It may also be as well to notice here, that Mistress Margery is highly accomplished. Of course she can play the lute, and sing, and work elaborate and delicate embroidery, and compound savoury dishes; and equally of course does she know any nobleman or gentleman by a glance at his shield, and can tell you in a moment to whom belong the three lions rampant sable, and who owns the bend engrailed argent on a field gules. These are but the ordinary acquirements of a gentlewoman; but our heroine knows more than this. Mistress Margery can read; and the handmaidens furthermore whisper to each other, with profound admiration of their young mistress’s extraordinary knowledge, that Mistress Margery can write. Dame Lovell cannot do either; but Sir Geoffrey, who is a literary man, and possesses a library, has determined that his daughter shall receive a first-rate education. Sir Geoffrey’s library is a very large one, for it consists of no less than forty-two volumes, five of which are costly illuminated manuscripts, and consist of the Quest of the Sangraal (see Note 1), the Travels of Sir John Maundeville, the Chronicle of Matthew Paris, Saint Augustine’s City of God, and a Breviary. Dame Lovell has no Breviary, and as she could not read it if she had, does not require one; but Margery, having obtained her father’s permission to do so, has employed her powers of writing and illuminating in making an elaborate copy of his Breviary for her own use; and from an illumination in this book, not quite finished, representing Judas Iscariot in parti-coloured stockings, and Saint Peter shooting at Malchus with a cross-bow, is Margery now summoned away to the kitchen.
Margery entered the kitchen with a noiseless step, and making a low courtesy to her mother, said, in a remarkably clear, silvery voice, “It pleased you to send for me, good mother.”
“Yea, lass; give a hand to the blanch-porre, for Al’ce knows no more than my shoe; and then see to the grewall, whilst I scrape these almonds for the almond butter.”
Margery quietly performed her task, and spoke to the mortified Al’ce in a much gentler tone than Dame Lovell had done. She was occupied in the preparation of “eels in grewall,” a kind of eel-stew, when a slender youth, a little older than herself, and attired in the usual costume of a page, entered the kitchen.
“Why, Richard Pynson,” cried Dame Lovell, “thou art a speedy messenger, in good sooth. I looked not for thee until evensong.”
“I finished mine errand, good mistress,” replied the youth, “earlier by much than I looked for to do.”
“Hast heard any news, Richard?”
“None, mistress mine, unless it be news that a homily will be preached in Bostock Church on Sunday next ensuing, by a regular of Oxenforde, one Master Sastre.”
The grewall was standing still, and Margery was listening intently to the words of Richard Pynson, as he carelessly leaned against the wall.
“Will you go, Mistress Margery?”