In Malvern Chase
HE porter at the gate of Malvern Priory was a very old man, but he had good eyes, and he knew a pretty thing when he saw it.
“Thou wilt speak with Brother Owyn, wilt thou?” he said to Calote in his toothless voice. “By my troth, I 'll have thee to know, hussy, that this is no household of gadding friars, but a sober and well-conducted priory. Our monks do not come and go at the bidding of wenches.”
“Good brother, I come not of myself,” said Calote, “I am sent a message of my father.”
“And thy father, I make no doubt, is the Father of Lies,—Christ give him sorrow!”
“My father was put to school one while in Malvern Priory,” answered Calote. “Brother Owyn was his master and loved him well.”
“Sayst thou so?” the porter retorted, yet with something of curiosity awaking within his bright eyes. “Is no lad hath gone in and out this gate in forty year, but hath one day or other tasted my rod for a truant. How do they call thy father?”
“In London men call him Long Will, and Will Langland 's his name.”
The porter opened wide his mouth, and, “By Goddes Soul!” quoth he, “Will Langland!—Let me look on thee,”—albeit he had done naught but look on her for ten minutes past. “Yea, 't is true; I 'd know thee by thine eyen, that are gray, and thoughtful, and dark with a something that lies behind the colour of them,—and shining by the light of a lamp lit somewhere within.—So! Will Langland hath got him a wench! 'T is a hard nut to crack. Moreover, eyen may be gray as glass, and yet speak lies. What for a token hast thou that thou 'rt true messenger?”
“I have a poem,” she answered.
“Let 's see it.”
“Nay, 't is for Brother Owyn.”
“And how shall Brother Owyn have it, if not by me?” rejoined the porter testily.
“Wilt thou get me speech of him if I show it thee?” asked Calote.
“Shall a lay-brother of Malvern stoop to play handy-dandy for favours?” said the porter, casting up his chin in a way feebly to imitate his prior; yet his curiosity overcame his pride and he added: “Do thou show me first the poem. After, I 'll think on 't.”
Whereupon Calote drew forth the parchment from her breast, and he unrolled it and spread it upon his knee, and “H-m-m, h-m-m!” said he. But he could not read a word, being no scholar.
“Find me a pretty passage,” he bade her presently, “and say it me, the while I follow with my finger.”
So she began;—and neither one of them knew the place in the parchment:—
"'Right so, if thou be religious run thou never further
To Rome, nor to Rochemadour, but as thy rule teacheth,
And hold thee under obedience, that highway is to heaven.'"
“Tut chut! Thou 'rt a bold wench! Wilt teach thy grandmother to suck eggs?” cried the porter.
Calote laughed, but began anew:—
"'Grace ne groweth not but amongst the low;
Patience and poverty is the place where it groweth,
And in loyal-living men, and life-holy,
And through the gift of the Holy Ghost as the gospel telleth'"—
“Lord, Lord, enough!” cried the porter. “'T is very true that never none but Will Langland writ such-like twaddle.”
“But thou wilt bid Brother Owyn to the gate?” said Calote, rolling up her parchment.
“How may I bid him to the gate when he 's gone forth yonder in the Chase with hook and line and missal to catch fish for supper?”
“Ah! good brother, gramerci,” laughed Calote.
“Then kiss me,” said he. “Nay, what harm? An old man that might be thy father twice over!”
But she shook her head and sprang swiftly from him.
“I 've a long journey afore me,” she said, “and if I kiss every man that doeth me service, there 'll be no kisses left for my True Love.”
So she ran away among the trees, and the old man went into the gate-house and sat chuckling.
All about Malvern Priory was forest, and a part of this was the King's Chase. The woodland climbed the hill part way, thinning as it climbed.
"'I was weary with wandering and went me to rest
Under a broad bank by a burn's side.'"
hummed Calote as she went upward. “Belike he 's there catching his fish.”
The day was mild; Saint Martin's summer was at hand; all around trees were yellowing, leaves were dropping. The little haze that is ever among the Malverns dimmed the vistas betwixt the tree-trunks to faintest blue. The voices of the hunt floated upward from the level stretch of forest in the plain,—bellowing of dogs, a horn, a distant shouting.
“Please God I may not meet the King, nor Stephen,” said Calote. “They do say he came hither last night to hunt.”
Even as she spoke, a roe fled across her path, and immediately after, two huntsmen came riding.
“Which way went the—Cœur de joie!” cried a boy's voice.
