Chapter Nine.
Paying the Bill.
“’Tis hard when young heart, singing songs of to-morrow,
Is suddenly met by the old hag, Sorrow.”
Leigh Hunt.
Father Bruno was walking slowly, with his hands one in the other behind him, about a mile from Bury Castle. It was a lovely morning in April, and, though alone, he had no fear of highwaymen; for he would have been a bold sinner indeed who, in 1236, meddled with a priest for his harm. An absent-minded man was Father Bruno, at all times when he was free to indulge in meditation. For to him:—
“The future was all dark,
And the past a troubled sea,
And Memory sat in his heart
Wailing where Hope should be.”
He was given to murmuring his thoughts half aloud when in solitude; and he was doing it now. They oscillated from one to the other of two subjects, closely associated in his mind. One was Belasez: the other was a memory of his sorrowful past, a fair girl-face, the likeness to which had struck him so distressingly in hers, and which would never fade from his memory “till God’s love set her at his side again.”
“What will become of the maiden?” he whispered to himself. “So like, so like!—just what my Beatrice might have been, if—nay, Thou art wise, O Lord! It is I who am blind and ignorant. Ay, and just the same age! She must be the infant of whom Licorice spoke: she was then in the cradle, I remember. She said that if Beatrice had lived, they might have been like twin sisters. Well, well! Ay, and it is well. For Anegay has found her in Heaven, safe from sin and sorrow, from tempest and temptation, with Christ for evermore.
“‘O mea, spes mea, O Syon aurea, ut clarior oro!’
“And what does it matter for me, during these few and evil days that are left of this lower life? True, the wilderness is painful: but it will be over soon. True, my spirit is worn and weary: but the rest of the New Jerusalem will soon restore me. True, I am weak, poor, blind, ignorant, lonely, sorrowful: but my Lord is strength, wealth, light, wisdom, love, and joyfulness. Never canst thou be loveless, Bruno de Malpas, while the deathless love of Christ endureth; never canst thou be lonely and forlorn, whilst thou hast His company who is the sunlight of Heaven. Perhaps it would not have been good for me, had my beloved stayed with me. Nay, since He saw it good, it can be no perhaps, but a certainty. I suppose I should have valued Him less, had my jewel-casket remained full. Ay, Thou hast done well, my Lord! Pardon Thy servant if at times the journey grows very weary to his weak human feet, and he longs for a draught of the sweet waters of earthly love which Thou hast permitted to dry up. Grant him fresh draughts of that Living Water whereof he that drinketh shall thirst no more. Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe!
“Was I right in refusing to baptise the maiden? Verily, it would have been rich revenge on Licorice. I had no right, as I told her, to suffer the innocence of her chrism to be soiled with the evil passions which were sin in me. Yet had I any right to deny her the grace of holy baptism, because I was not free from evil passions? Oh, how hard it is to find the straight road!
“Poor little maiden! What will become of her now? I fear the impressions that have been made on her will soon be stifled in the poisonous atmosphere into which she is gone. And I cannot bear to think of her as a lost soul, with that face so like my Anegay, and that voice—
“Now, shame upon thee, Bruno de Malpas! Is Belasez more to thee than to Him that died for her? Canst thou not trust Him who giveth unto His sheep eternal life, not to allow this white lamb to be plucked out of His hand? O Lord, increase my faith!—for it is very low. I am one of the very weakest of Thy disciples. Yet I am Thine. Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee!”
During the time occupied by these reflections, Bruno had been instinctively approaching the Castle, and he looked up suddenly as he was conscious of a clang of arms and a confused medley of voices, not in very peaceful tones, breaking in upon his meditations. He now perceived that the drawbridge was thronged with armed men, the portcullis drawn up, and the courtyard beyond full of soldiers in mail.
“What is the matter, friend William?” asked Bruno of the porter at the outer gate.
“Nay, the saints wot, good Father, not I: but of this am I very sure, that some mischance is come to my Lord. You were a wise man if you kept away.”
“Not so,” was Bruno’s answer, as he passed on: “it is the hireling, not the shepherd, that fleeth from the wolf, and leaveth the sheep to be scattered.”
