Chapter Three.
On the Threshold of Life.
“I will not dream of him handsome and strong—
My ideal love may be weak and slight;
It matters not to what class he belong,
He would be noble enough in my sight;
But he must be courteous toward the lowly,
To the weak and sorrowful, loving too;
He must be courageous, refined, and holy,
By nature exalted, and firm, and true.”
By the time that Clarice had been six weeks at Oakham she had pretty well made up her mind as to the characters of her companions. The Countess did not belie the estimate formed on first seeing her. The gentle, mournful, loving woman of Clarice’s dreams had vanished, never to be recalled. The girl came to count that a red-letter day on which she did not see her mistress. Towards the Earl her feeling was an odd mixture of reverential liking and compassion. He came far nearer the ideal picture than his wife. His manners were unusually gentle and considerate of others, and he was specially remarkable for one trait very rarely found in the Middle Ages—he was always thoughtful of those beneath him. Another peculiarity he had, not common in his time; he was decidedly a humourist. The comic side even of his own troubles was always patent to him. Yet he was a man of extremely sensitive feeling, as well as of shrewd and delicate perceptions. He lived a most uncomfortable life, and he was quite aware of it. The one person who should have been his truest friend deliberately nursed baseless enmity towards him. The only one whom he loved in all the world hated him with deadly hatred. And there was no cause for it but one—the strongest cause of all—the reason why Cain slew his brother. He was of God, and she was of the world. Yet nothing could have persuaded her that he was not on the high road to perdition, while she was a special favourite of Heaven.
Clarice found Mistress Underdone much what she had expected—a good-natured, sensible supervisor. Her position, too, was not an easy one. She had to submit her sense to the orders of folly, and to sink her good-nature in submission to harshness. But she did her best, steered as delicately as she could between her Scylla and Charybdis, and always gave her girls the benefit of a doubt.
The girls themselves were equally distinct as to character. Olympias was delicate, with a failing of delicate people—a disposition to complaining and fault-finding. Elaine was full of fun, ready to barter any advantage in the future for enjoyment in the present. Diana was caustic, proud of her high connections, which were a shade above those of her companions, and inclined to be scornful towards everything not immediately patent to her comprehension. Roisia, while the most amiable, was also the weakest in character of the four; she was easily led astray by Elaine, easily persuaded to deviate from the right through fear of Diana.
The two priests had also unfolded themselves. The Dominican, Father Bevis, awoke in Clarice a certain amount of liking, not unmixed with rather timorous respect. But he was a grave, silent, undemonstrative man, who gave no encouragement to anything like personal affection, though he was not harsh nor unkind. The Franciscan, Father Miles, was of a type common in his day. The man and the priest were two different characters. Father Miles in the confessional was a stern master; Father Miles at the supper-table was a jovial playfellow. In his eyes, religion was not the breath and salt of life, but something altogether separate from it, and only to be mentioned on a Sunday. It was a bundle of ceremonies, not a living principle. To Father Bevis, on the contrary, religion was everything or nothing. If it had anything to do with a man at all, it must pervade his thoughts and his life. It was the leaven which leavened the whole lump; the salt whose absence left all unsavoury and insipid; the breath, which virtually was identical with life. One mistake Father Bevis made, a very natural mistake to a man who had been repressed, misunderstood; and disliked, as he had been ever since he could remember—he did not realise sufficiently that warmth was a necessity of life, and that young creatures more especially required a certain brooding tenderness to develop their faculties. No one had ever given him love but God; and he was too apt to suppose that religion could be fostered only in that way which had cherished his own. His light burned bright to Godward, but it was not sufficiently visible to men.
Clarice La Theyn had by this time discovered that there were other people in the household beyond those already mentioned. The Earl had four squires of the body, and the Countess two pages in waiting, beside a meaner crowd of dressers, sewers, porters, messengers, and all kinds of officials. The squires and the pages were the only ones who came much in contact with the bower-maidens.
Both the pages were boys of about fifteen, of whom Osbert was quiet and sedate for a boy, while Jordan was espiègle and full of mischievous tricks. The squires demand longer notice.
