Chapter Five.
Building a Fresh Castle.
“Oh, had I wist, afore I kissed,
That loue had been sae ill to win,
I’d locked my heart wi’ a key o’ gowd,
And pinned it wi’ a siller pin.”—Old Ballad.
On an afternoon early in December, the Countess sat among her bower-women at work. Roisia was almost in tears, for she had just been sharply chidden for choosing too pale a shade of blue. A little stir at the door made all look up, and they saw Father Bevis. All rose to their feet in an instant, the Countess dropping on her knees, and entreating the priest’s blessing. He gave it, but as if his thoughts were far away.
“Lady, my Lord hath sent me to you with tidings. May God grant they be not the worst tidings for England that we have heard for many a day! A messenger is come from the North, bringing news that the Lady Alianora the Queen lieth dead in the marsh lands of Lincolnshire.”
It was a worse loss to England than any there knew. Yet they knew enough to draw a cry of horror and sorrow from the lips of all those that heard the news. And a fortnight later, on the 17th of December, they all stood at Charing Cross, to see the funeral procession wind down from the north road, and set down the black bier for its last momentary rest on the way to Westminster.
It is rather singular that the two items which alone the general reader usually remembers of this good Queen’s history should be two points distinctly proved by research to be untrue. Leonor did not suck the poison from her husband’s arm—a statement never made until a hundred and fifty years after her death, and virtually disproved by the testimony of an eye-witness who makes no allusion to it, but who tells us instead that she behaved like a very weak woman instead of a very brave one, giving way to hysterical screams, and so distressing the sufferer that he bade four of his knights to carry her out of the room. Again, Edward’s affectionate regret did not cause the erection of the famous Eleanor Crosses wherever the bier rested on its journey. Leonor herself desired their erection, and left money for it in her will.
The domestic peace of the royal house died with her who had stood at its head for nineteen years. To her son, above all others, her loss was simply irreparable. The father and son were men of very different tastes and proclivities; and the former never understood the latter. In fact, Edward the Second was a man who did not belong to his century; and such men always have a hard lot. His love of quiet, and hatred of war, were, in the eyes of his father, spiritless meanness; while his musical tastes and his love of animals went beyond womanish weakness, and were looked upon as absolute vices. But perhaps to the nobles the worst features of his character were two which, in the nineteenth century, would entitle him to respect. He was extremely faithful in friendship, and he had a strong impatience of etiquette. He loved to associate with his people, to mix in their joys and sorrows, to be as one of them. His favourite amusement was to row down the Thames on a summer evening, with music on board, and to chat freely with the lieges who came down in their barges, occasionally, and much to his own amusement, buying cabbages and other wares from them. We should consider such actions indicative of a kindly disposition and of simplicity of taste. But in the eyes of his contemporaries they were inexpressibly low. And be it remembered that it was not a question of associating with persons of more or less education, whose mental standard might be unequal to his own. There was no mental standard whereby to measure any one in the thirteenth century. All (with a very few exceptions, and those chiefly among the clergy) were uneducated alike. The moral standard looked upon war and politics as the only occupations meet for a prince, and upon hunting and falconry as the only amusements sufficiently noble. A man who, like Edward, hated war, and had no fancy for either sport or politics, was hardly a man in the eyes of a mediaeval noble.
The hardest treatment to which Edward was subjected, whether from his father in youth or from his people at a later time, arose out of that touching constancy which was his greatest virtue. Perhaps he did not always choose his friends well; he was inclined to put rather too much trust in his fellow creatures; and Hugh Le Despenser the elder may have been grasping and mean, and Piers Gavestone too extravagant. Yet we must remember that we read their characters only as depicted by the pens of men who hated them—of men who were simply unable to conceive that two persons might be drawn together by mutual taste for some elevated and innocent pursuit. The most wicked motives imaginable were recklessly suggested for the attachment which Edward showed for these chosen friends—who were not of noble origin, and had no handles to their names till he conferred them.
