The Young Lovell: A Romance

by Ford Madox Ford

"Surge et vocabitur in nomine Dei et Regis nostri Sir Paris Lovell Castelli."

The Percy laughed and asked what those words were, and when the Prince Bishop had told him, still laughing, he smote the metal in the same place with the flat of his sword and mocked the Bishop with the words—

"Stand up in the name of God. And in the King's name be called henceforth, Sir Paris Lovell of the Castle." To name her son Paris had been a whimsy of the Lady Rohtraut since Paris of Troy was a goodly knight, and also it stood for a symbol that he might retake Paris Town if the English had it not at the time when he was a man, and so that name had pleased the great Talbot which was a good thing at the time of his birth.

Then the good knight stood up upon his long feet and the Percy cried out that they should get the business of the betrothal over with speed, and so they did, the knight and the Lady Margaret who came out, kneeling on black cushions before the Prince Bishop. She was wearing a great and long green gown, to the making of which there had gone twenty-six yards of patterned damask from the city of Bruges. It was worked with leaves and birds and pomegranates, so that it was very rich in folds. Her ribbons in her shirt were of scarlet silk and her fur edgings of the red fox. Her hood was of white and red velvet, the gables at the front being of silver set with large pearls, and her hair fell in two black plaits to her heels where she knelt. So when the Bishop had recited their oaths they stood up and the knight pushed up his visor and looked at the lady. Those few that could see his face cried out as if they had seen a ship strike on a rock, so they raised their hands. The others only marked that haughty lady shrink back upon her feet, with a great flowing of her garments as she drew them together towards her. She cried out some words of detestation that no man heard but he, and then with her fist she struck him in the face.

Then he turned upon the high table, grinning and unashamed, the dark eyebrows that seemed to have been painted in with tar, the red cheeks and the lascivious lips of Decies of the South.

All those at the high table stood up on their feet, lifting their hands above their heads and crying out. The Decies cried towards his father, lifting also his mailed arm to heaven—

"See justice done to me. My half-brother is gone upon a sorcery. His lands and gear are forfeit to me that inform against him and his name and bride have been given me by the Prince Bishop."

Then the lawyer, Magister Stone of Barnsides by Glororem, ran across the hall from the little door in the great ones. He began, as it were, a sort of trafficing between the Knight and the Bishop, not neglecting the Lord Percy and the Knight's father, but running backwards and forwards between the one and the other, raising his hands to their breasts and squeaking, though there was no hearing what he said. His weazened face, his brown furred gown, his chattering voice and his long jaw worked incessantly so that he resembled a monkey that was chewing straws with voracity and haste. A Widdrington, a Eure and a Selby, desperate young men and fast friends of the young Lovell, rushed upon the Decies with their daggers out. But the Bishop pushed them back and cried out for silence. And because all there saw that the Lady Rohtraut, upon her feet, was pointing down at the Lord Lovell and calling out to him, they held their tongues to hear what she was saying. They caught the end of a sentence calling upon the Lord Lovell to have that filthy and blaspheming bastard cast from the top of the White Tower. Then all eyes saw that the Lord Lovell was laughing.

He had begun with a slow grin: by little and little he had understood that his son at last had made a fine, impudent stroke. He had struck his thigh with his hand; he had tried to cry out that this was the finest stroke of all and that his son had got up early enough, at last. But he could get no words out.

Then he had begun his laughing. He laughed, rolling from side to side: he laughed, shaking so that his leathern chair cracked beneath him. His stomach trembled in an agony of laughter, his eyes gazing painfully and fixed at the scarlet and green chequers of the tablecloth. Between tornadoes of shaken laughter he gasped for breath, and all the while the Lady Rohtraut stood gazing down upon him as if he were a loathsome dog struck with a fit. All men there stood still to watch him laugh.