Chapter Four.
The Time of Jacob’s Trouble.
“I know that the thorny path I tread
Is ruled with a golden line;
And I know that the darker life’s tangled thread,
The brighter the rich design.
“For I see, though veiled from my mortal sight,
God’s plan is all complete;
Though the darkness at present be not light,
And the bitter be not sweet.”
The course of public events at that time was of decidedly a stirring character. The public considered that four mock suns which had been seen during the previous winter, two snakes fighting in the sea off the south coast, and fifteen days’ continuous thunder in the following March, were portents sufficiently formidable to account for any succeeding political events whatever. The Church was busy introducing the Order of Saint Francis into England. The populace were discovering how to manufacture cider, hitherto imported: and were, quite unknown to themselves, laying the foundation of their country’s commercial greatness by breaking into the first vein of coal at Newcastle. In fact, the importance of this last discovery was so little perceived, that a hundred and fifty years were suffered to elapse before any advantage was taken of it.
Belasez’s work was done, and entirely to the satisfaction of the Countess. So much, also, did the Princess Marjory admire it, that she requested another scarf might be worked for her, to be finished in time for her approaching marriage. She was now affianced to Gilbert de Clare, the new Earl of Pembroke. It was not without a bitter pang that Marjory had resigned her proud hope of wearing the crown of England, and had consented to become merely the wife of an English noble. But the crown was gone from her beyond recall. The fickle-hearted King, who had been merely attracted for a season by her great beauty, was now as eagerly pursuing a foreign Countess, Jeanne of Ponthieu, whom report affirmed to be equally beautiful: and perhaps Marjory was a little consoled, though she might not even admit it to herself, by the fact that Earl Gilbert was at once a much richer man than the King, and very much better-looking. She made him a good wife when the time came, and she grieved bitterly over his loss, when six years afterwards he was killed in a tournament at Hereford.
Marjory was not so particular as her sister about the work being done under her own eyes. She left pattern and colours to Belasez’s taste, only expressing her wish that red and gold should predominate, as they were the tints alike of the arms of Scotland and of Clare. The Princess was to be married on the first of August, and Belasez promised that her father should deliver the scarf during his customary hawker’s round in July.
The young Jewess had suffered less than might have been supposed from Levina. The Countess, without condescending to assign any reason, had quietly issued orders that Belasez’s meals should be served in the ante-chamber, half an hour before the general repast was ready in the hall. In the presence of the young ladies, and not unfrequently of the Countess herself, Levina deemed it prudent to bring up apple-pie without sauce piquante, and to serve gateaux unmixed with pepper or anchovies.
Abraham became eloquent in his thanks for the kindness shown to his daughter, and the tears were in Belasez’s eyes when she took leave.
“Farewell, my maid,” said the Countess, addressing the latter. “Thou art a fair girl, and thou hast been a good girl. I shall miss thy pretty face in Magot’s ante-chamber. We shall meet again, I doubt not. Such work as thine is not to be lightly esteemed.—Wilt thou grudge thy treasure to me, if I ask for her again?” she added, turning to Abraham with a smile.
“Surely not, my Lady! My Lady has been as an angel of God to my darling.”
“And remember, both of you, that if ye come into any trouble—as may be—and thou seekest safe shelter for thy bird, I will give it her at any time, in return for her lovely work.”
This was a greater boon than it may appear. Troubles were only too likely to assail a Jewish household, and to know a place where Belasez could seek shelter and be certain of finding it, was a comfort indeed, and might at any hour be a most terrible necessity.
Abraham kissed the robe of the Countess, and poured out eloquent blessings on her. Belasez kissed her hand and that of Margaret: but the tears choked the girl’s voice as she turned to follow her father.
The arguments against idolatry which Margaret had heard from Belasez were ghosts easily laid by Father Nicholas. A few vague platitudes concerning the supreme authority committed to the Apostle Peter, and through him to the Papacy (Father Nicholas discreetly left both points unencumbered by evidence),—the wickedness of listening to sceptical reasonings, and the happiness of implicit obedience to holy Church,—were quite enough to reduce Belasez’s arguments, as they remained in Margaret’s mind, to the condition of uncomfortable reminiscences, which, being also wicked, it was best to forget as soon as possible.
