IV
The Young Lovell felt as if he had came up out of a deep dream. He knewthat the lady of the white horse thought to him:
"And I have all the time of the sea and the sky and beyond," but shespoke not at all--no words and no language that he knew. Only it was asif he saw her thoughts coursing through her mind as minnows swim inclear water. And he knew that, before that, he had thought, as ifbeseechingly:
"Even let me go in Christ's name, for I have many businesses."
She had a crooked and voluptuous mouth, mocking eyes of a shade ofgreen, a little nose, a figure of waves, a high breast crossed withscarlet ribbons, and hair the colour of the yellow gold, shining withthe sun, each hair separate and inclining to little curls. In short shewas all white and gold save for her red and alluring lips that smiledaskant, and he thought that he had never seen so bright a lady, no, notamong the courtesans of Venice. His heart at the sight of her hair beatin great, stealthy pulses; his throat was dry and the flowers grew allabout her. And she sat there smiling, with the side of her face to him,and he heard her think--
"This mortal man shall be mine."
It had been then that he had prayed her in Christ's name to let him go,and that she had answered that she had all the time of this earth andbeyond it.
He turned Hamewarts slowly down the dune, though his heart lay behindhim, and, like a mortally wounded man upon a dying horse, he rodetowards his Castle where it towered upon the crag. The day was verybright, in the white sand the wind played with the ribbed rushes, andvery slowly Hamewarts went. To judge by the sun he had not stayed morethan a half-hour in that place, if so long, for it was very little abovethe horizon. He had not thought the day would prove so bright. The seawas very blue: the foam sparkled and was churned to curds, and thelittle wind was warm from sunwards. He saw the shepherd coming down avery green slope below the chapel, and the white sheep, with whiterlambs, spreading, like a fan below him. Behind him, over that shoulder,Meggot, their goose girl, was driving her charges, a great company ofgrey with but three white ones amongst them.
In a stupid way he thought that this great brightness in an early andraw spring day must come from having seen so beautiful a lady; so, itwas said in stories, were good knights' hearts elated after such asight. But he was aware that his heart was like the grey lead in hisside, and leaden sighs came heavily from him.
When he came to the gate in the outermost wall he tirled wearily at thepin. He was aware of a monstrous heaviness and tire in all his limbs.A man opened the little grating; loud yawns came from him and, verysleepily, he let down bars and chains and the gate back. From thisgateway a short, white road went slantwise, up a green bank, to thechief gate of the Castle.
Young Lovell never looked at this man's face, and slowly he rode up thesteep. He heard the man say:
"What lording be ye?" but he rode on mute. The man came running afterhim, his armour rattling like pot-lids. He caught Hamewarts by thebridle and, looking earnestly at Young Lovell's face, he said:
"Master, I mauna let ye pass only I ken your name." And then he criedout, and his eyes were almost out of his head:
"The Young Lovell!" He ran like a hare up the broad road; his hose wererusset coloured.
Young Lovell grumbled to himself that it was strange to set so new a manto the gate that he should not know his master's son, and stranger stillthat the man should be of the men of his sister's husband of Cullerford,for all their followers had russet beneath their steel facings.
And then he saw old Elizabeth Campstones that had been help-maid to hismother's nurse, coming out of the littlest door of the inner castle walland down the path across the green grass of the glacis. She was all inhodden grey, she carried a great basket of tumbled clouts upon her head,and so the tears poured from her red eyes that at the first she did notsee him though she came into the road at his horse's forefoot. But whenhe said:
"Why greet ye, Elizabeth?" she looked up at him on high as he sat there,as if the sun dazzled her eyes. And then she screamed, a high longscream. She caught at her basket and she ran to his bridle.
"Come away," she cried out. "Cullerford and Haltwistle have ta'en yourbonny Castle. Your father's dead. Your mother's jailed. There is nosoul of yours true to you here."
If there was one thing that distinguished the Young Lovell amongst thecaptains of the North--and his name was very well known to the Scots ofthe Border--it was that he was quick in thinking. And now, the kindlingpassion of war being the one thing that could drive away the thirst oflove, made him see, as if it were a clear table laid out before him, theminds of his sisters that he knew very well and the dispositions of hisbrothers-in-law as well as the reed of the Decies that was not concealedfrom him. And, there being very little decency in his age, he knew thatan hour or so in the Castle with his father dead and his mother no doubtgrieved and shut in her bower, the men leaderless, since he, that hadbeen his father's lieutenant and ancient was absent--that short hour ortwo that had gone by--and it might well have been that his father haddied over his cups at the board whilst he himself, the night before, wasa-watch over his arms--would very well suffice to put Cullerford andHaltwhistle in possession of his Castle with all his own men butcheredduring their sleep. In those days it was grab while you could and getback at your leisure.
With the pressure of his knee, he moved Hamewarts a yard forward andaside; he leant over his saddle bow and caught the old woman under theshoulders. He lifted her, basket and all--for in the midst of grief,fear and danger, she would cling first to the clouts that were herfeudal duty--and the great horse with the pressure on his mouth, cast uphis head and wheeled round again towards the gate at which they hadentered. There came the bang of a saker, but without doubt it wasrather to rouse the Castle than aimed at them, for they heard no ball goby them. Then there was a sharp scratch as if a cat had spat, and justabove his head an arrow stuck itself through the basket of clouts.Hamewarts went back downwards in long bounds.