Reginald de Echingham was the first to attract Clarice’s notice—a fact which, in Reginald’s eyes, would only have been natural and proper. He was a handsome young man, and no one was better aware of it than himself. His principal virtue lay in a silky moustache, which he perpetually caressed. The Earl called him Narcissus, and he deserved it.
Next came Fulk de Chaucombe, who was about as careless of his personal appearance as Reginald was careful. He looked on his brother squire with ineffable disdain, as a man only fit to hunt out rhymes for sonnets, and hold skeins of silk for ladies. Call him a man! thought Master Fulk, with supreme contempt. Fulk’s notion of manly occupations centred in war, with an occasional tournament by way of dessert.
Third on the list was Vivian Barkworth. To Clarice, at least, he was a perplexity. He was so chameleon-like that she could not make up her mind about him. He could be extremely attractive when he liked, and he could be just as repellent.
Least frequently of any were her thoughts given to Ademar de Gernet. She considered him at first entirely colourless. He was not talkative; he was neither handsome nor ugly; he showed no special characteristic which would serve to label him. She merely put him on one side, and never thought of him unless she happened to see him.
Her fellow bower-maidens also had their ideas concerning these young gentlemen. Olympias was—or fancied herself—madly in love with the handsome Reginald, on whom Elaine cracked jokes and played tricks, and Diana exhausted all her satire. As to Reginald, he was too deeply in love with himself to be sensible of the attractions of any other person. It struck Clarice as very odd when she found that the weak and gentle Roisia was a timid admirer of the bear-like De Chaucombe. As for Diana, her shafts were levelled impartially at all; but in her inmost heart Clarice fancied that she liked Vivian Barkeworth. Elaine was heart-whole, and plainly showed it.
The Countess had not improved on further acquaintance. She was not only a tyrant, but a capricious one. Not merely was penalty sure to follow on not pleasing her, but it was not easy to say what would please her at any given moment.
“We might as well be in a nunnery!” exclaimed Diana.
“Nay,” said Elaine, “for then we could not get out.”
“Don’t flatter thyself on getting out, pray,” returned Diana. “We shall never get out except by marrying, or really going into a nunnery.”
“For which I am sure I have no vocation,” laughed Elaine. “Oh, no! I shall marry; and won’t I lead my baron a dance!”
“Who is it to be, Elaine?” asked Clarice.
“Ha, chétife! How do I know? The Lady will settle that. I only hope it won’t be a man who puts oil on his hair and scents himself.”
This remark was a side-thrust at Reginald, as Olympias well knew, and she looked reproachfully at Elaine.
“Well, I hope it won’t be one who kills half-a-dozen men every morning before breakfast,” said Diana, making a hit at Fulk.
It was Roisia’s turn to look reproachful. Clarice could not help laughing.
“What dost thou think of our giddy speeches, Heliet?” said she.
Heliet looked up with her bright smile.
“Very like maidens’ fancies,” she said. “For me, I am never like to wed, so I can look on from the outside.”
“But what manner of man shouldst thou fancy, Heliet?”
“Oh ay, do tell us!” cried more than one voice.
“I warrant he’ll be a priest,” said Elaine.
“He will have fair hair and soft manners,” remarked Olympias.
“Nay, he shall have such hair as shall please God,” said Heliet, more gravely. “But he must be gentle and loving, above all to the weak and sorrowful: a true knight, to whom every woman is a holy thing, to be guarded and tended with care. He must put full affiance in God, and love Him supremely: and next, me; and below that, all other. He must not fear danger, yet without fool-hardiness; but he must fear disgrace, and fear and hate sin. He must be true to himself, and must aim at making of himself the best man that ever he can. He must not be afraid of ridicule, or of being thought odd. He must have firm convictions, and be ready to draw sword for them, without looking to see whether other men be on the same side or not. His heart must be open to all misery, his brain to all true and innocent knowledge, his hand ready to redress every wrong not done to himself. For his enemies he must have forgiveness; for his friends, unswerving constancy: for all men, courtesy.”
“And that is thy model man? Ha, jolife!” cried Elaine. “Why, I could not stand a month of him.”
“I am afraid he would be rather soft and flat,” said Diana, with a curl of her lip.
“No, I don’t think that,” answered Roisia. “But I should like to know where Heliet expects to find him.”
