Chapter Eight.
In the Dark.
“I trust Thee, though I cannot see
Thy light upon my pathway shine;
However dark, Lord, let it be
Thy way, not mine!”
“If it stand with your good liking, may a man have speech of Sir Piers de Rievaulx?”
It was a tall youth who asked the question, and he stood under the porch of a large Gothic house, on the banks of the Thames near Westminster. The night was wet and dark, and it was the second of April 1236.
“And who art thou, that would speak with the knight my master?”
“What I have to say to him is of consequence. Who I may be does not so much matter.”
“Well said, my young cockerel! Thou crowest fairly.” The porter laughed as he set down the lantern which he had been holding up to the youth’s face, and took down a large key from the peg on which it hung. “What shall I say to my master touching thee?”
“Say, if it please you, that one would speak with him that hath important tidings, which closely concern the King’s welfare.”
“They were rash folks that trusted a slip like thee with important tidings.”
“None trusted me.”
“Eavesdropping, eh? Well, thou canst keep thine own counsel, lad as thou art. I will come back to thee shortly.”
It was nearly half an hour before the porter returned; but the youth never changed his position, as he stood leaning against the side of the porch.
“Come in,” said the porter, holding the wicket open. “Sir Piers will see thee. I told him, being sent of none, thou wert like to have no token.”
The unknown visitor followed the porter in silence through the paved courtyard, up a flight of stone steps, and into a small chamber, hung with blue. Here, at a table covered with parchments, sat one of King Henry’s ministers, Sir Piers de Rievaulx, son of the Bishop of Winchester, the worst living foe of Earl Hubert of Kent. He was on the younger side of middle age, and was only not quite so bad a man as the father from whom he inherited his dark gleaming eyes, lithe quick motions, intense prejudices, and profound artfulness of character.
“Christ save you! Come forward,” said Sir Piers. “Shut the door, Oliver, and let none enter till I bid it.—Now, who art thou, and what wouldst thou with me?”
“I am Delecresse, son of Abraham of Norwich.”
“Ha! A Jew, of course. Thy face matches thy name. Now, thy news?”
“Will my noble knight be pleased to tell his unworthy servant if he likes the taste of revenge?”
Delecresse despised himself for the words he used. A son of Israel to humble himself thus to one of the Goyim! But it was expedient that the “creeping thing” should be flattered and gratified, in order to induce him to act as a tool.
“Decidedly!” replied Sir Piers, looking fixedly at Delecresse.
“Your Honour hates Sir Hubert of Kent, or I am mistaken?”
“Ha, pure foy! Worse than I hate the Devil.”
The Devil was very near to both at that moment.
“If I help you to be revenged on him, will you pay me by giving me my revenge on another?”
Delecresse had dropped alike his respectful words and subservient manner, and spoke up now, as man to man.
“‘Turn about is fair play,’ I suppose,” said Sir Piers. “If thou seek not revenge on any friend of mine, I will.”
“I seek it on Sir Richard de Clare, the young Earl of Gloucester.”
“He is no friend of mine!” said Sir Piers, between his teeth. “His father married the woman I wanted. I should rather enjoy it than otherwise.”
“The Lady his mother yet lives.”
“What is that to me? She is an old hag. What do I care for her now?”
Delecresse felt staggered for a moment. Bad as he was in one respect, he was capable of personal attachment as well as of hatred; and Sir Piers’ delicate notions of love rather astonished him. But Sir Piers was very far from being the only man who was—or is—incapable of entertaining any others. Delecresse soon recovered himself. He was too anxious to get his work done, to quarrel with his tools. It was gratifying, too, to discover that Sir Piers was not a likely man to be troubled by any romantic scruples about breaking the heart of the young Margaret. Delecresse himself had been unpleasantly haunted by those, and had with some difficulty succeeded in crushing them down and turning the key on them. Belasez’s pleading looks, and Margaret’s bright, pretty face, persisted in recurring to his memory in a very provoking manner. Sir Piers was evidently the man who would help him to forget them.