Three other arrows set themselves in the grass beside their course; onefell on the road, one carried off his scarlet cap with its frontal andjewel of pearls. But that arrow too transfixed itself in the basket andpinned the cap there; so it was not lost, and that was a good thing, forthe pearls were worth two hundred pounds. And as he rode he thoughtthat that was not very good shooting.
The men-at-arms, wakened from sleep, had gummy and unclear eyes; theirbows, too, must have been strung all night and that had made the stringsslacken and be uncertain. It was an evil and untidy practice, but itshowed him firstly that fear of attack must be in that place, andsecondly that some of his own men might be without the castle and apt toessay to take it again. Moreover, though he had not time to turn, heknew that they must have fired from the meurtrieres of the guard house;if they had taken time to open the great doors they must have struck himlike a hare, for he had not been thirty yards from the walls.
Hamewarts clattered in his heavy gallop under the archway of the gateout into the village street, and the Young Lovell thanked our Saviourthat the porter had been too amazed to go back and close it, but had runto warn the Castle. Without that he had been caught like a fox in awell. When he was through and well outside, he caught up his horse, andturning, gazed in again under the arch. The inner walls of the Castlerose immense and pinkish, with their pale stone, above the green grass.The sun shone on such of the windows--about twenty--that had glass inthem. One of these casements opened and he saw the naked shoulders ofhis sister Douce, holding a sheet over her breasts as she gazed out tomark why the tumult was raised. He observed thus that, in one night, ashe thought it, his sister had taken their mother's bower for herself.It was no more than he would have awaited of her.
He perceived then the large gate of the Castle on top of the moundroughly burst open and there came running out thirty men in russet whoranged themselves in a fan-shape on the slope. Last came a man in hisshirt and shoes--Limousin of Haltwhistle. The me
n in russet held bows intheir hands and the man in his shirt waved his hands downwards. Thearchers began to come down, but not very fast and with caution. TheYoung Lovell knew they thought that very belike he had already raisedthe country against them and had men posted in ambush behind the outerwalls.
He rode slowly away with the old woman before him. The street was verybroad and empty in the morning sun. The cottages were all thatched withsea-rushes and kelp, all the doors stood open and the swine moved in andout. Two cottages had been burnt to the ground and lay, black heaps,sparkling here and there with the wetness of the dew. He marvelled alittle that they did not still smoke, for they must have been set alightsince last nightfall. He considered the sleeve of his scarlet cloakthat was very brave, being open at the throat to shew his shirt of whitelawn tied with green ribbons. He saw that the scarlet was faded to thecolour of pink roses. He looked before him and, on a green hill-side,he was aware of a great gathering of men and women bearing scythes whoseblades shone like streaks of flame in the sun. Also, at their head wentpriests and little boys with censers and lit candles. The day was soclear that, though they were already far away, he could see the bluesmoke of the incense.
He rode slowly forward, pensive and observing all that he might. Theold woman sat before him, but she was breathing so fast with the lategalloping of the horse that she could not yet speak. The windows of theone stone house in that place were still shuttered and barred, so thatwithout doubt the lawyer still slept. Then he remembered that he wouldhave that man hanged without delay. Without doubt he left his windowsshuttered to give false news, for certainly, that morning, he had seenhim moving those stones. He looked about him to see if in the openbarns and byres he could not see any horse of the Prince Bishop or thePercy or any of their men polishing their head-pieces or their pikes.But, though many of the barns stood open, none could he observe.
He looked over his shoulder and saw that the archers were come to thegateway and were peering sideways out, with a due caution. Then some ofthem came through and stood with their backs to the wall, waving at himtheir hands and shouting foul words. They would not come any furtherfor fear he had an ambush hidden amongst the byres and middens of thevillage. So, still slowly, he rode on between heaps of garbage wherethe street was narrow and a filthy runnel went down.
At the top the street grew very wide till it was a green swarded placewith many slender, sea-bent trees to make a darkened shade up againstthe walls of the small monastery of Saint Edmund. He considered whetherhe should go in there, but he remembered that there were only a fewmonks and they had no men-at-arms to guard those who sought sanctuarywith them from pursuers not afraid of sacrilege. He determined,however, to make his way to another monastery--the great and powerfulone of Belford, where they had fifty bowmen and two hundred men-at-armsto guard them against the Scots. There he would go, unless the oldwoman told him other news when her breath came back. Then the old thingwhimpered:
"Set me down, master. I cannot speak on horse-back." He let her slideto the ground and, with the basket transfixed by the two arrows, shefell on her knees. And then she crossed herself and gave thanks to Godfor his coming so well off, and afterwards, his long-toed shoes beingjust on a level with her lips and she on her knees, she set her mouth tothe shoe that was on the right side where she was, and then placed itover her head as far as the basket gave her space. He wondered a momentthat this old woman should be so humble that was used to treat him as adirty little boy, long after he had fought in great fights, she havingnursed his mother before and him afterwards. But then he consideredthat she was doing homage for such small goods as she had and this wasthe first of his vassals to do this thing. And again he observed thatthe bright scarlet of his shoe and the bright green--it beingparticoloured and running all up his leg to his thigh--these were dullpink and dull brown. They had been the brightest colours that you couldfind in the North.
