Chapter Eleven.The Rough Night Wind.“Whan cockle-shells ha’e siller bells,And mussels grow on every tree—Whan frost and snaw shall warm us a’—Then shall my luve prove true to me!”Old Ballad.It was the evening of the third day succeeding Isabel’s visit, and while she and Avice were seated in the banquet-hall with the Governor and his family, the scene lit up by blazing pine torches, a single earthen lamp threw a dull and unsteady light over the silent bedchamber of the royal prisoner. The little Alianora was asleep in her cradle, and on the bed lay her mother, not asleep, but as still and silent as though she were. Near the cradle, on a settle, sat Maude Lyngern, trying with rather doubtful success to read by the flickering light.Custance had not quitted her bed during all that time. She never spoke but to express a want or reply to a question. When Maude brought her food, she submitted to be fed like an infant. Of what thoughts were passing in her mind, she gave no indication.At last Maude came to the conclusion that the spell of silence ought to be broken. The passionate utterances which Isabel’s news had evoked at first were better than this dead level of silent suffering. But she determined to break it by no arguments or consolations of her own, but by the inspired words of God. She felt doubtful what to select; so she chose a passage which, half knowing it by heart, would be the easier to make out in the uncertain light.“‘And oon of the Farisees preiede (prayed) Jhesus that he schulde ete with him; and he entride into the hous of the Farisee, and sat at the mete. And lo, a synful woman that was in the cytee, as sche knewe that Jhesus sat at the mete in the hous of the Farisee, she broughte an alabastre box of oynement, and sche stood bihynde bisidis hise feet, and bigan to moiste hise feet with teeris, and wypide with the heeris of hir heed, and kiste hise feet, and anoyntide with oynement. And the Farisee seyng (seeing) that had clepide him seide within himsilf, seiyinge, if this were a profete, he schulde wete who and what maner womman it were that touchide him, for sche is a synful womman. And Jhesus answerde and seide to him, Symount, I han sum thing to seye to thee. And he seide, Maistir, seye thou. And he answerde, Tweye dettouris weren to oo lener (one lender); and oon oughte fyve hundrid pens (pence) and the tother fifty. But whanne thei hadden not wherof thei schulen yelde, (yield, pay) he forgaf to bothe. Who thanne loueth him more? Symount answerde and seide, I gesse that he to whom he forgaf more. And he answeride to him, Thou hast demed (doomed, judged) rightly. And he turnide to the womman, and seyde to Symount, Seest thou this womman? I entride into thin hous, thou gaf no watir to my feet; but this hath moistid my feet with teeris, and wipide with her heeris. Thou hast not gouen to me a cosse (kiss); but this, sithen sche entride, ceeside not to kisse my feet. Thou anointidst not myn heed with oyle; but this anointide my feet with oynement. For the which thing I seye to thee, manye synnes ben forgiuen to hir, for sche hath loued myche; and to whom is lesse forgyuen to hir, he loueth lesse. And Jhesus seyde to hir, Thi synnes ben forgiuen to thee. And thei that saten togider at the mete bigunnen to seye withinne hemsilf, (themselves), Who is this that forgyveth synnes? But he seide to the womman, Thei feith hath maad thee saaf; go thou in pees.’”Maude added no words of her own. She closed the book, and relapsed into silence. But Custance’s solemn stillness was broken at last.“‘He seide to the womman!’—Wherefore no, having so spoken to the Pharisee, have left?” (concluded).“Nay, dear my Lady,” answered Maude, “it were not enough. So dear loveth our good and gentle Lord, that He will not have so much as one of His children to feel any the least unsurety touching His mercy. Wherefore He were not aseeth (contented) to say it only unto the Pharisee; but on her face, bowed down as she knelt behind Him, He looked, and bade her to be of good cheer, for that she was forgiven. O Lady mine! ’tis great and blessed matter when a man hath God to his friend!”“Thy words sound well,” said the low voice from the bed. “Very well, like the sound of sweet waters far away.”“Far away, dear my Lady?”“Ay, far away, Maude,—without (outside) my life and me.”“Sweet Lady, if ye will but lift the portcullis, our Lord is ready and willing to come within. And whereinsoever He entereth, He bringeth withal rest and peace.”“Rest! Peace!—Ay so. I guess there be such like gear some whither—for some folks.”“They dwell whereso Christ dwelleth, Lady mine.”“In Paradise, then! I told thee it were far hence.”“Is Paradise far hence, Lady? I once heard say Father Ademar that it were not over three hours’ journey at the most; for the thief on the cross went there in one day, and it were high noon ere he set out.”Maude stopped sooner than she intended, suddenly checked by a moan of pain from Custance. The mere mention of Ademar’s name seemed to evoke her overwhelming distress, as if it brought back the memory of all the miserable events over which she had been brooding for three days past. She rocked herself from side to side, as though her suffering were almost unendurable.“If he could come back! O Maude, Maude!—if only he could come back!”“Sweet Lady, an’ he were hither, methinks Father Ademar—”“No, no—not Father Ademar. Oh, if I could rend the grave open!—if I could tear asunder the blue veil of Heaven! I set no store by it all then; but now! He would forgive me: he would not scorn me! He would not count me too vile for his mercy. O my Lord, mine own dear Lord! you would never have served me thus!”And down rained the blessed tears, and relieved the dry, parched soil of the agonised heart. She lay quieter after that torrent of pain and passion. The terrible spell of dark silence was broken; and Maude knew at last, that through this bitterest trial she had ever yet experienced, the wandering heart was coming home—at least to Le Despenser.Was it needful that she should pass through yet deeper waters, before she would come home to God?The leaves were carpeting the ground around Kenilworth, when Custance granted a second interview to her cousin Isabel. There was more news for her by that time. Edward had been once more pardoned, and was again in his usual place at Court. How this inscrutable man procured his pardon, and what sum he paid for it, in cash or service, is among the mysteries of the medieval “back-stairs.” He had to be forgiven for more than Custance knew. Among his other political speculations, he had been making love to the Queen; a fact which, though there can be little doubt that it was a mere piece of policy on his part, was unlikely to be acceptable to the King. But the one item which most closely concerned his sister was indicated in plain terms by his pardon—that she need look for no help at her brother’s hands until she too “put herself in the King’s mercy.”The King’s mercy! What that meant depended on the King. In the reign of Richard of Bordeaux, that prisoner must be heavily-charged to whom it did not mean at least a smile of pardon—not unfrequently a grant of lands, or sometimes a coronet. But in the reign of Henry of Bolingbroke, it meant rigid justice, as he understood justice. And his mercy, to any Lollard, convicted or suspected, usually meant solitary confinement in a prison cell. What inducement was there for Custance to throw herself on such mercy as that? Nor was she further encouraged by hearing of another outbreak on behalf of King Richard or the Earl of March, headed by Archbishop Scrope and Lord Mowbray, and the heads of the ringleaders had fallen on the scaffold.Isabel had sat and talked for an hour without winning any answer beyond monosyllables. She was busy with her rosary—a new coral one—while she unfolded her budget of news, and tried to persuade her cousin into compliance with the King’s wish. The last bead was just escaping from her fingers with an Amen, when Custance turned to her with a direct question.“Now speak plainly, fair Cousin;—what wouldst have me to do?”“In good sooth, to put thee in the King’s mercy.”“Inhismercy!” murmured the prisoner significantly. “The which should be—wist how much?”“Truly, to free thee hence, and thou shouldst go up to London to wait upon his Grace.”“And then—?”Isabel knew what the King intended to exact, but the time was not yet come to say too much, lest Custance should be alarmed and draw back altogether. So she replied evasively—“Then his Highness should restore to thee thy lands, on due submission done.”“And yield me back my childre?”“Most surely.”A knot was tied upon Isabel’s memory, unknown to her cousin. If Custance cared much for her children, they might prove a most effective instrument of torture.“Well!—and then?”“Nay, ask at thine own self. Me supposeth thou shouldst choose to return to thine own Castle of Cardiff. But if it pleased thee rather to abide in the Court, I cast no doubt—”“Let be!—and then?”“Then, in very deed,” resumed Isabel, warming with her subject, “thou shouldst have chance to make good alliance for Nib and Dickon, and see them well set in fair estate.”“Ah!—and then?”“Why, then thou mayest match thy grandchildre yet better,” answered Isabel, laughing.“And after all, Isabel,” returned Custance, in a manner much graver than was usual with her, “there abideth yet one furtherthen—death, and God’s judgment.”“Holy Mary aid us!—avaunt with such thoughts!”“Canst thou avaunt with such thoughts, child?” said Custance, with a heavy sigh. “Ah me! they come unbidden, when the shadows of night be over the soul, and the thick darkness hath closed in upon the life. And I, at the least, have no spell to bid them avaunt. If holy Mary aid thee in that avoidment, ’tis more than she doth for me.”Isabel seemed at a loss for a reply. “I have had no lack of time for thought, fair Cousin, while I yonder lay. And the thought would not away,—when we stand together, I and Harry of Bolingbroke, at that Bar of God’s judgment, shall I desire in that day that I had said ay or nay to him now?”“Forsooth, Custance, I am not thy confessor. These be priests’ matters—not gear for women like thee and me.”“What, child! is thy soul matter for the priest’s concernment only? Is it not rather matter for thee—thee by thyself, beyond all priests that be? Thou and the priest may walk handed (walk hand in hand) up to that Bar, but methinks he will be full fain to leave thee to bide the whipping.”“Nay, in very deed, Custance, thou art a Lollard, else hadst thou never spoken no such a thing!”“What, be Lollards the only men that have a care for their own souls? But be it as thou wilt—what will it matterthen? Isabel, in good sooth I have sins enough to answer for, neither will I by my good-will add thereto. And if it be no sin to stand up afore God and men, and swear right solemnly unto His dread face that I did not that which I did before His sun in Heaven—good lack! I do marvel what sin may be. There is no such thing as sin, if it be no sin to swear to a lie!”“But, Custance, the King’s Highness asketh not thee to deny that thou wert wed unto my Lord of Kent, but only to allow openly that the same were not good in law.”“Can a law go backwards-way?”“Fair Cousin, the priest was excommunicate afore.”“God wot if he were!” said Custance shrewdly.“Bishops use not to leave their letters tarry two months on the road, child. There have been riddles writ ere now; ay, and black treachery done—by shaven crowns too. Canst thou crede that story? ’Tis more than I can.”“Custance, I do ensure thee, the King’s Grace sware into me his own self, by the holy Face of Lucca, and said, if thou didst cast any doubt of the same, my Lord Archbishop should lay to pledge his corporal oath thereon.”“His corporal oath ensure me! nay, nor an’ he sware by Saint Beelzebub!” cried Custance in bitter scorn. “I have heard of a corporal oath ere now, child. I know of one that was taken at Conway, by an old white-haired man (Note 1), whose reverend head should have lent weight to his words: but they were words, and nought else. How many days were, ere it was broken to shivers? I tell thee, Nib, Harry of Bolingbroke may swear an’ it like him by every saint in the calendar from Aaron to Zachary; and when he is through, my faith in his oaths will go by the eye of a needle. Why, what need of oath if a man be but true? If I would know somewhat of Maude yonder, I shall never set her to swear by Saint Nicholas; I can crede her word. And if a man’s word be not trustworthy, how much more worth is his oath?”“But, Custance! the King’s Grace and my Lord Archbishop—”“How thou clarifiest (glorifiest) the King’s Grace! Satan ruleth a wider realm than he, child, but I would not trust his oath. What caused them to take account that I should not believe them, unless their own ill consciences?”Isabel was silent.“Isabel!” said her cousin, suddenly turning to her, “have theyhisoath for the same?”“Whose, Custance?—my Lord of Kent?”Custance nodded impatiently.“Oh, ay.”“He hath allowed our wedding void in law?”“Ay so.”“What manner of talk held his conscience with him, sithence, mewondereth?” suggested Custance, in a low, troubled voice. “But maybe, like thee, he accounteth if but priest’s gear.”“Marry, ’tis far lighter travail. I list not to carry mine own sins: I had the liefer by the worth of the Queen’s Highness’ gems they were on the priest’s back.”“Ah, Nib!—but how if God charge them on thy back at the last?”“Good lack! a white lie or twain, spiced with a little matter of frowardness by times! My back is broad enough.”“I am fain to hear it, for so is not mine.”“Ah! thou art secular—no marvel.”“Much thanks for thy glosing (flattery), mine holy sister!” said Custance sarcastically. “The angels come down from Heaven, to set thee every morrow in a bath of rose-water, trow? While I, poor sinner that I am, having been twice wed, may journey to Heaven as best I can in the mire. ’Tis well, methinks, there be some secular in the world, for these monks and nuns be so holy that elsewise there were no use for God’s mercy.”“Nay, Custance!”“Well, have it as thou wilt, child! What matter?” returned her cousin with a weary air. “I am no doctor of the schools, to break lances with thee. Only methinks I have learned, these last months, a lesson or twain, which maybe even thy holiness were not the worser to spell over. Now let me be.”Isabel thought that the victim was coming round by degrees, and she wisely forbore to press her beyond the point to which she chose to go of herself. So the interview ended. It was not till October that they met again.Maude fancied that Avice eschewed any renewal of intercourse with her. She kept herself strictly secluded in the chamber which had been allotted to the nuns; and since Maude had no power to pass beyond the door of the guard-room, the choice lay in Avice’s own hands. At neither of the subsequent interviews was she present.“Well, fair Cousin! what cheer?” was Isabel’s greeting, when she presented herself anew.“Thus much,” replied Custance; “that, leave given, I will go with thee to London.”“Well said!” was the answer, in a tone which intimated that it was more than Isabel expected.“But mark me, Isabel! I byhote (promise) nought beyond.”“Oh ay!—well and good.”“And for thus much yielding, I demand to have again the keeping of my childre.”“Good lack! thou treatest with the King’s Grace as though thou wert queen of some land thyself,” said Isabel, with a little laugh. “Verily, that goeth beyond my commission: but methinks I can make bold to say thus much: that an’ thou come with me, they shall be suffered at the least to see thee and speak with thee.”Custance shook her head decidedly.“That shall not serve.”“Nay, then, we be again at a point. I can but give mine avisement unto thee to come thither and see.”The point was sturdily fought over on both sides. Isabel dared promise nothing more than that Custance should be allowed to see her children, and that she herself would do her utmost to obtain further concessions. At last it was settled that the King should be appealed to, and the request urged upon him by his emissary, by letter. Isabel, however, was evidently gifted with no slight ambassadorial powers; for when she selected Bertram Lyngern as her messenger, the Governor did not hesitate to let him go.But Bertram’s projected journey never took place, for a most unexpected event intervened to stop it.It was the seventh of November, and a warm, close, damp day, inducing languor and depression in any person sensitive to the influence of weather. Custance and Maude had received no visit that day from any one but Bertram, who was busy preparing for his journey. There were frequent comers and goers to Kenilworth Castle, so that the sound of a bugle-horn without was likely to cause no great curiosity; nor, as Custance’s drawing-room window opened on a little quiet corner of the inner court-yard, did she often witness the arrival of guests. So that three horns rang out on that afternoon without awakening more than a passing wonder “who it might be;” and when an unusual commotion was heard in the guard-room, the cause remained unsurmised. But when the door of the drawing-room was opened, a most unexpected sight dawned on the eyes of the prisoners. Unannounced and completely unlooked-for, in the doorway stood Henry of Bolingbroke, the King.It was no wonder that Maude’s work dropped from her hands as she rose hastily; nor that Custance’s eyes passed hurriedly on to see who composed the suite. But the suite consisted of a solitary individual, and this was her ubiquitous brother, Edward of York.“God give you good even, fair Cousin!” said Henry, with a bend of his stately head. His manners in public, though less really considerate, were stiffer and more ceremonious than those of his predecessor. “You scantly looked, as methinks, for a visit of ours this even?”; “Your Highness’ servant!” was all chat Custance said, in a voice the constrained tone of which had its source rather in coldness than in reverence.“Christ save thee, Custance!” said Edward, sauntering in behind his royal master. “Thou hast here a fine look-out, in very deed.”“Truth, Ned; and time to mark it!” rejoined his sister.The door opened again, and with a lout (the old English courtesy, now considered rustic) of the deepest veneration, Isabel made her appearance.“I pray you sit, ladies,” commanded the King.The Princesses obeyed, but Maude did not consider herself included. The King took the isolated chair with which the room was provided.“An’ you be served, our fair Cousins,” he remarked, “we will to business, seeing our tarrying hither shall be but unto Monday; and if your leisure serve, Lady Le Despenser, we would fain bear you with us unto London. Our fair cousin Isabel, as methinks, did you to wit of our pleasure?”What was the occult power within this man—whom no one liked, yet who seemed mysteriously to fascinate all who came inside the charmed circle of his personal influence? Instead of answering defiantly, as she had done to Isabel, Custance contented herself with the meek response—“She so did, Sire.”“You told her all?” pursued the King, turning his keen eyes upon Isabel.“To speak very truth, Sire,” hesitated Isabel, “I did leave one little matter.”She seemed reluctant to confess the omission; and Custance’s face paled visibly at this prospect of further sorrow in store.“Which was that, fair Cousin?”Henry was a perfect master of the art of expressing displeasure without any use of words to convey it. Isabel knew in an instant that he considered her to have failed in her mission.“Under your gracious leave, my Liege,” she said deprecatingly, “had your Grace seen how my fair cousin took that which I did say, it had caused you no marvel that I stayed ere more were spoken.”“We blamed you not, fair Cousin,” responded Henry coldly. “What matter left you unspoken?”“An’ it like your Grace to pardon me, touching her presence desired—”“Enough said. All else spake you?”“All else, your Highness’ pleasure served,” answered Isabel meekly.“My ‘presence desired’!” broke in Custance. “What meaneth your Grace, an’ it like you? Our fair cousin did verily arede (tell) me that your Grace commandeth mine appearing in London; and thither I had gone, had it not pleased your Grace to win hither.”