The other huntsman sat dumb upon his horse. Calote, rosy red, her lips a-quiver, stood with her hands crossed on her breast, that frighted but yet steadfast way she had. Then:—
“Light down, Etienne, thou laggard lover! 'T is thy true love hath followed thee from London town these many miles,” laughed Richard, and flung himself off his horse.
“Oh, me, harrow, weyl a way!” said Calote, covering up her face. “'T is not true! I am not so unmaidenly; my heart is full of other matter than light love.” She turned to Stephen, who was also lighted off his horse, and “Dost thou believe I followed for love of thee?” she cried.
“Alas and alack!—but I would it were so!” answered Stephen.
“Yet thou didst follow,” said the King. “Wherefore?”
She turned her eyes away from Stephen and looked on Richard, and as she looked she sank down on her knees before him.
“Thou art the King!” she gasped, “and I knew thee not!”
In very truth, here was not the little lad she had known. The grace of childhood was gone from Richard. Some of the mystery had gone out of his eyes, though they were yet, and would ever be, thoughtful; all of the shyness had gone out of his manner, albeit none of the courtesy. He was well used to being a king; he was already, at thirteen years of age or thereabout, the most of a gentleman in his very foppish and gentleman-like court. Calote had sat still in the window-seat that time he came to the crown by his grandfather's death, but to-day, before she knew wherefore, she was on her knees. Then only were her eyes opened, and she knew that this was the King.
He looked upon her friendly-wise, half-laughing. Kingship and comradeship were ever a-wrestle in Richard's heart to the end of the chapter. He liked to be a king, none better; he kept his state as never king kept it before in England,—as few have kept it since. But also, he loved to be loved, not from afar and awesomely as subjects love, but in the true human fashion that holds betwixt friends, betwixt kindly master and friendly servant.
Now, he put out his hand to Calote and lifted her up, and when they stood face to face, his eyes were a-level with hers, so big was he;—or haply she so small.
“I am grown tall; is 't not so?” he said. “Very soon I shall be tall as Etienne. No wonder thou didst not know me. But now, see thou tell me true wherefore thou art so suddenly come to Malvern, and I 'll forgive thy forgetting. Nay,—not on thy knees again.”
“Sire, hast thou forgot that I told thee—of a plot? And whether thou wouldst be King of all the people of England, or only puppet to the nobles?”
“I am not so good at forgetting as thou,” he made reply, and she could not but marvel to hear him so froward of speech. She was aware that this was no little child, but a boy that had listened, perforce, a year and more, to the counsels of grown men, some of them wise, all of them shrewd.
“This plot moveth on,” she continued, taking up her tale. “There is forming, and shall be formed, a great society of men over all England. I, and others, we go out across the land, one here, one there, north, south, east, and west, to bind the people into brotherhood. And it is my task to tell the people that the King is one of this brotherhood,—if so be 't is true.”—She paused, but Richard did not speak, so she went on: “It is my task to tell the people that the King approveth this gathering together of the people. And, when the time cometh, he will stand forth and be their leader,—against those that oppress them. If so be 't is true.”
“And the people want?”—
“Freedom, sire! Not to be a part of the land, like stocks and stones and dumb cattle. Not to be villeins any longer, but freed men, with leave to come and go of their own will.”
“But noblesse,—villeinage,—these are fixed,—may not be overthrown.”
“Not by the King?” asked Calote.
Richard looked on her uncertain, then his face flushed and he struck his long-bow vehement into the earth:—
“The King may do what he will!” he cried; “else wherefore is he King? Tell me, will they aid me to put down mine uncle, John of Gaunt, and all these that tie my hands, and the Council that now is the verray governor of this realm? Will they do all these things for me, if I make them free men?”
“This and more than this, sire!” Calote exclaimed; “For they 'll build up a kingdom whereof the foundation is love, and the law will be not to take away by tax, but to see that every man hath enough.”
“Shall it be soon?” asked Richard.
“That I cannot tell. The realm of England is a wide realm, not easy to traverse.”
Richard turned hesitating to his squire: “I would it were wise, this that the maid telleth. In vérité, is 't so? What dost say, Etienne? I—I fear mine uncle and Sudbury would laugh.”
“I say, 't is a wicked and evil counsel that sendeth forth a young maid to encounter perils. No love ruleth the hearts of them that send her.”
“Art thou my true lover, in good sooth?” cried Calote, “and would undo that I have most at heart?”
“Moreover, 't is beside my question,” Richard added fretfully. “I would know but only if an uprising, like to this Calote stirreth, is of power to succeed against nobilité?”
“I am no prophet, sire.”