Elizabeth Campstones stood up.
"Where will you go to, my master Paris?" she asked. "Woeful lording,where will you find shelter?"
"The Belford monks, I think, will give me the best rede and admonition,"he said. "There I am minded to ride now."
"Then come you down from the brown horse," she said, "and walk beside meon Belford road, for ye could go no better journey, only I cannot speakup to you with this basket on my poll."
He came down from the brown horse, and as he did so his stirrup leathercracked and that was more than passing strange for he had had them newtwo days before. So when he was come round Hamewarts' head and had thereins through his arm, he said to the old woman:
"Now tell me, truly, what day is this?"
"This day is the last day of June," she answered. "My master Paris, itis three months from the day that you gat you gone, and ye are a veryruined lord and the haymakers have gone to the high hills."
He answered only, "Ah," and walked thoughtfully forward. He had knownthat that lady was a fairy....
He walked with the old woman beside him, through the little grove ofthin trees, by the bridle gate into the yard of the square, brown churchwith the leaden roof, and so out into the field where it mounted towardsthe Spindleston Hills.
Halfway up the low hillside there was a spring with blackthorn bushes,sea-holly and broom in thick tufts about it. The sun fell hot here,early as it was. A grey goat wandered through the rough and flowerythicket and many great bees buzzed. He sat himself down upon asoft-turfed molehill and left Hamewarts to crop the bushes. The oldwoman stood looking at him curiously and with a sort of dread, for aminute. Then she took the basket from her head and began to lament overit.
The two arrows transfixed it through and through, so that it wasimpossible for her to draw out her cloths and linen. Lord Lovell cameout of his trance of thought a moment. He looked upon the woman, andthen, taking the basket from her, he broke off the feathered end of eacharrow and so drew them right through the basket. The old woman pulledout her clouts and said, "Eyah, eyah." Through each clout one arrow orthe other had made one, two or many round holes.
"These," she lamented, "are all that your mother has for her bed or herbody. All her others your sisters have taken."
"I am considering," he answered her, "how I best may save my mother."
She took her linen to the spring which was deep and clear, and begansedulously to soak piece after piece, rinsing it over and over as sheknelt, and beating it with an oaken staff upon an oaken board that shehad in her basket bottom. And as she hung each piece over the bramblebushes she looked diligently into the scene below her to see what wasstirring in the Castle or the village. Young Lovell had selected thathigh spot so that they might know what was agate by way of a pursuit.She saw, at intervals, three men on horseback go spurring up the streetfrom the Castle arch, but she did not disturb her master with the news.She thought it better to leave him to his thinking, for she consideredthat he would hit upon some magic way out of it. She imagined that hehad dwelt that three months amongst wizards and sorcerers that he shouldhave met during his vigil in the little old chapel that was a veryhaunted place.
At last he raised his head and said:
"Old woman, tell me truly now, all your news."
What she knew first was that, on the morning when the Lord Lovell haddied, all the lords and knights and the Prince Bishop and the othersbeing gone from the hall, there remained only the dead lord, his wife ina swound, the Lady Margaret Eure and her. Then Sir Walter Limousin ofCullerford with his wife Isopel and the other sister had approached withseveral men of theirs in arms and had carried the good body of hersenseless lady up to a little chamber in the tower called Wanshot, inthe very top of it. She, Elizabeth Campstones, had carried her lady'sfeet, but all the rest of her bearers had been men-at-arms. The LadyMargaret had followed them up into that little stone cell and asked themwhat they would do with that lady in that place. But no one of themanswered her a word, high and haughty as she was, and at last they wentaway and left them, the Lady Roh
traut just coming to herself on alittle, rotting frame bed that had no coverings but the strings thatheld it together.
The Lady Margaret had sought to go out with them, calling them all proudand beastly names and she was determined to set her own men that she hadthere, to the number of twenty, all well armed, to make war upon theseand to raise the Castle. But when she came to the doorway that waslittle and low Sir Simonde Vesey set his hand upon her chest and thrusther back so hard into the room that she fell against the wall and losther breath. When she had it again the door was locked and it was ofthick oak, studded deep with nails.
Finely she raved, but when she came to, the Lady Rohtraut was in a sortof stupour, sitting still and shaking her head at all that they said.She thought this must be a dream that would vanish upon her awakening,and so it was lost labour to talk.
So they remained until well on into the afternoon, seeing nothing butthe ceaseless run of the clouds and the sky and the gulls upon the FarneIslands and the restless sea, from their little window. Then there camethree weeping maids of their lady's, bearing bedding that they set downon the floor, and a little food and some wine that were placed upon thewindow-sill. But these girls spoke no word, for Sir Simonde Vesey stoodoutside and looked awfully upon them. The Lady Margaret made to runfrom the room, but two men that stood hidden put their pikes to herbreast so that she ran upon them, and would have been sore hurt onlythey were somewhat blunted.
The Lady Rohtraut sat for a long while eating a little white bread thatshe crumbled in her fingers, and sipping at the wine from the blackleather bottle, but still she said little, which was a great pity.