But there had been one listener to that conversation, of whom neither party took account, and who could not forget it. This was Doucebelle de Vaux. In her brain the words of the young Jewess took root and germinated, but so silently, that no one suspected it but herself. Father Nicholas had not the faintest idea of the importance of the question, when one morning, during the Latin lesson which he administered twice a week to the young ladies of the Castle, Doucebelle asked him the precise meaning of adoro.
“It means, in its original, to speak to or accost any one,” said the priest; “but being now taken into the holy service of religion, it signifies to pray, to supplicate; and, thence derived—to worship, to bow one’s self down.”
“And,—if I do not trouble you too much, Father,—would you please to tell me the difference between adoro and colo?”
Father Nicholas was a born philologist, though in his day there was no appellation for the science. To be asked any question involving a derivation or comparison of words, was to him as a trumpet to a war-horse.
“My daughter, it is pleasure, not trouble, to me, to answer such questions as these. Colo is a word which comes from the Greek, but is now obsolete in that tongue, wherein it seems to have had the meaning of feed or tend. Transferred to the Latin, it signifies to cultivate, exercise, practise, or cherish,—say rather, in any sense, to take pains about a thing: hence, used in the blessed service of religion, it is to regard, venerate, respect, or worship. Therefore cultus, which is the noun of this verb, signifies, when referred to things inanimate, tending or cultivation to things animate, education, culture; to God and the holy saints, reverence and worship. Dost thou now understand, my daughter?”
“I thank you very much, Father,” said Doucebelle, quietly; “I understand now.”
When she was alone, she put her information together, and thought it carefully over.
“Non adorabis ea, neque coles.”
Images, then, were not to be reverenced, either in heart or by bodily gesture. So said the version of Scripture made by Saint Jerome, and used and authorised by the Church. But how was it that the Church allowed these things to be done? Did she not know that Scripture forbade them? Or was she above all Scripture? Practically, it looked like it.
Yet how was it, if the Church were the mouthpiece of God, that the commands issued by the One were diametrically at variance with the recommendations given by the other? If God did not change,—if the Church did not change,—when had they been in accord, and how came they to differ?
Doucebelle had now reached a point where she could neither turn round nor go further. The more she cogitated on her problem, the more insoluble it appeared to her. Yet her instinctive feeling told her that to refer it to Father Nicholas would be of no service. He was one of the better class of priests,—a man of respectable character, with literary proclivities, which had in his case the effect of keeping him from vice on the one hand, and of deadening his spiritual sensibilities on the other. To him, the religion he taught, and had himself been taught, was sufficient for all necessities, and he could not understand any one wanting more. When a man’s mind has never been disturbed by the question, it is no cause for wonder that he has never sought for the answer.
That Father Nicholas would have listened to her, Doucebelle knew; for he was by no means an unkind or disobliging man. But she had sense to perceive that he was incapable of understanding her, and that his only idea of dealing with such queries would be not to solve, but to suppress them.
Doucebelle passed in mental review every person in the Castle: and every one, in turn, she dismissed as unsuitable for her purpose. The other chaplain of the Earl, Father Warner, was a stern, harsh man, of whom she, in common with all the young people, was very much afraid; she could not think of putting such queries to him. The chaplain of the Countess, Father Elias, had just resigned his post, and his successor had not yet been appointed. Master Aristoteles, the household physician, was an excellent authority on the virtues of comfrey or frogs’ brains, but a very poor resource on a theological question. The Earl was not at home. The Countess would be likely to enter into Doucebelle’s perplexities little better than Father Nicholas, and would playfully chide her for entertaining them. All the young people were too young except Sir John de Burgh and Hawise. Sir John had not an idea beyond war, politics, and falconry; and Hawise was accustomed to decline mental investigations altogether. So Doucebelle was shut up to her thoughts and her Psalter. Perhaps she might have been worse situated.
On the 7th of February 1235, died Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, “the enemy of all monks.” He had not, however, by any means been the enemy of all superstition. He was remarkably easy to take in by young women who had sustained personal encounters with Satan, nuns who had been favoured with apparitions of the Virgin, and monks to whom Saint Peter or Saint Lawrence had made revelations. It is little wonder that he was canonised, and perhaps not much that a touch of his bones, or a shred of his chasuble, were asserted to be possessed of miraculous power. A very different man filled the see of Lincoln in his stead. On the 3rd of June following, Robert Grosteste was appointed to the vacant episcopal throne.
