poor men; and He shall make low the false challenger. And He shall dwell with the sun, and before the moon, in generation and in to generation... And He shall be Lord from the sea till to the sea, and from the flood till to the ending of the world... For He shall deliver a poor man from the mighty, and a poor man to whom was none helper. He shall spare a poor man and needy, and He shall make safe the souls of poor men... Blessed be the name of His majesty withouten end! and all earth shall be filled with His majesty. Be it done, be it done!” (Note 1.)
Amphillis almost held her breath as she listened, for the first time in her life, to the grand roll of those sonorous verses.
“That were a King!” she said.
“That shall be a King,” answered Perrote, softly. “Not yet is His kingdom of this world. But He is King of Israel, and King of kings, and King of the everlasting ages; and the day cometh when He shall be King of nations, when there shall be one Lord over all the earth, and His Name one. Is He thy King, Amphillis Neville?”
“Signify you our blessed Lord, Mistress Perrote?”
“Surely, my maid. Could any other answer thereto?”
“I reckon so,” said Amphillis, calmly, as she put away her brush, and began undressing.
“I would make sure, if I were thou. For the subjects be like to dwell in the Court when they be preferred to higher place. ‘Ye ben servantis to that thing to which ye han obeisched.’ (Note 2.) Whose servant art thou? Who reigns in thine inner soul, Phyllis?”
“Soothly, Mistress, I myself. None other, I ween.”
“Nay, one other must there needs be. Thou obeyest the rule of one of two masters—either Christ our Lord, or Satan His enemy.”
“In very deed, Mistress, I serve God.”
“Then thou art concerned to please God in everything. Or is it rather, that thou art willing to please God in such matters as shall not displease Amphillis Neville?”
Amphillis folded up sundry new and not altogether agreeable thoughts in the garments which she was taking off and laying in neat order on the top of her chest for the morning. Perrote waited for the answer. It did not come until Amphillis’s head was on the pillow.
“Cannot I please God and myself both?”
“That canst thou, full well and sweetly, if so be thou put God first. Otherwise, nay.”
“Soothly, Mistress, I know not well what you would be at.”
“What our Saviour would be at Himself, which is, thy true bliss and blessedness, Phyllis. My maid, to be assured of fair ending and good welcome at the end of the journey makes not the journeying wearier. To know not whither thou art wending, save that it is into the dark; to be met of a stranger, that may be likewise an enemy; to be had up afore the judge’s bar, with no advocate to plead for thee, and no surety of acquittal,—that is evil journeying, Phyllis, Dost not think so much?”
Perrote listened in vain for any answer.
Note 1. Psalm seventy-two, verses 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 18, 19; Hereford and Purvey’s version, 1381-8.
Note 2. Romans six, verse 16; Wycliffe’s version, 1382.