The Young Lovell: A Romance

by Ford Madox Ford

They rode on all that day until they came to Sea Houses by North Sunderland, having covered nearly sixty miles of rough country, for they went by the South Forest and past Rothbury and the high moors so that they might not be observed. Four miles from Sea Houses, it being then ten o'clock at night, the Young Lovell sent his men forward towards Castle Lovell, and in a fisherman's hut on the sounding pebbles of the sea he found the monk Francis, who was very glad to see him and glad of his news. The monk had been that day in the village of Castle Lovell and had found that the hermit was indeed dead. So he had appointed the day following at six in the evening for skilled masons to come and disinter that holy man to give him holy burial. For he thought that by that hour the Young Lovell would be well established in his Castle.

So when they had exchanged their news the lord and the monk lay down to sleep a little on a pile of nets that the fisherman heaped up for them in a corner of his hut, he himself lying outside upon seaweed with his wife. At a quarter to three he waked them and they set out upon their voyage to the White Tower. There was a good following breeze from the due south, so that they might well come to Castle Lovell in an hour or a little under. But the dancing motion of that little boat made that monk Francis very ill, which was great pity for the Young Lovell. With fasting, prayer and vigil that good monk was become very weak, though he had once been a very strong knight. He lay on the bottom-boards of that boat, and so deeply had he fainted that when they had come to the little harbourage beneath the White Tower he was insensible and they could not tell that he was not dead. So there was no getting him up the ladder of iron spikes that was all the way there was into that tower from the sea. The Young Lovell would not trust those spikes to bear the two of them or he would have carried the monk up. So he climbed up alone, and Richard Bek and the others were awaiting. But the fisherman rowed that monk straight to the shore and carried him over the sand to the township. Here in a hut he found the Lady Margaret of Glororem, who had ridden all that day and night before to come there. So she tended that monk and in about an hour he could stand again. But then there was no way of coming into that tower.

Therefore the monk Francis and the Lady Margaret went up to the little mound on which was the chapel the Young Lovell had first watched his harness in. This was so near the Castle that half of the bowmen under Sir Matthew Grey had been appointed to spend the night in it so that they might come out when the gun fired and shoot their arrows against the battlements between de Insula and Wanshot Towers. So that monk and that lady knelt in that porch, and between their prayers for the success of their dear lording they watched the dawn pointing over the sea, which came with the grey forms of waterspouts. These moved silently, here and there upon the horizon. So they saw the sun come up white and fiercely shining between those monstrous appearances. The monk Francis said that that pale sunrise was a certain sign that the weather was breaking, and he thanked God that all their hay was in. Then they saw the Young Lovell spring up on to the coping of the White Tower. So clear the weather and the light were that they could mark the little lion's head that was carved on the peak of his helmet like the handle of a curling stone.

So he went down out of sight again and they prayed very fiercely, holding each other's hands for comfort. The bowmen whispered from the door behind to know if it were not near time. White smoke flew out from the top of that tower, and the monk cried out so loudly that they never heard the sound of the shot, for he knew that the great gateway was taken. Out ran the archers with their bows bent and stood on the green sward. They shot arrows high so that they fell over the battlements—long arrows with great feathers of the grey goose that journeyed intently through the air. So that gun sounded again and again, and they saw the Young Lovell once more upon that coping. The bowmen in the Castle were sending arrows up against him, but they glanced off his armour because of their slanting flight. He stood there looking down and behind him were the grey waterspouts.

Now as for such as dwelt within the Castle:

A little before the exact minute of sunrise such of them that slept were awakened by the firing of cannon shot, two following. A stone ball came into the window of the Lady Douce and broke a chest. Then from many quarters there came cries, sharp but short like gun shots. And then one scream so high and dreadful that all men stood deaf and amazed. Such a cry had never before been heard in all Northumberland amidst the rain of arrows. There were men bursting in at the great gate of the Castle and others with their swords high coming from the men's kitchen that was between the tower called Constance and that called Wanshot. The men upon the battlements had their bows bent or held up beams and bolts of iron, or were setting iron poles under great stones to roll them down through the machicolations. And the Knight of Wallhouses was whispering to the Lady Douce, who had run down into the great hall, that there were no men coming against the little postern nearest the sea, and that he and she and his men would make their way out of the Castle by the gate.

That tide of dreadful war had come upon them so quickly that it seemed as if, before Henry Vesey's eyes could see, men were bursting in at the great gate and from other places in the Castle. Then he knew that the Young Lovell must be aware of secret ways in that none of them had heard of, and before that fray was two minutes gone he knew that they were lost. Therefore he made ready to get himself gone by the postern.

But when that most dreadful cry was heard all those people stood still; the men with bows, balks, and levers, the men running in with swords; Sir Henry whispering; the Lady Isopel calling from her window; the Decies turning in his bed, and Sir Symonde running along the battlements. That cry deprived them of the powers of motion and made their bones quiver within their flesh like shaken reeds. Some that then heard it said afterwards that it was no more than the voice of the elements.

The monk Francis deemed to the end of his life that he had heard the cry of fear of a false goddess, for, when he went, a broken man, to commune of these things with the Bishop Palatine, that Bishop told him that so that false goddess whom they most dreaded and who is the bane of all Christendom, since in quiet hearts she setteth carnal desire—so that false goddess had cried out when, in the form of a cloud of mist or may be of a rainspout, she had hastened to the rescue of the hero Paris. That had been at the siege of a strong Castle called Troy. That Paris of Troy she had carried away to the top of a high hill near the town, as it might have been Spindleston Crags, and there she had kept him till that battle was done. And part of the cry had been for fear, and partly it was from pain because an arrow had struck her, she being vulnerable, though her blood would turn to jewels.

So the monk Francis was very certain that he had heard at least the cry of fear of a false goddess wailing for her love, and that in the waterspout that bore the Young Lovell away he had seen her twisting and writhing form. Whether she were wounded or not he did not know, but he hoped she was, and well she might have been, for arrows a many were glancing round the form of the Young Lovell where he stood upon the battlements, and all around him and below people stood rigid like figures seen in a flash of lightning whose hearts had ceased to beat, and it fell as black as in the hour before the dawn.