It is only through a thick mist of ignorance and prejudice that we of this day can see the character of Edward the Second. We read it only in the pages of monks who hated their Lollard King—in the angry complaints of nobles who were jealous that he listened to and bestowed gifts on other men than themselves. But we do see some faint glimpses of the Edward that really was, in the letter-book but recently dug out of a mass of State papers; in the pages of De La Moor, (Note 1), the only chronicler of his deeds who did not hate him, and who, as his personal attendant, must have known more of him in a month than the monks could have learned in a century; and last, not least, in that touching Latin poem in which, during the sad captivity which preceded his sadder death, he poured out his soul to God, the only Friend whom he had left in all the universe.
“Oh, who that heard how once they praised my name,
Could think that from those tongues these slanders came?
... I see Thy rod, and, Lord, I am content.
Weave Thou my life until the web is spun;
Chide me, O Father, till Thy will be done:
Thy child no longer murmurs to obey;
He only sorrows o’er the past delay.
Lost is my realm; yet I shall not repine,
If, after all, I win but that of Thine.”
(See Note 2.)
To a character such as this, the loss of his chief friend and only reliable intercessor, when just emerging from infancy into boyhood, was a loss for which nothing could atone. It proved itself so in those dreary after-years of perpetual misunderstandings and severities on the part of his father, who set him no good example, and yet looked on the son whose tastes were purer than his own as an instance of irredeemable depravity. The easiest thing in the world to do is one against which God has denounced a woe—to put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.
Another item of sorrowful news reached London with the coffin of Queen Leonor. It was the death of the baby Queen of Scotland, by whose betrothal to Prince Edward the King had vainly hoped to fuse the northern and southern kingdoms into one. It left Scotland in a condition of utter distraction, with no less than eleven different claimants for the Crown, setting up claims good, bad, and indifferent; but every one of them persuaded that all the others had not an inch of ground to stand on, and that he was the sole true and rightful inheritor.
The only claimants who really had a shadow of right may be reduced to three. If the old primitive custom of Scotland was to be regarded—a custom dear to all Celtic nations—by which illegitimate children were considered to have an equal right to the succession with the legitimate ones, then there could be no question that the heir was Patrick de Galithlys, son of Henry, the natural son of Alexander the Second. But if not—and in this respect undoubtedly the custom had become obsolete—the struggle rested between John Baliol and Robert Bruce, of whom the first was the son of Dervorgoyl, daughter of Margaret, eldest daughter of David Earl of Huntingdon, brother of King William the Lion; while the latter was the son of Isabel, the second daughter of David. Every reader knows that the question was submitted by consent of the Scottish nobles to Edward the First as arbitrator, and that he gave his decision in favour of Baliol. In other words, he gave it against the existing law both of England and Scotland, which did not recognise representation, and according to which the son of the second sister ought to have been preferred to the grandson of the elder.
The anxiety of our kings to bring in this law of representation is a curious psychological fact. Richard the First tried to do it by will, in leaving the crown to his nephew Arthur; but the law was too strong for him, and the rightful heir succeeded—his brother John. Edward the First contrived to abrogate the law, so far as Scotland was concerned, a hundred years later. And eighty years after him Edward the Third tried again to alter the English law of succession, and this time the experiment succeeded. But its success was due mainly to two reasons—the personal popularity of the dead Prince whose son was thus lifted into the line of succession, while the rightful heir was extremely unpopular; and the fact that the disinherited heir gave full consent and assistance to the change in the law.
The knights and squires of the Earl of Cornwall’s household were gathered together on the balcony which faced the river. One only was absent, Piers Ingham, who was occupied in a more interesting manner, as will presently be seen. His colleague, Sir Lambert Aylmer, was holding forth in a lively manner for the benefit of the four squires, who were listening to him with various degrees of attention. Reginald de Echingham could never spare much of that quality from his admirable self, and De Chaucombe was an original thinker, who did not purchase ready-made ideas from other people. Barkeworth invariably agreed with the last speaker in public, but kept his private views an inscrutable mystery; while all that could be said of Gernet’s notions was that he had “un grand talent pour le silence.”