Towards four of the afternoon, to judge by the shadows, Sir Simonde lethimself in at the door and asked the Lady Margaret if she wouldforthwith marry the Decies. She said no, not if Sathanas himselfbranded her with hot irons to make her do it. Sir Simonde said shemight as lief do it since she was betrothed to that good knight and thatcould never be altered. Then she caught at the little dagger with whichshe was wont to mend her pens. It hung in her girdle, and Sir Simondewent swiftly enough out at the little door.
The Lady Margaret chafed up and down that small place, but those womensaid little, for they knew well what this all meant in the way ofrobbery and pillage and bending them to their wills. But the LadyMargaret swore that she would have the Eures of Witton and theWiddringtons and the Nevilles themselves--aye and the spy Percies--whowere all her good cousins, and they should hang the Decies and do muchworse to the Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle.
And no doubt she had the right of it, for long after it was dark theysaw a glow of light illumining in a dreary way the face of the WhiteTower, so that the Lady Margaret thought it was a fire of joy or atleast a baal-blaze, but Elizabeth Campstones said that it was housesburning in the township. Then a man with a torch came through thelittle doorway and lighted in the Magister, or as he now was, theBailiff Stone, since the Prince Bishop had signed the appointment forhim that morning. This rendered him safe against any persecution orprocesses of laymen in those parts, nevertheless, when the torch-bearerhad stuck his torch in a ring by the door and gone away, the lawyerwould have the little door left open, and they knew afterwards that itwas done so that the men without might rescue him if the Lady Margaretmeant to strike or slay him, for she could have slain five of such leancats.
Before the Lady Margaret could bring out a question, for she wasastonished and could not think why such a person should come there, hebroke into a trembling gibber:
"Oh, good kind ladies; oh, gentle sweet and noble dames, for God Hislove and sufferings, save all our lives and houses of which two areburning!"
The Lady Margaret asked highly what all this claver was and what hewanted.
"These are very violent and high-stomached people," the lawyer babbledquaveringly on. "Two houses of the township they have burned, andhanged the husbandmen for an example. So that if you do not saveus...."
He stretched his hands to the Lady Rohtraut, but she looked before herand said nothing.
"Well, go you and make common cause with them," the Lady Margaret saidto him contemptuously. "So you will save your neck.
"Ah, but no," he answered miserably but with a sort of professional andcunning air. "I must be on the side of the law."
"Then what does the law say?" she asked as bitterly. "I will warrantyou will not be far from the top dog."
He began, however, to whine and wring his hands and said that he had notlong to live if he could not win these ladies to do the wills of theviolent people who had taken that Castle, not but what it might not besaid that they had not some shew of equity on their sides.
"I thought we should come near there," the Lady Margaret said; "come,Master, what is the worst on 't?"
"Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer said, "this is at the best a grievousmatter; at the worst it is...." And he waved his hand as if there wereno speaking of it.
"Go on," the Lady Margaret said grimly.
"I have been so confused," the lawyer answered, "with much running hereand there and seeing such blood flow and the hearing of suchthreats...."
"Come, come," the lady said, "you are a man of law and such a clever onethat if I threw you out of this window you could tell the law of it orever you fell to the ground."
"I am not saying," he retorted, with a sort of relish, "that I go indoubts concerning the law. What perplexes and affrights me is the fallof great and powerful lords. As to the torts, replevins, fines,amercements and the other things too numerous to recite, I am clearenough."
"Well, it is in the fall of mighty lords that the rats of your tradefind bloody bones to gnaw," she answered him. "But if you are tooamazed at the contemplation of the wealth that you shall make out ofthis to tell me, get you gone. If not, speak shortly, or I warrant youa few cousins of mine shall burn this Castle and you in a little space."
The lawyer shrank at these words and she went on:
"I trysted with my cousin Widdrington to meet him at Glororem at sixto-night and bade him fetch me hence with what companions he needed attwelve if I were not home, so you have but an hour."
"Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer said, "it is three hours."
"Well then, you have kept me twelve hours here," the lady said; "I shallpay you in full for your entertainment."
"Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer sighed, "not me, not me!"
She answered only: "Out with your tale."
He hesitated for a moment, and then began with another sigh:
"For your noble cousin Paris, Lord Lovell, I fear it is all done withhim."
"I think he may be dead that he did not come to his betrothal with me,"the lady said. "If that is so you have my leave to tell me."
"It is worse than that," he groaned. "Woe is me, that noble lordingsshould bend to violent passions."
The Lady Margaret looked at him with disdain.
"If ye would tell me," she said, "that the Young Lovell is gone upon asorcery, ye lie."
Again the lawyer sighed.
"It is too deeply proven," he said. "These poor eyes did see him andtwo other pairs--both his well-wishers, even as I am."
"Even whose?" she asked. "And what saw ye?"
"For the eyes," the lawyer said, "they were those of the Decies and ofan ancient goody called Meg of the Foul Tyke."
"For well-wishers," the Lady Margaret answered, "you well-wish whenceyour money comes; the Decies would claim my cousin's land and gear: andMeg of the Foul Tyke, though the best of the three is a naughty witch ina red cloak. I have twice begged her life of my lording."
"The more reason," Master Stone said, "why you should not doubt she isyour well-wisher, even more than the young lording's. And that is whyshe would see you have a better mate."
The lady said: "Aha!"
