“Before she was three years old, she passed from me. My Lord of Arundel—Earl Edmund that then was—was very friendly with my father; and he desired that their families should be drawn closer together by the marriage of Richard Fitzalan, his son and heir—a boy of twelve years—with one of my father’s daughters. My father, thus appealed unto, gave him our snowdrop.
“‘Not Joan,’ said he; ‘Joan is God’s. She shall be the spouse of Christ in Shaftesbury Abbey.’
“So it came that ere my darling was three years old, they twined the bride-wreath for her hair, and let it all down flowing, soft and shining, from beneath her golden fillet. Ah holy Virgin! had it been thy pleasure to give me that cup of gall they mixed that day for her, and to her the draught of pure fresh water thou hast held to me! Perchance I could have drunk it with less pain than she did; and at least it would have saved the pain to her.
“That was in the fourteenth year of Edward of Caernarvon. (1320.) So long as Earl Edmund of Arundel lived, there was little to fear. He, as I said, loved my father, and was a father to Isabel. The Lady of Arundel likewise was then living, and was careful over her as a mother. Knowest thou that the Lady Griselda, of such fame for her patient endurance, was an ancestress of thy father? It should have been of thy mother. Hers was a like story; only that to her came no reward, no happy close.
“But ere I proceed, I must speak of one woeful matter, which I do believe to have been the ruin of my father. He was never loved by the people—partly, I think, because he gave counsel to the King to rule, as they thought, with too stern a hand; partly because my grandfather loved money too well, nor was he over careful how he came thereby; partly because the Queen hated him, and she was popular; but far above all these for another reason, which was the occasion of his fall, and the ruin of all who loved him.
“Hast thou ever heard of the Boni-Homines? They have other names—Albigenses, Waldenses, Cathari, Men of the Valleys. They are a sect of heretics, dwelling originally in the dominions of the Marquis of Monferrato, toward the borders betwixt France, Italy, and Spain: men condemned by the Church, and holding certain evil opinions touching the holy doctrine of grace of condignity, and free-will, and the like. Yet some of them, I must confess, lead not unholy lives.”
Philippa merely answered that she had heard of these heretics.
“Well,” resumed the blind woman, “my father became entangled with these men. How or wherefore I know not. He might have known that their doctrines had been condemned by the holy Council of Lumbars two hundred years back. But when the Friars Predicants were first set up by the blessed Dominic, under leave of our holy Father the Pope, many of these sectaries crept in among them. A company went forth from Ashridge, and another from Edingdon—the two houses of this brood of serpents. And one of them, named Giles de Edingdon, fell in with my father, and taught him the evil doctrines of these wretches, whom Earl Edmund of Cornwall (of the blood royal), that wedded a daughter of our house, had in his unwisdom brought into this land; for he was a wicked man and an ill liver. (See Note 6.) King Edward of Caernarvon likewise listened to these men, and did but too often according to their counsels.
“Against my grandfather and others, but especially against these men of Edingdon and Ashridge, Dame Isabelle the Queen set herself up. King Edward had himself sent her away on a certain mission touching the homage due to the King of France for Guienne; for he might not adventure to leave the realm at that time. But now this wicked woman gathered together an army, and with Prince Edward, and the King’s brother the Earl of Kent, who were deluded by her enchantments, she came back and landed at Orewell, and thence marched with flying colours to Bristol, men gathering everywhere to her standard as she came.
“We were in Bristol on that awful day. My mother, the King had left in charge of the Tower of London; but in Bristol, with the King, were my grandfather and father my Lord and Lady of Arundel, their son Richard, and Isabel, and myself. I was then a maiden of sixteen years. When Dame Isabelle’s banners floated over the gates of the city, and her trumpets summoned the citizens to surrender, King Edward, who was a timid man, flung himself into the castle for safety, and with him all of us, saving my grandfather, and my Lord of Arundel, who remained without, directing the defence.