“Well!—go on,” said the Minister, when Delecresse hesitated.
“I have good reason to believe that Sir Richard is on the point of wedding the Damsel Margaret de Burgh; nay, I am not sure if they are not married clandestinely. Could not this be used as a handle to ruin both of them?”
The two pairs of eyes met, and a smile which was anything but angelic broke over the handsome countenance of Sir Piers.
“Not a bad idea for one so young,” he remarked. “Is it thine own?”
“My own,” answered Delecresse, shortly.
“I could make some use of thee in the Kings service.”
“Thank you,” said Delecresse, rather drily. “I do not wish to have more to do with the Devil and his angels than I find necessary.”
Sir Piers broke into a laugh. “Neat, that! I suppose I am one of the angels? But I am surprised to hear such a sentiment from a Jew.”
Nothing is more inconsistent than sin. In his anxiety to gratify his revenge, Delecresse was enduring patiently at the hands of Sir Piers far worse insults than that over which he had so long brooded from Richard de Clare. He kept silence.
“It really is a pity,” observed Sir Piers, complacently surveying Delecresse, “that such budding talent as thine should be cast away upon trade. Thou wouldst make far more money in secret service. It would be easy to change thy name. Keep thy descent quiet, and be ready to eat humble-pie for a short time. There is no saying to what thou mightest rise in this world.”
“And the other?” Delecresse felt himself an unfledged cherub by the side of Sir Piers.
“Bah!” Sir Piers snapped his fingers. “What do such as we know about that? There is no other world. If there were, the chances are that both of us would find ourselves very uncomfortable there. We had better stay in this as long as we can.”
“As you please, Sir Knight. I am not ready to sell my soul for gold.”
“Only for revenge, eh? Well, that’s not much better. There are a few scruples about thee, my promising lad, which thou wouldst find it necessary to sacrifice in the service. Some soft-hearted mother or sister, I imagine, hath instilled them into thee. Women are always after some mischief. I wish there were none.”
What did Delecresse know of the momentary pang of sensation which had pricked that hard, seared heart, as for one second memory brought before him the loving face of a little child, over whose fair head for thirty years the churchyard daisies had been blooming? Could he hear the tender, pleading voice of the baby sister, begging dear Piers not to hurt her pet kitten, and she would give him all the sweetmeats Aunt Theffania sent her? Such moments do come to the hardest hearts: and they usually leave them harder. Before Delecresse had found an answer, Sir Piers was himself again.
“Thou hast done me a service, boy: and I will take care that thy friend Sir Richard feels the goad as well as my beloved Earl Hubert. Take this piece of gold. Nay, it will not burn thee. ’Tis only earthly metal. Thou wilt not? As thou list. The saints keep thee! Ah,—I forgot! Thou dost not believe in the saints. Bah! no more do I. Only words, lad,—all words. Fare thee well.”
A few minutes later Delecresse found himself in the street. He was conscious of a very peculiar and highly uncomfortable mixture of feelings, as if one part of his nature were purely angelic, and the other absolutely diabolical. He felt almost as if he had come direct from a personal interview with Satan, and his spirit had been soiled and degraded by the contact. Yet was he any better than Sir Piers, except in lack of experience and opportunity? He leaned over the parapet as he passed, and watched the dark river flowing silently below.
“I wish I had not done it!” came in muttered accents from his lips at last. “I do almost, really, wish I had not done it!”
And then, as the reader knows, he went home and snubbed his sister.
Abraham could get nothing out of his son except some scornful platitudes concerning the “creeping creatures.” Not a shred of information would Delecresse give. He was almost rude to his father—a very high crime in the eyes of a Jew: but it was because he was so intensely dissatisfied with himself.
“O my son, light of mine eyes, what hast thou done!” mournfully ejaculated old Abraham, as he resigned the attempt to influence or reason with Delecresse.
