Part 2—- Chapter 1.
Wherein Agnes the Lady of Pembroke telleth tale (1348).
The Children of Ludlow Castle.
“O little feet, that, such long years,
Must wander on through hopes and fears,
Must ache and bleed beneath your load:
I, nearer to the wayside inn
Where toil shall cease and rest begin,
Am weary, thinking of your road.”
Longfellow.
Hereby I promise, and I truly mean to execute it, to give my new green silk cloth of gold piece, bordered with heads of griffins in golden broidery, to the Abbey of Saint Austin at Canterbury, if any that liveth, man or woman, will tell me certainly how evil came into this world. I want to know why Eva plucked that apple. She must have plucked it herself, for the serpent could not give it her, having no hands. And if man—or woman—will go a step further, and tell me why Adam ate another, he shall have my India-coloured silk, broidered with golden lions and vultures, whereof I had meant to make me a new gown for this next Michaelmas feast. It doth seem as if none but a very idiot could have let in evil and sin and sorrow and pain all over this world, for the sake of a sweet apple. It must have been sweet, I should think, because it grew in Eden. But was there never another in all the garden save only on that tree? Or did man not know what would happen? or was it that man would not think? That is the way sometimes with some folks, else that heedless Nichola had not broken my favourite comb.
The question has been in my head many a score of times; but it came just now because my Lady, my lord’s mother, was earnest with me to write in a book what I could remember of mine early days, when my Lady mine own mother was carried to Skipton and Pomfret. If those were not evil days, I know not how to spell the word. And I am very sure it was evil men that made them; and evil women. I believe bad woman is far worse than bad man. So saith the Lady Julian, my lord’s mother; and being herself woman, and having been thrice wed, she should know somewhat of women and men too. Ay, and I were ill daughter if I writ not down also that a good woman is one of God’s blessedest gifts to this evil world; for such is mine own mother, the Lady Joan de Geneville, that was sometime wife unto the Lord Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, whose name men of this day know but too well.
Well-a-day! if a thing is to be, it is best over. It is never any good to sit on the brink shivering before man plunge in. So, if I must needs write, be it done. Here is a dozen of parchment, and a full inkhorn, and grey goose-quills: and I need nothing else save brains; whereof, I thank the saints, I have enough and to spare. And indeed, it is as well I should, for in this world—I say not, in this house—there be folks who have none too many. But I reckon, before I begin my tale, I had best say who and what I am, else shall those who read my book be like men that walk in a mist, which is not pleasant, as I found this last summer, when for a time I lost my company—and thereby, myself—on the top of a Welsh mountain.
I, then, who write, am Agnes de Hastings, Countess of Pembroke and Lady of Leybourne: and I am wife unto the Lord Lawrence de Hastings, Earl and Baron of the same. My father and mother I have already named, but I may say further that my said mother is a Princess born, being of that great House of Joinville in France—which men call Geneville in England—that are nobles of the foremost rank in that country. These my parents had twelve children, of whom I stand right in the midst, being the seventh. My brother Edmund was the eldest of us; then came Margaret, Joan, Roger, Geoffrey, Isabel, and Katherine; then stand I Agnes, and after me are Maud, John, Blanche, and Beatrice (Note 1). And of them, Edmund and Margaret have been commanded to God. He died young, my poor brother Edmund, for he set his heart on being restored to the name and lands which our father had forfeited, and our Lord the King thought not good to grant it; so his heart broke, and he died. Poor soul! I would not say an unkind word over his grave; where the treasure is, there will the heart be; but I would rather set my heart on worthier treasure, and I think I should scarce be so weak as to die for the loss. God assoil him, poor soul!