Grosteste was a man who had learned his life-lessons, not from priest or monk, from Fathers or Decretals, but direct from God. I do not presume to say that he held no false doctrine, or that he made no mistakes: but considering the time at which he lived, and the corruption all around him, his teaching was singularly free from “wood, hay, stubble”—singularly clear, evangelical, and true to the one Foundation. Especially he set himself in opposition to the most popular doctrine of the day—that which was termed grace of congruity. And for a man in such a position to set himself in entire and active opposition to popular taste and belief, and to persevere in it, requires supplies either of vast pride from Satan, or of great grace from God. Grace of congruity is simply a variety of the old heresy of human merit. It clad its proud self in the silver robe of humility, by professing to possess only an imperfect degree of qualification for the reception of God’s grace. Grace of condignity, on the other hand, put itself on an equality with the Divine gift, by its pretension to possess that qualification to the uttermost.
The summer was chiefly occupied by pageants and feasts, for there were two royal marriages, that of the Princess Marjory of Scotland with Gilbert de Clare, and that of the Princess Isabel of England with the Emperor Frederic the Second of Germany. The latter ceremony did not take place in England, but the gorgeous preparations did: for Henry the Third, who delighted in spending money even more than in acquiring it, provided his sister with the most splendid trousseau ever known even for a royal bride. Her very cooking-vessels were all of silver, and her reins and bridles were worked in gold. She was married at Worms, in June: the wedding of the Princess Marjory took place on the first of August. Abraham and Belasez were faithful to their promises, and the beautiful scarf, wrought in scarlet and gold, was delivered into Marjory’s hands in time to be worn at the wedding. The young people of the Castle were naturally interested in the stereotyped rough and silly gambols which were then the invariable concomitants of a marriage: and the stocking, skilfully flung by Marie, hit Margaret on the head, to the intense delight of the merry group around her. The equally amusing work of cutting up the bride-cake revealed Richard de Clare in possession of the ring, supposed to indicate approaching matrimony, Marie of the silver penny which denoted riches, and Doucebelle of the thimble which doomed her to celibacy.
“There, now! ’Tis as plain to be seen as the church spire!” said Eva, clapping her hands. “Margaret is destined by fate to wed with my cousin Sir Richard.”
“Well, if ‘fate’ mean my wish and intention, so she is,” whispered the Countess to her sister the bride.
“Doth thy Lord so purpose it?” asked Marjory.
“Oh, hush!” responded the Countess, laughing. “He knows nothing about it, and I don’t intend that he shall, just yet. Trust me to bring things about.”
“But suppose he should be angry?”
“Pure foy! He is never angry with me. Oh, thou dost not understand, my dear Madge,—at present. Men always want managing. When thou hast been wed a year, thou wilt know more about it.”
“But can all women manage men?” asked Marjory in an amused tone.
“Ha, chétife! No, indeed. And there are some men who can’t be managed,—worse luck! But my Lord is not one of the latter, the holy saints be thanked.”
“And thou art one of the women who can manage men,” answered Marjory, laughing. “I wonder at thee, Magot, and have done so many times,—thou hast such a strange power of winning folks to thy will.”
“Well, that some have, and some have not. I have it, I know,” said the Countess, complacently. “But I will give thee a bit of counsel, Madge, which thou mayest find useful. First, have a will: let it be clear and distinct in thine own mind, what thou wouldst have done. And, secondly, let people see that thou takest quietly for granted that of course they will do it. There is a great deal in that, with some people. A weak will always bends to a strong.”
“But when two strong ones come in collision, how then?”
“Why, like wild animals,—fight it out, and discover which is the stronger.”
“A tournament of wills!” said Marjory. “I should hardly care to enter those lists, I think.”
The Countess laughed, and shook her head. She knew that among the strong-willed women Marjory was not to be reckoned.