“So quoth she; but this was other matter,” calmly rejoined the King. “Our Council thought good, fair Cousin, that you should be of the guests bidden unto the wedding of our cousin of Kent with the fair Lady Lucy of Milan.”For one instant after the words were spoken, there was dead silence through the room—the silence which marks the midst of a cyclone. The next moment, Custance rose, and faced the man who held her life in his hands. The spell of his mysterious power was suddenly broken; and the old fiery spirit of Plantagenet, which was stronger in her than in him, flamed in her eyes and nerved her voice.“You meantthat?” she demanded, dropping etiquette.“It hath been reckoned expedient,” was the calm reply.“Then you may drag me thither in my coffin, for alive will I never go!”“This, Custance, to the King’s Highness’ face!” deprecated her pardoned and (just then) subservient brother.“To his face? Ay,—better than behind his back!” cried the defiant Princess. “And to thy face, Harry of Bolingbroke, I do thee to wit that thou art no king of mine, nor I owe thee no allegiance! Wreak thy will on me for saying it! After all, I can die but once; and I can die as beseems a King’s daughter; and I would as lief die and be rid of thee as ’bide in a world vexed with thy governance.”“Custance! Custance!” cried Edward and Isabel in concert.“Let be, fair Cousins,” answered the cool unmoved tones of the King. “We can make large allowance for our cousin’s words—they be but nature.”This astute man knew how to overlook angry words. And certainly no words he could have used would have vexed Custance half so much as this assumption of calm superiority.“Speak your will, Lady,” he quietly added. “To all likelihood it shall do you some relievance to uncharge your mind after this fashion; and I were loth to let you of that ease. For us, we are used to hear our intent misconceived. But all said, hear our pleasure.”Which was as much as to say with contemptuous pity,—Poor captive bird! beat your wings against the iron bars of your cage as much as you fancy it; they are iron, after all.“Fair Cousin,” resumed the King, “you must be at this wedding, clad in your widow’s garb; and you must set your hand to the paper which our cousin Isabel holdeth. Know that if you be obedient, the custody and marriage of your son, with all lands of your sometime Lord, shall be yours, and you shall forthwith be set at full liberty, nor word further spoken touching past offences. But you still refusing, then every rood of your land is forfeit, and the marriages and custody of all your childre shall be given unto our fair aunt, the Duchess Dowager of York. We await your answer.”It was not in words that the answer came at first. Only in an exceeding bitter cry—“As of a wild thing taken in a trap,Which sees the trapper coming through the wood.”Custance saw now the full depth of misery to which she was doomed. The utmost concession hitherto wrung from her was that she would go to London and confront the King. And now it was calmly required of her that she should not only sign away her own fair name, but should confront Kent himself—should sit a quiet spectator of a ceremony which would publicly declare the invalidity of her right to bear his name—should by her own act consign her child to degradation and penury—should be a witness and a consenting party to the utter destruction of all her hopes of happiness. She knew that the lark might as well plead with the iron bars as she with Henry of Bolingbroke. And the penalty of her refusal was not merely poverty and homelessness. She could have borne that; indeed, the sentence about the estates passed by her, hardly noted. The bitterest sting lay in the assurance thus placidly given her, that her loving little Richard would be consigned to the keeping of a woman whom she knew to hate her fiercely—that he would be taught to hate and despise her himself. He would be brought up as a stranger to her; he would be led to associate her name with scorn and disgrace. And how was Joan likely to treat the children, when she had perpetually striven to vex and humiliate the mother?The words came at last. But they were of very different character from those which had preceded them.“Grant me one further mercy, Sire,” she said in a low voice, looking up to him:—“the one greater grace of death.”“Fair Cousin, we would fain grant you abundant grace, so you put it not from you with your own perversity. We have proffered unto you full restorance to our favour, and to endow you with every of your late Lord’s lands, on condition only of your obedience in one small matter. We take of you neither life nor liberty.”“Life? no!—only all that maketh life worthy the having.”“We wist not, fair Cousin, that our cousin of Kent were so precious,” replied the King, with the faintest accent of satire in his calm, polished voice.But Custance, like a spring let loose, had returned to her previous mood.“What, take you nought from me but only him?” she cried indignantly. “Is it not rather mine own good name whereof you would undo me? Ye have bereaved me of him already. I tare him from mine heart long ago, though I tare mine own heart in the doing of it. He is not worth the love I have wasted on him, and have repreved (denied, rejected) thereof one ten thousand times his better! God assoil (forgive) my blindness!—for mine eyes be opened now. But you, Sire,—you ask of me that I shall sign away mine own honourable name and my child’s birthright, and as bribe to bid me thereunto, you proffer me my lands! What saw you ever in Custance of Langley to give you the thought that she should thus lightly sell her soul for gold, or weigh your paltry acres in the balances against her truth and honour?”Every nerve of the outraged soul was quivering with excitement. In the calm even tones which responded, there was no more excitement than in an iceberg.“Fair Cousin, you do but utterly mistake. The matter is done and over; nor shall your ’knowledgment thereof make but little difference. ’Tis neither for our own sake, neither for our cousin of Kent, but for yours, that we would fain sway you unto a better mind. Nor need you count, fair Cousin, that your denial should let by so much as one day our cousin of Kent his bridal with the Lady Lucy. We do you to wit that you stand but in your own light. Your marriage is annulled. What good then shall come of your ’knowledgment, saving your own easement? But for other sake, if ye do persist yet in your unwisdom, we must needs make note of you as a disobedient subject.”There was silence again, only broken by the quiet regular dripping of the water-clock in a corner of the room. Silence, until Custance sank slowly on her knees, and buried her face upon the cushion of the settle.“God, help me; for I have none other help!” sobbed the agitated voice. “Help me to make this unceli (miserable) choice betwixt wrong and wrong, betwixt sorrow and sorrow!”A less impulsive and demonstrative woman would not have spoken her thoughts aloud. But Custance wore her heart upon her sleeve. What wonder if the daws pecked at it?“Not betwixt wrong and wrong, fair Cousin,” responded the cool voice of the King. “Rather, betwixt wrong and right. Nor betwixt sorrow and sorrow, but betwixt sorrow and pleasance.”With another sudden change in her mood, Custance lifted her head, and asked in a tone which was almost peremptory—“Is it the desire of my Lord himself that I be present?”To reply in the affirmative was to lie; for Kent was entirely innocent and ignorant of the King’s demand. But what mattered a few lies, when Archbishop Arundel, the fountain of absolution, was seated in the banquet-hall? So Henry had no scruple in answering unconcernedly—“It is our cousin of Kent his most earnest desire.”“And yet once more,” she said, fixing her eyes upon him, as if to watch the expression of his face while she put her test-question. “Yonder writ of excommunication:—was it verily and indeed forth against Sir Ademar de Milford, the Sunday afore I was wed?”Did she expect to read any admission of fraud in that handsome passionless face? If she did, she found herself utterly mistaken.“Fair Cousin, have ye so unworthy thoughts of your friends? Certes, the writ was forth.”“My friends! where be my friends?—The writ was forth?”“Assuredly.”“Then wreak your will—you and Satan together!”“How conceive we by that, fair Cousin?” inquired the King rather satirically.“Have your will, man!” she said wearily, as if she were tired of keeping measures with him any longer. “Things be sorely acrazed in this world. If there be an other world where they be set straight, there shall be some travail to iron out the creases.”“Signify you that you will sign this paper?”Isabel passed the paper quietly to Henry.“What matter what I signify, or what I sign? If my name must needs be writ up in black soot, it were as well done on that paper as an other.”The King laid the document on the table, where the standish was already, and with much show of courtesy, offered a pen to his prisoner. She knelt down to sign, holding the pen a moment idle in her fingers.“What a little matter art thou!” she said, soliloquising dreamily. “A grey goose quill! Yet on one stroke of thee all my coming life hangeth.”The pen was lifted to sign the fatal document, when the proceedings were stopped by an unexpected little wail from something in Maude’s arms. Custance dashed down the quill, and springing up, took her little Alianora to her bosom.“Sign away thy birthright, my star, my dove! Wretched mother that I am, to dream thereof! How could I ever meet thine innocent eyes again? I will not sign it!”“As it like you, fair Cousin,” was the quiet response of that voice gifted with such inexplicable power. “For us, we have striven but to avance you unto your better estate. ’Tis nought to us whether ye sign or no.”She hesitated; she wavered; she held out the child to Maude.“I would but add,” observed the King, “that yonder babe is no wise touched by your signing of that paper. Her birthright is gone already; or more verily, she had never none to go. Your name unto yon paper maketh no diversity thereabout.”Still the final struggle was terrible. Twice she resumed the pen; twice she flung it down in passionate though transient determination not by her own act to alienate her child’s inheritance and blot her own fair name. But every time the memory of her favourite, her loving little Richard, rose up before her, and she could not utter the refusal which would deprive her of him for ever. Perhaps she might even yet have held out, had the alternative been that of resigning him to any person but Joan. But the certain knowledge that he would be taught to despise and hate her was beyond the mother’s power to endure. At last she snatched up the pen, and dashed her name on the paper. It was signed in regal form, without a surname.“There!” she cried passionately: “behold all ye get of me! If I may not sign ‘Custance Kent,’ content you with ‘Custance.’ Never ‘Custance Le Despenser!’ My Lord was true to his heart’s core; and never sign Ihisname to a dishonour and a lie!—O my Dickon, my pretty, pretty Dickon! thou little knowest the price thine hapless mother hath paid for thee this day!”Henry the Fourth was not a man who loved cruelty for its own sake: he was simply a calculating, politic one. He never wasted power on unnecessary torture. When his purpose was served, he let his victim go.“Fully enough, fair Cousin!” he said with apparent kindness. “You sign as a Prince’s daughter—and such are you. We thank you right heartily for this your wise submission, and as you shall shortly see, you shall not lose thereby.”Not another word was said about her presence at the wedding. That would, come later. His present object was to get her to London. The evening of the 17th of November saw them at Westminster Palace.During the journey, Avice carefully avoided any private intercourse with Maude. The latter tried once or twice to renew the interrupted conversation; but it was either dinner-time, or it was prayer-time, or there was some excellent reason why Avice could not listen. And at last Maude resigned the hope. They never met again. But one winter day, eighteen years later, Maude Lyngern heard that Sister Avice, of the Minoresses’ house at Aldgate, had died in the odour of sanctity; and that the sisters were not without hope that the holy Father might pronounce her a saint, or at least “beata.” It was added that she had worn herself to a skeleton by fasting, and for three weeks before her death had refused all sustenance but the sacrament, which she received daily. And that was the last of Cousin Hawise.We return from this digression to Westminster Palace.News met them as they stepped over the threshold—news of death. Alianora, Countess of March, sister of Kent, and mother of the Mortimers, had died at Powys Castle.When Custance reached the chamber allotted to her at Westminster, she found there all the personal property which she had left at Langley twelve months earlier.“Maude!” she said that night, as she laid her head on the pillow.“Lady?” was the response.“To-morrow make thou ready for me my widow’s garb. I shall never wear any other again.”“Ay, Lady,” said Maude quietly.“And—hast here any book of Sir John de Wycliffe?”“The Evangel after Lucas, Lady.”“Wilt read me to sleep therewith?”“Surely, Lady mine.”“Was it thence thou readst once unto me, of a woman that was sinful, which washed our Lord’s feet?”“Ay so, Madam.”“Read that again.”The words were repeated softly in the quiet chamber, by the dim light of the silver lamp. Maude paused when she had read them.“When thou and I speak of such as we love, Maude, we make allowance for their short-comings. ‘She did but little ill,’ quoth we, or, ‘She had sore provoking thereto,’ and the like. But he saith, ‘Manye synnes ben forgiuen to hir’—yet not too many to be forgiven!”“Ah, dear my Lady,” said Maude affectionately, “methinks our Lord can afford to take full measure of the sins of His chosen ones, sith He hath, to bless them, so full and free forgiveness.”“Yet that must needs cost somewhat.”“Cost!” repeated Maude with deep feeling. “Lady, the cost thereof to Him was the cross.”“But to us?” suggested Custance.“Is there any cost to us, beyond the holding forth of empty hands to receive His great gift? I count, Madam, that as it is His best glory to give all, so it must be ours to receive all.”“O Maude!” she wailed with a weary sigh, “when can I make me clean enough in His sight to receive this His gift?”“Methinks, Lady mine, this woman which came into the Pharisee’s house was no cleaner ne fairer than other women. And, tarrying to make her clean, she might have come over late. Be not the emptiest meetest to receive gifts, and the uncleanest they that have most need of washing?”“The most need,—ay.”“And did ever an almoner ’plain that poor beggars came for his dole,—or a mother that her child were too much bemired to be cleansed?”“Is there woman on middle earth this night, Maude, poorer beggar than I, or more bemired?”“Sweet Lady!” said Maude very earnestly, “if you would but make trial of our Lord’s heart toward you! ‘Alle ye that traveilen and ben chargid, come to Me’—this is His bidding, dear my Lady! And His promise is, ‘I will fulfille you’—‘ye schal fynde reste to your soulis.’”“I would come, if I knew how!” she moaned.“Maybe,” said Maude softly, “they which would come an’ they knew how, do come after His reckoning. Howbeit, this wis I,—that an’ your Ladyship have will to come unto Him, He hath full good will to show you the way.”There was no more said on either side at the time. But if ever a weary, heavy-laden sinner came to Christ, Custance Le Despenser came that night.The next day she resumed her widow’s garb. At that period the weeds of widowhood were pure white, the veil bound tightly round the face, a piece of embroidered linen crossing the forehead, and another the chin, so that the only portion of the face visible was from the eyebrows to the lips. Indeed, the head-dress of a widow and that of a nun were so similar that inexperienced eyes might easily mistake one for the other. The costume was not by any means attractive.The hour was yet early when the Duchess of York was announced; and when the door was opened, the little Richard, whose presence had been purchased at so heavy a cost, sprang into his mother’s arms. His little sister, who followed, was shy and hung back, clinging close to the Duchess. The year which had elapsed since she had seen Custance and Maude seemed to have obliterated both from her recollection. With all her faults, Custance was an affectionate mother, with that sort of affection which develops itself in petting; and it pained her to see how Isabel shrank away from her. The only comfort lay in the hope that time would accustom her to her mother again; and beyond the mere affection of custom, Isabel’s nature would never reach.It soon became evident that King Henry meant to keep his word. Two months after her arrival at Westminster, Custance received a grant of all her late husband’s goods forfeited to the Crown; and five days later was the marriage of Edmund of Kent and Lucia of Milan.They were married in the Church of Saint Mary Overy, Southwark, the King himself giving the bride. The Queen and the whole Court were present; but Kent never knew who was present or absent; his eyes and thoughts were absorbed with Lucia. He never saw a white-draped figure which shrank behind the Queen, with eyes unlifted from the beginning of mass to the end. So, on that last occasion when the separated pair met, neither saw the face of the other.But Custance was not left to pass through her terrible ordeal alone. As the Queen’s procession filed into the church, Richard of Conisborough placed himself by the side of his sister, and clasped her hand in his: He left her again at the door of her own chamber. No words were spoken between the brother and sister; the hearts were too near each other to need them.Maude was waiting for her mistress. The latter lay down on the trussing-bed—the medieval sofa—and turned her face away towards the wall. Maude quietly sat down with her work; and the slow hours passed on. Custance was totally silent, beyond a simple “Nay” when asked if she wanted anything. With more consideration than might have been expected, the King did not require her presence at the wedding-banquet; he permitted her to be served in her own room. But the sufferer declined to eat.The twilight came at last, and Maude folded her needlework, unable to see longer, and doubtful whether her mistress would wish the lamp to be lighted. She had sat idle only for a’ few minutes when at last Custance spoke—her words having evidently a meaning deeper than the surface.“The light has died out!” she said.“In the City of God,” answered Maude gently, “‘night schal not be there,’ for the lantern of it is the Lamb, and He is ‘the schynyng morewe sterre.’ And He is ‘with us in alle daies, into the endyng of the world.’”“Maude, is not somewhat spoken in the Evangel, touching the taking up on us of His cross?”“Ay, dear my Lady:—‘He that berith not his cross and cometh after Me, may not be My disciple.’ And moreover:—‘He that takith not his cross and sueth (followeth) Me is not worthi to Me.’”“I can never be worthy to Him!” she said, with a new, strange lowliness which touched Maude deeply. “But hitherto I have but lain charing under the cross—I have not taken ne borne it, neither sued Him any whither. I will essay now to take it on me, humbly submitting me, and endeavouring myself to come after Him.”“Methinks, Lady mine, that so doing, ye shall find that He beareth the heavier end. At the least, He shall bearyou, and He must needs bear your burden with you. Yet in very sooth there is some gear we must needs get by rote ere we be witful enough to conceive the use thereof. The littlemaster (a schoolmaster) witteth what he doth in setting the task to his scholar. How much rather the great Master of all things?”“Me feareth I shall be slow scholar, Maude. And I have all to learn!”“Nor loved any yet the learning of letters, Madam. Yet meseemeth, an’ I speak not too boldly, that beside the lessons which be especial, that He only learneth (teaches), all this world is God’s great picture-book to help His children at their tasks. Our Lord likeneth Him unto all manner of gear—easy, common matter at our very hands—for to aid our slow wits. He is Bread of Life, and Water for cleansing, and Raiment to put on, and Staff for leaning upon, and Shepherd, and Comforter.”“Enough, now,” said Custance, with that strange gentleness which seemed so unlike her old bright, wilful self. “Leave me learn that lesson ere I crave a new one.”Note 1. The Earl of Northumberland, to induce King Richard to place himself in the power of his cousin Henry.