He made his way easily into the hall, for no one thought of staying a priest. The lower end was thronged with soldiers. On the daïs stood Sir Piers de Rievaulx and half-a-dozen more, confronting Earl Hubert, who wore an expression of baffled amazement. Just behind him stood the Countess, evidently possessed by fear and anguish; Sir John de Burgh, with his hand upon his sword; Doucebelle, very white and frightened; and furthest in the background, Sir Richard de Clare, who clasped in his arms the fainting form of Margaret, and bent his head over her with a look of agonised tenderness.
“Words are fine things, my Lord of Kent,” was the first sentence distinguishable to Father Bruno, and the spokesman was Sir Piers. “But I beg you to remember that it is of no earthly use talking to me in this strain. If you can succeed in convincing my Lord the King that you had no hand in this business, well!”—and Sir Piers’ shoulders went up towards his ears, in a manner which indicated that result to be far from what he expected. “But those two young fools don’t attempt to deny it, and their faces would give them the lie if they did. As for my Lady—”
The Countess sprang forward and threw herself on her knees, clinging to the arm of her husband, while she passionately addressed herself to both.
“Sir Piers, on my life and honour, my Lord knew nothing of this! It was done while he was away with the Lord King at Merton.—It was my doing, my Lord, mine! And it is true, what Sir Piers tells you. My daughter has gone too far with Sir Richard de Clare, ever to be married to another.” (Note 1.)
Sir Piers stood listening with a rather amused set of the lips, as if he thought the scene very effective. To him, the human agony before his eyes was no more than a play enacted for his entertainment. Of course it was in the way of business; but Sir Piers’ principle was to get as much diversion out of his business as he could.
“Very good indeed, Lady,” said that worthy Minister. “Your confession may spare you some annoyance. But as to your Lord, it will do nothing. You hardly expect us to swallow this pretty little fiction, I suppose? If you do, I beg you will undeceive yourself.—Officers, do your duty.” The officers had evidently received previous instructions, for they at once laid their hands on the shoulders of Earl Hubert and Sir Richard. The half-insensible Margaret was roused into life by the attempt to take her bridegroom from her. With a cry that might have touched any heart but that of Sir Piers de Rievaulx, she flung her arms around him and held him close.
Apparently the officers were touched, for they stopped and looked at their chief for further orders.
“Coward loons as ye are!—are ye frightened of a girl?” said Sir Piers with a harsh laugh, and he came forward himself. “Lady Margaret, there is no need to injure you unless you choose. Please yourself. I am going to arrest this young knight.”
But for one second, Sir Piers waited himself. Those around mistook it for that knightly courtesy of which there was none in him. They did not know that suddenly, to him, out of Margaret’s pleading eyes looked the eyes of the dead sister, Serena de Rievaulx, and it seemed to him as though soft child-fingers held him off for an instant. He had never loved any mortal thing but that dead child.
With one passionate, pleading gaze at Sir Piers, Margaret laid her head on the breast of Sir Richard, and sobbed as though her heart were breaking.
“My Lord, my Lord!” came, painfully mixed with long-drawn sobs, from the lips of the young bride. “My own, own Richard! And only two months since we were married!—Have you the heart to part us?” she cried, suddenly turning to Sir Piers. “Did you never love any one?”
“Never, Madam.” For once in his life, Sir Piers spoke truth, Never—except Serena: and not much then.
“Brute!” And with this calumnious epithet—for brutes can love dearly—Margaret resumed her former attitude.
“Lady Margaret, I must trouble you,” said Sir Piers, in tones of hardness veneered with civility.
“My darling, you must let me go,” interposed the young Earl of Gloucester, who seemed scarcely less miserable than his bride.
“Magot, my child, we may not stay justice,” said the distressed tones of her father.
Yet she held tight until Sir Piers tore her away.
“Look to the damsel,” he condescended to say, with a glance at Doucebelle and Bruno. “Oh, ha!—where is the priest that blessed this wedding? I must have him.”
“There was no priest,” sobbed the Countess, lifting her head from her husband’s arm, where she had let it sink: “it was per verba depresenti.”
“That we will see,” was the cool response of Sir Piers. “Take all the priests, Sir Drew.—Now, my Lady!”
“Fare thee well, my jewel,” said Earl Hubert, kissing the brow of the Countess. “Poor little Magot!—farewell, too.”