A tournament of that class was being held all that summer between the regular priests and the newly-instituted Predicant Friars. The priests complained that the friars presumed to hear confessions in the churches, which it was the prerogative of the regularly appointed priests to do: and wrathfully alleged that the public were more ready to confess to these travelling mendicants than to the proper authorities. It is possible that the cause may be traced to that human proclivity which inclines a man to confide rather in a stranger whom he may never meet again, than in one who can remind him of uncomfortable facts at inconvenient times: but also it is possible that the people recognised in the teaching of the Minorite Friars, largely recruited as they were from the ranks of the Waldenses, somewhat more of that good news which Christ came to bring to men, than of the endless, unmeaning ceremonies which encumbered the doctrine of the regular priests.
The summer had given place to autumn. The courtyard of Bury Castle was strewn with golden and russet leaves; the Countess was preparing a new dress for the feast of Saint Luke. A foggy day had ended in a dark night, and Eva threw down her work and rethreaded her needle with a long-drawn sigh. “Tired of sewing, Eva?”
“Very tired, Lady. I almost wish buttons grew on robes, and required no sewing.”
“Lazy maiden!” said the Countess playfully. “Then I am lazy too,” interposed Margaret; “for I do hate sewing.”
“If it please the Lady,” said Levina’s voice at the door, “an old man and woman entreat the honour of laying a petition before her.”
“An old man and woman?—such a night as this! Do they come from the town?”
“If it please the Lady, I do not know.”
“Very well. If the warder thinks them not suspicious persons, they can come into the hall. I shall be down shortly.”
When the Countess descended, followed by Margaret and Doucebelle, she found her petitioners awaiting her. Most unsuspicious, harmless, feeble creatures they looked. The old man had tottered in as if barely able to stand; the old woman walked with a stout oaken staff, and was bent nearly double.
“Well, good people!—what would ye have?” asked the Countess.
In answer, the old man lifted his head, pulled away a mass of false grey hair and a wax mask from, his face, and the old Jew pedlar, Abraham of Norwich, stood before the astonished ladies.
“I am come,” he said in a voice broken by emotion, “to claim my Lady’s promise.”
“What promise, old man?”
“My Lady was pleased to say, that if the robbers broke into the nest, or the hawk hovered over it, the young bird should be safe in her care.”
“Thy daughter? I remember, I did say so. Where is she?”
At a signal from Abraham, the aged woman at his side suddenly straightened herself, and the removal of another wax mask and some false white hair revealed the beautiful face of Belasez.
“Welcome, my maiden,” said the Countess kindly. “And what troubles have assailed thee, old Abraham, which made this disguise and flight necessary?”
“My Lady is good to her poor servants,—may the Blessed One bind her in the bundle of life! But not all Christians are like her. Lady, there is this day sore trouble, and great rebuke and blasphemy, against the sons of Israel that dwell in Norwich. They accuse us of having kidnapped and crucified a Christian child. They lay too much to us, Lady,—too much! We have never done such a thing, nor thought of it. But the house of my Lady’s servant is despoiled, and his son ill-treated, and his brother in the gaol at Norwich for this cause: and to save his beautiful Belasez he has brought her to his gracious Lady. Will she give his bird shelter in her nest, according to her word?”
“Indeed I will,” answered the Countess. “Margaret, take the maid up to thine ante-chamber, and bid Levina bring her food. She must stay here a while. And thou, sit thou down, old Abraham, and rest and refresh thee.”
“Truly, my Lady is as one of the angels of the Holy One to her tried servants!” said Abraham thankfully.
Belasez kissed the hand of the Countess, and then turned and followed Margaret to the ante-chamber.
“Art thou very tired, Belasez?”
“Very, very weary, my Damsel. We have come fourteen miles on foot since yesterday.”
Very weary Belasez looked. Now that the momentary excitement of her arrival and reception was over, the light had died out of the languid eyes, and her head drooped as if she could scarcely hold it up.
“Go to bed,” said Margaret; “that is the best place for over-tired people.—Levina! My Lady and mother wills thee to bring the maid some food.”
Levina appeared at the door, with an expression of undisguised annoyance.
“Ha, chétife!—if here is not my Lady Countess Jew come again! What would it please her sweetest Grace to take?”
But Levina had forgotten, as older people sometimes do, that Margaret was no longer a child to be kept in silent subjection. Girls of fifteen—and she was nearly that now—were virtually women in the thirteenth century. Margaret turned to the scoffing Levina, with an air of dignified displeasure which rather startled the latter.