To this quartette Sir Lambert was explaining his forecast of the political weather. The young knight had a great fancy for airing his politics, and an unwavering conviction of the infallibility of his judgment. If Sir Lambert was to be believed, what King Edward would undoubtedly do was to foment civil war in Scotland, until all the rival male claimants had destroyed each other. He would then marry the daughter of one of them, and annex Scotland as her appanage. All being smooth in that quarter, the King would next undertake a pilgrimage to Palestine, drive the Saracens out, and confer that country on one of his sons-in-law. He would then carry fire and sword through Borussia, Lithuania, and other heathen kingdoms in the north, subdue them all, put a few more sons-in-law in possession as tributary governors, and being by that time an old man, would then return to Westminster to end his days in peace, a new Alexander, and to leave a magnificent empire to his son.
“Easier said than done,” growled De Chaucombe, in his beard.
“Charming!” observed De Echingham, caressing his pet moustache.
“A lovely prospect, indeed,” said De Barkeworth, with a bow, in a tone so impartially suspended between conviction and cynicism that nobody could tell which had dictated it. “I should like to win my spurs in Lithuania.”
“Win thy spurs!” muttered De Chaucombe again. “There are no spurs for carpet-knights (Note 3) in the wardrobe of the Future.”
“I think knights should have golden spurs, not gilt ones—don’t you?” inquired De Echingham.
“Puppy!” sneered De Chaucombe. “If ever either are on thy heels it will be a blunder of somebody’s making.”
“Is it necessary to quarrel?” asked Gernet, speaking for the first time.
“Oh, I trust I have more generosity than to quarrel with him,” rather contemptuously returned De Echingham, who, as every one present knew, had as little physical courage as any girl.
“Make thyself easy,” was the answer of De Chaucombe, as he walked away. “I should not think of running the risk.”
“What risk?” demanded Barkeworth, laughing. De Chaucombe looked back over his shoulder, and discharged a Parthian dart.
“The risk of turning my good Damascus blade on a toad,” said he, to the great amusement of Barkeworth.
De Chaucombe went to the end of the balcony, descended the steps which led to the ground floor, and came on a second terrace, also fronting the river. As he turned a corner of the house he suddenly confronted two people, who were walking slowly along the terrace, and conversing in hushed tones. Sir Piers Ingham was evidently and deeply interested, his head slightly bowed towards Clarice who was as earnestly engaged in the dissection of one of the few leaves which Christmas had left fluttering on the garden bushes. As De Chaucombe approached she looked up with a startled air, and blushed to her eyes.
De Chaucombe muttered something indistinct which might pass for “Good evening,” and resumed his path rather more rapidly than before.
“So the wind blows from that direction!” he said to himself. “Well, it does not matter a straw to me. But what our amiable mistress will say to the fair Clarice, when she comes to know of it, is another question. I do believe that, if she had made up her mind to a match between them, she would undo it again, if she thought they wished it. It would be just like her.”
It had never occurred to Clarice to suppose that she did anything wrong in thus disobeying point blank the known orders of her mistress that the bower-maidens were to hold no intercourse whatever with the gentlemen of the household. She knew perfectly well that if the Countess saw her talking to Sir Piers, she would be exceedingly angry; and she knew that her parents fully intended and expected her to obey her mistress as she would themselves. Poor Clarice’s code of morals looked upon discovery, not disobedience, as the thing to be dreaded; and while she would have recoiled with horror from the thought of unfaithfulness to her beloved, she looked with absolute complacency on the idea of disloyalty to the mistress whom she by no means loved. How could she do otherwise when she had never been taught better?
Clarice’s standard was loyauté d’amour. It is the natural standard of all men, the only difference being in the king whom they set up. A vast number are loyal to themselves only, for it is themselves whom alone they love. Fewer are loyal to some human being; and poor humanity being a very fallible thing, they often make sad shipwreck. Very few indeed—in comparison of the mass—are loyal to the King who claims and has a right to their hearts’ best affections. And Clarice was not one of these.
Inside the house the Countess and Mistress Underdone were very busy indeed. Before them, spread over forms and screens, lay piles of material for clothing—linen, serge, silk, and crape, of many colours. On a leaf-table at the side of the room a number of gold and silver ornaments were displayed. Furs were heaped upon the bed, boots and loose slippers stood in a row in one corner; while Mistress Underdone was turning over for her mistress’s inspection a quantity of embroidered neckerchiefs.