I was born in the Castle of Ludlow, on the morrow of the Translation of Saint Thomas, in the year of King Edward of Caernarvon the eleventh (Note 2), so that I am now thirty years of age. I am somewhat elder than my lord, who was born at Allesley, by Coventry town, on Saint Cuthbert’s Day, in the fourteenth year of the same (March 20th, 1321). I might say I was wiser, and not look forward to much penance for lying; for I should be more likely to have it set me if I said that all the wits in this world were in his head. Howbeit, there is many a worse man than he: a valiant knight, and courteous, and of rarely gentle and gracious ways; and maybe, if he were wiser, he would give me more trouble to rule him, which is easy enough to do. Neverthelatter, there be times when it should do me ease to take him by the shoulders and give him an hearty shake, if I could thereby shake a bit more sense into him: and there be times when it comes over me that he might have been better matched, as our sometime Lord King Edward meant him to have been, with the Lady Alianora La Despenser, that Queen Isabel packed off to a nunnery in hot haste when she came in. Poor soul! He certainly is not matched with me, unless two horses be matched whereof one is black and of sixteen handfuls, and steppeth like a prince, and the other is white, and of twelve handfuls, and ambles of a jog-trot. I would he had a bit more stir in him. Not that he lacks knightly courage—never a whit; carry him into battle, and he shall quit him like a man; but when all is said, he is fitter for the cloister, for he loveth better to sit at home with Joan of his knee, and a great clerkly book afore him wherein he will read by the hour, which is full well for a priest, but not for a noble of the King’s Court. He never gave me an ill word (veriliest (truly), I marvel if ever he said ‘I won’t!’ in all his life), yet, for all his hendihood (courtesy, sweetness), will he have his own way by times, I can never make out how. But he is a good man on the whole, and doth pretty well as he is bid, and I might change for a worse without taking a long journey. So, take it all in all, there are many women have more to trouble them than I, the blessed saints be thanked, and our sweetest Lady Saint Mary and my patron Saint Agnes in especial. Only I do hope Jack shall have more wit than his father, and I shall think the fairies have changed him if he have not. My son should not be short of brains.
But now, to have back, and begin my story: for I reckon I shall never make an end if I am thus lone: in coming to the beginning.
We were all brought up in the Castle of Ludlow, going now and then to sweeten (to have the house thoroughly cleaned) to the Castle of Wigmore. Of course, while we were little children, we knew scarce any thing of our parents, as beseemed persons of our rank. The people whom I verily knew were Dame Hilda our mistress (governess), and Maud and Ellen our damsels, and Master Terrico our Chamberlain, and Robert atte Wardrobe, our wardrobe-keeper, and Sir Philip the clerk (I cry him mercy, he should have had place of Robert), and Stephen the usher of the chamber, and our four nurses, whose names were Emelina, Thomasia, Joan, and Margery, and little Blaise the page. They were my world. But into this world, every now and then, came a sweet, fair presence—a vision of a gracious lady in velvet robes, whose hand I knelt to kiss, and who used to lay it on my head and bless me: and at times she would take up one of us in her arms, and sit down with the babe on her velvet lap, and a look would come into her eyes which I never saw in Dame Hilda’s; and she would bend her fair head and kiss the babe as if she loved her very much. But that was mostly while we were babies. I cannot recollect her doing that to me—it was chiefly to Blanche and Beatrice. Until one day, and then—
Nay, I have not come to that yet. And then, at times, we should hear a voice below—a stern, deep voice, or a peal of loud laughter—and in an instant the light and the joy would die out of the tender eyes of that gracious vision, and instead would come a frightened look like that of a hunted hare, and commonly she would rise suddenly, and put down the babe, and hasten away, as if she had been indulging in some forbidden pleasure, and was afraid of being caught. I can remember wishing that the loud laugh and the stern angry voice would go away, and never come back, but that the gracious vision would stay always with us, and not only pay us a rare visit. Ay, and I can remember wishing that she would take me on that velvet lap, and let me nestle into her soft arms, and dare to lay my little head on her warm bosom. I think she would have done it, if she had known! I used to feel in those days like a little chicken hardly feathered, and longed to be under the soft brooding wings of the hen. The memory of it hath caused me to pet my Jack and Joan a deal more than I should without it.
