Philippa was silent from astonishment.
“Go on,” said the nun. “What did she to thee?”
“She did little,” said Philippa in a low voice. “She only left undone.”
“Ah!” replied Mother Joan. “The one half of the Confiteor. The other commonly marcheth apace behind.”
“Then,” said Philippa, “my mother was—”
“Isabel La Despenser, younger daughter of the Lord Hugh Le Despenser the younger, Earl of Gloucester, and grand-daughter of Hugh the elder, Earl of Winchester. Thou knowest their names well, if not hers.”
“I know nothing about them,” replied Philippa, shaking her head. “None ever told me. I only remember to have heard them named at Arundel as very wicked persons, and rebels against the King.”
“Holy Virgin!” cried Mother Joan. “Rebels!—against which King?”
“I do not know,” answered Philippa.
“But I do!” exclaimed the blind woman, bitterly. “Rebels against a rebel! Traitors to a traitress! God reward Isabelle of France for all the shame and ruin that she brought on England! Was the crown that she carried with her worth the price which she cost that carried it? Well, she is dead now—gone before God to answer all that long and black account of hers. Methinks it took some answering. Child, my father did some ill things, and my grandfather did more; but did either ever anything to merit the shame and agony of those two gibbets at Hereford and Bristol? Gibbets for them, that had sat in the King’s council, and aided him to rule the realm,—and one of them a white-haired man over sixty years! (See Note 5.) And what had they done save to anger the tigress? God help us all! We be all poor sinners; but there be some, at the least in men’s eyes, a deal blacker than others. But thou wouldst know her story, not theirs: yet theirs is the half of hers, and the tale were unfinished if I told it not.”