“Thou thinkest not of thy King, neither of his kingdom, but of thine own self only,” said Richard, in the sulks, driving an arrow spear-fashion into the earth and wrenching it forth with a jerk that snapped the shaft.
“I think of her,” Etienne answered him sadly.
“There is more kinds of love than one,” Calote protested. “Is there not a love for the whole people that is as worthy as the love for one woman? Yea, and more worthy, for 't is Christ's fashion of loving. What matter if I lose my life, if so be the people is free?”
Richard kindled to her words. “So must the King love!” he cried. “Fie, for shame, Etienne! But only yesternight thou wert persuading me how honourable 't is when a man lose his life for the world's sake and Christ Jesu—as crusaders and such.”
“And what is this I preach, but a crusade,” demanded Calote, “to free the people?”
“A crusade?” the King questioned. Then his face came all alight. “A crusade!—And when the preaching 's done I 'll be the leader of the crusade.—And I 'll make all England my Holy Land!”—For if Richard had not been a king, he might have been a poet.
“Now praise be to Christ and Mary Mother!” said Calote joyously. “And what for a token dost give me, sire, that the people may know me a true messenger?”
“A token, pardé!” and he looked him up and down hastily. He had on a green jerkin all embroidered over with R's entwined in a pattern of gold threads, and buttoned with little bells of gold. His one leg was scarlet, his other was green. About his neck, at the end of a long jewelled chain, hung a little hunting-horn of silver, with his badge of the white hart graven upon it and set round with pearls.
“Take this!” he said, and flung the chain over her head.
“By God's will, I 'll call the King's ményé to him with this horn,” quoth Calote, a-kissing it.
The King laughed merrily then, and went and cast himself upon his squire's neck:—
“Etienne, chéri, mignon,—be not so glum! When Richard is King in the Kingdom of Love, not Dan Cupid's self shall dare to cross thy suit to thy lady. Thou shalt be married to Calote, and I 'll make thee chief counsellor. I 'll take mine Uncle John's land and richesse in forfeit and give them to thee.”
“Ah, no, no!” Calote exclaimed.
“But I will if I 'm King?” said Richard.
And then did Stephen laugh.
“Now wherefore so merry?” Richard asked, eyeing him in discontent.
“Beau sire, you bade me be merry,” Stephen made answer, and to Calote he said “When dost thou start a-preaching, and whither?”
“When Parliament is departed,—I go about in the villages to the south and west of Gloucester. Meanwhile, I 'll lodge with a kindly forester's wife in Malvern here. But now I must away to find an old monk, my father's schoolmaster. My father was put to school in Malvern Priory.”
“Why, 't is very true!” cried the King. “The Vision maketh a beginning in the Malvern Hills.”
“I bring the Vision to this monk; and he 's a-fishing hereabout in the Chase, the porter saith. Saw ye a burn as ye came hither?”
“Yea, verily!” Richard answered her. “We crossed it but fifty paces back, and 't was there the dogs went off the scent and back to the pack and the other folk, in the lower chase. Hark to them now! We 've lost the hunt; let us go with the maid, Etienne. If her father's schoolmaster is the same that sat at my side yestere'en and told me tales, he 'll wile an hour right prettily for us. He said Dan Chaucer, our Chaucer, came hither a little lad years agone, afore mine Uncle Lionel died. I 'd rather fish than hunt. Leave Robert de Vere and my brother John Holland to slay the deer.”
So they went through the wood leading their jennets; and Calote, with the King's horn about her neck, walked by the King's side.
CHAPTER III
By a Burn's Side
ROTHER Owyn gazed dreamily into the flashing waters of the burn. His fish-basket was empty; twice he had lost his bait. But if the hunger and thirst of a man be in his soul, 't is little he recks if he have not fish for supper. Forty years past, when Brother Owyn was a young man, he had fled into the Church in the hope to escape the world. But he learned that monastery gates are as gossamer; and the world, the flesh, and the devil, all three, caper in cloister. To-day he was in disgrace with his prior—not the old dull prior, but a newer, narrower man—for defending the doctrine and opinions of Master John Wyclif, concerning sanctuary, and the possession of property, and the wrong that it is for prelates to hold secular office.
“Dost thou defend a devil's wight that is under ban of Holy Church,” quoth the prior, “and yet call thyself a servant to God and the Pope?”
“Which Pope?” saith Brother Owyn; for at this time there were two popes in Christendom, the one at Avignon and the other at Rome, and they were very busy cursing each other.
“Such levity in one of thy years is unseemly, brother,” the prior made answer, and turned his back.