Then, sometimes, we had a visit from a very different sort of guest. That was an old lady—about a hundred and fifty, I used to fancy her—dressed in velvet full as costly, but how differently she wore it! She never took us on her lap—not she, indeed! We used to have to kneel and kiss her hand—and Roger whispered to me once that if he dared, he would bite it. This horrid old thing (who called herself our grandmother) used to be like a storm blowing through the house. She never was two minutes in the room before she began to scold somebody; and if she could not find reasonable fault with any body, that seemed to vex her more than anything else. Then she scolded us all in a lump together. “Dame Hilda, what an untidy chamber!”—she usually began in that way—“why don’t you make these children put their playthings tidy? (Of course Dame Hilda did, at the end of the day; but how could we have playthings tidy while we were playing with them?) Meg, your hair is no better than a mop! Jack, how got you that rent in your sleeve? (I never knew Jack without a rent in some part of his clothes; I should not have thought it was Jack if he had come in whole garments.) Joan, how ungainly you sit! pluck yourself up this minute. Nym, take your elbows off the table. Maud, your chaucers (slippers) are down at heel. How dirty your hands are, Roger! go and wash them. Agnes, that wimple of yours is all awry; who pinned it up?”
So she went on—rattle and scold, scold and rattle—as long as she stayed in the room. Jack, always the saucy one, asked her one day, when he was very little—
“Are you really Grandmother?”
“Certes, child,” said she, turning to look at him: “why?”
“Because I wish you were somebody else!”
Ha, chétife! did Jack forget that afternoon? I trow not.
I had a sound whipping once myself from Dame Hilda, because I said, right out, that I hated the Lady Margaret: and Joan,—poor delicate Joan, who was perpetually scolded for stooping—looked at me as if she wished she dared say it too. Roger had his ears boxed because he drawled out, “Amen!” I think we all said Amen in our hearts.
Sometimes the Lady Margaret did not come upstairs, but sent for some of us down to her. That was worse than ever. There were generally a number of gentlemen there, who seemed to think that children were only made to be teased: and some of them I disliked, and others I despised. Only of one I was terribly afraid: and that was—mercy, Jesu!—mine own father.
I should have found it difficult to say what it was in him that frightened me. I used to call it fear then; but when I look back on the feeling from my present state, I think it was rather a kind of ungovernable antipathy. He did not scold us all round as Lady Margaret did. The worst thing, I think, that I remember his saying to me was a sharp—“Get out of the way, girl!” And I wished I only could get out of his way, for ever and ever. Something made me feel as if I could not bear to be in the same room with him. I used to shiver all over, if I only heard his voice. Yet he never ill-used any of us; he scarcely even looked at us. It was not any thing he did which made me feel so; it was just himself.
Surely never did man dress more superbly than he. I recollect thinking that the King was not half so fine; yet King Edward liked velvet and gold as well as most men. My Lord my father never wore worsted summer tunics or woollen winter cloaks, like others. Silk, velvet, samite, and cloth of gold, were his meanest wear; and his furs were budge, ermine, miniver, and gris. I can remember hearing how once, when the furrier sent him in a robe of velvet guarded with hare’s fur, he flung it on one side in a fury, and ordered the poor man to be beaten cruelly. He always wore much golden broidery, and buttons of gems or solid gold; and he never would wear a suit of any man’s livery—not even the King’s,—save once, when he wore the Earl of Chester’s at the coronation of the Queen of France, just to vex King Edward—as it sorely did, for he was then a proscribed fugitive, who had no right to use it.
It is a hard matter when a child is frightened of its own father. It is yet harder when he makes it hate him. Ah, it is easy to say, That was wicked of thee. So it was: and I know it. But doth not sin lead to sin?—spring out of it, like branches from a stem, like leaves from a branch? And when one man’s act of sin creates sin in another man, and that again in a third, whose is the sin—the black root, whereof came the rotten branches and the withered leaves? Are we not all our brothers’ and our sisters’ keepers? Well, it will not answer to pursue that road: for I know well I should trace up the sin too high, to one of whom it were not meet for me to speak in the same breath with ugly words. Ay me! what poor weak things we mortal creatures are! Little marvel, little marvel for the woe that was wrought!—so fair, so fair she was! She had the soul of a fiend with the face of an angel. Was it any wonder that men—ay, and some women—were beguiled with that angel face, and fancied but too rashly that the soul must be as sweet as it? God have mercy on all Christian souls! Verily, I myself, only this last spring-time, was ready to yield to the witch’s spell—never was woman such enchantress as she!—and athwart all the past, despite all I knew, gazing on that face, even yet fairer than the faces of younger women, to think it possible that all the tales were false, and all the past a vision of the night, and that the lovely face and the sweet, soft voice covered a soul white as the saints in Heaven! And men are easier deluded by such dreams than women—or at least I think it. My poor father! If only he had never seen her that haled him to his undoing! he might, perchance, have been a better man. Any way, he paid the bill in his heart’s blood. So here I leave him. God forgive us all!