“Whan cockle-shells ha’e siller bells,And mussels grow on every tree—Whan frost and snaw shall warm us a’—Then shall my luve prove true to me!”Old Ballad.
“Whan cockle-shells ha’e siller bells,And mussels grow on every tree—Whan frost and snaw shall warm us a’—Then shall my luve prove true to me!”Old Ballad.
It was the evening of the third day succeeding Isabel’s visit, and while she and Avice were seated in the banquet-hall with the Governor and his family, the scene lit up by blazing pine torches, a single earthen lamp threw a dull and unsteady light over the silent bedchamber of the royal prisoner. The little Alianora was asleep in her cradle, and on the bed lay her mother, not asleep, but as still and silent as though she were. Near the cradle, on a settle, sat Maude Lyngern, trying with rather doubtful success to read by the flickering light.
Custance had not quitted her bed during all that time. She never spoke but to express a want or reply to a question. When Maude brought her food, she submitted to be fed like an infant. Of what thoughts were passing in her mind, she gave no indication.
At last Maude came to the conclusion that the spell of silence ought to be broken. The passionate utterances which Isabel’s news had evoked at first were better than this dead level of silent suffering. But she determined to break it by no arguments or consolations of her own, but by the inspired words of God. She felt doubtful what to select; so she chose a passage which, half knowing it by heart, would be the easier to make out in the uncertain light.
“‘And oon of the Farisees preiede (prayed) Jhesus that he schulde ete with him; and he entride into the hous of the Farisee, and sat at the mete. And lo, a synful woman that was in the cytee, as sche knewe that Jhesus sat at the mete in the hous of the Farisee, she broughte an alabastre box of oynement, and sche stood bihynde bisidis hise feet, and bigan to moiste hise feet with teeris, and wypide with the heeris of hir heed, and kiste hise feet, and anoyntide with oynement. And the Farisee seyng (seeing) that had clepide him seide within himsilf, seiyinge, if this were a profete, he schulde wete who and what maner womman it were that touchide him, for sche is a synful womman. And Jhesus answerde and seide to him, Symount, I han sum thing to seye to thee. And he seide, Maistir, seye thou. And he answerde, Tweye dettouris weren to oo lener (one lender); and oon oughte fyve hundrid pens (pence) and the tother fifty. But whanne thei hadden not wherof thei schulen yelde, (yield, pay) he forgaf to bothe. Who thanne loueth him more? Symount answerde and seide, I gesse that he to whom he forgaf more. And he answeride to him, Thou hast demed (doomed, judged) rightly. And he turnide to the womman, and seyde to Symount, Seest thou this womman? I entride into thin hous, thou gaf no watir to my feet; but this hath moistid my feet with teeris, and wipide with her heeris. Thou hast not gouen to me a cosse (kiss); but this, sithen sche entride, ceeside not to kisse my feet. Thou anointidst not myn heed with oyle; but this anointide my feet with oynement. For the which thing I seye to thee, manye synnes ben forgiuen to hir, for sche hath loued myche; and to whom is lesse forgyuen to hir, he loueth lesse. And Jhesus seyde to hir, Thi synnes ben forgiuen to thee. And thei that saten togider at the mete bigunnen to seye withinne hemsilf, (themselves), Who is this that forgyveth synnes? But he seide to the womman, Thei feith hath maad thee saaf; go thou in pees.’”
Maude added no words of her own. She closed the book, and relapsed into silence. But Custance’s solemn stillness was broken at last.
“‘He seide to the womman!’—Wherefore no, having so spoken to the Pharisee, have left?” (concluded).
“Nay, dear my Lady,” answered Maude, “it were not enough. So dear loveth our good and gentle Lord, that He will not have so much as one of His children to feel any the least unsurety touching His mercy. Wherefore He were not aseeth (contented) to say it only unto the Pharisee; but on her face, bowed down as she knelt behind Him, He looked, and bade her to be of good cheer, for that she was forgiven. O Lady mine! ’tis great and blessed matter when a man hath God to his friend!”
“Thy words sound well,” said the low voice from the bed. “Very well, like the sound of sweet waters far away.”
“Far away, dear my Lady?”
“Ay, far away, Maude,—without (outside) my life and me.”
“Sweet Lady, if ye will but lift the portcullis, our Lord is ready and willing to come within. And whereinsoever He entereth, He bringeth withal rest and peace.”
“Rest! Peace!—Ay so. I guess there be such like gear some whither—for some folks.”
“They dwell whereso Christ dwelleth, Lady mine.”
“In Paradise, then! I told thee it were far hence.”
“Is Paradise far hence, Lady? I once heard say Father Ademar that it were not over three hours’ journey at the most; for the thief on the cross went there in one day, and it were high noon ere he set out.”
Maude stopped sooner than she intended, suddenly checked by a moan of pain from Custance. The mere mention of Ademar’s name seemed to evoke her overwhelming distress, as if it brought back the memory of all the miserable events over which she had been brooding for three days past. She rocked herself from side to side, as though her suffering were almost unendurable.
“If he could come back! O Maude, Maude!—if only he could come back!”
“Sweet Lady, an’ he were hither, methinks Father Ademar—”
“No, no—not Father Ademar. Oh, if I could rend the grave open!—if I could tear asunder the blue veil of Heaven! I set no store by it all then; but now! He would forgive me: he would not scorn me! He would not count me too vile for his mercy. O my Lord, mine own dear Lord! you would never have served me thus!”
And down rained the blessed tears, and relieved the dry, parched soil of the agonised heart. She lay quieter after that torrent of pain and passion. The terrible spell of dark silence was broken; and Maude knew at last, that through this bitterest trial she had ever yet experienced, the wandering heart was coming home—at least to Le Despenser.
Was it needful that she should pass through yet deeper waters, before she would come home to God?
The leaves were carpeting the ground around Kenilworth, when Custance granted a second interview to her cousin Isabel. There was more news for her by that time. Edward had been once more pardoned, and was again in his usual place at Court. How this inscrutable man procured his pardon, and what sum he paid for it, in cash or service, is among the mysteries of the medieval “back-stairs.” He had to be forgiven for more than Custance knew. Among his other political speculations, he had been making love to the Queen; a fact which, though there can be little doubt that it was a mere piece of policy on his part, was unlikely to be acceptable to the King. But the one item which most closely concerned his sister was indicated in plain terms by his pardon—that she need look for no help at her brother’s hands until she too “put herself in the King’s mercy.”
The King’s mercy! What that meant depended on the King. In the reign of Richard of Bordeaux, that prisoner must be heavily-charged to whom it did not mean at least a smile of pardon—not unfrequently a grant of lands, or sometimes a coronet. But in the reign of Henry of Bolingbroke, it meant rigid justice, as he understood justice. And his mercy, to any Lollard, convicted or suspected, usually meant solitary confinement in a prison cell. What inducement was there for Custance to throw herself on such mercy as that? Nor was she further encouraged by hearing of another outbreak on behalf of King Richard or the Earl of March, headed by Archbishop Scrope and Lord Mowbray, and the heads of the ringleaders had fallen on the scaffold.
Isabel had sat and talked for an hour without winning any answer beyond monosyllables. She was busy with her rosary—a new coral one—while she unfolded her budget of news, and tried to persuade her cousin into compliance with the King’s wish. The last bead was just escaping from her fingers with an Amen, when Custance turned to her with a direct question.
“Now speak plainly, fair Cousin;—what wouldst have me to do?”
“In good sooth, to put thee in the King’s mercy.”
“Inhismercy!” murmured the prisoner significantly. “The which should be—wist how much?”
“Truly, to free thee hence, and thou shouldst go up to London to wait upon his Grace.”
“And then—?”
Isabel knew what the King intended to exact, but the time was not yet come to say too much, lest Custance should be alarmed and draw back altogether. So she replied evasively—
“Then his Highness should restore to thee thy lands, on due submission done.”
“And yield me back my childre?”
“Most surely.”
A knot was tied upon Isabel’s memory, unknown to her cousin. If Custance cared much for her children, they might prove a most effective instrument of torture.
“Well!—and then?”
“Nay, ask at thine own self. Me supposeth thou shouldst choose to return to thine own Castle of Cardiff. But if it pleased thee rather to abide in the Court, I cast no doubt—”
“Let be!—and then?”
“Then, in very deed,” resumed Isabel, warming with her subject, “thou shouldst have chance to make good alliance for Nib and Dickon, and see them well set in fair estate.”
“Ah!—and then?”
“Why, then thou mayest match thy grandchildre yet better,” answered Isabel, laughing.
“And after all, Isabel,” returned Custance, in a manner much graver than was usual with her, “there abideth yet one furtherthen—death, and God’s judgment.”
“Holy Mary aid us!—avaunt with such thoughts!”
“Canst thou avaunt with such thoughts, child?” said Custance, with a heavy sigh. “Ah me! they come unbidden, when the shadows of night be over the soul, and the thick darkness hath closed in upon the life. And I, at the least, have no spell to bid them avaunt. If holy Mary aid thee in that avoidment, ’tis more than she doth for me.”
Isabel seemed at a loss for a reply. “I have had no lack of time for thought, fair Cousin, while I yonder lay. And the thought would not away,—when we stand together, I and Harry of Bolingbroke, at that Bar of God’s judgment, shall I desire in that day that I had said ay or nay to him now?”
“Forsooth, Custance, I am not thy confessor. These be priests’ matters—not gear for women like thee and me.”
“What, child! is thy soul matter for the priest’s concernment only? Is it not rather matter for thee—thee by thyself, beyond all priests that be? Thou and the priest may walk handed (walk hand in hand) up to that Bar, but methinks he will be full fain to leave thee to bide the whipping.”
“Nay, in very deed, Custance, thou art a Lollard, else hadst thou never spoken no such a thing!”
“What, be Lollards the only men that have a care for their own souls? But be it as thou wilt—what will it matterthen? Isabel, in good sooth I have sins enough to answer for, neither will I by my good-will add thereto. And if it be no sin to stand up afore God and men, and swear right solemnly unto His dread face that I did not that which I did before His sun in Heaven—good lack! I do marvel what sin may be. There is no such thing as sin, if it be no sin to swear to a lie!”
“But, Custance, the King’s Highness asketh not thee to deny that thou wert wed unto my Lord of Kent, but only to allow openly that the same were not good in law.”
“Can a law go backwards-way?”
“Fair Cousin, the priest was excommunicate afore.”
“God wot if he were!” said Custance shrewdly.
“Bishops use not to leave their letters tarry two months on the road, child. There have been riddles writ ere now; ay, and black treachery done—by shaven crowns too. Canst thou crede that story? ’Tis more than I can.”
“Custance, I do ensure thee, the King’s Grace sware into me his own self, by the holy Face of Lucca, and said, if thou didst cast any doubt of the same, my Lord Archbishop should lay to pledge his corporal oath thereon.”
“His corporal oath ensure me! nay, nor an’ he sware by Saint Beelzebub!” cried Custance in bitter scorn. “I have heard of a corporal oath ere now, child. I know of one that was taken at Conway, by an old white-haired man (Note 1), whose reverend head should have lent weight to his words: but they were words, and nought else. How many days were, ere it was broken to shivers? I tell thee, Nib, Harry of Bolingbroke may swear an’ it like him by every saint in the calendar from Aaron to Zachary; and when he is through, my faith in his oaths will go by the eye of a needle. Why, what need of oath if a man be but true? If I would know somewhat of Maude yonder, I shall never set her to swear by Saint Nicholas; I can crede her word. And if a man’s word be not trustworthy, how much more worth is his oath?”
“But, Custance! the King’s Grace and my Lord Archbishop—”
“How thou clarifiest (glorifiest) the King’s Grace! Satan ruleth a wider realm than he, child, but I would not trust his oath. What caused them to take account that I should not believe them, unless their own ill consciences?”
Isabel was silent.
“Isabel!” said her cousin, suddenly turning to her, “have theyhisoath for the same?”
“Whose, Custance?—my Lord of Kent?”
Custance nodded impatiently.
“Oh, ay.”
“He hath allowed our wedding void in law?”
“Ay so.”
“What manner of talk held his conscience with him, sithence, mewondereth?” suggested Custance, in a low, troubled voice. “But maybe, like thee, he accounteth if but priest’s gear.”
“Marry, ’tis far lighter travail. I list not to carry mine own sins: I had the liefer by the worth of the Queen’s Highness’ gems they were on the priest’s back.”
“Ah, Nib!—but how if God charge them on thy back at the last?”
“Good lack! a white lie or twain, spiced with a little matter of frowardness by times! My back is broad enough.”
“I am fain to hear it, for so is not mine.”
“Ah! thou art secular—no marvel.”
