“Poor Emma!” laughed Antigone. “You get enough of it, don’t you, at the smithy?”
“I would rather not talk over my mother and sisters, if you please,” returned Emma.
“Oh, you don’t need to take airs, my lady. I know!”
“Come, let Emma be,” said Sarah. “Let’s keep our tempers, if we haven’t much else. There’s the vesper bell!”
Antigone’s work was not likely to be improved by the hasty huddled-up style in which it was folded, while Sarah and Emma shook theirs straight and carefully avoided creases. They had then to give it in to the mistress, who stood at one end of the room, putting all away in a large coffer. When the last girl had given in her work, Mrs De la Laund called for silence.
“On Thursday next,” said she, “I shall give you a holiday after dinner. The Queen comes to Lincoln on that day, and I wish to give as many as are good girls the chance of seeing her enter. But I shall expect to have no creased work like Antigone’s; nor split and frayed like Geneveva’s; nor dirtied like Femiana’s. Now you may go.”
They had odd names for girls in those days. Among the nobles and gentry, most were like ours; young ladies of rank were Alice, Cicely, Margaret, Joan, Isabel, Emma, or Agnes: a strange name being the exception. But among working women the odd names were then the rule: they were Yngeleis, Sabelina, Orenge, Pimma, Cinelote, Argentella, and very many more of the same high-sounding kind.
When the apprentices left the work-room, they were free to do as they liked till seven o’clock, when they must all re-assemble there, answer to their names called over, repeat some prayers after Mrs de la Laund, and go to bed in a large loft at the top of the house. Characters came out on these occasions. The majority showed themselves thoughtless and giddy: they went to run races on the green, and to play games—the better disposed only among themselves: but the wild, adventurous spirits soon joined a lot of idle youths as unsteady as themselves, with whom they spent the evening in rough play, loud laughter, and not altogether decorous joking. The little group of sensible girls kept away from such scenes. Most of them went to see their friends, if within reasonable distance; those who had none at hand sat or walked quietly together. Emma and Sarah were among these.
Any person entering Lincoln on the following Wednesday would plainly have seen that the town was preparing for some great event. Every house draped itself in some kind of hanging—the rich in coarse silk, the poorer in bunting or whatever they could get. The iron hoops here and there built into the walls for that purpose, held long pine-sticks, to be lighted as torches after dark; and they would need careful watching, for a great deal of the city was built of wood, and if a spark lighted on the walls, a serious fire might be the result. In the numerous balconies which projected from the better class of houses sat ladies dressed in their handsomest garments on the Thursday morning, and below in the street stood men and women packed tightly into a crowd, waiting for the Queen to arrive. There was not much room in a mediaeval street, and the sheriffs did not find it easy to keep a clear passage for the royal train. As to keeping any passage for the traffic, that would have been considered quite unnecessary. There was not much to keep it for; and what there was could go round by back streets, just as well as not. Few people set any value on time in the Middle Ages.
Queen Alianora was expected to arrive about twelve o’clock. She was not the Queen Eleanor of whom we read at the beginning of the story (for Alianora is only one of the old ways of spelling Eleanor), but her daughter-in-law, the Lady Alianora who had been a friend to the dumb Princess. She was a Spanish lady, and was one of the best and loveliest Queens who ever reigned in England. Goodness and beauty are not always found in company—perhaps I might say, not often; but they went together with her. She was a Spanish blonde—which means that her hair was a bright shade of golden—neither flaxen nor red; and that her eyes were a deep, deep blue—the blue of a southern sky, such as we rarely if ever see in an English one. Her complexion was fair and rosy, her features regular and beautiful, her figure extremely elegant and well-proportioned. The crowd, though good-humoured, was beginning to get tired, when she came at last.