And now to my story. While I was but a little child, we saw little of our mother: little more, indeed, than we did of our father. I think, of the two, we oftener saw our grandmother. And little children, as God hath wisely ordered it, live in the present moment, and take no note of things around them which men and women see with half an eye. Now, looking back, I can recall events which then passed by me as of no import. It was so, and there was an end of it. But I can see now why it was so: and I know enough to guess the often sorrowful nature of that wherefore.
So it was nothing to us children, unless it were a relief, that after I was about four years old, we missed our father almost entirely. We never knew why he tarried away for months at a time. We had not a notion that he was first in the prison of the Tower, and afterwards a refugee over seas. And we saw without seeing that our mother grew thin and white, and her sweet eyes were heavy with tears which we never saw her shed. All we perceived was that she came oftener to the nursery, and stayed longer with us, and petted the babies more than had been her wont. And that such matters had a meaning,—a deep, sad, terrible meaning—never entered our heads. Later on we knew that during those lonely years her heart was being crucified, and crucifixion is a dying that lasts long. But she never let us know it. I think she would not damp our fresh childish glee by even the spray of that roaring cataract wherein her life was overwhelmed. Mothers—such mothers as she—are like a reflection of God.
I remember well, though I was but just seven years old, the night when news came to Ludlow Castle that my father had escaped from the Tower. It was a very hot night in August—too hot to sleep—and I lay awake, chattering to Kate and Isabel, who were my bedfellows, about some grand play we meant to have the next afternoon, in the great gallery—when all at once we heard a horse come dashing up to the portcullis, past our chamber wall, and a horn crying out into the night.
Isabel sat up in bed, and listened.
“Is it my Lord coming home?” I said.
“What, all alone, with no company?” answered Isabel, who is four years elder than I. “Silly child! It is some news for my Lady my mother. The saints grant it be good!”
Of course we could hear nothing of what passed at the portcullis, as our window opened on the base court. But in a few minutes we heard the horse come trotting into our court, and the rider ’lighted down: and Isabel, who lay with her head next the casement, sat up again and put her head out of the curtain. It was a beautiful moonlight night, almost as bright as day.
“What is it, Ibbot?” said Kate.
“It is a man in livery,” answered Isabel; “but whose livery I know not. It is not ours.”
Then we heard the man call to the porter, and the door open, and the sound of muffled voices to and fro for a minute; and then Master Inge’s step, which we knew—he was then castellan—coming in great haste past our door as if he were going to my Lady’s chamber. Then the door of the large nursery opened, and we heard Dame Hilda within, saying to Tamzine, “Thou wert better run and see.” And Tamzine went quickly along the gallery, as if she, too, were going to my Lady.
For a long, long time, as it seemed to us—I dare say it was not many minutes—we lay and listened in vain. At length Tamzine came back.
“Good tidings, or bad?” we heard Dame Hilda ask.
“The saints wot!” whispered Tamzine. “My Lord is ’scaped from the Tower.”
“Ha, chétife! will he come here?” said Dame Hilda: and we saw that it was bad news in her eyes.
“Forsooth, nay!” replied Tamzine. “There be hues and cries all over for him, but man saith he is fled beyond seas.”
“Amen!” ejaculated Dame Hilda. “He may win to Cathay (China) by my good will; and if he turn not again till mine hair be white, then will I give my patron saint a measure in wax. But what saith my Lady?”
“Her I saw not,” answered Tamzine; “but Mistress Robergia, who told me, said she went white and red both at once, and her breast heaved as though her very heart should come forth.”
“Gramercy!” said Dame Hilda. “How some folks do set their best pearls in copper!”
“Eh, our Lady love us!” responded Tamzine. “That’s been ever sith world began to run, Dame, I can tell you.”
“I lack no telling, lass,” was Dame Hilda’s answer. “Never was there finer pearl set in poorer ore than that thou and I wot of.”
I remember that bit of talk because I puzzled myself sorely as to what Dame Hilda could mean. Kate was puzzled, too, for she said to Isabel—
“What means the Dame? I never saw my Lady wear a pearl set in copper.”