“Sir Hubert, my Lord, forgive me! I meant no ill.”
“Forgive thee?” said the Earl, with a smile, and again kissing his wife’s brow. “I could not do otherwise, my Margaret.—Now, Sir Piers, we are your prisoners.”
“These little amenities being disposed of,” sneered Sir Piers. “I suppose women must cry over something:—kind, I should think, to give them something to cry about.—March out the prisoners.”
Father Nicholas had been discovered in his study, engaged in the deepest meditation on a grammatical crux; and had received the news of his arrest with a blank horror and amazement very laughable in the eyes of Sir Piers. Master Aristoteles was pounding rhubarb with his sleeves turned up, and required some convincing that he was not wanted professionally. Father Warner was no where to be found. The three priests were spared fetters in consideration of their sacred character: both the Earls were heavily ironed. And so the armed band, with their prisoners, marched away from the Castle.
The feelings of the prisoners were diverse. Father Nicholas was simply astonished beyond any power of words to convey. Master Aristoteles was convinced that the recent physical disturbances in the atmosphere were more than enough to account for the whole affair. Earl Hubert felt sure that his old enemy, the Bishop of Winchester, was at the bottom of it. Earl Richard was disposed to think the same Father Bruno alone looked upwards, and saw God.
But assuredly no one of them saw the moving cause in that tall, stern, silent Jewish youth, and the last idea that ever entered the mind of Richard de Clare was to associate this great grief of his life with the boyish trick he had played on Delecresse two years before.
For the great grief of Richard’s life this sorrow was. Through the six-and-twenty years which remained of his mortal span, he never forgot it, and he never forgave it.
It proved the easiest thing in the world to convince King Henry that he had not intended Richard to marry Margaret. Had his dearly-beloved uncle, the Bishop of Valentia, held up before him a black cloth, and said, “This is white,” His Majesty would merely have wondered what could be the matter with his eyes.
The next point was to persuade that royal and most deceivable individual that he had entertained an earnest desire to see Richard married to a Princess of Savoy, a cousin of the Queen. This, also, was not difficult. The third lesson instilled into him was that, Richard having thought proper to render this impossible by choosing for himself, he, King Henry, was a cruelly-injured and unpardonably insulted man. His Majesty swallowed them all as glibly as possible. The metal being thus fused to the proper state, the prisoners were brought before their affronted Sovereign in person.
They were tried in inverse order, according to importance. Father Bruno could prove, without much difficulty, that the obnoxious marriage had taken place, on the showing of the prosecution itself, before he had entered the household. His penalty was the light one of discharge from the Countess’s service. That he deserved no penalty at all was not taken into consideration. The Crown could not so far err as to bring a charge against an entirely innocent man. The verdict, therefore, in Father Bruno’s case resembled that of the famous jury who returned as theirs, “Not Guilty, but we hope he won’t do it again.”
Master Aristoteles was next placed in the dock, and had the honour of amusing the Court. His asseverations of innocent ignorance were so mixed up with dissertations on the virtues of savin and betony, and lamenting references to the last eclipse which might have warned him of what was coming on him, that the Court condescended to relax into a smile, and let the simple man go with the light sentence of six months’ imprisonment. At a subsequent period in his life, Master Aristoteles was wont to say that this sentence was the best thing that ever happened to him, since the enforced meditation and idleness had enabled him to think out his grand discovery that the dust which gathered on beams of chestnut wood was an infallible specific for fever. He had since treated three fever patients in this manner, and not one of them had died. Whether the patients would have recovered without the dust, and with being so much let alone, Master Aristoteles did not concern himself.
Next came Father Nicholas. A light sentence also sufficed for him, not on account of his innocence, but because his friend the Abbot of Ham was a friend of the Bishop of Winchester.