“Done?—made those vile Gentiles wince, I hope!” retorted Licorice. “I hate every man, woman, and child among them. I should like to bake them all in the oven!”
And she shut the door of that culinary locality with a bang. Belasez looked up with saddened eyes, and her mother noticed them.
“Abraham, son of Ursel,” she said that night, when she supposed her daughter to be safely asleep in the inner chamber, “when dost thou mean to have this maiden wedded?”
“I do not know, wife. Would next week do?”
Next week was always Abraham’s time for doing every thing.
“If thou wilt. The gear has all been ready long ago. There is only the feast to provide.”
“Then I suppose I had better speak to Hamon,” said Abraham, in the tone of a man who would have been thankful if allowed to let it alone. “It is time, I take it?”
“It is far past the time, husband,” said Licorice. “That girl’s heart, as I told thee, is gone after the creeping things. Didst thou not see the look in her eyes to-night? Like to like—blood to blood! It made mine boil to behold it.”
“Forbid it, God of our fathers!” fervently ejaculated Abraham. “Licorice, dost thou think the child has ever guessed—”
“Hush, husband, lest she should chance to awake. Guessed! No, and she never shall.”
Belasez’s ears, it is unnecessary to say, were strained to catch every sound. What was she not to guess?
“Art thou sure that Genta knows nothing?”
Genta was the daughter of Abraham’s brother Moss.
“Nothing that would do much harm,” said Licorice, but in rather a doubtful tone. “Beside, Genta can hold her peace.”
“Ay, if she choose. But suppose she did not? She knows, does she not, about—Anegay?”
“Hush! Well, yes—something. But not what would do most mischief.”
“What, about her marriage with—”
“Man I do, for pity’s sake, give over, or thou wilt blurt all out! Do only think, if the child were to hear! Trust me, she would go back to that wasp’s nest to-morrow. No, no! Just listen to me, son of Ursel. Get her safely married before she knows anything. Leo may be relied upon to keep her in safe seclusion: and when she has a husband and half-a-dozen children to tie her down, heart and soul, to us, she will give over pining after the Gentiles.”
Belasez was conscious of a rising repugnance, which she had never felt before, to this marriage about to be forced upon her. Not personally to Leo, of whom she knew nothing; but to this tie contemplated for her, which was to be an impassable barrier between her and all her Christian friends.
“Well!” sighed Abraham. He evidently did not like it. “I suppose, then, I must let the Cohen (Note 1) know about it.”
“If it be not already too late,” responded Licorice, dubiously. “If only this second visit had not happened! There was less harm done the first time, and I do not quite understand it. Some stronger feeling has taken possession of her now. Either her faith is shaken—”
“May the All-Merciful defend us from such horror!”
“Well, it is either that, or there is love in her heart—a deeper love than for the Gentile woman, and the girls of whom she talks. She likes them, I do not doubt; but she would never break her heart after them. There is somebody else, old man, of whom we have not heard; and I counsel thee to try and find out him or her. I am sadly afraid it is him.”
“But, Licorice, she has not seen any one. The Lady passed her word that not a soul should come near her.”
“Pish! Did the shiksah keep it? Even if she meant to do—and who can trust a Gentile?—was she there, day and night? Did Emendant not tell thee that he saw her at the Coronation?”
“Well, yes, he did,” admitted Abraham, with evident reluctance.
“And had she Belasez there, tied to her apron-string, with a bandage over her eyes? Son of Ursel, wilt thou never open thine? Who knows how many young gallants may have chattered to her then? ‘When the cat is away—’ thou knowest. Not that the shiksah was much of a cat when she was there, I’ll be bound. Dost thou not care if the child be stolen from us? And when they have stolen her heart and her soul, they may as well take her body. It won’t make much difference then.”
“Licorice—”
Belasez listened more intently than ever. There was a world of tender regret in Abraham’s voice, and she knew that it was not for Licorice.
“Licorice,”—he said, and stopped.
“Go on,” responded her mother sharply, “unless thou wert after some foolery, as is most likely.”