“Oh, let be!” said Isabel. “’Tis but one of the Dame’s strange sayings. She is full of fantasies.”
But whether Isabel were herself perplexed, or whether she understood, and thought it better to shut our mouths, that cannot I tell to this day.
Well, after that things were quiet again for a while: a very long while, it seemed to me. I believe it was really about six months. During that time, we saw much more of our mother than we used to do; she would come often into the nursery, and take one of the little ones on her lap—it was oftenest Blanche—and sit there with her. Sometimes she would talk with Dame Hilda; but more frequently she was silent and sad, at times looking long from the casement as if she saw somewhat that none other eyes could see. Jack said one day—
“Whither go Mother’s eyes when she looks out of the window?”
“For shame, Damsel (Note 3) John!” cried Dame Hilda. “‘Mother,’ indeed! Only common children use such a word. Say ‘my Lady’ if you please.”
“She is my mother, isn’t she?” said Jack stubbornly. “Why shouldn’t I call her so, I should like to know? But you haven’t answered me, Dame.”
“I know not what you mean, Damsel.”
“Why, when she sits down in that chair, and takes Blanchette on her knee,—her eyes go running out of the window first thing. Whither wend they?”
“Children like you cannot understand,” replied Dame Hilda, with one of those superior smiles which used to make me feel so very naughty. It seemed to say, “My poor, little, despicable insect, how could you dream of supposing that your intellect was even with Mine?” (There, I have writ that a capital M in red ink. To have answered to Dame Hilda’s tone when she put that smile on, it should have been in vermilion and gold leaf.) Howbeit, Jack never cared for all the airs she put on.
“Then why don’t you make us understand it?” said he.
I do not remember what Dame Hilda said to that, but I dare say she boxed Jack’s ears.
Deary me, how ill doth my tale get forward! Little things keep a-coming to my mind, and I turn aside after them, like a second deer crossing the path of the first. That shall never serve; I must keep to my quarry.
All this time our mother grew thinner and whiter. Poor soul, she loved him well!—but so sure as the towel of the blessed Nicodemus is in the sacristy of our Lady at Warwick, cannot I tell for why. Very certain am I that he never gave her any reason.
We reckoned those six months dreary work. There were no banquets in hall, nor shows came to the Castle, nor even so much as a pedlar, that we children saw; only the same every-day round, and tired enough we were of it. All the music we ever heard was in our lessons from Piers le Sautreour; and if ever child loved her music lessons, her name was not Agnes de Mortimer. All the laughter that was amongst us we made ourselves; and all the shows were when Jack chose to tumble somersaults, or Maud twisted some cold lace round her head, and said, “Now I am Queen Isabel.” Dreary work, in good sooth! yet was it a very Michaelmas show and an Easter Day choir to that which lay ahead.
And then, one night,—ah, what a night that was! It was near our bed-time, and Jack, Kate, and I, were playing on the landing and up and down the staircase of our tower. I remember, Jack was the stag, and Kate and I were the hunters; and rarely did Jack throw up his head, to show off his branching horns—which were divers twigs tied on his head by a lace of Dame Hilda’s, for the use whereof Jack paid a pretty penny when she knew it. Kate had just made a grab at him, and should have caught him, had his tunic held, but it gave way, and all she won was an handful of worsted and a slip of the step that grazed her shins; and she was rubbing of her leg and crying “Lack-a-day!” and Jack above, well out of reach, was making mowes (grimaces) at us—when all at once an horn rang loud through the Castle, and man on little ambling nag came into the court-yard. Kate forgat her leg, and Jack his mowes, and all we, stag and hunters alike, ran to the gallery window for to gaze.
I know not how long we should have tarried at the window, had not Emelina come and swept us afore her into the nursery, with an impatient—“Deary me! here be these children for ever in the way!”
And Jack cries, “You always say we are in the way; but mustn’t we be any where?”
Whereto she makes answer—“Go and get you tucked into bed; that’s the only safe place for the like of you!”
Jack loudly resented being sent to bed before the proper time, whereupon he and Emelina had a fight (as they had most nights), and Kate and I ran into the nursery to get out of the way. Here was Margery, turning down the beds, but Dame Hilda we saw not till, an half-hour after, as we were doffing us for bed, she came, with her important face which she was wont to wear when some eventful thing had befallen her or us.