"I will tell you how it was," the lawyer said. "I could not very wellsleep that night because I had been turning of old parchments, where, tomake a long story short, I had found that if the Lord Lovell should, onthe
next day, swear to give the Bishop the rights of ingress andfire-feu over his lands in Barnside he should do himself a wrong. For,since the days of that blessed King, Edward the Second, those lands havebeen held by _carta directa_..."
"Get on; get on," the Lady Margaret cried.
"But this is in the essence of the thing," the lawyer protested, "for a_carta directa_..."
"I will not hear this whigamaree," the lady said, "Let us take it,though no doubt you lie, that you had found certain parcels ofsheepskin. But understand that we have stomachs for other things thanthat dry haggis."
"That is a lamentable frame of mind," the lawyer said, "for look you, acarta of that tenure is the best that can be come by." But, at agesture of the lady's hand, he began again very quickly: "I spent anight of groaning and sighing, for it was a grievous dilemma. On the onehand, my beloved young lord might do himself a wrong by swearing awayhis chartered rights. On the other hand, if I should tell him that Ihad found them, this might be deemed foul play by the Pro-proctor RegisRushworth, who is a lawyer for the house of Lovell in the Palatinedistricts. Though how it is that Rushworth knoweth not of this charterI cannot tell."
"How came you by them?" the lady asked. "Without a doubt you stole themto make work."
"They were old papers that were there when I bought the study of mymaster that was Magister Greenwell," the lawyer answered, and again thelady said: "Get on; get on."
"So, at the last," Stone continued, "I made, after prayer, theresolution and firm intent to tell my lord. And so I arose, rememberinghow he would be praying in the chapel, and gat me into the street. Andthere, in the grey dawn, I lighted upon Meg of the Foul Tyke, who wasreturning from gathering of simples by the light of the moon in thekirkyard."
"There was no moon last night," the Lady Margaret said.
"Then, by the light of the star Arcturus," the lawyer claimed. "Well,my first motion was to rate her for a naughty witch. And so I did fullroundly till that woman fell a-weeping and vowed to reform."
"Well, you were more powerful than the prophets with the Witch ofEndor," the lady mocked him.
"And, seeing her in that good mind," Stone went on with his tale, "Iremembered that she was a very old woman--the oldest of all these parts.So I told her that if she could remember matters of Barnside yearsagone, since she was in a holier mind, without doubt the young lordingwould be gracious to her and would grant her a halfpenny a day to liveby; so she might live godly, after repenting in a sheet.... So sheremembered very clearly that one Hindhorn of Barnsides, Henrice QuintoRege, had been used, once a year, at Shrovetide, to drag with threebullocks, an oaken log bound with yellow ribbons to the Castle. This wasdirect and blinding evidence that the right of fire-feu ..."
"Well, you went with the old hag to the chapel," the Lady Margaret said."I can follow the cant of your mind and spring before it."
"But you may miss many and valuable things," he retorted. "As thus....Whilst we went up the hill, this old goody, being repentant and weeping,cried out when she heard whither we were bound: 'Alas! Horror! Woe isme!" and other cries. And, when I pressed for a reason, she said thatthe young lording was a damned soul and that was one of her sins. Forshe had taught him magic and the meeting-places of warlocks; one ofwhich was that chapel that was an ill-haunted spot, and that was why thelording was there at night. And she was afraid to go near the chapel;for the warlocks would tear her limb from limb. And the familiar andsuccubus of the Young Lovell was the toad that was, in afore time, thestep-mother of the Laidly Worm of Spindleston, that to this day spitsupon maidens, so much she hateth the estate of virginity, as often youwill have heard."
The lawyer paused and looked long at that lady.
"So that old witch repented?" she said at last, but she gave no sign ofher feelings.
"There was never a more beautiful repentance seen," the lawyer said."So she sighed and groaned and the tears poured off her face to thinkthat she had corrupted that poor lording...." And it had been herrepentance, he went on, that had let them see what they had seen, and somade it possible for them to save him.
Now when they came to the chapel, said the lawyer, the young lording, asif he were demented, came rushing out from the door, and the Decies whohad watched all night in the porch came out after him, and asked himwhat he would. But he answered nothing to the Decies and nothing tothem, but, with a marvellous fury, like a man rushing in a dream, he raninto the shed where his horse was tethered, and bringing it out, so hegalloped away that his long curls of gold flapped in the wind. It wasnot yet cockcrow, but pretty clear.
Thus those three, standing there and lamenting, saw how, at no greatdistance, but just under Budle Crags, there was a fire lit, and round itdanced wonderful fair women and some old hags and witch-masters, butmost fair women.
The lawyer, saying this, gazed hard at the Lady Margaret, but once againthe lady said no more than--
"Aye, my cousin was always one for fair women."
"So he kissed and fondled them; it was so horrid a sight...." the lawyerwent on.
"Now is it a horrid thing," the lady asked, "to see a fine lording kissa fair woman?"
"I only know," the lawyer said, "that at once all we three fell todevising how you, ah, most gentle lady, might be saved from the embraceof this lost man; and how that poor lording might be saved from his evilways, and have his lands and all his heritage preserved to him."
"And the upshot," the lady asked, with a dry pleasantness, "was what theDecies did in the Great Hall."