“Licorice, hast thou forgotten that Sabbath even, when thou broughtest home—”
“I wish thou wouldst keep thy tongue off names. I have as good a memory as thou, though it is not lined like thine with asses’ skin.”
“And dost thou remember what thou toldest me that she said to thy reproaches?”
“Well, what then?”
“‘What then?’ O Licorice!”
“I do wish thou wouldst speak sense!—what art thou driving at?”
“Thou art hard to please, wife. If I speak plainly thou wilt not hear me out, and if I only hint thou chidest me for want of plainness. Well! if thou canst not see ‘what then,’ never mind. I thought those sorrowful words of my poor child might have touched thy heart. I can assure thee, they did mine, when I heard of them. They have never been out of mine ears since.”
It seemed plain to Belasez that her mother was being rebuked for want of motherly tenderness, and, as she doubted not, towards Anegay. This mysterious person, then, must have been a sister of whom she had never heard,—probably much older than herself.
“What a lot of soft down must have been used up to make thine heart!” was the cynical reply of Licorice.
“I cannot help it, Licorice. I have her eyes ever before me—hers, and his. It is of no use scolding me—I cannot help it. And if it be as thou thinkest, I cannot break the child’s heart. I shall not speak to Hamon, nor the Cohen.”
“Faint-hearted Gentile!” blazed forth Licorice.
“Get it over, wife,” said Abraham, quietly. “I will try to find out if thou hast guessed rightly; though it were rather work for thee than me, if—well, I will do my best. But suppose I should find that she has given her maiden heart to some Gentile,—what am I to do then?”
“Do! What did Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest unto Zimri and Cozbi? Hath not the Blessed One commanded, saying, ‘Thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son’? What meanest thou? Do! Couldst thou do too much, even if they were offered upon the altar before the God of Sabaoth?”
“Where is it?” responded Abraham, desolately. “But, Licorice,—our daughter?”
“What dost thou mean?” said Licorice, fiercely. “Perhaps we might shed tears first. But they must not pollute the sacrifice. Do not the holy Rabbins say that a tear dropped upon a devoted lamb washeth out all the merit of the offering?”
“I believe they do,” said Abraham; “though it is not in the Thorah. But I did not mean exactly that. Dost thou not understand me?”
“I understand that thou art no true son of Abraham!” burst out his wife. “I say she is, and she shall be!”
“Who ever heard of such reckoning in the days of the fathers?” answered Abraham. “Licorice, I am doubtful if we have done well in keeping back the truth so much. Doth not the Holy One love and require truth in all His people? Yet it was thy doing, not mine.”
“Oh yes, thou wouldst have told her at once!” sneered Licorice. “She would stay with us meekly then, would she not? Go to sleep, for mercy’s sake, I entreat thee, and hold thy tongue, before any worse mischief be done. My doing! yes, it is well it was. Had I listened to thee, that girl would have been worshipping idols at this moment.”
“‘Blessed is the man that trusteth in Adonai,’” softly said Abraham. “He could have helped it, I suppose.”
“Ay, and happy is that woman that hath a wise man to her husband!” responded Licorice, irreverently. “Go to sleep, for the sake of Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite, or I shall get up and chop thy head off, for thou art not a whit better than Sisera!”
Perhaps Abraham thought it the wisest plan to obey his incensed spouse, for no word of response reached Belasez.
That damsel lay awake for a considerable time. She soon made up her mind to get as much as she could out of her cousin Genta. It was evident that a catechising ordeal awaited her, to the end of discovering a supposed Christian lover; but feeling her conscience quite clear on that count, Belasez was only disturbed at the possible revelation of her change of faith. She could, however, honestly satisfy Abraham that she had not received baptism. But two points puzzled and deeply interested her. How much had she better say about Bruno?—and, what was this mysterious point which they were afraid she might guess—which seemed to have some unaccountable reference to herself? If Anegay were her sister, as she could no longer doubt, why should her conduct in some way reflect upon Belasez? Suppose Anegay had married a Christian—as she thought most likely from the allusions, and which she knew would be in her parents’ eyes disgrace of the deepest dye—or even if Anegay had herself become a Christian, which was a shade worse still,—yet what had that to do with Belasez, and why should it make her so anxious to go back to the Christians?