“Much thanks for thy glosing (flattery), mine holy sister!” said Custance sarcastically. “The angels come down from Heaven, to set thee every morrow in a bath of rose-water, trow? While I, poor sinner that I am, having been twice wed, may journey to Heaven as best I can in the mire. ’Tis well, methinks, there be some secular in the world, for these monks and nuns be so holy that elsewise there were no use for God’s mercy.”
“Nay, Custance!”
“Well, have it as thou wilt, child! What matter?” returned her cousin with a weary air. “I am no doctor of the schools, to break lances with thee. Only methinks I have learned, these last months, a lesson or twain, which maybe even thy holiness were not the worser to spell over. Now let me be.”
Isabel thought that the victim was coming round by degrees, and she wisely forbore to press her beyond the point to which she chose to go of herself. So the interview ended. It was not till October that they met again.
Maude fancied that Avice eschewed any renewal of intercourse with her. She kept herself strictly secluded in the chamber which had been allotted to the nuns; and since Maude had no power to pass beyond the door of the guard-room, the choice lay in Avice’s own hands. At neither of the subsequent interviews was she present.
“Well, fair Cousin! what cheer?” was Isabel’s greeting, when she presented herself anew.
“Thus much,” replied Custance; “that, leave given, I will go with thee to London.”
“Well said!” was the answer, in a tone which intimated that it was more than Isabel expected.
“But mark me, Isabel! I byhote (promise) nought beyond.”
“Oh ay!—well and good.”
“And for thus much yielding, I demand to have again the keeping of my childre.”
“Good lack! thou treatest with the King’s Grace as though thou wert queen of some land thyself,” said Isabel, with a little laugh. “Verily, that goeth beyond my commission: but methinks I can make bold to say thus much: that an’ thou come with me, they shall be suffered at the least to see thee and speak with thee.”
Custance shook her head decidedly.
“That shall not serve.”
“Nay, then, we be again at a point. I can but give mine avisement unto thee to come thither and see.”
The point was sturdily fought over on both sides. Isabel dared promise nothing more than that Custance should be allowed to see her children, and that she herself would do her utmost to obtain further concessions. At last it was settled that the King should be appealed to, and the request urged upon him by his emissary, by letter. Isabel, however, was evidently gifted with no slight ambassadorial powers; for when she selected Bertram Lyngern as her messenger, the Governor did not hesitate to let him go.
But Bertram’s projected journey never took place, for a most unexpected event intervened to stop it.
It was the seventh of November, and a warm, close, damp day, inducing languor and depression in any person sensitive to the influence of weather. Custance and Maude had received no visit that day from any one but Bertram, who was busy preparing for his journey. There were frequent comers and goers to Kenilworth Castle, so that the sound of a bugle-horn without was likely to cause no great curiosity; nor, as Custance’s drawing-room window opened on a little quiet corner of the inner court-yard, did she often witness the arrival of guests. So that three horns rang out on that afternoon without awakening more than a passing wonder “who it might be;” and when an unusual commotion was heard in the guard-room, the cause remained unsurmised. But when the door of the drawing-room was opened, a most unexpected sight dawned on the eyes of the prisoners. Unannounced and completely unlooked-for, in the doorway stood Henry of Bolingbroke, the King.
It was no wonder that Maude’s work dropped from her hands as she rose hastily; nor that Custance’s eyes passed hurriedly on to see who composed the suite. But the suite consisted of a solitary individual, and this was her ubiquitous brother, Edward of York.
“God give you good even, fair Cousin!” said Henry, with a bend of his stately head. His manners in public, though less really considerate, were stiffer and more ceremonious than those of his predecessor. “You scantly looked, as methinks, for a visit of ours this even?”; “Your Highness’ servant!” was all chat Custance said, in a voice the constrained tone of which had its source rather in coldness than in reverence.
“Christ save thee, Custance!” said Edward, sauntering in behind his royal master. “Thou hast here a fine look-out, in very deed.”
“Truth, Ned; and time to mark it!” rejoined his sister.
The door opened again, and with a lout (the old English courtesy, now considered rustic) of the deepest veneration, Isabel made her appearance.
“I pray you sit, ladies,” commanded the King.
The Princesses obeyed, but Maude did not consider herself included. The King took the isolated chair with which the room was provided.
“An’ you be served, our fair Cousins,” he remarked, “we will to business, seeing our tarrying hither shall be but unto Monday; and if your leisure serve, Lady Le Despenser, we would fain bear you with us unto London. Our fair cousin Isabel, as methinks, did you to wit of our pleasure?”
What was the occult power within this man—whom no one liked, yet who seemed mysteriously to fascinate all who came inside the charmed circle of his personal influence? Instead of answering defiantly, as she had done to Isabel, Custance contented herself with the meek response—
“She so did, Sire.”
“You told her all?” pursued the King, turning his keen eyes upon Isabel.
“To speak very truth, Sire,” hesitated Isabel, “I did leave one little matter.”
She seemed reluctant to confess the omission; and Custance’s face paled visibly at this prospect of further sorrow in store.
“Which was that, fair Cousin?”
Henry was a perfect master of the art of expressing displeasure without any use of words to convey it. Isabel knew in an instant that he considered her to have failed in her mission.
“Under your gracious leave, my Liege,” she said deprecatingly, “had your Grace seen how my fair cousin took that which I did say, it had caused you no marvel that I stayed ere more were spoken.”
“We blamed you not, fair Cousin,” responded Henry coldly. “What matter left you unspoken?”
“An’ it like your Grace to pardon me, touching her presence desired—”
“Enough said. All else spake you?”
“All else, your Highness’ pleasure served,” answered Isabel meekly.
“My ‘presence desired’!” broke in Custance. “What meaneth your Grace, an’ it like you? Our fair cousin did verily arede (tell) me that your Grace commandeth mine appearing in London; and thither I had gone, had it not pleased your Grace to win hither.”
“So quoth she; but this was other matter,” calmly rejoined the King. “Our Council thought good, fair Cousin, that you should be of the guests bidden unto the wedding of our cousin of Kent with the fair Lady Lucy of Milan.”
For one instant after the words were spoken, there was dead silence through the room—the silence which marks the midst of a cyclone. The next moment, Custance rose, and faced the man who held her life in his hands. The spell of his mysterious power was suddenly broken; and the old fiery spirit of Plantagenet, which was stronger in her than in him, flamed in her eyes and nerved her voice.
“You meantthat?” she demanded, dropping etiquette.
“It hath been reckoned expedient,” was the calm reply.
“Then you may drag me thither in my coffin, for alive will I never go!”
“This, Custance, to the King’s Highness’ face!” deprecated her pardoned and (just then) subservient brother.
“To his face? Ay,—better than behind his back!” cried the defiant Princess. “And to thy face, Harry of Bolingbroke, I do thee to wit that thou art no king of mine, nor I owe thee no allegiance! Wreak thy will on me for saying it! After all, I can die but once; and I can die as beseems a King’s daughter; and I would as lief die and be rid of thee as ’bide in a world vexed with thy governance.”
“Custance! Custance!” cried Edward and Isabel in concert.
“Let be, fair Cousins,” answered the cool unmoved tones of the King. “We can make large allowance for our cousin’s words—they be but nature.”
This astute man knew how to overlook angry words. And certainly no words he could have used would have vexed Custance half so much as this assumption of calm superiority.
“Speak your will, Lady,” he quietly added. “To all likelihood it shall do you some relievance to uncharge your mind after this fashion; and I were loth to let you of that ease. For us, we are used to hear our intent misconceived. But all said, hear our pleasure.”
Which was as much as to say with contemptuous pity,—Poor captive bird! beat your wings against the iron bars of your cage as much as you fancy it; they are iron, after all.
“Fair Cousin,” resumed the King, “you must be at this wedding, clad in your widow’s garb; and you must set your hand to the paper which our cousin Isabel holdeth. Know that if you be obedient, the custody and marriage of your son, with all lands of your sometime Lord, shall be yours, and you shall forthwith be set at full liberty, nor word further spoken touching past offences. But you still refusing, then every rood of your land is forfeit, and the marriages and custody of all your childre shall be given unto our fair aunt, the Duchess Dowager of York. We await your answer.”
It was not in words that the answer came at first. Only in an exceeding bitter cry—
“As of a wild thing taken in a trap,Which sees the trapper coming through the wood.”
“As of a wild thing taken in a trap,Which sees the trapper coming through the wood.”
Custance saw now the full depth of misery to which she was doomed. The utmost concession hitherto wrung from her was that she would go to London and confront the King. And now it was calmly required of her that she should not only sign away her own fair name, but should confront Kent himself—should sit a quiet spectator of a ceremony which would publicly declare the invalidity of her right to bear his name—should by her own act consign her child to degradation and penury—should be a witness and a consenting party to the utter destruction of all her hopes of happiness. She knew that the lark might as well plead with the iron bars as she with Henry of Bolingbroke. And the penalty of her refusal was not merely poverty and homelessness. She could have borne that; indeed, the sentence about the estates passed by her, hardly noted. The bitterest sting lay in the assurance thus placidly given her, that her loving little Richard would be consigned to the keeping of a woman whom she knew to hate her fiercely—that he would be taught to hate and despise her himself. He would be brought up as a stranger to her; he would be led to associate her name with scorn and disgrace. And how was Joan likely to treat the children, when she had perpetually striven to vex and humiliate the mother?
The words came at last. But they were of very different character from those which had preceded them.
“Grant me one further mercy, Sire,” she said in a low voice, looking up to him:—“the one greater grace of death.”
“Fair Cousin, we would fain grant you abundant grace, so you put it not from you with your own perversity. We have proffered unto you full restorance to our favour, and to endow you with every of your late Lord’s lands, on condition only of your obedience in one small matter. We take of you neither life nor liberty.”
“Life? no!—only all that maketh life worthy the having.”
“We wist not, fair Cousin, that our cousin of Kent were so precious,” replied the King, with the faintest accent of satire in his calm, polished voice.
But Custance, like a spring let loose, had returned to her previous mood.
“What, take you nought from me but only him?” she cried indignantly. “Is it not rather mine own good name whereof you would undo me? Ye have bereaved me of him already. I tare him from mine heart long ago, though I tare mine own heart in the doing of it. He is not worth the love I have wasted on him, and have repreved (denied, rejected) thereof one ten thousand times his better! God assoil (forgive) my blindness!—for mine eyes be opened now. But you, Sire,—you ask of me that I shall sign away mine own honourable name and my child’s birthright, and as bribe to bid me thereunto, you proffer me my lands! What saw you ever in Custance of Langley to give you the thought that she should thus lightly sell her soul for gold, or weigh your paltry acres in the balances against her truth and honour?”
Every nerve of the outraged soul was quivering with excitement. In the calm even tones which responded, there was no more excitement than in an iceberg.
“Fair Cousin, you do but utterly mistake. The matter is done and over; nor shall your ’knowledgment thereof make but little difference. ’Tis neither for our own sake, neither for our cousin of Kent, but for yours, that we would fain sway you unto a better mind. Nor need you count, fair Cousin, that your denial should let by so much as one day our cousin of Kent his bridal with the Lady Lucy. We do you to wit that you stand but in your own light. Your marriage is annulled. What good then shall come of your ’knowledgment, saving your own easement? But for other sake, if ye do persist yet in your unwisdom, we must needs make note of you as a disobedient subject.”
There was silence again, only broken by the quiet regular dripping of the water-clock in a corner of the room. Silence, until Custance sank slowly on her knees, and buried her face upon the cushion of the settle.
“God, help me; for I have none other help!” sobbed the agitated voice. “Help me to make this unceli (miserable) choice betwixt wrong and wrong, betwixt sorrow and sorrow!”
A less impulsive and demonstrative woman would not have spoken her thoughts aloud. But Custance wore her heart upon her sleeve. What wonder if the daws pecked at it?
“Not betwixt wrong and wrong, fair Cousin,” responded the cool voice of the King. “Rather, betwixt wrong and right. Nor betwixt sorrow and sorrow, but betwixt sorrow and pleasance.”
With another sudden change in her mood, Custance lifted her head, and asked in a tone which was almost peremptory—
“Is it the desire of my Lord himself that I be present?”
To reply in the affirmative was to lie; for Kent was entirely innocent and ignorant of the King’s demand. But what mattered a few lies, when Archbishop Arundel, the fountain of absolution, was seated in the banquet-hall? So Henry had no scruple in answering unconcernedly—
“It is our cousin of Kent his most earnest desire.”
“And yet once more,” she said, fixing her eyes upon him, as if to watch the expression of his face while she put her test-question. “Yonder writ of excommunication:—was it verily and indeed forth against Sir Ademar de Milford, the Sunday afore I was wed?”
Did she expect to read any admission of fraud in that handsome passionless face? If she did, she found herself utterly mistaken.
“Fair Cousin, have ye so unworthy thoughts of your friends? Certes, the writ was forth.”
“My friends! where be my friends?—The writ was forth?”
“Assuredly.”
“Then wreak your will—you and Satan together!”
“How conceive we by that, fair Cousin?” inquired the King rather satirically.
“Have your will, man!” she said wearily, as if she were tired of keeping measures with him any longer. “Things be sorely acrazed in this world. If there be an other world where they be set straight, there shall be some travail to iron out the creases.”
“Signify you that you will sign this paper?”
Isabel passed the paper quietly to Henry.
“What matter what I signify, or what I sign? If my name must needs be writ up in black soot, it were as well done on that paper as an other.”
The King laid the document on the table, where the standish was already, and with much show of courtesy, offered a pen to his prisoner. She knelt down to sign, holding the pen a moment idle in her fingers.
“What a little matter art thou!” she said, soliloquising dreamily. “A grey goose quill! Yet on one stroke of thee all my coming life hangeth.”
The pen was lifted to sign the fatal document, when the proceedings were stopped by an unexpected little wail from something in Maude’s arms. Custance dashed down the quill, and springing up, took her little Alianora to her bosom.
“Sign away thy birthright, my star, my dove! Wretched mother that I am, to dream thereof! How could I ever meet thine innocent eyes again? I will not sign it!”
“As it like you, fair Cousin,” was the quiet response of that voice gifted with such inexplicable power. “For us, we have striven but to avance you unto your better estate. ’Tis nought to us whether ye sign or no.”
She hesitated; she wavered; she held out the child to Maude.
“I would but add,” observed the King, “that yonder babe is no wise touched by your signing of that paper. Her birthright is gone already; or more verily, she had never none to go. Your name unto yon paper maketh no diversity thereabout.”
Still the final struggle was terrible. Twice she resumed the pen; twice she flung it down in passionate though transient determination not by her own act to alienate her child’s inheritance and blot her own fair name. But every time the memory of her favourite, her loving little Richard, rose up before her, and she could not utter the refusal which would deprive her of him for ever. Perhaps she might even yet have held out, had the alternative been that of resigning him to any person but Joan. But the certain knowledge that he would be taught to despise and hate her was beyond the mother’s power to endure. At last she snatched up the pen, and dashed her name on the paper. It was signed in regal form, without a surname.
“There!” she cried passionately: “behold all ye get of me! If I may not sign ‘Custance Kent,’ content you with ‘Custance.’ Never ‘Custance Le Despenser!’ My Lord was true to his heart’s core; and never sign Ihisname to a dishonour and a lie!—O my Dickon, my pretty, pretty Dickon! thou little knowest the price thine hapless mother hath paid for thee this day!”
Henry the Fourth was not a man who loved cruelty for its own sake: he was simply a calculating, politic one. He never wasted power on unnecessary torture. When his purpose was served, he let his victim go.
“Fully enough, fair Cousin!” he said with apparent kindness. “You sign as a Prince’s daughter—and such are you. We thank you right heartily for this your wise submission, and as you shall shortly see, you shall not lose thereby.”
Not another word was said about her presence at the wedding. That would, come later. His present object was to get her to London. The evening of the 17th of November saw them at Westminster Palace.
