“It had peen better to send word,” calmly returned the warder.
“Send word to thy Lord, thou lither oaf!” cried the irate trumpeter, “and see whether it liketh him to keep the Lady awaiting hither on an even in January, while thou pratest in chopped English!”
Thereupon arose a passage of arms between the two affronted persons of diverse nationalities, which was terminated by Constance, with one of her sudden impulses, riding forward to the front, and taking the business on herself.
“Sir Warder,” she said—with that exquisite grace and lofty courtesy which was natural to every Plantagenet, be the other features of his character what they might,—“I am your Lady, and I pray you to notify unto your Lord that I am come hither.”
The warder was instantly mollified, and blew his horn to announce the arrival of a guest. There was a minute’s bustle among the minor officials about the gate, a little running to and fro, and then the drawbridge was thrown across, and the next moment the Lord Le Despenser knelt low to his royal spouse. He could have had no idea of her coming five minutes before, but he did his best to show her that any omissions in her welcome were no fault on his part.
Thomas Le Despenser was just twenty years of age. He was only of moderate height for a man; and Constance, who was a tall woman, nearly equalled him. His Norman blood showed itself in his dark glossy hair, his semi-bronzed complexion, and his dark liquid eyes, the expression of which was grave almost to sadness. An extremely short upper lip perhaps indicated blue blood, but it gave a haughty appearance to his features, which was not indicative of his character. He had a sweet low-toned voice, and an extremely winning smile.
The Princess suffered her husband to lift her from the pillion on which she rode behind Bertram Lyngern, who had been transferred to her service by her father’s wish. At the door of the banquet-hall the Dowager Lady met them. Maude’s impression of her was not exactly pleasant. She thought her a stiff, solemn-looking, elderly woman, in widow’s garb. The Lady Elizabeth received her royal guest with the lowest of courtesies, and taking her hand, conducted her with great formality to a state chair on the dais, the Lord Le Despenser standing, bare-headed, on the step below.
The ensuing ten minutes were painfully irksome to all parties. Everybody was shy of everybody else. A few common-place questions were asked and answered; but when the Dowager suggested that “the Lady” must be tired with her journey, and would probably like to rest for an hour ere the rear-supper was served, it was a manifest relief to all.
A sudden incursion of so many persons into an unprepared house was less annoying in the fourteenth century than it would be in the nineteenth. There was then always superfluous provision for guests who might suddenly arrive; a castle was invariably victualled in advance of the consumption expected; and as to sleeping accommodation, a sack filled with chaff and a couple of blankets was all that any person anticipated who was not of “high degree.” Maude slept the first night in a long gallery, with ten other women; for the future she would occupy the pallet in her lady’s chamber. Bertram was provided for along with the other squires, in the banquet-hall, the chaff beds and blankets being carried out of the way in the morning; and as to draughts, our forefathers were never out of one inside their houses, and therefore did not trouble themselves on that score. The washing arrangements, likewise, were of the most primitive description. Princes and the higher class of peers washed in silver basins in their own rooms; but a squire or a knight’s daughter would have been thought unwarrantably fastidious who was not fully satisfied with a tub and a towel. A comb was the only instrument used for dressing the hair, except where crisping-pins were required; and mirrors were always fixtures against the wall.
A long time elapsed before Maude felt at home at Cardiff; and she could not avoid seeing that a still longer period passed before Constance did so. The latter was restless and unsettled. She had escaped from the rule of her step-mother to that of her mother-in-law, and she disliked the one only a little less than the other; though “Daughter” fell very differently on the ear from the lips of a child of ten, and from those of a woman who was approaching sixty. But the worst point of Constance’s new life was her utter indifference to her husband. She looked upon his gentle deference to her wishes as want of spirit, and upon his quiet, reserved, undemonstrative manner as want of brains. From loving him she was as far as she had been in those old days when she had so cruelly told his sister Margaret that “when she loved Tom, she would let him know.”