“Are the damsels abed, Emelina?” saith she.
“The babes be, Dame; and the elders be a-doffing them.”
Dame Hilda came forward into the night nursery.
“Hold you there, young ladies!” saith she: “at the least, I would say my three elder young ladies—Dame Margaret, Dame Joan, and Dame Isabel. Pray you, don you once more, but of your warmest gear, for a journey by night.”
“Are we not to go to bed?” asked Joan in surprise: but our three sisters donned themselves anew, as Dame Hilda had said, of their warmest gear. Dame Hilda spake not word till they were all ready. Then Meg saith—
“Whither be we bound, Dame?—and with whom?”
“With my Lady, Dame Margaret, to Southampton.”
I think we all cried out “Southampton!” in diverse tones.
“There is news come to her Ladyship, as she herself may tell you,” said Dame Hilda, mysteriously.
“Aren’t we to go, Dame?” saith Blanche’s little voice.
Dame Hilda turned round sharply, as if she went about to snap Blanche’s head off; and Blanche shrank in dismay.
“Certainly not, Dame Blanche! What should my Lady do to be worried with babes like you? She has enough else on her mind at this present, without a pack of tiresome children—holy saints be her help! Eh dear, dear, this world!”
“Dame, is this world so bad?” saith Jack, letting his nose appear above the bed-clothes.
“Go to sleep, the weary lot of you!” was Dame Hilda’s irritable answer.
“Because,” saith Jack, ne’er a whit daunted—nothing ever cowed Jack—“if it is so bad, hadn’t you better be off out of it? You’d be better off, I suppose, and we shouldn’t miss you,—that I’ll promise. Do go, Dame!”
Jack spake these last words with a full compassionate air, as though he were seriously concerned for Dame Hilda’s happiness; but she, marching up to the bed where Jack lay, dealt him a stinging slap for his impudence.
“Ah!” saith Jack in a mumbled voice, having disappeared under the bed-clothes, “this is a bad world, I warrant you, where folks return evil for good o’ this fashion!”
We heard no more of Jack beyond divers awesome snores, which I think were not altogether sooth-fast: but before many minutes had passed, the door of the antechamber opened, and my Lady, donned in travelling gear, entered the nursery.
Dame Hilda’s words had given me the fancy that some sorrowful, if not shocking news, had come to her; and I was therefore much astonished to see a faint flush in her cheeks, and a brilliant light in her eyes, which looked as though she had heard good news.
“My children,” said our mother, “I come to bid you all farewell—may be a long farewell. I have heard that—never mind what; that which will take me away. Meg, and Joan, and Ibbot, must go with me.”
“Take me too!” pleaded little Blanche.
“Thee too!” repeated our mother, with a loving smile. “Nay, sweetheart! That cannot be. Now, my children, I hope you will all be good and obedient to Dame Hilda while I am away.”
It was on Kate that her glance fell, being the next eldest after Isabel; and Kate answered readily—
“We will all be good as gold, Dame.”
“Nym, and Hodge, and Geoffrey,” she went on, “go also with me; so thou, Kate, wilt be eldest left here, and I look to thee to set a good ensample to thy brethren,—especially my little wilful Jack.”
Jack’s snoring had stopped when she came in, and now, as she went over and sat her down by the bed wherein Jack lay of the outside, up came Jack’s head from under the blue velvet coverlet. Our mother laid her hand tenderly upon it.
“My dear little Jack!” she said; “my poor little Jack!”
“Dame, I’m not poor, an’t like you!” made answer Jack, in a tone of considerable astonishment. “I’ve got a whole ball of new string, and two battledores and a shuttlecock, and a ball, and a bow and arrows.”
“Yes, my little Jack,” she said, tenderly.
“There are lots of lads poorer than me!” quoth Jack. “Nym himself hasn’t got a whole ball of string, and Geoff hasn’t a bit. I asked him. Master Inge gave it me yesterday. I’m going to make reins with it for Annis and Maud, and lots of cats’ cradles.”
“You’re not going to make reins for me,” said Maud from our bed. “Dame, it is horrid playing horses with Jack. He wants you to take the string in your mouth, and you don’t know where he’s had it. I don’t mind having it tied to my arms, but I won’t have it in my mouth.”