Then, as to Bruno,—Belasez was conscious in her heart that she loved him very dearly, though her affection was utterly unmingled with any thoughts of matrimony. She would have thought old Hamon as eligible for a husband, when he patted her on the head with a patriarchal benediction. It was altogether a friendly and daughterly class of feeling with which she regarded Father Bruno. But would Abraham enter into that? Was it wise to tell him?
Thinking and planning, Belasez fell asleep.
The ordeal did not come off immediately. It seemed to Belasez as if her father would gladly have avoided it altogether; but she was tolerably sure that her mother would not allow him much peace till it was done.
“Delecresse,” she said, the first time she was alone with her brother, “had we ever a sister?”
“Never, to my knowledge,” said Delecresse, looking as if he wondered what had put that notion into her head.
Evidently he knew nothing.
Genta, who was constantly coming in and out, for her home was in the same short street, dropped in during the evening, and Belasez carried her off to her own little bed-chamber, which was really a goodsized closet, on the pretext of showing her some new embroidery.
“Genta,” she said, “tell me when my sister died.”
“Thy sister, Belasez?” Genta’s expression was one of most innocent perplexity. “Hadst thou ever a sister?”
“Had I not?”
“I never heard of one.”
“Think, Genta I was she not called Anegay?”
Genta’s shake of the head was decided enough to settle any question, but Belasez fancied she caught a momentary flash in her eyes which was by no means a negation.
But Belasez did not hear a few sentences that were uttered before Genta left the house.
“Aunt Licorice, what has Belasez got in her head?”
“Nay, what has she, Genta?”
“I am sure some one has been telling her something. She has asked me to-night if she had not once a sister, and if her name were not Anegay.”
The exclamation in reply was more forcible than elegant. But that night, as Belasez lay in bed, through half-closed eyes she saw her mother enter and hold the lantern to her face. I am sorry to add that Belasez instantly counterfeited profound sleep; and Licorice retired with apparent satisfaction.
“Husband!” she heard her mother say, a few minutes later, “either some son of a Philistine has told that child something, or she has overheard our words.”
“What makes thee think so?” Abraham’s tone was one of great distress, if not terror.
“She has been asking questions of Genta. But she has got hold of the wrong pattern—she fancies Anegay was her sister.”
“Does she?” replied Abraham, in a tone of sorrowful tenderness.
“There’s less harm in her thinking that, than if she knew the truth. Genta showed great good sense: she professed to know nothing at all about it.”
“Dissimulation again, Licorice!” came, with a heavy sigh, from Abraham.
“Hold thy tongue! Where should we be without it?”
Abraham made no answer. But early on the following morning he summoned Belasez to the little porch-chamber, and she went with her heart beating.
As she suspected, the catechism was now to be gone through. But poor Abraham was the more timid of the two. He was so evidently unwilling to speak, and so regretfully tender, that Belasez’s heart warmed, and she lost all her shyness. Of course, she told him more than she otherwise would have done.
Belasez denied the existence of any Christian lover, or indeed of any lover at all, with such clear, honest eyes, that Abraham could not but believe her. But, he urged, had she ever seen any man in the Castle, to speak to him?
“Yes,” said Belasez frankly. “Not while the Lady was there. But during her absence, Sir Richard de Clare had been three times in the bower, and the priests had given lessons to the damsels in the ante-chamber.”
“Did any of these ever speak to thee?”
“Sir Richard never spoke to me but twice, further than to say ‘Good morrow.’ Once he admired a pattern I was working, and once he asked me, when I came in from the leads, if it were raining.”
“Didst thou care for him, my daughter?”