“Do give his address, Heliet!” said Elaine, laughing.
“Ah! I never knew but one that answered to that description,” was Heliet’s reply.
“Ha, jolife!” cried Elaine, clapping her hands. “Now for his name! I hope I know him—but I am sure I don’t.”
“You all know His name,” said Heliet, gravely. “How many of us know Him? For indeed, I know of no such man that ever lived, except only Jesus Christ our Lord.”
There was no answer. A hush seemed to have fallen on the whole party, which was at last broken by Olympias.
“Well, but—thou knowest we cannot have Him.”
“Pardon me, I know no such thing,” answered Heliet, in the same soft, grave tone. “Does not the Psalmist say, ‘Portio mea, Domine’? (Note 1) And does not Solomon say, ‘Dilectus meus mihi?’ (Note 2.) Is it not the very glory of His infinitude, that all who are His can have all of Him?”
“Where did Heliet pick up these queer notions?” said Diana under her breath.
“She goes to such extremes!” Elaine whispered back.
“But all that means to go into the cloister,” replied Olympias in a discontented tone.
“Nay,” said Heliet, taking up her crutches, “I hope a few will go to Heaven who do not go into the cloister. But we may rest assured of this, that not one will go there who has not chosen Christ for his portion.”
“Well,” said Diana, calmly, a minute after Heliet had disappeared, “I suppose she means to be a nun! But she might let that alone till she is one.”
“Let what alone?” asked Roisia.
“Oh, all that parson’s talk,” returned Diana. “It is all very well for priests and nuns, but secular people have nothing to do with it.”
“I thought even secular people wanted to go to Heaven,” coolly put in Elaine, not because she cared a straw for the question, but because she delighted in taking the opposite side to Diana.
“Let them go, then!” responded Diana, rather sharply. “They can keep it to themselves, can’t they?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Elaine, laughing. “Some people cannot keep things to themselves. Just look at Olympias, whatever she is doing, how she argues the whole thing out in public. ‘Oh, shall I go or not? Yes, I think I will; no, I won’t, though; yes, but I will; oh, can’t somebody tell me what to do?’”
Elaine’s mimicry was so perfect that Olympias herself joined in the laugh. The last-named damsel carried on all her mental processes in public, instead of presenting her neighbours, as most do, with results only. And when people wear their hearts upon their sleeves, the daws will come and peck at them.
“Now, don’t tease Olympias,” said Roisia good-naturedly.
“Oh, let one have a bit of fun,” said Elaine, “when one lives in a convent of the strictest order.”
“I suspect thou wouldst find a difference if thou wert to enter one,” sneered Diana.
Elaine would most likely have fought out the question had not Mistress Underdone entered at that moment with a plate of gingerbread in her hand smoking hot from the oven.
“Oh, Mistress, I am so hungry!” plaintively observed that young lady.
Mistress Underdone laughed, and set down the plate. “There, part the spice-cake among you,” said she. “And when you be through, I have somewhat to tell you.”
“Tell us now,” said Elaine, as well as a mouthful of gingerbread allowed her to speak.
“Let me see, now—what day is this?” inquired Mistress Underdone.
All the voices answered her at once, “Saint Dunstan’s Eve!” (May 13th).
“So it is. Well—come Saint Botolph, (June 17th) as I have but now learned, we go to Whitehall.”
“Ha, jolife!” cried Diana, Elaine, and Roisia at once.
“Will Heliet go too?” asked Clarice, softly.
“Oh, no; Heliet never leaves Oakham,” responded Olympias.
Mistress Underdone looked kindly at Clarice. “No, Heliet will not go,” she said. “She cannot ride, poor heart.” And the mother sighed, as if she felt the prospective pain of separation.
“But there will be dozens of other maidens,” said Elaine. “There are plenty of girls in the world beside Heliet.”
Clarice was beginning to think there hardly were for her.
“Oh, thou dost not know what thou wilt see at Westminster!” exclaimed Elaine. “The Lord King, and the Lady Queen, and all the Court; and the Abbey, with all its riches, and ever so many maids and gallants. It is delicious beyond description, when the Lady is away visiting some shrine, and she does that nearly every day.”
Roisia’s “Hush!” had come too late.