During the journey, Avice carefully avoided any private intercourse with Maude. The latter tried once or twice to renew the interrupted conversation; but it was either dinner-time, or it was prayer-time, or there was some excellent reason why Avice could not listen. And at last Maude resigned the hope. They never met again. But one winter day, eighteen years later, Maude Lyngern heard that Sister Avice, of the Minoresses’ house at Aldgate, had died in the odour of sanctity; and that the sisters were not without hope that the holy Father might pronounce her a saint, or at least “beata.” It was added that she had worn herself to a skeleton by fasting, and for three weeks before her death had refused all sustenance but the sacrament, which she received daily. And that was the last of Cousin Hawise.
We return from this digression to Westminster Palace.
News met them as they stepped over the threshold—news of death. Alianora, Countess of March, sister of Kent, and mother of the Mortimers, had died at Powys Castle.
When Custance reached the chamber allotted to her at Westminster, she found there all the personal property which she had left at Langley twelve months earlier.
“Maude!” she said that night, as she laid her head on the pillow.
“Lady?” was the response.
“To-morrow make thou ready for me my widow’s garb. I shall never wear any other again.”
“Ay, Lady,” said Maude quietly.
“And—hast here any book of Sir John de Wycliffe?”
“The Evangel after Lucas, Lady.”
“Wilt read me to sleep therewith?”
“Surely, Lady mine.”
“Was it thence thou readst once unto me, of a woman that was sinful, which washed our Lord’s feet?”
“Ay so, Madam.”
“Read that again.”
The words were repeated softly in the quiet chamber, by the dim light of the silver lamp. Maude paused when she had read them.
“When thou and I speak of such as we love, Maude, we make allowance for their short-comings. ‘She did but little ill,’ quoth we, or, ‘She had sore provoking thereto,’ and the like. But he saith, ‘Manye synnes ben forgiuen to hir’—yet not too many to be forgiven!”
“Ah, dear my Lady,” said Maude affectionately, “methinks our Lord can afford to take full measure of the sins of His chosen ones, sith He hath, to bless them, so full and free forgiveness.”
“Yet that must needs cost somewhat.”
“Cost!” repeated Maude with deep feeling. “Lady, the cost thereof to Him was the cross.”
“But to us?” suggested Custance.
“Is there any cost to us, beyond the holding forth of empty hands to receive His great gift? I count, Madam, that as it is His best glory to give all, so it must be ours to receive all.”
“O Maude!” she wailed with a weary sigh, “when can I make me clean enough in His sight to receive this His gift?”
“Methinks, Lady mine, this woman which came into the Pharisee’s house was no cleaner ne fairer than other women. And, tarrying to make her clean, she might have come over late. Be not the emptiest meetest to receive gifts, and the uncleanest they that have most need of washing?”
“The most need,—ay.”
“And did ever an almoner ’plain that poor beggars came for his dole,—or a mother that her child were too much bemired to be cleansed?”
“Is there woman on middle earth this night, Maude, poorer beggar than I, or more bemired?”
“Sweet Lady!” said Maude very earnestly, “if you would but make trial of our Lord’s heart toward you! ‘Alle ye that traveilen and ben chargid, come to Me’—this is His bidding, dear my Lady! And His promise is, ‘I will fulfille you’—‘ye schal fynde reste to your soulis.’”
“I would come, if I knew how!” she moaned.
“Maybe,” said Maude softly, “they which would come an’ they knew how, do come after His reckoning. Howbeit, this wis I,—that an’ your Ladyship have will to come unto Him, He hath full good will to show you the way.”
There was no more said on either side at the time. But if ever a weary, heavy-laden sinner came to Christ, Custance Le Despenser came that night.
The next day she resumed her widow’s garb. At that period the weeds of widowhood were pure white, the veil bound tightly round the face, a piece of embroidered linen crossing the forehead, and another the chin, so that the only portion of the face visible was from the eyebrows to the lips. Indeed, the head-dress of a widow and that of a nun were so similar that inexperienced eyes might easily mistake one for the other. The costume was not by any means attractive.
The hour was yet early when the Duchess of York was announced; and when the door was opened, the little Richard, whose presence had been purchased at so heavy a cost, sprang into his mother’s arms. His little sister, who followed, was shy and hung back, clinging close to the Duchess. The year which had elapsed since she had seen Custance and Maude seemed to have obliterated both from her recollection. With all her faults, Custance was an affectionate mother, with that sort of affection which develops itself in petting; and it pained her to see how Isabel shrank away from her. The only comfort lay in the hope that time would accustom her to her mother again; and beyond the mere affection of custom, Isabel’s nature would never reach.
It soon became evident that King Henry meant to keep his word. Two months after her arrival at Westminster, Custance received a grant of all her late husband’s goods forfeited to the Crown; and five days later was the marriage of Edmund of Kent and Lucia of Milan.
They were married in the Church of Saint Mary Overy, Southwark, the King himself giving the bride. The Queen and the whole Court were present; but Kent never knew who was present or absent; his eyes and thoughts were absorbed with Lucia. He never saw a white-draped figure which shrank behind the Queen, with eyes unlifted from the beginning of mass to the end. So, on that last occasion when the separated pair met, neither saw the face of the other.
But Custance was not left to pass through her terrible ordeal alone. As the Queen’s procession filed into the church, Richard of Conisborough placed himself by the side of his sister, and clasped her hand in his: He left her again at the door of her own chamber. No words were spoken between the brother and sister; the hearts were too near each other to need them.
Maude was waiting for her mistress. The latter lay down on the trussing-bed—the medieval sofa—and turned her face away towards the wall. Maude quietly sat down with her work; and the slow hours passed on. Custance was totally silent, beyond a simple “Nay” when asked if she wanted anything. With more consideration than might have been expected, the King did not require her presence at the wedding-banquet; he permitted her to be served in her own room. But the sufferer declined to eat.
The twilight came at last, and Maude folded her needlework, unable to see longer, and doubtful whether her mistress would wish the lamp to be lighted. She had sat idle only for a’ few minutes when at last Custance spoke—her words having evidently a meaning deeper than the surface.
“The light has died out!” she said.
“In the City of God,” answered Maude gently, “‘night schal not be there,’ for the lantern of it is the Lamb, and He is ‘the schynyng morewe sterre.’ And He is ‘with us in alle daies, into the endyng of the world.’”
“Maude, is not somewhat spoken in the Evangel, touching the taking up on us of His cross?”
“Ay, dear my Lady:—‘He that berith not his cross and cometh after Me, may not be My disciple.’ And moreover:—‘He that takith not his cross and sueth (followeth) Me is not worthi to Me.’”
“I can never be worthy to Him!” she said, with a new, strange lowliness which touched Maude deeply. “But hitherto I have but lain charing under the cross—I have not taken ne borne it, neither sued Him any whither. I will essay now to take it on me, humbly submitting me, and endeavouring myself to come after Him.”
“Methinks, Lady mine, that so doing, ye shall find that He beareth the heavier end. At the least, He shall bearyou, and He must needs bear your burden with you. Yet in very sooth there is some gear we must needs get by rote ere we be witful enough to conceive the use thereof. The littlemaster (a schoolmaster) witteth what he doth in setting the task to his scholar. How much rather the great Master of all things?”
“Me feareth I shall be slow scholar, Maude. And I have all to learn!”
“Nor loved any yet the learning of letters, Madam. Yet meseemeth, an’ I speak not too boldly, that beside the lessons which be especial, that He only learneth (teaches), all this world is God’s great picture-book to help His children at their tasks. Our Lord likeneth Him unto all manner of gear—easy, common matter at our very hands—for to aid our slow wits. He is Bread of Life, and Water for cleansing, and Raiment to put on, and Staff for leaning upon, and Shepherd, and Comforter.”
“Enough, now,” said Custance, with that strange gentleness which seemed so unlike her old bright, wilful self. “Leave me learn that lesson ere I crave a new one.”
Note 1. The Earl of Northumberland, to induce King Richard to place himself in the power of his cousin Henry.
Chapter Twelve.Frost and Snow.“Whan bells were rung, and mass was sung,And every lady went hame,Than ilka lady had her yong sonne,But Lady Helen had nane.”Old Ballad.“I have come home, Mother!”It was Constance who spoke, standing in the hall at Cardiff, wrapped in the arms of the Dowager Lady Le Despenser. And in every sense, from the lightest to the deepest, the words were true. The wanderer had come home. Home to the Castle of Cardiff, which she was never to leave any more; home to the warm motherly arms of Elizabeth Le Despenser, who cast all her worn-out theories to the winds, and took her dead son’s hapless darling to her heart of hearts; home to the great heart of God. And the ear of the elder woman was open to a sound unheard by the younger. The voice of that dead son echoed in her heart, repeating his dying charge to her—“Have a care of my Lady!”“My poor stricken dove!” sobbed the Lady Elizabeth. “Child, men’s cruel handling hath robbed thee of much, yet it hath left thee God and thy mother!”Constance looked up, with tears gleaming in her sapphire eyes, now so much calmer and sadder than of old.“Ay,” she said, the remembrance thrilling through her of the heavy price at which she had bought back her children; “and I have paid nought for God and thee.”“Nay, daughter dear, Christ paid that wyte (forfeit) for thee. We may trust Him to have a care of the quittance,” (receipt).The children now claimed their share of notice. Richard kissed the old lady in an energetic devouring style, and proclaimed himself “so glad, Grammer, so glad!” Isabel offered her cheek in her cold unchildlike way. The baby Alianora at once accepted the new element as a perfectly satisfactory grandmamma, and submitted to be dandled and talked nonsense to with pleased equanimity.“O Bertram!” said Maude that night, “surely our Lady’s troubles and travails be now over!”“It is well, wife, that God loveth her better than thou,” was the answer. “He will not leave his jewel but half polished, because the sound of the cutting grieveth thine ears.”“But how could she bear aught more?”“Dear heart! how know we what any man can bear—aye, even our own selves? Only God knoweth; and we trust Him. The heavenly Goldsmith breaketh none of His gems in the cutting.”The doors of the prison in Windsor Castle were opened that spring to release two of the state prisoners. The dangerous prisoner, Edmund Earl of March, remained in durance; and his bright little brother Roger had been set free already, by a higher decree than any of Henry of Bolingbroke. The child died in his dungeon, aged probably about ten years. Now Anne and Alianora were summoned to Court, and placed under the care of the Queen. They were described by the King as “deprived of all their relatives and friends.” They were not quite that; but in so far as they were, he was mainly responsible for having made them so.The manner in which King Henry provided the purchase-money required by the Duke of Milan for Lucia is amusing for its ingenuity. The sum agreed upon was seventy thousand florins; and the King paid it out of the pockets of five of his nobles. One was his own son, Thomas Duke of Clarence; the second and third were husbands of two of Kent’s sisters—Sir John Neville and Thomas Earl of Salisbury—the latter being the son of the murdered Lollard; the fourth was Lord Scrope, whose character appears to have been simple to an extreme; and the last was assuredly never asked to consent to the exaction, for he was the hapless March, still close prisoner in Windsor Castle.In the summer, Constance received a grant of all her late husband’s lands. The Court was very gay that summer with royal weddings. The first bride was Constance’s young stepmother, the Duchess Joan of York, who bestowed her hand on Lord Willoughby de Eresby: the second was the King’s younger daughter, the Princess Philippa, who was consigned to the ungentle keeping of the far-off King of Denmark. Richard of Conisborough was selected to attend the Princess to Elsinore; but he was so poor that the King was obliged to make all the provision he required for the journey. It was not his own fault that his purse was light: his godfather, King Richard, had left him a sufficient competence; but the grants of Richard of Bordeaux were not held always to bind Henry of Bolingbroke. But when the Earl of Cambridge returned to Elsinore, he was rewarded for his labours, not with money nor lands, but by a grant of the only thing for which he cared—the gift of Anne Mortimer. He was penniless, and so was she. But though poverty was an habitual resident within the doors, love did not fly out at the window.The year 1408 brought another sanguinary struggle in favour of March’s title, headed by the old white-haired sinner Northumberland, who fell in his attempt, at the battle of Bramham Moor, on the 29th of February. He had armed in the cause of Rome, which he hoped to induce March to espouse yet more warmly than Henry the Fourth. He probably did not know the boy personally, and imagined him the counterpart of his gallant, fervent father. He was as far from it as possible. Nothing on earth would have induced March to espouse any cause warmly. He valued far too highly his own dearly beloved ease.Matters dragged themselves along that autumn as lazily as even March could have wished. All over England the rain came down, sometimes in a dashing shower, but generally in an idle dreary dripping from eaves and ramparts. Nothing particular was happening to any body. At Cardiff all was extremely quiet. Constance had recovered as much brightness as she would ever recover, but never any more would she be the Constance of old time.“Surely our Lady’s troubles be over now!” said Maude sanguinely.On the evening on which that remark was made,—the fifteenth of September—two sisters of Saint Clare sat watching, in a small French convent, by the dying bed of a knight. At the siege of Briac Castle, five days earlier, he had been mortally wounded in the head by a bolt from a crossbow; and his squires bore him into the little convent to die in peace. The sufferer had never fully recovered his consciousness. He seemed but dimly aware of any thing—not fully sensible even to pain. His words were few, incoherent, scarcely intelligible. What the nuns could occasionally disentangle from his low mutterings was something about “blue eyes,” and “watching from the lattice.” The last rites of the Church were administered, but there could be no confession; a crucifix was held before his eyes, but they doubted if he recognised what it was. And about sunset of that autumn evening he died.So closed the few and evil days of the vain, weak, self-loving Kent. His age was only twenty-six; he left no child but the disinherited Alianora, and his sisters took good care that she should remain disinherited. They pounced upon the lands of the dead brother with an eagerness which would have been rather more decent had it been a little less apparent; and to the widowed Lucia, who was the least guilty party to the conspiracy for which she had been made the decoy, they left little beyond her wardrobe. She was actually reduced to appeal to the King’s mercy for means to live. Henry responded to her piteous petition by the offer of his brother of Dorset as a second husband. Lucia was one of those women who are born actresses, and whose nature it is to do things which seem forced and unnatural to others. She flattered the King with anticipations that she was on the point of complying with his wishes, till the last moment; and then she eloped with Sir Henry de Mortimer, possibly a distant connection of the Earl of March. It may be added, since Lucia now disappears from the story, that she survived her second marriage for fourteen years, and showed herself at her death a most devout member of the orthodox Church, by a will which was from beginning to end a string of bequests for masses, to be sung for the repose of her soul, and of the soul of Kent.Bertram and Maude, to whom the news came first, scarcely knew how to tell Constance of Kent’s death. At last Maude thought of dressing the little Alianora in daughter’s mourning, and sending her into her mother’s room alone. The gradations of mourning were at that time so distinct and minute that Constance’s practised eye would read the parable in an instant. So they broke in that manner the news they dared not tell her.For the whole day there was no sign from Constance that she had even noticed the hint. Her voice and manner showed no change. But at night, when the little child of three years old knelt at her mother’s knee for her evening prayer, said Lollard-wise in simple English, they found it had not escaped her. As the child came to the usual “God bless my father and mother,”—which, fatherless as she had always been, she had been taught to say,—Constance quietly checked her, and made her say, “God bless my mother” only. And at the close, little Alianora was instructed to add,—“God pardon my father’s soul.”Knowing how passionately Constance had once loved Kent, this calm show of indifference puzzled Maude Lyngern sorely. But to the Dowager Lady it was no such riddle.“Her love is dead, child,” she said, when Maude timidly expressed her surprise. “And when that is verily thus, it were lighter to bid a dead corpse live than a dead love.”All this time the Lollard persecution slowly waxed hotter and hotter. Men began to thank God when any “heretics” among their friends were permitted to die in their beds, and to whisper in hushed accents that when the Prince of Wales should be King, whose nature was more merciful than his father’s, matters might perchance mend. They little knew what the future was to bring. The worst was not yet over,—was not even to come during the reign of Henry of Bolingbroke.Seeing that Constance was now restored to her lands, and basking in the sunshine of Court favour, it struck Lady Abergavenny, a niece of Archbishop Arundel, who was a politic woman—as most of his nieces were—that an alliance between her son and Isabel Le Despenser would be a good speculation. And her Ladyship, being moreover a strong-minded woman, whose husband was of very little public and less private consequence, carried her point, and the marriage of Isabel with young Richard Beauchamp took place at Cardiff on the eleventh birthday of the bride.The ceremony was slightly hastened at the wish of the Dowager Lady Le Despenser. She was anxious not to distress Constance by breaking the news too suddenly to her, but she felt within herself that the golden bowl was nearing its breaking at the fountain, and that the silver cords of her earthly house of this tabernacle were not far from being taken down. She was an old woman,—very old, for a period wherein few lived to old age; she had long outlived her husband, and had seen the funerals of nearly all her children. The greater part even of her earthly treasures were already safe where moth and rust corrupt not, and her own feeling of earnest longing to rejoin them grew daily stronger. It was for the daughter’s sake alone that she cared to live now; the daughter to whom men had left only God and that mother. A new lesson was now to be taught to Constance—to rest wholly upon God.It was very tranquilly at last that Elizabeth Le Despenser passed away from earth. She took most loving leave of Constance, blessed and said farewell to all her children, and charged Bertram and Maude to remain with her and be faithful to her.Twenty years’ companionship, fellowship in sorrow, and fellowship in faith, had effected a complete revolution in the feelings of Constance towards her mother-in-law.“O Mother, Mother!” she sobbed; “what shall I do without you!”“My child,” answered Elizabeth, “had the heavenly Master not seen that thou shouldst well do without me, He had left me yet here.”“You yourself said, Mother, that He had left me but Him and you!”