Earl Hubert of Kent was then tried. The animus of his accusers was plainly shown, for they brought up again all the old hackneyed charges on account of which he had been pardoned years before—for some of them more than once. The affront offered to the King by the Earl’s marriage with Margaret of Scotland, the fact that she and his third wife were within the forbidden degrees, and that no dispensation had been obtained; these were renewed, with all the other disproved and spiteful accusations of old time. But the head and front of the offending, in this instance, was of course the marriage of his daughter. It did not make much difference that Hubert calmly swore that he had never known of the marriage, either before or after, except what he had learned from the simple statement of the Countess his wife, to the effect that it had been contracted at Bury Saint Edmund’s, during his absence at Merton. The fervent intercession of Hubert’s friends, moved by the passionate entreaties of the Countess, did not make much difference either; but what did make a good deal was that the Earl (who knew his royal master) offered a heavy golden bribe for pardon of the crime he had not committed. King Henry thereupon condescended to announce that in consideration of the effect produced upon his compassionate heart by the piteous intercession of the prisoner’s friends,—
“His fury should abate, and he
The crowns would take.”
Earl Hubert therefore received a most gracious pardon, and was permitted to return (minus the money) to the bosom of his distracted family.
But the heaviest vengeance fell on the young head of Richard de Clare, and through him on the fair girl with the cedar hair, whose worst crime was that she had loved him. It was not vengeance that could be weighed like Hubert’s coins, or told on the clock like the imprisonment of his physician. It was counted out, throb by throb, in the agony of two human hearts, one fiercely stabbed and artificially healed, and the other left to bleed to death like a wounded doe.
The King’s first step was to procure a solemn Papal sentence of divorce between Richard and Margaret. Their consent, of course, was neither asked nor thought needful. His Majesty’s advisers allowed him—and Richard—a little rest then, before they thought it necessary to do any thing more.
The result of the trial was to leave Father Bruno homeless. He returned to his monastery at Lincoln, and sought the leave of his Superior to be transferred to the Convent of the Order at Norwich. His heart still yearned over Belasez, with a tenderness which was half of Heaven and half of earth. Yet he knew that in all probability he would never find it possible to cross her path. Well! let him do what he could, and leave the rest with God. If He meant them to meet, meet they must, though Satan and all his angels combined to bar the way.
“Wife!”
“May thy beard be shaven! I was just dropping off. Well?”
It had taken Abraham a long while to summon up his courage to make what he felt would be to Licorice an unwelcome communication. He was rather dismayed to find it so badly received at the first step.
“Do go on, thou weariest of old jackdaws! I’m half asleep.”
“I have spoken to the child, Licorice.”
“As if thou couldst not have said that half an hour ago! Well, how do matters stand?”
“There is one person in particular whom she is sorry to leave.”
“Of course there is! I saw that as plain as the barber’s pole across the street. Didn’t I tell thee so? Is it some young Christian gallant, and who is he? Blessed be the memory of Abraham our father!—why did we ever let that girl go to Bury?”
“It is not as thou art fearing, wife. But—it is worse.”
“Worse!” Licorice seemed wide awake enough now. “Why, what could there be worse, unless she had married a Christian, or had abjured her faith?”
“Wife, this is worse. She has seen—him.”
“De Malpas?” The name was almost hissed from the lips of Licorice.
“The same. It was to be, Licorice. Adonai knows why! But it is evident they were fated to meet.”
“What did the viper tell her?”
“I do not gather that he told her any thing, except that she brought a face to his memory that he had known of old. She fancies—and so of course does he—that it was her sister.”
A low, peculiar laugh from her mother made Belasez’s blood curdle as she lay listening. There seemed so much more of the fiend in it than the angel.
“What an ass he must be, never to guess the truth!”
“She wants to know the truth, wife. She asked me if she might not.”
“Thou let it alone. I’ll cook up a nice little story, that will set her mind at rest.”
“O Licorice!—more deception yet?”
“Deception! Why, wouldst thou tell her the truth? Just go to her now, and wake her, and let her know that she is—”
Belasez strained her ears to their utmost, but the words which followed could not be heard from her mother’s dropped tones.
“What would follow—eh?” demanded Licorice, raising her voice again.
“Adonai knows!” said Abraham, sadly. “But I suppose we could not keep her long.”
“I should think not! Thou canst go and tell the Mayor, and see what he and his catch-polls will say. Wouldn’t there be a pretty ferment? Old man, it would cost thee thy life, and mine also. Give over talking about lies as if thou wert one of the cherubim (I’ll let thee know when I think there’s any danger of it), and show a little spice of prudence, like a craftsman of middle earth as thou art. More deception! Of course there is more deception. A man had better keep off a slide to begin with, it he does not want to be carried down it.”