“I pray you say that again, my mistress!” said the well-known voice of the Lady Margaret in the doorway. “Nay, I will have it.—Fetch me the rod, Agatha.—Now then, minion, what saidst? Thou caitiff giglot! If I had thee not in hand, that tongue of thine should bring thee to ruin. What saidst, hussy?”
And Elaine had to repeat the unlucky words, with the birch in prospect, and immediately afterwards in actuality.
“I will lock thee up when I go visiting shrines!” said the Countess with her last stroke. “Agatha, remember when we are at Westminster that I have said so.”
“Ay, Lady,” observed Mistress Underdone, composedly.
And the Lady Margaret, throwing down the birch, stalked away, and left the sobbing Elaine to resume her composure at her leisure.
In a vaulted upper chamber of the Palace of Westminster, on a bright morning in June, four persons were seated. Three, who were of the nobler sex, were engaged in converse; the last, a lady, sat apart with her embroidery in modest silence. They were near relatives, for the men were respectively husband, brother-in-law, and uncle of the woman, and they were the most prominent members of the royal line of England, with one who did not belong to it.
Foremost of the group was the King. He was foremost in more senses than one, for, as is well known, Edward the First, like Saul, was higher than any of his people. Moreover, he was as spare as he was tall, which made him look almost gigantic. His forehead was large and broad, his features handsome and regular, but marred by that perpetual droop in his left eyelid which he had inherited from his father. Hair and complexion, originally fair, had been bronzed by his Eastern campaigns till the crisp curling hair was almost black, and the delicate tint had acquired a swarthy hue. He had a nose inclining to the Roman type, a broad chest, agile arms, and excessively long legs. His dark eyes were soft when he was in a good temper, but fierce as a tiger’s when roused to anger; and His Majesty’s temper was—well, not precisely angelic. (Note 3.) It was like lightning, in being as sudden and fierce, but it did not resemble that natural phenomenon in disappearing as quickly as it had come. On the contrary, Edward never forgot and hardly forgave an injury. His abilities were beyond question, and, for his time, he was an unusually independent and original thinker. His moral character, however, was worse than is commonly supposed, though it did not descend to the lowest depths it reached until after the death of his fair and faithful Leonor.
The King’s brother Edmund was that same Earl of Lancaster whom we have already seen at Oakham. He was a man of smaller intellectual calibre than his royal brother, but of much pleasanter disposition. Extreme gentleness was his principal characteristic, as it has been that of all our royal Edmunds, though in some instances it degenerated into excessive weakness. This was not the case with the Earl of Lancaster. His great kindness of heart is abundantly attested by his own letters and his brother’s State papers.
William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, was the third member of the group, and he was the uncle of the royal brothers, being a son of their grandmother’s second marriage with Hugh de Lusignan, Count de La Marche. Though he made a deep mark upon his time, yet his character is not easy to fathom beyond two points—that his ability had in it a little element of craft, and that he took reasonable care of Number One.
Over the head of the lady who sat in the curule chair, quietly embroidering, twenty-five years had passed since she had been styled by a poet, “the loveliest lady in all the land.” She was hardly less even now, when her fifty years were nearly numbered; when, unseen by any earthly eyes, her days were drawing to their close, and the angel of death stood close beside her, ready to strike before six months should be fulfilled. Certainly, according to modern ideas of beauty, never was a queen fairer than Leonor the Faithful, and very rarely has there been one as fair. And—more unusual still—she was as good as she was beautiful. The worst loss in all her husband’s life was the loss of her.
So far from seeing any sorrow looming in the future was King Edward at this moment, that he was extremely jubilant over a project which he had just brought to a successful issue.
“There!” said he, rubbing his hands in supreme satisfaction, “that parchment settles the business. When both my brother of Scotland and I are gone, our children will reign over one empire, king and queen of both. Is not that worth living for?”
“Soit!” (Be it so) ejaculated De Valence, shrugging his Provençal shoulders. “A few acres of bare moss and a handful of stags, to say nothing of the barbarians who dwell up in those misty regions. A fine matter surely to clap one’s hands over!”