“Ay, dear daughter; and yet He hath left thee Himself. Every hour He shall be with thee; and every hour of thy life moreover shall be an hour the less betwixt thee and me.”The last thing that they heard her murmur, which had reference to that land whither she was going, was—“Neither schulen they die more.”They laid her in the family vault at Tewkesbury Abbey; and once more there was mourning at Cardiff.It was only just begun when news came of another death, far more unexpected than hers. Richard of Conisborough and Anne Mortimer were already the parents of a daughter; and two months after the death of the Lady Le Despenser a son was born, who was hereafter to become the father of all the future kings of England. And while the young mother lay wrapped in her first tender gladness over her new treasure, God called her to come away to Him. So she left the little children who would never call her “mother,” left the husband who was all the world to her; and—fragile White Rose as she was—Anne Mortimer “perished with the flowers.” She died “with all the sunshine on her,” aged only twenty-one years. Perhaps those who stood round her coffin thought it a very sad and strange dispensation of Providence. But we, who know what lay hidden in the coming years, can see that God’s time for her to die was the best and kindest time. And indications are not quite wanting, slight though they may be, that Richard of Conisborough was not a political, but a religious Lollard, and that this autumn journey of Anne Mortimer to the unknown land may have been a triumphal entry into the City of God.The news that Constance had of set purpose cast in her lot with the Lollards was not long in travelling to Westminster. And she soon found that the lot of a Lollard was no bed of roses. In his anger, Henry of Bolingbroke departed from his usual rule of rigid justice, and revoked the grant which Constance may be said to have purchased with her heart’s blood. Her favourite Richard, now a fine youth of sixteen, was taken from her, and his custody, possessions, and marriage were granted to trustees, of whom the chief persons were Archbishop Arundel and Edward Duke of York. This meant that the trustees were to sell his hand to the father of some eligible damsel, and pocket the proceeds; and also to convert to their own use the rents of young Richard’s estates until he was of age. The Duke of York was just now a most devout and orthodox person. It was time, for any one who cared to save his life, as Edward did; for a solemn decree against Wycliffe’s writings had just been fulminated at Rome; and while Henry of Bolingbroke sat on the throne, England lay at the feet of the Pope. The trustees took advantage at once of the favour done them, and sold young Richard (without consulting Constance) to the Earl of Westmoreland, for the benefit of one of his numerous daughters, the Lady Alianora Neville. She was a little girl of about ten years old, and remained in the charge of her mother, the King’s sister. In the April following it pleased the Duke of York to pay a visit to his sister, and to bring her son in his train. Edward was particularly silent at first. He appeared to have heard no news, to be actuated by no motive in coming, and generally to have nothing to say. Richard, on the contrary, was evidently labouring under suppressed excitement of some kind. But when they sat down to supper, York called for Malvoisie, and threw a bomb into the midst of the company by the wish which he uttered as he carried the goblet to his lips.“God pardon King Henry’s soul!”He was answered by varying exclamations in different tones.“Ay, Madam, ’tis too true!” broke forth young Richard, addressing his mother; “but mine uncle’s Grace willed me not to speak thereof until he so should.”“Harry of Bolingbroke is dead?—Surely no!”“Dead as a door-nail,” said York unfeelingly.“Was he sick of long-time?”“Long enough!” responded York in the same manner. “Long enough to weary every soul that ministered to his fantasies, and to cause them ring the church bells for joy that their toil was over. Leprosy, by my troth!—a sweet disorder to die withal!”“Ned, I pray thee keep some measure in speech.”“By the Holy Coat of Treves! but if thou wouldst love to deal withal, Custance, thy tarrying at Kenilworth hath wrought mighty change in thee. Marry, it pleased the Lady Queen to proffer unto me an even’s watch in the chamber. ‘Good lack! I thank your Grace,’ quoth I, ‘but ’tis mine uttermost sorrow that I should covenant with one at Hackney to meet with me this even, and I must right woefully deny me the ease that it should do me to abide with his Highness.’ An honest preferment, to be his sick nurse, by Saint Lawrence his gridiron! Nay, by Saint Zachary his shoe-strings, but there were two words to that bargain!”“Then what did your Grace, Uncle?” said Isabel in her cool, grown-up style.“Did? Marry, little cousin, I rade down to Norwich House, and played a good hour at the cards with my Lord’s Grace of Norwich; and then I lay me down on the settle and gat me a nap; and after spices served, I turned back to Westminster, and did her Grace to wit that it were rare cold riding from Hackney.”“Is your Grace yet shriven sithence, Uncle?” inquired young Richard rather comically.“The very next morrow, lad, my said Lord of Norwich the confessor. I bare it but a night, nor it did me not no disease in sleeping.”“Maybe it should take a heavy sin to do that, fair Uncle,” said Isabel with a sneer.“What wist, such a chick as thou?” returned York, holding out his goblet to the dispenser of Malvoisie.A little lower down the table, Sir Bertram Lyngern and Master Hugh Calverley were discussing less serious subjects in a more sober and becoming manner.“Truly, our new King hath well begun,” said Hugh. “My Lord of March is released of his prison, and shall be wed this next summer to the Lady Anne of Stafford, and his sister the Lady Alianora unto my Lord of Devon his son; and all faithful friends and servants of King Richard be set in favour; and ’tis rumoured about the Court that your Lady shall receive confirmation of every of his father’s grants made unto her.”“I trust it shall so be verily,” said Bertram.“And further yet,” pursued Hugh, slightly dropping his voice, “’tis said that the King considereth to take unto the Crown great part of the moneys and lands of the Church.”“Surely no!”“Ay, so far as my judgment serveth, ’tis so soothly.”“But that were sacrilege!”“Were it?” asked Hugh coolly.For the extreme Lollards, of whom he was one, looked upon the two political acts which we have learned to call disestablishment and disendowment, as not only permissible, but desirable. In so saying, I speak of the political Lollards. All political Lollards, however, were not religious ones, nor were all religious Lollards sharers in these political views. John of Gaunt, a strong political Lollard, was never a religious one in his life; while King Richard, who decidedly leaned to them in religion, disliked their politics exceedingly. In fact, it was rather the fervent, energetic, practical reformers who took up with such aims; while those among them who walked quietly with God let the matter alone. Hugh Calverley had been drawn into these questions rather by circumstances than choice. While he was emphatically one that “sighed and that cried for all the abominations that were done in the midst of” his Israel, he was sagacious enough to know that even from his own point of view, the abolition of the hierarchy, or the suppression of the monastic orders, were no more than lopping off branches, while the root remained.It was perfectly true that Henry the Fifth seriously contemplated the policy of disendowment, which Parliament had in vain suggested to his father. And it continued to be true for some six months longer. The clue has not yet been discovered to the mysterious and sudden change which at that date came over, not only the policy, but the whole character of Henry of Monmouth. Up to that date he had himself been something very like a political Lollard; ever after it he was fervently orthodox. The suddenness of the change was not less remarkable than its completeness. It took place about the first of October, 1413; and it exactly coincides in date with a visit from Archbishop Arundel, to urge upon the reluctant King the apprehension of his friend Lord Cobham. Whatever may have been the means of the alteration, there can be but little question as to who was the agent.The King’s confirmation of grants to his cousin Constance occurred before this ominous date; and, revoking the last penalty inflicted, it restored her son to her custody. Richard therefore came home in July, where he remained until September. His attendance was then commanded at Court, and he left Cardiff accordingly.“Farewell, Madam!” he said brightly, as his mother gave him her farewell kiss and blessing. “God allowing, I trust to be at home again ere Christmas; and from London I will seek to bring your Grace and my sisters some gear of pleasance.”“Farewell, my Dickon!” said Constance, lovingly. “Have a care of thyself, fair son. Remember, thou art now my dearest treasure.”“No fear, sweet Lady!”So he sailed off, waving his hand or his cap from the boat, so long as he could be seen.A letter came from him three weeks later—a doubtful, uneasy letter, showing that the mind of the writer was by no means at rest concerning the future. The King had received him most graciously, and every one at Court was kind to him; but the sky was lowering ominously over the struggling Church of God—that little section of the Holy Catholic Church, on which the “mother and mistress of all churches” looked down with such supreme contempt. The waves of persecution were rising higher now than to the level of poor tailors like John Badby, or even of priestly graduates like William Sautre.“Lady, I do you to wit,” wrote young Richard, “that as this day, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was put to his trial, and being convinced (convicted), was cast (sentenced); the beginning and end of whose offence is that he is a Lollard confessed, and hath harboured other men of the like opinions. And the said Lord is now close prisoner in the Tower of London, nor any of his kin ne lovers (friends) suffered to come anigh him. And at the Court it is rumoured that Sir William Hankeford (whom your Ladyship shall well remember) should be sent into our parts of South Wales, there to put down both heresy and sedition: which sedition, methinks, your Ladyship’s favour allowing, shall point at Sir Owain Glendordy (the name is usually spelt thus in contemporary records); and the heresy so called, both your Ladyship and I, your humble son and servant, do well know what it doth signify. So no more at this present writing; but praying our Lord that He would have your Ladyship in His good keeping, and that all we may do His good pleasure, I rest.”Twelve days later came another letter, written in a strange hand. It was dated from Merton Abbey, in Surrey, was attested by the Abbot’s official cross and seal, and contained only a few lines. But never throughout her troubled life had any letter so wrung the heart of Constance Le Despenser. For those few formal lines brought the news that never again would her eyes be gladdened by her heart’s dearest treasure—that the Angel of Death had claimed for his own her bright, loving, fair-haired Richard.No details have been handed down concerning that early and lamented death of the last Lord Le Despenser. We do not even know how the boy died—whether by the visitation of God in sudden illness, or by the fiat of Thomas de Arundel, making the twelfth murder which lay upon that black, seared soul. He was buried where he died, in the Abbey of Merton—far from his home, far from his mother’s tears and his father’s grave. It was always the lot of the hapless buds of the White Rose to be scattered in death.There was only one person at Cardiff who did not mourn bitterly for its young Lord. To his sister Isabel, the inheritance to which she now became sole heiress—the change of her title from “Lady Isabel de Beauchamp” to “The Lady Le Despenser”—were amply sufficient compensation to outweigh the loss of a brother. But little Alianora wept bitterly.“Ay me! what a break is this in our Lady’s line!” lamented Maude to Bertram. “God grant it the last,ifHis will is!”It was only one funeral of a long procession.The Issue Roll for Michaelmas, 1413 to 1414, bears two terribly significant entries—the expenses for the custody of Katherine Mortimer and her daughters, who were “in the King’s keeping”—and the costs of the funerals of the same persons, buried in Saint Swithin’s Church, London. This was the hapless daughter of Owain Glyndwr, the wife of Edmund Mortimer, uncle of the Earl of March. A mother and two or more daughters do not usually require burial together, unless they die of contagious disease. Of course that may have been the case; but the entry looks miserably like a judicial murder.Stirring events followed in rapid succession. Lord Cobham escaped mysteriously from the Tower, and as mysteriously from an armed band sent to apprehend him by Abbot Heyworth of Saint Albans. Old Judge Hankeford made his anticipated visit to South Wales, and ceremoniously paid his respects to the Lady of Cardiff, whose associations with his name were not of the most agreeable order. With the new year came the unfortunate insurrection of the political Lollards, goaded to revolt partly by the fierce persecution, partly by a chivalrous desire to restore the beloved King Richard, whom many of them believed to be still living in Scotland. Wales and its Marches were their head-quarters. Thomas Earl of Arundel—son of a persecutor—was sent to the Principality at the head of an army, to “subdue the rebels;” Sir Roger Acton and Sir John Beverley, two of the foremost Lollards of the new generation, were put to death; and strict watch was set in every quarter for Lord Cobham, once more escaped as if by miracle.And then suddenly came another death—this time by the distinct and awful sentence of God Almighty. He stooped to disconcert for a moment the puny plans of men who had set themselves in array against the Lord and His Christ. On the chief of all the persecutors, Sir Thomas de Arundel himself, the angel of God’s vengeance laid his irresistible hand. Cut off in the blossom of his sin—struck down in a moment by paralysis of the throat, which deprived him of all power of speech or swallowing—the dreaded Archbishop passed to that awful tribunal where his earthly eloquence was changed to silence and shame. He died, probably, not unabsolved; they could still lay the consecrated wafer upon the silent tongue, and touch with the chrism the furrowed brow and brilliant eyes: but he must have died unconfessed—a terrible thing to him, if he really believed himself the doctrines which he spent his life in forcing upon others.Arundel was dead; but the infernal generalissimo of the persecutors, who could not die, was ready with a worthy successor. Henry Chichele stepped into the vacant seat, and the fierce battle against the saints went on.The nephew of the deceased Archbishop, Thomas Earl of Arundel, presented himself at Cardiff early in the year. He lost no time in delicate insinuations, but came at once to his point. Was the Lady of Cardiff ready to give all possible aid to himself and his troops, against those traitors and heretics called Lollards? The answer was equally distinct. With some semblance of the old fire flashing in her eyes, the Lady of Cardiff refused to give him any aid whatever.The Earl hinted in answer, with a sarcastic smile, that judging by the rumours which had reached the Court, he had scarcely expected any other conduct from her.“Look ye for what ye will,” returned the dauntless Princess. “Never yet furled I my colours in peace; and I were double craven if I should do it in war!”Her words were reported to the relentless hearts at Westminster. The result was an order to seize all the manors of the Despenser heritage, and to deliver them to Edward Duke of York, the King’s dearly beloved cousin, by way of compensation (said the grant) for the loss which he had sustained by the death of Richard Le Despenser. But the compensation was estimated at a high figure.There were some curious contradictory statutes passed this year. A hundred and ten monasteries were suppressed by order of Council, and at the same time another order was issued for the extirpation of heresy. But, as usual, “the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church.” Wycliffism increased rapidly among the common people. Meanwhile Henry was preparing for his French campaign; and at Constance the seventeenth General Council of Christendom was just gathering, and John Huss, with the Emperor’s worthless safe-conduct in his pocket, was hastening towards his prison—not much larger than a coffin—in the Monastery of Saint Maurice. The Council ended their labours by burning Huss. They would have liked to burn Wycliffe; but as he had been at rest with God for over thirty years, they took refuge in the childish revenge of disinterring and burning his senseless bones. And “after that, they had no more that they could do.”The day that heard Huss’s sentence pronounced in the white-walled Cathedral of Constance, Edward Duke of York—accompanied by a little group of knights and squires, one of whom was Hugh Calverley—walked his oppressed horse across the draw-bridge at Cardiff. Life had agreed so well with York that he had become very fat upon it. He had no children, his wife never contradicted him, and he did not keep that troublesome article called a conscience; so his sorrows and perplexities were few. On the whole, he had found treachery an excellent investment—for one life; and York left the consideration of the other to his death-bed. It may be that at times, even to this Dives, the voice from Heaven mercifully whispered, “Thou fool!” But he never stayed his chariot-wheels to listen—until one autumn evening, by Southampton Water, when the end loomed full in view, the Angel of Death came very near, and there rose before him, suddenly and awfully, the dread possibility of a life which might not close with a death-bed. But it was yet bright summer when he reached Cardiff; and not yet had come that dark, solemn August hour, when Edward Duke of York should dictate his true character as “of all sinners the most wicked.”On this particular summer day at Cardiff, York was, for him, especially gay and bright. Yet that night in the Cathedral of Constance stood John Huss before his judges; and in the Convent of Coimbra an English Princess (Philippa Queen of Portugal, eldest daughter of John of Gaunt), long ago forgotten in England, yet gentlest and best daughters of Lancaster, lay waiting for death. Somewhere in this troublesome world the bridal is always matched by the burial, the festal song by the funeral dirge. Men and women are always mourning, somewhere.York’s mind was full of one subject, the forthcoming campaign in France. He was to sail from Southampton with his royal master in August. Bedford was to be left Regent, the King’s brother—Bedford, who, whatever else he were, was no Lollard, and was not likely to let a Lollard escape his fangs. And on this interesting topic York’s tongue ran on glibly—how King Henry meant to march at once upon Paris, proclaim himself King of France, be crowned at Saint Denis, marry one of the French Princesses—which, it did not much signify—and return home a conquering hero, mighty enough to brave even the Emperor himself on any European battle-plain.A little lower down the table, Hugh Calverley’s mind was also full of one subject.“Nay,” he whispered earnestly to Bertram: “he is yet hid some whither,—here, in Wales. Men wit not where; and God forbid too many should!”“Then men be yet a-searching for him?”“High and low, leaving no stone unturned. God keep His true servant safe, unto His honour!”It needs no far-fetched conjecture to divine that they were speaking of Lord Cobham.“And goest unto these French wars, sweet Hugh?”“Needs must; my Lord’s Grace hath so bidden me.”“But thou wert wont to hold that no Christian man should of right bear arms, neither fight.”“Truth; and yet do,” said Hugh quietly. This was the view of the extreme Lollards.“Then how shall thine opinion serve in the thick of fight?”“As it hath aforetime. I cannot fight.”“But how then?” asked Bertram, opening his eyes.“I can die, Bertram Lyngern,” answered the calm, resolute voice. “And it may be that I should die as truly for my Master Christ there, as at the martyr’s stake. For sith God’s will hath made yonder noble Lord my master, and hath set me under him to do his bidding, in all matters not sinful, his will is God’s will for me; and I can follow him to yonder battle-plain with as easy an heart and light as though I went to lie down on my bed to sleep. Not to fight, good friend; not to resist nor contend with any man; only to do God’s will. And is that not worth dying for?”Bertram made no reply. But his memory ran far back to the olden days at Langley—to a scriptorius who had laid down his pen to speak of two lads, both of whom he looked to see great men, but he deemed him the greater who was not ashamed of his deed. And Bertram’s heart whispered to him that, knight as he was, while Hugh remained only a simple squire, yet now as ever, Hugh was the greater hero. For he knew that it would have cost him a very bitter struggle to accept an unhonoured grave such as Hugh anticipated, only because he thought it was God’s will.They parted the next morning. Edward’s last words to his sister were “Adieu, Custance, I will send thee a fleur-de-lis banner as trophy from the fight. The oriflamme (Note 1), if the saints will have it so!”But Hugh’s were—“Farewell, dear friend Bertram. Remember, both thou and I may do God’s will!”Note 1. The oriflamme wasthebanner of France, kept in the Cathedral of Saint Denis, and held almost sacred.