“Now, let me see,” said the Countess, peremptorily. “Measure off linen for four gowns, Agatha—two of brown and two of red. Serge for two—the dark green. One silk will be enough, and one of crape.”
“How many ells the gown does my Lady choose to allow?” asked Mistress Underdone, taking an ell-wand from the table.
“Four,” said the Countess, curtly. This was rather miserly measure, four ells and a third being the usual reckoning; but Mistress Underdone measured and cut in silence.
“Thou mayest allow a third more for the silk and crape,” said the Countess, in a fit of unusual generosity.
Mistress Underdone finished her measuring, laying each piece of material neatly folded on the last, until the table held a tall heap of them.
“Now for hoods,” pursued the Countess. “Black cloth for two, lined with cats’ fur; russet for two more. Capes for outdoor wear—two of the green serge; one of black cloth lined with cats’ fur; one of silk. Four linen wimples; two pairs of cloth boots, two of slippers; two corsets; three of those broidered kerchiefs, one better than the others; four pairs of hosen. Measure off also twenty-four ells of linen cloth.”
“Of what price, if it please my Lady?”
“Fivepence the ell. And the boots of sixpence a pair. What did that green serge cost?”
“Threepence the ell, my Lady.”
“That is monstrous. Have I no cheaper? Twopence would be good enough for her.”
“If it please my Lady, there is only that coarse grey serge at three halfpence the ell, which was bought for the cook-maids.”
“Humph! I suppose that would scarcely do,” said the Countess, in a tone which sounded as if she wished it would. “Well, then—those ornaments. She must have a silver fibula, I suppose; and a copper-gilt one for common. What made thee put out all those other things? That is enough for her. If she wants a silver chain, her husband must give it her; I shall not. As to rings and necklaces, they are all nonsense—not fit for such as she.”
“Would my Lady think proper to allow a dovecote with silver pins?”
The dovecote was a head-dress, a kind of round caul of gold or silver network, secured by gold or silver pins fastened in the hair.
“Not I. Let her husband give her such fooleries.”
“And may I request to know what my Lady allows for making the garments?”
“Three halfpence each.”
“Might I be pardoned if I remind my Lady that the usual price is twopence each?”
“For me, perhaps; not for her.”
Mistress Underdone went on measuring the linen in silence.
“There, that finishes for Clarice,” said the Countess. “Now for Diana. She may have a silver chain in addition, two of the best kerchiefs, and—no, that is enough. Otherwise let her have just the same.”
“If my Lady would graciously indulge her servant with permission to ask it, do the maidens know yet what is to befall them?”
“No. I shall tell them on Sunday. Time enough.”
And the Countess left Mistress Underdone to finish the work by herself.
“On Sunday! Only two days beforehand!” said Agatha Underdone to herself. “Diana will stand it. She is one that would not care much for anything of that kind, and she will rule the house. But Clarice! If she should have given her heart elsewhere!—and I have fancied, lately, that she has given it somewhere. That poor child!”
“But how can we?” queried Clarice. “If I were to speak to the Lady—even if I dared—I doubt—”
“I do not doubt, sweetheart,” replied Sir Piers. “No, the path must be rather mere winding than that, though I confess I hate tortuous paths. Father Miles is the only person who has any influence with the Lady, and Father Bevis is the only one who has any with him.”
“But Father Bevis would have no sympathy with a love-story.”
“I am not sure that he would. But my Lord will, I know; and Father Bevis will listen to him. Leave this business to me, my fair Clarice. If I can obtain my Lord’s ear this evening after vespers, and I think I can, we shall soon have matters in train; and I have a fine hawk for Father Miles, which will put him in a good humour. Now, farewell, for I hear the Lady’s voice within.”
The lovers parted hastily, and Clarice went in to attire herself for mass. For any one of her maidens to be absent from that ceremony would have been a terrible offence in the eyes of the Countess; nor would any less excuse than serious illness have availed to avert her displeasure. Dinner followed mass, and a visit to the shrine of Saint Edward, concluded by vespers, occupied the remainder of the afternoon. There was half an hour to spare before supper, and the girls were chatting together in their usual “bower,” or boudoir, when, to their surprise, the Countess entered.