“The child fancies, Licorice, that Anegay was her sister, and that she either became a Christian or married one. She has no idea of any thing more.”
“Who told her Anegay’s name?”
“I cannot imagine. It might be Bruno.”
“We have always been so careful to keep it from her hearing.”
There was a pause.
“Didst thou find the Christian dog had tampered with her faith?”
“I don’t know, Licorice. I could not get that out of her.”
“Then he has, no doubt. I’ll get it out of her.”
Belasez trembled at the threat.
“Any thing more, old man? If not, I’ll go to sleep again.”
“Licorice,” said Abraham in a low voice, “the child said she loved him—as she loves me.”
“May he be buried in a dunghill! What witchcraft has he used to them both?”
“It touched me so, wife, I could hardly speak to her. She did not know why.”
“Abraham, do give over thy sentimental stuff! Nothing ever touches me!”
“I doubt if it do,” was Abraham’s dry answer.
“Such a rabbit as thou art!—as frightened as a hare, and as soft as a bag of duck’s down. I’m going to sleep.”
And Belasez heard no more. She woke, however, the next morning, with that uncomfortable conviction of something disagreeable about to happen, with which all human beings are more or less familiar. It gradually dawned upon her that Licorice was going to “get it out of her,” and was likewise about to devise a false tale for her especial benefit. She had not heard two sentences which passed between her parents before she woke, or she might have been still more on her guard.
“Licorice, thou must take care what thou sayest to that child. I told her that Anegay was not her sister.”
“Just what might have been expected of thee, my paragon of wisdom! Well, never mind. I’ll tell her she was her aunt. That will do as well.”
When the daily cleaning, dusting, cooking, and baking were duly completed, Licorice made Belasez’s heart flutter by a command to attend her in the little porch-chamber.
“Belasez,” she began, in tones so amiable that Belasez would instantly have suspected a trap, had she overheard nothing,—for Licorice’s character was well known to her—“Belasez, I hear from thy father that thou hast heard some foolish gossip touching one Anegay, that was a kinswoman of thine, and thou art desirous of knowing the truth. Thou shalt know it now. Indeed, there was no reason to hide it from thee further than this, that the tale being a painful one, thy father and I have not cared to talk about it. This Anegay was the sister of Abraham thy father, and therefore thine aunt.”
Belasez, who had been imagining that Anegay might have been her father’s sister, at once mentally decided that she was not. She had noticed that Abraham’s references to the dead girl were made with far more indication of love and regret than those of Licorice: and she had fancied that this might be due to the existence of relationship on his part and not on hers. She now concluded that it was simply a question of character. But who Anegay was, was a point left as much in the dark as ever.
“She was a great friend of mine, daughter, and I loved her very dearly,” said Licorice, applying one hand to her perfectly dry eyes—a proceeding which imparted to Belasez, who knew that such terms from her were generally to be interpreted by the rule of contrary, a strong impression that she had hated her. “And at that time thy father dwelt at Lincoln—it was before we were married, thou knowest—and Anegay, being an only and motherless daughter, used to spend much of her time with me. I cannot quite tell thee how, for indeed it was a puzzle to myself, but Anegay became acquainted with a Christian maiden whose name was Beatrice—”
A peculiar twinkle in the eyes of Licorice caused Belasez to feel especially doubtful of the truth of this part of the story.
“And who had a brother,” pursued Licorice, “a young Christian squire, but as thou shalt hear, a most wicked and artful man.”
Belasez at once set down the unknown squire as a model of all the cardinal virtues.
“Thou art well aware, Belasez, my child, that these idolaters practise the Black Art, and are versed in spells which they can cast over all unfortunate persons who are so luckless as to come within their influence.”
There had been a time when Belasez believed this, and many more charges brought against the Christians, just as they in their turn believed similar calumnies against the Jews. But the months spent at Bury Castle, unconsciously to herself till it was done, had shaken and uprooted many prejudices, leaving her with the simple conviction that Jews and Christians were all fallible human beings, very much of the same stamp, some better than others, but good and bad to be found in both camps. Licorice, however, was by no means the person to whom she chose to impart such impressions. There had never been any confidence or communion of spirit between them. In fact, they were cast in such different moulds that it was hardly possible there should be any. Licorice was a sweeping and cooking machine, whose intellect was wholly uncultivated, and whose imagination all ran into cunning and deceit. Belasez was an article of much finer quality, both mentally and morally. The only person in her own family with whom she could exchange thought or feeling was Abraham; and he was not her equal, though he came the nearest to it.