“Whan bells were rung, and mass was sung,And every lady went hame,Than ilka lady had her yong sonne,But Lady Helen had nane.”Old Ballad.
“Whan bells were rung, and mass was sung,And every lady went hame,Than ilka lady had her yong sonne,But Lady Helen had nane.”Old Ballad.
“I have come home, Mother!”
It was Constance who spoke, standing in the hall at Cardiff, wrapped in the arms of the Dowager Lady Le Despenser. And in every sense, from the lightest to the deepest, the words were true. The wanderer had come home. Home to the Castle of Cardiff, which she was never to leave any more; home to the warm motherly arms of Elizabeth Le Despenser, who cast all her worn-out theories to the winds, and took her dead son’s hapless darling to her heart of hearts; home to the great heart of God. And the ear of the elder woman was open to a sound unheard by the younger. The voice of that dead son echoed in her heart, repeating his dying charge to her—“Have a care of my Lady!”
“My poor stricken dove!” sobbed the Lady Elizabeth. “Child, men’s cruel handling hath robbed thee of much, yet it hath left thee God and thy mother!”
Constance looked up, with tears gleaming in her sapphire eyes, now so much calmer and sadder than of old.
“Ay,” she said, the remembrance thrilling through her of the heavy price at which she had bought back her children; “and I have paid nought for God and thee.”
“Nay, daughter dear, Christ paid that wyte (forfeit) for thee. We may trust Him to have a care of the quittance,” (receipt).
The children now claimed their share of notice. Richard kissed the old lady in an energetic devouring style, and proclaimed himself “so glad, Grammer, so glad!” Isabel offered her cheek in her cold unchildlike way. The baby Alianora at once accepted the new element as a perfectly satisfactory grandmamma, and submitted to be dandled and talked nonsense to with pleased equanimity.
“O Bertram!” said Maude that night, “surely our Lady’s troubles and travails be now over!”
“It is well, wife, that God loveth her better than thou,” was the answer. “He will not leave his jewel but half polished, because the sound of the cutting grieveth thine ears.”
“But how could she bear aught more?”
“Dear heart! how know we what any man can bear—aye, even our own selves? Only God knoweth; and we trust Him. The heavenly Goldsmith breaketh none of His gems in the cutting.”
The doors of the prison in Windsor Castle were opened that spring to release two of the state prisoners. The dangerous prisoner, Edmund Earl of March, remained in durance; and his bright little brother Roger had been set free already, by a higher decree than any of Henry of Bolingbroke. The child died in his dungeon, aged probably about ten years. Now Anne and Alianora were summoned to Court, and placed under the care of the Queen. They were described by the King as “deprived of all their relatives and friends.” They were not quite that; but in so far as they were, he was mainly responsible for having made them so.
The manner in which King Henry provided the purchase-money required by the Duke of Milan for Lucia is amusing for its ingenuity. The sum agreed upon was seventy thousand florins; and the King paid it out of the pockets of five of his nobles. One was his own son, Thomas Duke of Clarence; the second and third were husbands of two of Kent’s sisters—Sir John Neville and Thomas Earl of Salisbury—the latter being the son of the murdered Lollard; the fourth was Lord Scrope, whose character appears to have been simple to an extreme; and the last was assuredly never asked to consent to the exaction, for he was the hapless March, still close prisoner in Windsor Castle.
In the summer, Constance received a grant of all her late husband’s lands. The Court was very gay that summer with royal weddings. The first bride was Constance’s young stepmother, the Duchess Joan of York, who bestowed her hand on Lord Willoughby de Eresby: the second was the King’s younger daughter, the Princess Philippa, who was consigned to the ungentle keeping of the far-off King of Denmark. Richard of Conisborough was selected to attend the Princess to Elsinore; but he was so poor that the King was obliged to make all the provision he required for the journey. It was not his own fault that his purse was light: his godfather, King Richard, had left him a sufficient competence; but the grants of Richard of Bordeaux were not held always to bind Henry of Bolingbroke. But when the Earl of Cambridge returned to Elsinore, he was rewarded for his labours, not with money nor lands, but by a grant of the only thing for which he cared—the gift of Anne Mortimer. He was penniless, and so was she. But though poverty was an habitual resident within the doors, love did not fly out at the window.
The year 1408 brought another sanguinary struggle in favour of March’s title, headed by the old white-haired sinner Northumberland, who fell in his attempt, at the battle of Bramham Moor, on the 29th of February. He had armed in the cause of Rome, which he hoped to induce March to espouse yet more warmly than Henry the Fourth. He probably did not know the boy personally, and imagined him the counterpart of his gallant, fervent father. He was as far from it as possible. Nothing on earth would have induced March to espouse any cause warmly. He valued far too highly his own dearly beloved ease.
Matters dragged themselves along that autumn as lazily as even March could have wished. All over England the rain came down, sometimes in a dashing shower, but generally in an idle dreary dripping from eaves and ramparts. Nothing particular was happening to any body. At Cardiff all was extremely quiet. Constance had recovered as much brightness as she would ever recover, but never any more would she be the Constance of old time.
“Surely our Lady’s troubles be over now!” said Maude sanguinely.
On the evening on which that remark was made,—the fifteenth of September—two sisters of Saint Clare sat watching, in a small French convent, by the dying bed of a knight. At the siege of Briac Castle, five days earlier, he had been mortally wounded in the head by a bolt from a crossbow; and his squires bore him into the little convent to die in peace. The sufferer had never fully recovered his consciousness. He seemed but dimly aware of any thing—not fully sensible even to pain. His words were few, incoherent, scarcely intelligible. What the nuns could occasionally disentangle from his low mutterings was something about “blue eyes,” and “watching from the lattice.” The last rites of the Church were administered, but there could be no confession; a crucifix was held before his eyes, but they doubted if he recognised what it was. And about sunset of that autumn evening he died.
So closed the few and evil days of the vain, weak, self-loving Kent. His age was only twenty-six; he left no child but the disinherited Alianora, and his sisters took good care that she should remain disinherited. They pounced upon the lands of the dead brother with an eagerness which would have been rather more decent had it been a little less apparent; and to the widowed Lucia, who was the least guilty party to the conspiracy for which she had been made the decoy, they left little beyond her wardrobe. She was actually reduced to appeal to the King’s mercy for means to live. Henry responded to her piteous petition by the offer of his brother of Dorset as a second husband. Lucia was one of those women who are born actresses, and whose nature it is to do things which seem forced and unnatural to others. She flattered the King with anticipations that she was on the point of complying with his wishes, till the last moment; and then she eloped with Sir Henry de Mortimer, possibly a distant connection of the Earl of March. It may be added, since Lucia now disappears from the story, that she survived her second marriage for fourteen years, and showed herself at her death a most devout member of the orthodox Church, by a will which was from beginning to end a string of bequests for masses, to be sung for the repose of her soul, and of the soul of Kent.
Bertram and Maude, to whom the news came first, scarcely knew how to tell Constance of Kent’s death. At last Maude thought of dressing the little Alianora in daughter’s mourning, and sending her into her mother’s room alone. The gradations of mourning were at that time so distinct and minute that Constance’s practised eye would read the parable in an instant. So they broke in that manner the news they dared not tell her.
For the whole day there was no sign from Constance that she had even noticed the hint. Her voice and manner showed no change. But at night, when the little child of three years old knelt at her mother’s knee for her evening prayer, said Lollard-wise in simple English, they found it had not escaped her. As the child came to the usual “God bless my father and mother,”—which, fatherless as she had always been, she had been taught to say,—Constance quietly checked her, and made her say, “God bless my mother” only. And at the close, little Alianora was instructed to add,—“God pardon my father’s soul.”
Knowing how passionately Constance had once loved Kent, this calm show of indifference puzzled Maude Lyngern sorely. But to the Dowager Lady it was no such riddle.
“Her love is dead, child,” she said, when Maude timidly expressed her surprise. “And when that is verily thus, it were lighter to bid a dead corpse live than a dead love.”
All this time the Lollard persecution slowly waxed hotter and hotter. Men began to thank God when any “heretics” among their friends were permitted to die in their beds, and to whisper in hushed accents that when the Prince of Wales should be King, whose nature was more merciful than his father’s, matters might perchance mend. They little knew what the future was to bring. The worst was not yet over,—was not even to come during the reign of Henry of Bolingbroke.
Seeing that Constance was now restored to her lands, and basking in the sunshine of Court favour, it struck Lady Abergavenny, a niece of Archbishop Arundel, who was a politic woman—as most of his nieces were—that an alliance between her son and Isabel Le Despenser would be a good speculation. And her Ladyship, being moreover a strong-minded woman, whose husband was of very little public and less private consequence, carried her point, and the marriage of Isabel with young Richard Beauchamp took place at Cardiff on the eleventh birthday of the bride.
The ceremony was slightly hastened at the wish of the Dowager Lady Le Despenser. She was anxious not to distress Constance by breaking the news too suddenly to her, but she felt within herself that the golden bowl was nearing its breaking at the fountain, and that the silver cords of her earthly house of this tabernacle were not far from being taken down. She was an old woman,—very old, for a period wherein few lived to old age; she had long outlived her husband, and had seen the funerals of nearly all her children. The greater part even of her earthly treasures were already safe where moth and rust corrupt not, and her own feeling of earnest longing to rejoin them grew daily stronger. It was for the daughter’s sake alone that she cared to live now; the daughter to whom men had left only God and that mother. A new lesson was now to be taught to Constance—to rest wholly upon God.
It was very tranquilly at last that Elizabeth Le Despenser passed away from earth. She took most loving leave of Constance, blessed and said farewell to all her children, and charged Bertram and Maude to remain with her and be faithful to her.
Twenty years’ companionship, fellowship in sorrow, and fellowship in faith, had effected a complete revolution in the feelings of Constance towards her mother-in-law.
“O Mother, Mother!” she sobbed; “what shall I do without you!”
“My child,” answered Elizabeth, “had the heavenly Master not seen that thou shouldst well do without me, He had left me yet here.”
“You yourself said, Mother, that He had left me but Him and you!”
“Ay, dear daughter; and yet He hath left thee Himself. Every hour He shall be with thee; and every hour of thy life moreover shall be an hour the less betwixt thee and me.”
The last thing that they heard her murmur, which had reference to that land whither she was going, was—“Neither schulen they die more.”
They laid her in the family vault at Tewkesbury Abbey; and once more there was mourning at Cardiff.
It was only just begun when news came of another death, far more unexpected than hers. Richard of Conisborough and Anne Mortimer were already the parents of a daughter; and two months after the death of the Lady Le Despenser a son was born, who was hereafter to become the father of all the future kings of England. And while the young mother lay wrapped in her first tender gladness over her new treasure, God called her to come away to Him. So she left the little children who would never call her “mother,” left the husband who was all the world to her; and—fragile White Rose as she was—Anne Mortimer “perished with the flowers.” She died “with all the sunshine on her,” aged only twenty-one years. Perhaps those who stood round her coffin thought it a very sad and strange dispensation of Providence. But we, who know what lay hidden in the coming years, can see that God’s time for her to die was the best and kindest time. And indications are not quite wanting, slight though they may be, that Richard of Conisborough was not a political, but a religious Lollard, and that this autumn journey of Anne Mortimer to the unknown land may have been a triumphal entry into the City of God.
The news that Constance had of set purpose cast in her lot with the Lollards was not long in travelling to Westminster. And she soon found that the lot of a Lollard was no bed of roses. In his anger, Henry of Bolingbroke departed from his usual rule of rigid justice, and revoked the grant which Constance may be said to have purchased with her heart’s blood. Her favourite Richard, now a fine youth of sixteen, was taken from her, and his custody, possessions, and marriage were granted to trustees, of whom the chief persons were Archbishop Arundel and Edward Duke of York. This meant that the trustees were to sell his hand to the father of some eligible damsel, and pocket the proceeds; and also to convert to their own use the rents of young Richard’s estates until he was of age. The Duke of York was just now a most devout and orthodox person. It was time, for any one who cared to save his life, as Edward did; for a solemn decree against Wycliffe’s writings had just been fulminated at Rome; and while Henry of Bolingbroke sat on the throne, England lay at the feet of the Pope. The trustees took advantage at once of the favour done them, and sold young Richard (without consulting Constance) to the Earl of Westmoreland, for the benefit of one of his numerous daughters, the Lady Alianora Neville. She was a little girl of about ten years old, and remained in the charge of her mother, the King’s sister. In the April following it pleased the Duke of York to pay a visit to his sister, and to bring her son in his train. Edward was particularly silent at first. He appeared to have heard no news, to be actuated by no motive in coming, and generally to have nothing to say. Richard, on the contrary, was evidently labouring under suppressed excitement of some kind. But when they sat down to supper, York called for Malvoisie, and threw a bomb into the midst of the company by the wish which he uttered as he carried the goblet to his lips.