Nevertheless, Brother Owyn was sore perplexed. Having that vision of the Holy City ever before his eyes, and his daughter awaiting him on the other side of the River of Death, he was altogether minded to keep him from heresy. He began to be an old man now; haply the time was short till he might enter into that other Kingdom. Was Master John Wyclif the Devil, who taketh the word out of the mouth of Dame Truth? Yet a many of those men, even his enemies who reviled him for his doctrine, revered him for a holy man and a scholar. Some said there was not so great a man in England, nor so good, as John Wyclif. Here, then, was the old perplexity, to know what was truth. But Brother Owyn erred in that he thought to save his soul alive by flight.
“Malvern coveteth a hermit,” he mused; “but if I go apart, and sleep in a cave, and never wash me, nor cut my beard, straightway there 'll be a flocking of great folk to look on me, and to question me of their wives' honour, and of the likelihood of these French wars, for that I 'm a holy man. Alack, my Margaret, my Pearl, now lead me out of this quandary away into a quiet place to pray, for John Wyclif's word draweth. Soon I 'll be a heretic and accursed.”
Hereupon Brother Owyn lifted up his eyes, and suddenly cried out aloud; for, on the other side of the burn, there stood a golden-haired maid.
“Ho! thou hast lost a fine fish, see him!—gone!” cried a merry voice, and the boy that was the King of England came a-leaping and laughing from stone to stone across the sun-flecked water. After him tiptoed the maid, but the squire with the two horses bode on the farther side.
“Nay, climb not to thy feet, good brother,” said the King. “Thy fright hath shaken thee; in sooth, we meant it not.”
“My lord, my lord,” murmured Brother Owyn, and there were tears in his eyes; “methought 't was my young daughter come to take me home,—home where a man sinneth no more, and the walls of the city are jasper, and the gates are twelve pearls.” He covered his face with his hands, and the tears trickled down his beard.
Richard knelt beside him and put his arm about the bent shoulders: “Oh, but I 'm sorry!” he said distressfully. “Don't weep! prythee, don't weep!”
“If I be not thy daughter, yet my father was as a son to thee,” Calote assured him, kneeling at his other side. “'T was thou taught him to sing, and to-day he 's sent his song to thee.”
Brother Owyn had lifted up his face to look on her, and now he touched her bright hair, soft, with his finger, and “Will Langland's voice was wonderly sweet,‘ said he, ’and low. 'T is nigh on thirty years since he went out from Malvern, but his was not a voice to be forgot. His daughter, thou?—He ever did the thing he had not meant to do.” He looked on her with a curiosity most benevolent, staying his gaze a long while at her eyes; and:—
“Doth Will Langland sing at court?” he asked.
Calote laughed, her father's image in the threadbare gown flashing sudden in her mind.
“Nay, he hath not yet; but he shall one day, when Calote cometh again to London,‘ declared the King. ’'T is not so merry a poet as Master Chaucer; but I do love his solemnité. Whiles he jesteth, but his tongue 's a whip then,—stingeth.”
Brother Owyn nodded his head, as he were hearing an old tale; and turned him again to Calote:—
“Will Langland went a-seeking Truth, his lady, thirty years past. Hath he found her?”
“She is here,” Calote answered simply; and unrolled the parchment to set it open before him.
The old man looked on her keenly: “Thou hast a great trust in thy father?”
“More than in all men else,” she said; and the squire on the other side of the burn thrust his foot among the fallen leaves noisily, and jingled the bridles of the horses.
“I am in sore straits to find Truth,” quoth Brother Owyn, with a half-smile. “Many a man will thank Will Langland heartily, if so be he hath found her.”
He turned the pages, slow, reading to himself a bit here and there.
“Give me thy rod, brother,” said the King, “I 'll fish.”
“There 's a-many horns blowing, sire,” Stephen warned him from the other side of the burn. “No doubt they seek thee and are troubled.”
“Cœur de joie! Let them seek!” replied Richard. “'T will give them a merry half-hour to think I 'm come to hurt, or slain. Then would there be one less step to the throne for mine Uncle Lancaster. Look not so sourly, Etienne! I 'll catch but one little fish. Hist!—Be still!”
For a little while there was no voice but the brook's voice, and no other sound but the slow turning of parchment pages. The monk busied him with the poem and Richard looked into the water. Meanwhile, Calote's gaze strayed to the squire and found his eyes awaiting her. Straightway he plucked his dagger from his belt, flashed it in the sun that she might see, and kissed it; after, he took it by the point and held it out, arm's length, as he would give it to her; and so he stood till she might rede his riddle. Presently, her eyes frowning a question, she put forth her hand, palm upward, uncertain. The squire smiled and nodded, and because their two hands might not meet across the brook, he thrust the dagger in the trunk of a tree and wedged the sheath betwixt the bark and the slant of the blade. All this very silently.