It had often distressed Belasez that her mother and she seemed to have so little in common. Many times she had tried hard to scold herself into more love for Licorice, and had found the process a sheer impossibility. She had now given it up with a sorrowful recognition that it was not to be done, but a firm conviction that it was her own fault, and that she ought to be very penitent for such hardness of heart.
“It seems to me,” continued Licorice, “that this bad young man, whose name was De Malpas, must have cast a spell on our poor, unhappy Anegay. For how else could a daughter of Israel come to love so vile an insect as one of the accursed Goyim?
“For she did love him, Belasez; and a bitter grief and disgrace it was to all her friends. Of course I need not say that the idea of a marriage between them was an odious impossibility. The only resource was to take Anegay away from Lincoln, where she would learn to forget all about the creeping creatures, and return to her duty as a servant of the Living and Eternal One. It was at that time that I and thy father were wedded; and we then came to live in Norwich, bringing Anegay with us.”
Licorice paused, as if her tale were finished. It sounded specious: but how much of it was true? “And did she forget him, Mother?”
“Of course she did, Belasez. It was her duty.” Belasez privately thought that people did not always do their duty, and that such a duty as this would be extremely hard to do.
“Was she ever married, Mother, if you please?”
“She married a young Jew, my dear, named Aaron the son of Leo, and died soon after the birth of her first child,” said Licorice, glibly. “And was she really happy, Mother?”
“Happy! Of course she was. She had no business to be any thing else.”
Belasez was silent, but not in the least convinced.
“Thou seest now, my Belasez, why I was so much afraid of thy visits to Bury. I well know thou art a discreet maiden, and entirely to be trusted so far as thine ability goes: but what can such qualities avail thee against magic? I have heard of a grand-aunt of mine, whom a Christian by this means glued to the settle, and for three years she could not rise from it, until the wicked spell was dissolved. I do not mistrust thee, good daughter: I do but warn thee.”
And Licorice rose with a manner which indicated the termination of the interview, apparently thinking it better to reserve the religious question for another time.
“May I ask one other question, Mother?—what became of the maiden Beatrice and her brother?”
Licorice’s eyes twinkled again. Belasez listened for the answer on the principle of the Irishman who looked at the guide-post to see where the road did not lead.
“The squire was killed fighting the Saracens, I believe. I do not know what became of the maiden.”
Licorice disappeared.
“The squire was not killed, I am sure,” said Belasez to herself. “It is Father Bruno.”
Left alone, Belasez reviewed her very doubtful information. Anegay was not her sister, and probably not her aunt. That she had loved Bruno was sure to be true; and that she had been forcibly separated from him was only too likely. But her subsequent marriage to Aaron, and the very existence of Beatrice, were in Belasez’s eyes purely fictitious details, introduced to make the events dovetail nicely. Why she doubted the latter point she could hardly have told. It was really due to that gleam in her mother’s eyes, which she invariably put on when she was launching out rather more boldly than usual into the sea of fiction. Yet there seemed no reason for the invention of Beatrice, if she were not a real person.
But was the story which Belasez had heard sufficient to explain all the allusions which she had overheard? She went over them, one by one, as they recurred to her memory, and decided that it was. She had heard nothing from her parents, nothing from Bruno, which contradicted it in the least. Why, then, this uncomfortable, instinctive feeling that something was left behind which had not been told her?
Belasez was lying awake in bed when she reached that point: and a moment after, she sprang to a sitting posture.
Yes, there was something behind!
What had she heard that, if it were known, would cost Abraham and Licorice their lives? What had she heard which explained those mysterious allusions to herself as personally concerned in the story? Why would she leave them instantly if she knew all? What was that one point which Abraham had distinctly told her she must not know,—which Licorice expressed such anxiety that she should not even guess?
There was not much sleep for Belasez that night.
Note 1. The confession of the Countess is historical. She took the whole blame upon herself.