“Levina! thou hast forgotten thyself. Do as thou art bid.”
And Levina disappeared without venturing a reply.
“What have they done to thy brother, Belasez?” asked Margaret.
“They beat him sorely. Damsel, and turned him forth into the street.”
“Where did he go?”
“That is known to the Blessed One. Out in the fields somewhere. It is not the first time that a Jew hath lain hidden for a night or more, until the fury of the Christians should pass away.”
Doucebelle de Vaux was a grave and thoughtful girl, beyond her years. She sat silent now, trying to recall, from the stores of a memory not too well furnished, whether Christ, whom these Christians professed to follow, had ever treated people in such a manner as this. At length she remembered that she had seen a picture at Thetford of His driving sundry people out of the Temple with a scourge. But was that because they were Jews? Doucebelle thought not. She was too ignorant to be sure, but she fancied they had been doing something wrong.
“I should think,” said Margaret warmly, “that you Jews must hate us Christians.”
“Christians are not all alike,” said Belasez with a faint smile.
“But do you not hate us?” persisted Margaret.
“Delecresse does, I am afraid,” replied Belasez, colouring.
“But thyself?”
“No. O my Damsel, no!” She warmed into vivid life for an instant, to make this reply; then she sank back against the wall, apparently overpowered by utter weariness.
“I am glad of that,” said Margaret, with her usual outspoken earnestness.—“What can Levina be doing? Doucebelle, do go and see.—And hast thou been hard at work at Norwich all the summer, Belasez?”
“No, if it please my Damsel. I have dwelt all this summer at Lincoln, with my mother’s father.”
“‘The Devil overlooks Lincoln,’ they say,” remarked Margaret, laughingly. “I hope he did thee no mischief, Belasez. But, perhaps Jews do not believe in the Devil?”
“Ah! We have good cause to believe in the Devil,” answered Belasez gravely. “Nay, Damsel, he did me no mischief. Yet—what know I? The Holy One knoweth all things.”
Belasez’s tone struck Margaret as hinting at some one thing in particular. But she did not explain further. Perhaps she was too tired.
Doucebelle returned at this point, followed by Levina, who carried a plate of manchet-bread and a bowl of milk. And though Belasez did not know it, she owed thanks to Doucebelle that it was not skim milk. The young Jewess ate as if she were very faint as well as weary.
“Then hast thou come here all the way from Lincoln?” inquired Margaret when the bowl was emptied.
“If it please my Damsel, no. I had returned home only two days before the riot.”
“Is thy mother living?” asked Margaret abruptly.
“Yes. She abode at Lincoln with my grandfather. He is very old, and will not in likelihood live long. When he dies, my mother will come back to us.”
“Do go to bed, Belasez. Thou canst scarcely hold thine head up, nor thine eyes open,” said Margaret compassionately: and Belasez accepted the invitation with thanks. Doucebelle went with her, and silently noticed two facts: that Belasez stood for a few minutes in silent prayer, with her face turned to the wall, before she offered to undress; and that she was fast asleep almost as soon as her head had touched the pillow.
Doucebelle stood still and looked at the sleeping girl. Why was it so wicked to be a Jew? Had Belasez been a Christian of noble birth, or even of mean extraction, she would have been regarded as an ornament of any Court in Christendom. Some nobleman or knight would very soon have found that lovely face, and her refined and dignified manners were fit for any lady in the land. Why must she be regarded as despicable, and treated with abuse and loathing, merely because she had been born a Jewess? Of course Doucebelle knew the traditionary reason—because the Jews had crucified Christ. But Belasez had not been one of them. Why must she bear the shame of others’ sins? Did none of my ancestors, thought Doucebelle, ever do some wicked deed? Yet people do not despise me on that account. Why do they scorn her?
Belasez stirred in her sleep, and one or two broken words dropped from her unconscious lips. Greatly interested, and a little startled, Doucebelle bent over her. But she could make out nothing connected from the indistinct utterances. It sounded as if Belasez were dreaming about somebody whose face she could not see. “Hid faces,” Doucebelle heard her murmur. It was probably, she thought, some reminiscence connected with the tumults which had brought her to seek shelter at the Castle. Doucebelle drew the coverlet higher over the weary sleeper, and went to seek rest in her own bed.