Brother Owyn pursed his lips, or shook his head, or turned the pages backward to read again. The King wagged his fishing-line up and down in the water, impatiently. The distant horns blew more frequent.
“My lord,” Stephen ventured once again.
Richard got to his feet and threw away the rod. “Eh, well; let 's be going, since thou wilt have it so,‘ he agreed. ’The holiday is over. On the morrow Gloucester again, and to say whether Urban or Clement is true Pope.”
Brother Owyn's face was grave; rebuke and displeasure trembled in his voice:—
“My lord, and dost thou think 't is England maketh the Pope?”
Richard was halfway across the burn; he laughed, and looked over his shoulder:—
“Ma foy, but I 'm very sure 't is not France!” said he.
After, when he was in the saddle, he felt for his horn, and, remembering, called:—
“Prythee, Calote, blow thrice, that they may know whence I come. Now, give thee good day, sweet maid, and success to thine adventure. I 'll watch for thee in London.”
And Calote had not blown the third blast when king and squire were off and away; and she turned to meet Brother Owyn's disapproving eye.
“'T would seem that thou art well acquaint at court, though thy father is not,” he said.
She opened her lips to speak, then hung her head and answered nothing.
“Now, thanks be to Christ Jesus, the Lamb and the Bridegroom, that my little daughter is dead, and safe away from this world of sin,” said Brother Owyn. “She dwelleth as a Bride in the house of the Bridegroom,—in the Holy City that John the beloved and I have seen in a vision. Thou art so fair that I could wish thou mightst dwell therein likewise.”
“Yea, after I 'm dead, and my devoir is done,” Calote assented to him. “Beseech thee, judge me not, good brother! I carry a message of comfort to all these poor English folk that sweat beneath the burden of wrong. Haply, thy daughter, were she quick, would go along with me this day.”
“Is this thy message?” he asked, pointing to the parchment.
“This, and more. I may not tell all to thee, for thou 'rt a monk.”
“A strange reason,” he averred. “'T must be a most unholy message. Have a care of thy soul, maiden; the pure only shall see the Bridegroom. Here am I sheltered in monastery, yet have I much ado to withstand the Devil, that I may keep me clean and a true believer, and so see Christ and my daughter at the last.”
“I cannot forever take keep of mine own soul, brother, when there be so many other in peril to be thought on. Wilt thou that I hide my head in monastery and sing plain-song, and watch perpetual at the altar lest the lamp go out; and, all the while, without the gate, the poor till the fields that I may have leisure to pray? The poor likewise be anhungered after truth. They cry, 'Wherefore did God make us to be starved of the fat prelates!'”
“So did thy father rail in years gone by,” answered the monk, “and Master John Wyclif would have more preaching. But monasteries are holy; they are ordained of God and the—the Pope. They shall endure.”
“Brother, what wilt thou do, thou and thy monastery, when the villeins all are free, when they need no longer grind at the abbot's mill, nor plough the abbey's fields, nay, nor even pay quit-rent to rid them of service?”
“Free!” cried Brother Owyn, “and who shall set them free?”
“Themselves, and Piers Ploughman, and Christ the King's Son of Heaven, which cureth all ills by love.”
The old man drew away from her: “Surely, thou hast a devil,” he said.
“Then an thou lov'st me, call it forth,” quoth she; and smiled, and spread her arms wide, waiting.
But he cried, “Woe, woe!” and cast up his hands to heaven; and after, “Lord, I 'm content my daughter died at two years old.”
“Had she lived, she might have saved souls other than her own.”
“She hath saved mine, mine most sinful,” the monk interrupted her sternly; “and dost thou think I 'll lose it now to thee? Get thee gone, with thy strange beliefs and blasphemies!”
She got to her feet very slow, and stepped down the bank to the edge of the burn; so, standing close at his knee, she spoke once again:—
“In the city where the wall is jasper and the gates are twelve pearls, will there be any villeins to labour while other men feast?”
Her face was very near to his, her hand was on his arm.
“Nay, but I trow we 'll all be villeins there,” he answered gently; “villeins of one Lord, and bound to the soil; and the streets of that city are as pure gold.” So saying, he made the sign of the cross upon her brow.
She trod the stepping-stones in silence, but on the other bank she turned:—
“Natheless, though bond, yet we 'll be free!” she cried; and, catching up the squire's dagger, was quickly gone.