“I have ado but with two of you,” she said, as she seated herself.
Naturally, the girls supposed that some penalty was about to befall those two. How had they offended her? and which of them were the offenders? To displease the Countess, as they all knew, was so extremely easy, that not one of them was prepared for the next sentence.
“Two of you are to be wed on Tuesday.”
This was a bombshell. And it was the more serious because they were aware that from this sentence there was no appeal. Troubled eyes, set in white faces, hurriedly sought each other.
Was it from sheer thoughtlessness, or from absolute malice, or even from a momentary feeling of compassion towards the two who were to be sacrificed, that the Countess made a long pause after each sentence?
“Diana Quappelad,” she said.
Olympias, Roisia, and Clarice drew a sigh of relief. There were just half the chances against each that there had been. Diana stood forward, with a slight flush, but apparently not much concerned.
“Thou art to wed with Master Fulk de Chaucombe, and thy bridegroom will be knighted on the wedding-day. I shall give thee thy gear and thy wedding-feast. Mistress Underdone will show thee the gear.”
The first momentary expression of Diana’s face had been disappointment. It passed in an instant, and one succeeded which was divided between pleasurable excitement and amusement. She courtesied very low, and thanked the Countess, as of course was expected of her.
Roisia stood behind, with blank face and clasped hands. There might be further pain in store, but pleasure for her there could now be none. The Countess quite understood the dumb show, but she made no sign.
“Clarice La Theyn.”
The girl stood out, listening for the next words as though her life hung on them.
“I shall also give thee thy gear, and thy squire will be knighted on the wedding-day.”
The Countess was turning away as though she had said all. Clarice had heard enough to make her feel as if life were not worth having. A squire who still required knighthood was not Piers Ingham. Did it matter who else it was? But she found, the next moment, that it might.
“Would my Lady suffer me to let Clarice know whom she is to wed?” gently suggested Mistress Underdone.
“Oh, did I not mention it?” carelessly responded the Countess, turning back to Clarice. “Vivian Barkeworth.”
She paused an instant for the courtesy and thanks which she expected. But she got a good deal more than she expected. With a passionate sob that came from her very heart, Clarice fell at the feet of the Lady Margaret.
“What is all this fuss about?” exclaimed her displeased mistress. “I never heard such ado about nothing.”
Her displeasure, usually feared above all things, was nothing to Clarice in that terrible instant. She sobbed forth that she loved elsewhere—she was already troth-plight.
“Nonsense!” said the Countess, sharply. “What business hadst thou with such foolery, unknown to me? All maidens are wed by orders from their superiors. Why shouldst thou be an exception?”
“Oh, have you no compassion?” cried poor Clarice, in her agony. “Lady, did you never love?”
All present were intently watching the face of the Countess, in the hope of seeing some sign of relenting. But when this question was asked, the stern lips grew more set and stern than ever, and something like fire flashed out of the usually cold blue-grey eyes.
“Who—I?” she exclaimed. “Thanks be to all the saints right verily, nay. I never had ado with any such disgraceful folly. From mine earliest years I have ever desired to be an holy sister, and never to see a man’s face. Get up, girl; it is of no use to kneel to me. There was no kindness shown to me; my wishes were never considered; why should thine be? I was made to array myself for my bridal, to the very uprooting and destruction of all that I most loved and desired. Ah! if my Lord and father had lived, it would not have been so; he always encouraged my vocation. He said love was unhappy, and I thought it was scandalous. No, Clarice; I have no compassion upon lovers. There never ought to be any such thing. Let it be as I have said.”
And away stalked the Countess, looking more grey, square, and angular than ever.
Note 1. De La Moor is the only chronicler in whose pages it is possible to recognise the Edward of the letter-book, in which all his letters are copied for the thirty-third year of his father’s reign—1304-5.
Note 2. Barnes’s Edward the Third. I must in honesty confess that I have taken the liberty of smoothing Dr Barnes’s somewhat rugged translation.
Note 3. A carpet-knight was one whose heroism lay more in rhetorical visions addressed to his partner in the intervals of dancing than in hard blows given and taken in the field.