A Clerk of Oxford, and His Adventures in the Barons' War

by Evelyn Everett-Green

Bridget Marlow, who had no child of her own, was willing enough to have the care of her sister's daughter. She promised to guard her jealously and tend her lovingly, and to keep her as long as her mother could spare her.

"I always said, when I did hear of thy twin daughters, that one ought surely to be mine," she said with a smile. "Fear not for her, sister—I will guard her like the apple of mine eye; and she shall find a second father and mother in us. In this quiet place few, save the good monks of the Abbey hard by, pass our way. My husband, as thou dost know, acts as porter of the gate by day; and living as we do neath the shadow of the cloister wall, we are not molested by the comings and goings of worldlings from the city. The maid will have peace and quiet here, and may well forget the troubles through which she has passed."

So Linda was, after a few days, left in that quiet place by her mother, in the fond hope that she and Hugh would now forget one another, and that the troubled dream of love would be effaced by illness from her daughter's brain.

Lotta nodded with approval when she learned what had been done.

"She had better take the veil herself, and live the life of a nun," she said, tossing her handsome, haughty head. "She is not fit for the battle of life. She is a poor, puling creature at best! She is not fit to be the bride of any save a man of dreams and books. The clash of arms turns her cheek white; the thought of peril to one she loves drives her out of her senses. She had better forget Hugh, and he her. They are no fitting mates one for the other."

As for Hugh himself, he had been carried to the Castle by order of the Constable, when his case had been made known there. A guard had been sent to search the tower, to take possession of everything found there, and to convey the young man to the Castle, where he received every attention and care.

The father of Hugh and the Constable of the Castle had been friends in their youth, and Sir Humphrey was not only interested in Hugh for that reason, but was deeply indignant at the treatment he had received, and the trick which had been played upon the authorities of the city by these two lawless youths.

For some days Hugh was unable to give an account of what had occurred, lying in a state of exhaustion which was almost like that of trance. Indeed so strange was his condition that Brother Angelus (at the earnest solicitation of Leofric) was asked to come and look at him; and he shook his head somewhat gravely over his state, and spoke words not altogether understood by those about him.

In those days the friars were the best leeches and surgeons to be had. Their work amongst the sick poor gave to them a skill and insight not always found amongst those who professed greater lore. Brother Angelus had no small store of knowledge regarding sickness, and it was well for Hugh that he was called to his side; for he strictly forbade any further bleeding (always the favourite remedy for fevers), declaring that this fever was itself the result of excessive bleedings practised with an unholy purpose, and he detected other symptoms about the young man which caused his face to take a stern and anxious aspect.

"He has been made the unwilling accomplice in deeds of darkness," he said, as he observed the comatose symptoms which often seized the patient. "They have sought to subdue his spirit and will, and to throw him into those unhallowed trances wherein men see and hear things which our Maker has thought it good to hide from us. There are ways by which one man may obtain this unrighteous power over his fellow, and this is what yon evil men have sought to do with their captive. By weakening his body they have sought to gain ascendency over his spirit. But it is plain that he has resisted manfully, and to the very last. God be thanked for that! We will pray that the malice of the enemy may in this case be frustrated!"