When the Young Lovell, sitting amongst the furze and broom, had heard sofar, he sighed with a deep satisfaction. The old Elizabeth had told hertale of sorcery alleged against himself at an intolerable length,dwelling on the nature of linen clouts here and there, and upon all thatshe had said to the Lady Rohtraut when she lay in the swoon. But he kepthimself quiet and did not interrupt her; he had listened to her talessince he had been a young boy, and knew that if you hastened her theytook five times as long. Yet he sat all the while on tenterhooks forfear she should say they had seen his meeting with the lady that satupon a white horse amongst doves and sparrows. Had they seen that itmight have gone ill with him in a suit at law. For, if they had seenit, it was twenty to one that there would be other witnesses; the placewas well frequented by people journeying from Bamburgh to Holy Island.Nay, he would have been visible to the very fishers upon the sea, and tostay with such a lady, he well knew--though at the moment he sigheddeeply--would be accounted a felony of the deepest magic kind in anyecclesiastical court.
But now he knew that this lawyer was simply lying, and that was aneasier thing. He saw, and so he told Elizabeth Campstones, how they hadhit upon that tale. The lawyer coming by the chapel, after the YoungLovell had threatened him with death for the moving of his neighbour'slandstones, and the old witch meeting with him, after she had beenthreatened with drowning for her wicked ways; both trembling with fear,since they knew him for a man of his word and a weighty but just lord inthose lands, had come together to the chapel door. No doubt they hadentered in, meaning to steal his armour that was visible lying there,and hold it for ransom as the price of their miserable lives. But inthe deep porch they would see the Decies snoring like a hog.
Him they wakened, and, the old witch's mind running on sorcery, thelawyer's on suits, and the Decies desiring to have his heritage and hisbride, whilst the other two desired to save their lives; all threetogether had hit upon this stratagem that would give them what theydesired. For in those days there was in Northumberland a stern hatredof the black arts, which had grown the greater since the twelve childrenof Hexham, two years before, had been slain, that their blood andmembers might stew in a witch's broth--a thing proven by many competentwitnesses. So that, if the Decies should come in and claim the YoungLovell's knighthood, name, and the rest, he might, with the support ofhis father, make a pretty good suit of it, and, maybe, take the whole.And, if the Young Lovell should come back soon for his armour, theywould murder him. Thus, the law
yer, and the witch, the one with a ropeto cast over his neck, and the other with a sharp dagger, hid waitingbehind the thick pillars, whilst the Decies dressed in hishalf-brother's harness.
And it had worked better for them than they had expected, so that nowthey held the Castle, and the law might be very hard set, if it evermade the essay, to get them out of it.
For, as Elizabeth Campstones presently told him, they had taken all thecharters and the deeds of the Castle to Haltwhistle, where the oneknight had them hidden up, and all the deeds and charters of hismother's lands and houses to Cullerford, where the other kept them. TheCastle itself they held all three, the Decies and the two knights--orrather their two ladies--being captains there by turns of three dayseach, and dividing the revenues of it very fairly.
They had cast out all the men-at-arms that were any way faithful to theYoung Lovell, taking away their arms too. For they, with their armedmen, had been in possession of the Castle and had taken the keys of thearmoury, whilst the Lovell men were without arms and leaderless. Sothat some of the Lovell men had become bedesmen at the monastery atBelford, and many perished miserably about the country in the greatstorm of the second day of April, whilst some had taken to robbery,which was all that was left them. Those in the Castle had hired menfrom the false Scots and other ragged companions of the Vesty that wasSir Symonde's brother, and there they all dwelt comfortable, havingbetween them about three hundred men-at-arms and a numerous army ofbowmen, but no cannon. They deemed that they could well await anyassault of the Young Lovell if he should return. They considered thathe had been slain by the outlaw Elliotts, who had been seen to ride by,three miles north of the Castle, going up into the Cheviots.
But all these things happened only after they had settled with the LadyMargaret in that little room. And that had happened in this way,Elizabeth Campstones said:
After the lawyer told her the tale about the fair witches she had brokeninto no cries and oaths as he had expected; not even when he hadparticularised one witch with red hair and great breasts that danced andsprang all naked over a broomstick, with her hair tossing, and how theYoung Lovell had singled this witch out for favours apart. The LadyMargaret said only--
"And so you two and the Decies...."
"We stood there weeping and lamenting," the lawyer said.
"I marvel that not one of you had heart to adventure for the caresses ofsuch fair women as you have told me of. Had ye been men ye would."
The lawyer answered with an accent of horror:
"But witches and warlocks!"
"Ah, I had forgotten," the lady said. "So ye wept and turned your headsaway. And afterwards?"
"After they were gone," Magister Stone answered, "we fell to devisinghow we might rescue you, ah gentle lady, from that lost knight andhimself from himself." That was to be in this way: The Decies shouldseek to possess himself of the lands, knighthood and name of the YoungLovell, and, if he did this with the irrevocable blessing of the LordBishop, the act of the Border Warden, who in those parts stood for theKing, as well as in presence of his father, he might establish a verygood title whether of presumption or possession. And if in the same wayhe might be betrothed to the Lady Margaret in the presence of the LadyRohtraut to whom she was ward and with the formal rite of the Church,which like the other is irrevocable, the Young Decies would be in a veryfair way to achieve his pious desires.
"And that should be as how?" the Lady Margaret asked.