“Did you ever see a horse with his reins tied to his arms?” scornfully demanded Jack. “You do as you are bid, my Lady Maud, or I’ll come and make you.”
“Children!” said our mother’s soft voice, before Maud could answer, “are you going to quarrel this last night when I have come to say farewell? For shame, Maud! this was thy blame.”
“Oh, of course, it is always me,” muttered Maud, too angry for grammar. “Jack’s always the favourite; I never do any thing right.”
“Yes, you do—now and then, by accident,” responded Joan, who was sitting at the foot of our bed; a speech which did not better Maud’s temper, and it was never angelic.
Jack seemed to have forgotten his passage-at-arms with Maud. He was always good-tempered enough, though he did tease outrageously.
“Why am I poor, Dame?” quoth Jack.
“Little Jack, thou must shortly go into the wars, and thou hast no armour.”
“But you’ll get me a suit. Dame?”
“I cannot, Jack. Not for these wars. Neither can I give thee the wealth to make thee rich, as I fain would.”
“Then, Dame, you will petition the King for a grant, will you not?” saith Meg.
“True, my daughter,” saith our mother softly. “I must needs petition the King, both for the riches from His treasury, and for the arms from His armoury.” And then she bent down to kiss Jack. “O my boy, lay not up treasure for thyself, and thus fail to be rich in God.”
I began then to see what she meant; but I rather wondered why she said it. Such talk as that, it seemed to me, was only fit for Sunday. And then I remembered that she was going away for a long, long time, and that therefore Sunday talk might be appropriate.
I do not recollect any thing she said to the others, only to Jack and me. Jack and I were always fellows. We children had paired ourselves off, not altogether according to age, but rather according to tastes. Edmund and Meg should have gone together, and then Hodge and Joan, and so forth: whereas it was always Nym and Joan, and Meg and Hodge. Then Geoffrey and Isabel made the right pair, and Kate, Jack, and I, went in a trio. Maud was by herself; she paired with nobody, and nobody wanted her, she was so cross. Blanche was every body’s pet while she was the baby, and Beatrice came last of all.
Our mother went round, and kissed and blessed us all. I lay inside with Kate and Maud, and when she said, “Now, my little Agnes,”—I crept out and travelled over the tawny silk coverlet, to those gentle velvet arms, and she took me on her lap, and lapped me up in a fur mantle that Meg bare on her arm.
“And what shall I say to my little Agnes?”
“Mother, say you love me!”
It came out before I knew it, and when I had said it, I was so frightened that I hid my face in the fur. It did not encourage me to hear Dame Hilda’s exclamation—
“Lack-a-day! what next, trow?”
But the other voice was very tender and gentle.
“Didst thou lack that told thee, mine own little Annis? Ay me! Maybe men are happier lower down. Who should love thee, my floweret, if not thine own mother? Kiss me, and say thou wilt be good maid till I see thee again.”
I managed to whisper, “I will try, Dame.”
“How long will it be?” cries Jack.
“I cannot tell thee, Jack,” she saith. “Some months, I fear. Not years—I do trust, not years. But God knoweth—and to Him I commit you.” And as she bent her head low over the mantle wherein I was lapped, I heard her say—“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis, Jesu!”
I knew that, because I always had to repeat it in my evening prayers, though I never could tell what it meant, only, as it seemed to say “Agnes” and “Monday,” I supposed it had something to do with me, and was to make me good after some fashion, but I saw not why it must be only on a Monday, especially as I had to say it every day. Now, of course, I know what it means, and I wonder children and ignorant people are not taught what prayers mean, instead of being made to say them just like popinjays. I wanted to teach my Joan what it meant, but the Lady Julian, my lord’s mother, commanded me not to do so, for it was unlucky. I begged her to tell me why, and she said the Latin was a holy tongue, known to God and the saints, and so long as they understood our prayers, we did not need to understand them.
“But, Dame,” said I, “saving your presence, if I say prayers I understand not, how can I tell the way to use them? I may be asking for a basket of pears when I want a pair of shoes.”
“Wherefore trouble the blessed saints for either?” saith she. “Prayers be only for high and holy concerns—not for base worldly matter, such as be pears and shoes.”