“God pardon King Henry’s soul!”
He was answered by varying exclamations in different tones.
“Ay, Madam, ’tis too true!” broke forth young Richard, addressing his mother; “but mine uncle’s Grace willed me not to speak thereof until he so should.”
“Harry of Bolingbroke is dead?—Surely no!”
“Dead as a door-nail,” said York unfeelingly.
“Was he sick of long-time?”
“Long enough!” responded York in the same manner. “Long enough to weary every soul that ministered to his fantasies, and to cause them ring the church bells for joy that their toil was over. Leprosy, by my troth!—a sweet disorder to die withal!”
“Ned, I pray thee keep some measure in speech.”
“By the Holy Coat of Treves! but if thou wouldst love to deal withal, Custance, thy tarrying at Kenilworth hath wrought mighty change in thee. Marry, it pleased the Lady Queen to proffer unto me an even’s watch in the chamber. ‘Good lack! I thank your Grace,’ quoth I, ‘but ’tis mine uttermost sorrow that I should covenant with one at Hackney to meet with me this even, and I must right woefully deny me the ease that it should do me to abide with his Highness.’ An honest preferment, to be his sick nurse, by Saint Lawrence his gridiron! Nay, by Saint Zachary his shoe-strings, but there were two words to that bargain!”
“Then what did your Grace, Uncle?” said Isabel in her cool, grown-up style.
“Did? Marry, little cousin, I rade down to Norwich House, and played a good hour at the cards with my Lord’s Grace of Norwich; and then I lay me down on the settle and gat me a nap; and after spices served, I turned back to Westminster, and did her Grace to wit that it were rare cold riding from Hackney.”
“Is your Grace yet shriven sithence, Uncle?” inquired young Richard rather comically.
“The very next morrow, lad, my said Lord of Norwich the confessor. I bare it but a night, nor it did me not no disease in sleeping.”
“Maybe it should take a heavy sin to do that, fair Uncle,” said Isabel with a sneer.
“What wist, such a chick as thou?” returned York, holding out his goblet to the dispenser of Malvoisie.
A little lower down the table, Sir Bertram Lyngern and Master Hugh Calverley were discussing less serious subjects in a more sober and becoming manner.
“Truly, our new King hath well begun,” said Hugh. “My Lord of March is released of his prison, and shall be wed this next summer to the Lady Anne of Stafford, and his sister the Lady Alianora unto my Lord of Devon his son; and all faithful friends and servants of King Richard be set in favour; and ’tis rumoured about the Court that your Lady shall receive confirmation of every of his father’s grants made unto her.”
“I trust it shall so be verily,” said Bertram.
“And further yet,” pursued Hugh, slightly dropping his voice, “’tis said that the King considereth to take unto the Crown great part of the moneys and lands of the Church.”
“Surely no!”
“Ay, so far as my judgment serveth, ’tis so soothly.”
“But that were sacrilege!”
“Were it?” asked Hugh coolly.
For the extreme Lollards, of whom he was one, looked upon the two political acts which we have learned to call disestablishment and disendowment, as not only permissible, but desirable. In so saying, I speak of the political Lollards. All political Lollards, however, were not religious ones, nor were all religious Lollards sharers in these political views. John of Gaunt, a strong political Lollard, was never a religious one in his life; while King Richard, who decidedly leaned to them in religion, disliked their politics exceedingly. In fact, it was rather the fervent, energetic, practical reformers who took up with such aims; while those among them who walked quietly with God let the matter alone. Hugh Calverley had been drawn into these questions rather by circumstances than choice. While he was emphatically one that “sighed and that cried for all the abominations that were done in the midst of” his Israel, he was sagacious enough to know that even from his own point of view, the abolition of the hierarchy, or the suppression of the monastic orders, were no more than lopping off branches, while the root remained.
It was perfectly true that Henry the Fifth seriously contemplated the policy of disendowment, which Parliament had in vain suggested to his father. And it continued to be true for some six months longer. The clue has not yet been discovered to the mysterious and sudden change which at that date came over, not only the policy, but the whole character of Henry of Monmouth. Up to that date he had himself been something very like a political Lollard; ever after it he was fervently orthodox. The suddenness of the change was not less remarkable than its completeness. It took place about the first of October, 1413; and it exactly coincides in date with a visit from Archbishop Arundel, to urge upon the reluctant King the apprehension of his friend Lord Cobham. Whatever may have been the means of the alteration, there can be but little question as to who was the agent.
The King’s confirmation of grants to his cousin Constance occurred before this ominous date; and, revoking the last penalty inflicted, it restored her son to her custody. Richard therefore came home in July, where he remained until September. His attendance was then commanded at Court, and he left Cardiff accordingly.
“Farewell, Madam!” he said brightly, as his mother gave him her farewell kiss and blessing. “God allowing, I trust to be at home again ere Christmas; and from London I will seek to bring your Grace and my sisters some gear of pleasance.”
“Farewell, my Dickon!” said Constance, lovingly. “Have a care of thyself, fair son. Remember, thou art now my dearest treasure.”
“No fear, sweet Lady!”
So he sailed off, waving his hand or his cap from the boat, so long as he could be seen.
A letter came from him three weeks later—a doubtful, uneasy letter, showing that the mind of the writer was by no means at rest concerning the future. The King had received him most graciously, and every one at Court was kind to him; but the sky was lowering ominously over the struggling Church of God—that little section of the Holy Catholic Church, on which the “mother and mistress of all churches” looked down with such supreme contempt. The waves of persecution were rising higher now than to the level of poor tailors like John Badby, or even of priestly graduates like William Sautre.
“Lady, I do you to wit,” wrote young Richard, “that as this day, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was put to his trial, and being convinced (convicted), was cast (sentenced); the beginning and end of whose offence is that he is a Lollard confessed, and hath harboured other men of the like opinions. And the said Lord is now close prisoner in the Tower of London, nor any of his kin ne lovers (friends) suffered to come anigh him. And at the Court it is rumoured that Sir William Hankeford (whom your Ladyship shall well remember) should be sent into our parts of South Wales, there to put down both heresy and sedition: which sedition, methinks, your Ladyship’s favour allowing, shall point at Sir Owain Glendordy (the name is usually spelt thus in contemporary records); and the heresy so called, both your Ladyship and I, your humble son and servant, do well know what it doth signify. So no more at this present writing; but praying our Lord that He would have your Ladyship in His good keeping, and that all we may do His good pleasure, I rest.”
Twelve days later came another letter, written in a strange hand. It was dated from Merton Abbey, in Surrey, was attested by the Abbot’s official cross and seal, and contained only a few lines. But never throughout her troubled life had any letter so wrung the heart of Constance Le Despenser. For those few formal lines brought the news that never again would her eyes be gladdened by her heart’s dearest treasure—that the Angel of Death had claimed for his own her bright, loving, fair-haired Richard.
No details have been handed down concerning that early and lamented death of the last Lord Le Despenser. We do not even know how the boy died—whether by the visitation of God in sudden illness, or by the fiat of Thomas de Arundel, making the twelfth murder which lay upon that black, seared soul. He was buried where he died, in the Abbey of Merton—far from his home, far from his mother’s tears and his father’s grave. It was always the lot of the hapless buds of the White Rose to be scattered in death.
There was only one person at Cardiff who did not mourn bitterly for its young Lord. To his sister Isabel, the inheritance to which she now became sole heiress—the change of her title from “Lady Isabel de Beauchamp” to “The Lady Le Despenser”—were amply sufficient compensation to outweigh the loss of a brother. But little Alianora wept bitterly.
“Ay me! what a break is this in our Lady’s line!” lamented Maude to Bertram. “God grant it the last,ifHis will is!”
It was only one funeral of a long procession.
The Issue Roll for Michaelmas, 1413 to 1414, bears two terribly significant entries—the expenses for the custody of Katherine Mortimer and her daughters, who were “in the King’s keeping”—and the costs of the funerals of the same persons, buried in Saint Swithin’s Church, London. This was the hapless daughter of Owain Glyndwr, the wife of Edmund Mortimer, uncle of the Earl of March. A mother and two or more daughters do not usually require burial together, unless they die of contagious disease. Of course that may have been the case; but the entry looks miserably like a judicial murder.
Stirring events followed in rapid succession. Lord Cobham escaped mysteriously from the Tower, and as mysteriously from an armed band sent to apprehend him by Abbot Heyworth of Saint Albans. Old Judge Hankeford made his anticipated visit to South Wales, and ceremoniously paid his respects to the Lady of Cardiff, whose associations with his name were not of the most agreeable order. With the new year came the unfortunate insurrection of the political Lollards, goaded to revolt partly by the fierce persecution, partly by a chivalrous desire to restore the beloved King Richard, whom many of them believed to be still living in Scotland. Wales and its Marches were their head-quarters. Thomas Earl of Arundel—son of a persecutor—was sent to the Principality at the head of an army, to “subdue the rebels;” Sir Roger Acton and Sir John Beverley, two of the foremost Lollards of the new generation, were put to death; and strict watch was set in every quarter for Lord Cobham, once more escaped as if by miracle.
And then suddenly came another death—this time by the distinct and awful sentence of God Almighty. He stooped to disconcert for a moment the puny plans of men who had set themselves in array against the Lord and His Christ. On the chief of all the persecutors, Sir Thomas de Arundel himself, the angel of God’s vengeance laid his irresistible hand. Cut off in the blossom of his sin—struck down in a moment by paralysis of the throat, which deprived him of all power of speech or swallowing—the dreaded Archbishop passed to that awful tribunal where his earthly eloquence was changed to silence and shame. He died, probably, not unabsolved; they could still lay the consecrated wafer upon the silent tongue, and touch with the chrism the furrowed brow and brilliant eyes: but he must have died unconfessed—a terrible thing to him, if he really believed himself the doctrines which he spent his life in forcing upon others.
Arundel was dead; but the infernal generalissimo of the persecutors, who could not die, was ready with a worthy successor. Henry Chichele stepped into the vacant seat, and the fierce battle against the saints went on.
The nephew of the deceased Archbishop, Thomas Earl of Arundel, presented himself at Cardiff early in the year. He lost no time in delicate insinuations, but came at once to his point. Was the Lady of Cardiff ready to give all possible aid to himself and his troops, against those traitors and heretics called Lollards? The answer was equally distinct. With some semblance of the old fire flashing in her eyes, the Lady of Cardiff refused to give him any aid whatever.
The Earl hinted in answer, with a sarcastic smile, that judging by the rumours which had reached the Court, he had scarcely expected any other conduct from her.
“Look ye for what ye will,” returned the dauntless Princess. “Never yet furled I my colours in peace; and I were double craven if I should do it in war!”
Her words were reported to the relentless hearts at Westminster. The result was an order to seize all the manors of the Despenser heritage, and to deliver them to Edward Duke of York, the King’s dearly beloved cousin, by way of compensation (said the grant) for the loss which he had sustained by the death of Richard Le Despenser. But the compensation was estimated at a high figure.
There were some curious contradictory statutes passed this year. A hundred and ten monasteries were suppressed by order of Council, and at the same time another order was issued for the extirpation of heresy. But, as usual, “the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church.” Wycliffism increased rapidly among the common people. Meanwhile Henry was preparing for his French campaign; and at Constance the seventeenth General Council of Christendom was just gathering, and John Huss, with the Emperor’s worthless safe-conduct in his pocket, was hastening towards his prison—not much larger than a coffin—in the Monastery of Saint Maurice. The Council ended their labours by burning Huss. They would have liked to burn Wycliffe; but as he had been at rest with God for over thirty years, they took refuge in the childish revenge of disinterring and burning his senseless bones. And “after that, they had no more that they could do.”
The day that heard Huss’s sentence pronounced in the white-walled Cathedral of Constance, Edward Duke of York—accompanied by a little group of knights and squires, one of whom was Hugh Calverley—walked his oppressed horse across the draw-bridge at Cardiff. Life had agreed so well with York that he had become very fat upon it. He had no children, his wife never contradicted him, and he did not keep that troublesome article called a conscience; so his sorrows and perplexities were few. On the whole, he had found treachery an excellent investment—for one life; and York left the consideration of the other to his death-bed. It may be that at times, even to this Dives, the voice from Heaven mercifully whispered, “Thou fool!” But he never stayed his chariot-wheels to listen—until one autumn evening, by Southampton Water, when the end loomed full in view, the Angel of Death came very near, and there rose before him, suddenly and awfully, the dread possibility of a life which might not close with a death-bed. But it was yet bright summer when he reached Cardiff; and not yet had come that dark, solemn August hour, when Edward Duke of York should dictate his true character as “of all sinners the most wicked.”
On this particular summer day at Cardiff, York was, for him, especially gay and bright. Yet that night in the Cathedral of Constance stood John Huss before his judges; and in the Convent of Coimbra an English Princess (Philippa Queen of Portugal, eldest daughter of John of Gaunt), long ago forgotten in England, yet gentlest and best daughters of Lancaster, lay waiting for death. Somewhere in this troublesome world the bridal is always matched by the burial, the festal song by the funeral dirge. Men and women are always mourning, somewhere.
York’s mind was full of one subject, the forthcoming campaign in France. He was to sail from Southampton with his royal master in August. Bedford was to be left Regent, the King’s brother—Bedford, who, whatever else he were, was no Lollard, and was not likely to let a Lollard escape his fangs. And on this interesting topic York’s tongue ran on glibly—how King Henry meant to march at once upon Paris, proclaim himself King of France, be crowned at Saint Denis, marry one of the French Princesses—which, it did not much signify—and return home a conquering hero, mighty enough to brave even the Emperor himself on any European battle-plain.
A little lower down the table, Hugh Calverley’s mind was also full of one subject.
“Nay,” he whispered earnestly to Bertram: “he is yet hid some whither,—here, in Wales. Men wit not where; and God forbid too many should!”
“Then men be yet a-searching for him?”
“High and low, leaving no stone unturned. God keep His true servant safe, unto His honour!”
It needs no far-fetched conjecture to divine that they were speaking of Lord Cobham.
“And goest unto these French wars, sweet Hugh?”
“Needs must; my Lord’s Grace hath so bidden me.”
“But thou wert wont to hold that no Christian man should of right bear arms, neither fight.”
“Truth; and yet do,” said Hugh quietly. This was the view of the extreme Lollards.
“Then how shall thine opinion serve in the thick of fight?”
“As it hath aforetime. I cannot fight.”
“But how then?” asked Bertram, opening his eyes.
“I can die, Bertram Lyngern,” answered the calm, resolute voice. “And it may be that I should die as truly for my Master Christ there, as at the martyr’s stake. For sith God’s will hath made yonder noble Lord my master, and hath set me under him to do his bidding, in all matters not sinful, his will is God’s will for me; and I can follow him to yonder battle-plain with as easy an heart and light as though I went to lie down on my bed to sleep. Not to fight, good friend; not to resist nor contend with any man; only to do God’s will. And is that not worth dying for?”
Bertram made no reply. But his memory ran far back to the olden days at Langley—to a scriptorius who had laid down his pen to speak of two lads, both of whom he looked to see great men, but he deemed him the greater who was not ashamed of his deed. And Bertram’s heart whispered to him that, knight as he was, while Hugh remained only a simple squire, yet now as ever, Hugh was the greater hero. For he knew that it would have cost him a very bitter struggle to accept an unhonoured grave such as Hugh anticipated, only because he thought it was God’s will.
They parted the next morning. Edward’s last words to his sister were “Adieu, Custance, I will send thee a fleur-de-lis banner as trophy from the fight. The oriflamme (Note 1), if the saints will have it so!”
But Hugh’s were—“Farewell, dear friend Bertram. Remember, both thou and I may do God’s will!”
Note 1. The oriflamme wasthebanner of France, kept in the Cathedral of Saint Denis, and held almost sacred.