“Ah, fair uncle, you never travelled in Scotland,” interposed the gentle Lancaster, before the King could blaze up, “and you know not what sort of country it is. From what I have heard, it would easily match your land in respect of beauty.”
“Match Poitou? or Provence? Cousin, you must have taken leave of your senses. You were not born on the banks of the Isère, or you would not chatter such treason as that.”
“Truly no, fair Uncle, for I was born in the City of London, just beyond,” said Lancaster, with a good-humoured laugh; “and, verily, that would rival neither Scotland nor Poitou, to say nothing of Dauphiné and Provence. The goddess of beauty was not in attendance when I was born.”
Perhaps few would have ventured on that assertion except himself. Edmund of Lancaster was among the most handsome of our princes.
“Beshrew you both!” cried King Edward, unfraternally; “wherever will these fellows ramble with their tongues? Who said anything about beauty? I care not, I, if the maiden Margaret were the ugliest lass that ever tied a kerchief, so long as she is the heiress of Scotland. Ned has beauty enough and to spare; let him stare in the glass if he cannot look at his wife.”
The Queen looked up with an amused expression, and would, perhaps, have spoken, had not the tapestry been lifted by some person unseen, and a little boy of six years old bounded into the room.
No wonder that the fire in the King’s eyes died into instant softness. It would have been a wonder if the parents had not been proud of that boy, for he was one of the loveliest children on whom human eye ever rested. Did it ever cross the minds of that father and mother that the kindest deed they could have done to that darling child would have been to smother him in his cradle? Had the roll of his life been held up before them at that moment, they would have counted only thirty-seven years, written within and without in lamentation, and mourning, and woe.
King Edward lifted his little heir upon his knee.
“Look here, Ned,” said he. “Seest yonder parchment?”
The blue eyes opened a little, and the fair curls shook with a nod of affirmation.
“What is it, thinkest?”
A shake of the pretty little head was the reply.
“Thy Cousin Margaret is coming to dwell with thee. That parchment will bring her.”
“How old is she?” asked the Prince.
“But just a year younger than thou.”
“Is she nice?”
The King laughed. “How can I tell thee? I never saw her.”
“Will she play with us?”
“I should think she will. She is just between thee and Beatrice.”
“Beatrice is only a baby!” remarked the Prince disdainfully. Six years old is naturally scornful of four.
“Not more of a baby than thou,” said his uncle Lancaster, playfully.
“But she’s a girl, and I’m a man!” cried the insulted little Prince.
King Edward, excessively amused, set his boy down on the floor. “There, run to thy mother,” said he. “Thou wilt be a man one of these days, I dare say; but not just yet, Master Ned.”
And no angel voice whispered to one of them that it would have been well for that child if he had never been a man, nor that ere he was six months older, the mother, whose death was a worse calamity to him than to any other, and the little Norwegian lassie to whom he was now betrothed, would pass almost hand in hand into the silent land. Three months later, Margaret, Princess of Norway and Queen of Scotland, set sail from her father’s coast for her mother’s kingdom, whence she was to travel to England, and be brought up under the tender care of the royal Leonor as its future queen. But one of the sudden and terrible storms of the North Sea met her ere she reached the shore of Scotland. She just lived to be flung ashore at Kirkwall, in the Orkneys, and there, in the pitying hands of the fishers’ wives, the child breathed out her little life, having lived five years, and reigned for nearly as long. Who of us, looking back to the probable lot that would have awaited her in England, shall dare to pity that little child?
Note 1. “Thou art my portion, O Lord.”—Psalm 119, verse 57.
Note 2. “My beloved is mine.”—Canticles 2, verse 16.
Note 3. Two anecdotes may be given which illustrate this in a manner almost comical; the first has been published more than once, the latter has not to my knowledge. When his youngest daughter Elizabeth was married to the Earl of Hereford in 1302, the King, annoyed by some unfortunate remark of the bride, snatched her coronet from her head and threw it into the fire, nor did the Princess recover it undamaged. In 1305, writing to John de Fonteyne, the physician of his second wife, Marguerite of France, who was then ill of small-pox, the King warns him not on any account to allow the Queen to exert herself until she has completely recovered, “and if you do,” adds the monarch in French, of considerably more force than elegance, and not too suitable for exact quotation, “you shall pay for it!”