For Hugh Calverley stood at one of the hall windows of Langley Palace, on the brightest of May mornings, in the year 1388, his face hidden in his hands, and his whole mien and aspect bearing the traces of sudden and intense anguish.
“God had no mercy, Mistress Maude!” he wailed under his voice. “We had no friend save Him, and He was silent to us. He cared nought for us—He left us alone in the uttermost hour of our woe.”
“Nay, sweet Hugh! it was men, not God!” said Bertram’s voice soothingly behind them.
“He gave them leave,” replied Hugh in an agonised tone.
It was the old reproachful cry, “Lord, carest thou not that we perish?” but Maude could not understand it at all. That cry, when it rises within the fold, is sometimes a triumph, and always a mystery, to those that are without. “You believe yourselves even now as safe as the angels, and shortly to be as happy, and you complain thus!” True; but we are not angels yet. Poor weak, suffering humanity is always rebellious, without an accompanying unction from the Holy One. But it is not good for us to forget that such moods are rebellion, and that they often cause the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.
Bertram quietly drew Maude aside into the next window.
“Let the poor fellow be!” he said compassionately. “Alack, ’tis no marvel. These traitor loons have hanged his father. And never, methinks, did son love father more.”
“Master Calverley’s father!—the Queen’s squire?”
“He. And look you, Maude,—heard man ever the like! the Queen’s own Grace was on her knees three hours unto my Lord of Arundel, praying him to spare Master Calverley’s life. Think of it, Maude!—Caesar’s daughter!”
“Mercy, Jesu!”—Maude could imagine nothing more frightful. It seemed to her equivalent to the whole world tumbling into chaos. What was to become of “slender folk,” such as Bertram and herself, when men breathed who could hear unmoved the pleadings of “Caesar’s daughter?”