He desired, the lawyer said, to hold the Young Lovell's heritage only asa faithful steward and brother and, so holding it with a very arguabletitle, neither Prince Bishop or King could extort from it any very greatfines or amercements. Meanwhile the Decies should consummate that verynight his wedding with the Lady Margaret whom, after the betrothal, healone could marry. And they had a good priest there present and himselfready to draw up marriage charters enough to fill two bridal chests.And, the more to incline her to this, it was the mind of the gallantDecies to allow her such marriage lots, dowers and jointures, out of theheritage of the Young Lovell as together with her own lands of Glororemand the other places, and by inducing the Lady Rohtraut to forego thegreat fine that they should pay her upon her marriage, would leave themone of the richest married pairs of that part of the King's realms.
And when the Lady Margaret asked how that should be brought about, andthe particulars, feudal and direct, of the deeds he would make, he wentoff into a great flood of Latin and Norman words of the law. At lastshe said:
"I make out nothing of all this talk. But I think I will not marry witha great toad that hath a weasel gnawing at his vitals."
"Ah, gentle lady..." the lawyer began, and his voice rose in its tones.
"To put it shortly," the lady continued, "the great toad is the gallantDecies, for toads do shelter under other men's rocks and stones, andthis gallant--for I will not rob him of the title you give him, and Iknow no other by which to call him--is minded to shelter under thestones and rocks of my cousin's Castle that in God's good time shall bemy cousin's and mine. And for who the weasel is that gnaweth at thevitals of the gallant Decies I will not further particularise, since Imight well go beyond courtesy. So now get you gone, or I will wave oneof the clouts from this little window which, by the light of the burninghouses, my cousins the Eures and the Widdringtons and the Percy shallperceive from where they wait upon Budle Crags, and very soon you shallbe hanging from the White Tower to affright the morning sun. And that Ipromise you...."
The lawyer protested in various tones, rising to a sick squeak, but shesaid no more to him. It was not true what she said, that her cousinswere waiting to fall upon the Castle, though they would well have doneit on the next morning or in two days' time. But the lawyer did not knowthat it was not true and so he shivered and went away.
A little later there came Henry Vesey of Wall Houses, the evil knightthat was brother to Sir Symonde. He had a red nose, a roving eye andstaggered a little. He affected a great gravity, but she laughed athim. His cloak was monstrous and of green, slit all down the greatsleeves to show the little coat of purple damask. His shirt was wroughtup into a frill very low down in his neck, so that it showed much of hischest, and in his stiff biretta of scarlet he had a jewel of scarletthat held five white feathers. His hair, which was reddish, fell almostto his shoulders, for he affected very much to be in the fashions of histime--more than most lordings and knights of that part. And, indeed,the Lady Margaret considered him a very proper, impudent gentleman.
"Cousin Meg!" he began, and then he stammered with the liquor that wasin him. But he achieved again an owlish gravity and a sweet reason. Hisproposition was that, still, she should marry the Decies and that hehimself would wed the Lady Rohtraut so that he could defend herinterests the better. And so they could all live there comfortablytogether, for it was better to live in one great family than scatteredhere and there. The Lady Margaret was already laughing, but hecontinued with a great gravity, that, as for the Decies, he loved her sodesperately he did not dare to come nigh her, but, now he had no need toconceal it, was rolling about the carpet in the great hall, bellowingwith the pain of his passion.
"Well, I have been aware of it this many months," the lady said, "and itis a very comfortable love that will not let him come nigh me. I prayit may continue."
At that Vesey of Wall Houses fell to laughing.
He tried to explain that he had come to her with the idea that she mightbe more apt to wed the Decies if she knew that, by his wedding the LadyRohtraut, the Castle should have for its head and guidance, such asober, answerable, prudent and valorous head as himself.
"So the cage of apes made the parrot their captain when they wenta-sailing to the Indies," she said, and then he laughed altogether.
"Nay, indeed Meg, sweetmouthed Meg," he said, "will ye still keep trothto the monstrous wicked, idolatrous, blaspheming lording called Lovellthat dances with fair naked witches and all the other horrid things thatwe would all do if we could? Consider your
wretched soul!"
But his liquorish manner showed that he believed nothing of thatwitches' dance, and indeed he was pretty sure that the Young Lovell hadbeen carried off by the outlaw Elliotts that had been seen near thatplace, and that he would return and send them ransom.
"Friend Henry," the Lady answered, "good Sir Henry, if my love, who is agallant gentleman, would not dance and courteously devise with beautifulwomen, naked or how they were, I should think the less of him supposingthey entreated it. But I do not believe that he did this thing such asthe calling up of succubi, however fair, since his desire for me onlywas so great, and that ye well wis."
"Ah well," the Vesey sighed, "sweet mouth that ye are, if it was I thathad the ordering of this Castle I should not let you go so easily."
"That I well believe and take it kindly," the lady said.
"But, being as it is," he continued, "the poltroons, my brother andCullerford and their wives and the Decies and the lawyer tremble so atthe thought of your kinsmen camped on Budle Crags that they are mindedto open the gates on this pretty bird. But well I know that it is alie, though they will not hear me."
"In truth there is a monstrous great host awaits the waving of mykerchief," she said, "with nine culverins planted there and all; and yeknow what the culverins did to Bamburgh?"