“Not in the least,” said Belasez, “nor he for me. I rather think Damsel Margaret was his attraction.” Her father seemed satisfied on that point. “And these priests? How many were there?” Belasez told him. “Master Aristoteles the physician, and Father Nicholas, and Father Warner, chaplains of my Lord the Earl; and the chaplain of the Lady.”
She hardly knew what instinct made her unwilling to utter Father Bruno’s name; and, most unintentionally, she blushed.
“Oh!” said Abraham to himself, “the Lady’s chaplain is the dangerous person.—Are they old men, my child?”
“None of them is either very old or very young, Father.”
“Describe them to me, I pray thee.”
“Master Aristoteles I cannot describe, for I have only heard his voice. Father Nicholas is about fifty, I should think: a kindly sort of man, but immersed in his books, and caring for little beside. Father Warner is not pleasant; all the girls were very much afraid of him.”
“And the chaplain of the Lady?”
“He is forty or more, I should suppose: tall and slender, eyes and hair dark; a very pleasant man to speak with.”
“I am afraid so!” was Abraham’s internal comment.—“And his name, daughter?”
“Father Bruno.”
“What?” Abraham had risen, with outspread hands, as though he would fain push away some unwelcome and horrible thing.
Belasez repeated the name.
“Bruno!—de Malpas?”
“I never heard of any name but Bruno.”
“Has he talked with thee?” Abraham’s whole manner showed agitation.
“Much.”
“Upon what subjects?”
Belasez would gladly have avoided that question.
“Different subjects,” she said, evasively.
“Tell me what he said when he first met thee.”
“He seemed much distressed, I knew not at what, and murmured that my face painfully reminded him of somebody.”
“Ah!—Belasez, didst thou know whom?”
“Not till I came home,” she said in a low tone.
“Ay de mi! What hast thou heard since thy coming home?”
Belasez resolved to speak the truth. She had been struck by her father’s hints that some terrible mischief had come from not speaking it; and she thought that perhaps open confession on her part might lead to confidence on his.
“I overheard you and my mother talking at night,” she said. “I gathered that the somebody whom I was like was my sister, and that her name was Anegay; and I thought she had either become a Christian, or had wedded a Christian. Father, may I know?”
“My little Belasez,” he said, with deep feeling, “thou knowest all but the one thing thou must not know. There was one called Anegay. But she was not thy sister. Let the rest be silence to thee.”
It seemed to cost Abraham immense pain to say even so much as this. He sat quiet for a moment, his face working pitifully.
“Little Belasez,” he said again, “didst thou like that man?”
“I think I loved him,” was her soft answer.
Abraham’s gesture, which she thought indicated despair and anguish, roused her to explain.
“Father,” she said hastily, “I do not mean anything wrong or foolish. I loved Father Bruno with a deep, reverential love—such as I give you.”
“Such as thou givest me—O Belasez!”
Belasez thought he was hurt by her comparison of her love for him to that of her love for a mere stranger.
“Father, how shall I explain? I meant—”
“My poor child, I need no explanation. Thou hast been more righteous than we. Belasez, the truth is hidden from thee because thou art too near it to behold it. My poor, poor child!” And suddenly rising, Abraham lifted up his arms in the attitude of prayer. “O Thou that doest wonders, Thou hast made the wrath of man to praise Thee. How unsearchable are Thy judgments, and Thy ways past finding out!” Then he laid his hand upon Belasez’s head.
“It is Adonai,” he said. “Let Him do what seemeth Him good. He said unto Shimei, Curse David. Methinks He hath said to thee, Love Bruno. The Holy One forbid that I should grudge the love of—of our child, to the desolate heart which we made desolate. Adonai knows, and He only, whether we did good or bad. Pray to Him, my Belasez, to forgive that one among us who truly needs His forgiveness!”
And Abraham hurried from the room, as if he were afraid to trust himself, lest if he stayed he should say something which he might afterwards regret bitterly.
Note 1. Priest. All Jews named Cohen are sons of Aaron.