“But I am worldly matter, under your leave, Dame,” said I. “And saith not the Paternoster somewhat touching daily bread?”
“Ay, the food of the soul—‘panem supersubstantialem da nobis’” quoth she. “It means not a loaf of bread, child.”
“That’s Saint Matthew,” said I. “But Saint Luke hath it ‘panem quotidianum,’ and saith nought of ‘supersubstantialem.’ And surely common food cometh from God.”
“Daughter!” saith she, somewhat severely, “thou shouldst do a deal better to leave thy fantasies and the workings of thine own brain, and listen with meek submission to the holy doctors that can teach thee with authority.”
“Dame, I cry you mercy,” said I. “But surely our Lord teacheth with more authority than they all; and if I have His words, what need I of theirs?”
Ha, chétife! she would not listen to me,—only bade me yet again to beware of pride and presumption, lest I should fall into heresy, from the which Saint Agnes preserve me! But it doth seem strange that folks should fall into heresy by studying our Lord’s words; I had thought they should rather thereby keep them out of it.
Well—dear heart, here again am I got away from my story! this it is to have too quick a wit—our mother blessed us, and kissed us all, and set forth, the six eldest with her, for Southampton. I know now, though I heard not then, that she was on her way to join our father. News had come that he was safe over seas, in France, with the Sieurs de Fienles, the Lady Margaret’s kin, and no sooner had she learned it than she set forth to join him. I doubt greatly if he sent for her. Nay, I should rather say he would scarce have blessed her for coming. But she got not thus far on her way, as shall be seen.
His tarrying with the Sieurs de Fienles was in truth but a blind to hide his true proceedings. He stayed in Normandy but a few weeks, until the hue and cry was over, and folks in England should all have got well in their heads that he was there: then, or ever harm should befall him by tarrying there too long, he made quiet departure, and ere any knew of it he was safe in the King of France’s dominions. At this time the King of France was King Charles le Bel, youngest brother of our Queen. I suppose he was too much taken up with the study of his own perfections to see the perfections or imperfections of any body else: otherwise had he scarce been so stone-blind to all that went on but just afore his nose. There be folks that can see a mouse a mile off, and there be others that cannot see an elephant a yard in front of them. But there be a third sort, and to my honest belief King Charles was of them, that can see the mouse as clear as sunlight when it is their own interest to detect him, but have not a notion of the elephant being there when they do not choose to look at him. When he wanted to be rid of his first wife Queen Blanche, he could see her well enough, and all her failings too, as black as midnight; but when his sister behaved herself as ill as ever his wife did or could have done, he only shut his eyes and took a comfortable nap. Now King Charles had himself expelled my father from his dominions, for some old grudge that I never rightly understood; yet never a word said he when he came back without licence. Marry, but our old King Edward should not have treated thus the unlicenced return of a banished man! He would have been hung within the week, with him on the throne. But King Charles was not cut from that stuff. He let my father alone till the Queen came over—our Queen Isabel, his sister, I mean—and then who but he in all the French Court! Howbeit, they kept things pretty quiet for that time; nought came to King Edward’s ears, and she did her work and went home. Forsooth, it was sweet work, for she treated with her brother as the sister of France, and not as the wife of England. King Charles had taken Guienne, and she, sent to demand restitution, concluded a treaty of peace on his bare word that it should be restored, with no pledge nor security whatever: but bitter complaints she laid of the King her husband, and the way in which he treated her. Well, it is true, he did not treat her as I should have done in his place, for he gave in to all her whims a deal too much, where a good buffet on her ear should have been ever so much more for her good—and his too, I will warrant. Deary me, but if some folks were drowned, the world would get along without them! I mention no names (only that weary Nichola, that is for ever mashing my favourite things). So the Queen came home, and all went on for a while.
But halt, my goose-quill! thou marchest too fast. Have back a season.
Note 1. This is the probable order of birth. The date assigned to the birth of Agnes is fictitious, but that of her husband is taken from his Probatio Aetatis.
Note 2. July 8th, 1317; this is about the probable time. The Countess is supposed to be writing in the spring of 1348.
Note 3. This word was then used of both sexes, and was the proper designation of the son of a prince or peer not yet arrived at the age of knighthood.