He closed one eye slowly and then he sighed. "Well, I must take youdown," he said, "I am a reckless devil, woe is me, and if there are noWiddringtons and the rest there now, I know that Wall Houses would burnto-morrow and I should hang when they caught me.... But oh, I repent meto let you go...." And he regarded her with very amorous and melancholylaughing eyes.
"Friend Henry," she laughed, "if you will open the doors for me, for me,for your good behaviour you may kiss me twice, once here and once at thegate, for I dare say, if the truth be known, though you are too muchdrunk to be clear and not drunk enough to speak the truth, you are morethe friend of me and of my love than any here."
"Well, they are a curst crew," he said, "and I will not hang with them;only, where there are pickings I must have my poke, and that is goodLatin."
So, approaching and lifting his legs, as high as he might in the politerfashion of the day, though once in his progress he fell against thewall, he took her by the hand and kissed her on the cheek. She said shewondered how a man could make himself smell so like a beast with wine,and so he led her forth from the room, after he had waved away theguards and after she had taken leave of the Lady Rohtraut who spokenever a word. And that was as much as Elizabeth Campstones knew of herat that time, except that she promised not to rest a night in bed untilshe had roused all the Dacres of the North to come to her aunt'sassistance.
But afterwards Elizabeth heard that the Vesey of Wall Houses hadconducted the lady very courteously, not only to the gate, but, havingfound her a horse and guards, to her very tower of Glororem. And on theway he gave her very good counsel as to how she should aid her aunt.But that had proved a very difficult matter, for the Dacres themselves,in those disturbed and critical times, lay under such clouds ofsuspicion that the best of them were detained in London near the Kingand his court; so that, if they were not actually in the Tower or someother prison, they might as well have been. As for coming to rescue theLady Rohtraut by force, they could not do it and, as for aiding her byany process of law, that was a matter well-nigh impossible for itsslowness and because the Knight of Cullerford had stolen all her deedsand titles. Moreover, all the middle part of Yorkshire was in a stateof rebellion, so that it was very difficult for messengers to comethrough, either the one way or the other. It is true that a lawyer fromDurham came to the Castle and sought an interview with the lady onbehalf of the Prince Palatine, but they pelted him from the archway withdung at first and then with flint-stones so that they never heard whathis errand was. And although many in that neighbourhood would gladlyhave set upon the Castle and sacked it, it was difficult to find aleader and head. For the Percy was afraid, not knowing how the law wasor how he should best please the King, and the Nevilles were in theSouth, so that there was no one left of great eminence.
The Lady Margaret and some young squires of degree raised a force of acouple of hundred or so and began to march on the Castle. But beforethey reached it the men-at-arms repented, saying that they would not beled by a woman and a parcel of beardless boys; and when the LadyMargaret beat them with a whip these men shrugged their shoulders androde back the faster to their homes. She had two of them led to thegallows and the ropes round their necks till they fell on their kneesand sued pardons. But that did not mend things much and there thebusiness sat.
The Lady Rohtraut came to herself one night and knew it was no dream.And she would have letters written to the Lord of Croy in Germany, thatwas her mother's father, that he might come to her rescue. And no doubthe would have sent ships, though he was a very ancient man. He was amighty prince, and had taken prisoner, in the old time, Edward Dacre,the Lady Rohtraut's father, in a battle that his suzerain the Duke ofBurgundy, who was of uncertain mind, fought against the English inFlanders. So, waiting in the Castle for his ransom to come, EdwardDacre loved the Duke's daughter, the Princess Rohtraut, and was belovedby her. And, at the intercession of the Talbot, for the bettersoldering of a new friendship between the English and the Burgundians,the Duke, though sorely against his will, had given his daughter toEdward Dacre, he being made a baron of England on the day of thewedding. Her mother, the Princess Rohtraut, was still alive and livedwith her son, the Lord Dacre, in London. But between mother anddaughter there was a lawsuit about some of these very lands that herdaughters sought to take from her, and in that way there was no commercebetween them.
Thus it was that the Lady Rohtraut was very haughty, and would in no waysubmit to the importunities of her daughters and their husbands, for shehad the pride of the Dacres and of a Princess of Low Germany. Thedaughters would still have had her marry the Vesey of Wall Houses, sothat they might have the management of her properties, but she answeredthat for nothing in the world would she do that thing, and that it wouldbe to give them both to Satan. She had the right to an annual dower of3,000 French crowns and to all the furnishings that had been taken byher husband, upon their marriage, from her Castle at Cramlinton, as wellas her houses at Plessey and Killingworth. And she had the right toenter again, her husband being dead, into the possession andadministration of those places as well as of her lands by Morpeth.
She was minded to live as a proud and wealthy dowager and she was notminded to abate one jot of her rights and possessions to buy herfreedom, though her daughters and their husbands came day by day andclamoured to her to do it.
So there abode, like a prisoner in that little room, the Lady Rohtrauttill that hour. All of her servants were driven away from her, and shehad only Elizabeth Campstones to dress and undress her: and of linen shehad so little that the old woman must come forth and wash it every threedays. And, when she brought it forth, the daughters searched it intothe very seams to see that there was no letter to the Duke of Croy or tothe Dacres concealed within it. And the Lady Rohtraut fell ill, and shethought her daughters had poisoned her with a fig laid down in honey,till the doctor cured her with another such fig, the one poison, if itwere a poison, driving out the other.
PART II