The Young Lovell: A Romance

by Ford Madox Ford

"Or, if you will have it a little otherwise," Sir Bertram said to the Lady Margaret, "let it be thus. This monstrous fair and magic lady saw this Sir Paris in a grove or amid the smoke of war or where you will in Venice or near it. And so she fell enamoured of him. Such things happen. And so, coming in a magic boat, in the morning before cockcrow she finds him—having waited many years for this chance—by the sea-shore where you say that chapel was. And so she beguiles him to step aboard and miraculously they are transported to the very isles of Greece. And there, poor man, he sitteth in the sun, lamenting beneath a vine as they say there are in Greece, and to beguile him she dances before him...."

The Lady Margaret held out her white hand to silence the words upon his lips. And so they heard a voice speak to the porter below and a heavy tread upon the stairfoot.

"Sir," the Lady Margaret said to the Cornish knight, "I think you do lie. For I hear my true love's voice and his foot upon the stair."

At that heavy beating of an iron foot on the stone steps a sort of fear descended upon both Sir Bertram and the Lady Margaret; but the old Princess said jestingly:

"Now I shall see the eighth wonder of the world."

VI

John Sherwood, Bishop Palatine of Durham, was seated in a deep chair, in the vestiary of his dwelling in Durham Castle. He had just come in there from the cathedral, and he was very weary with having sung a solemn mass for the soul of Sir Leofric Bertram, one that had, in times past, been a great benefactor of that see. This mass was sung every year upon the second day of July and, along with the oration, it lasted a full two hours. He had had a little fever too, and was weak with the monthly bloodletting which had been done the day before; for the Prince Bishop and his household were bled upon the first day of each month. Moreover, he was fasting till then, and it was close on the stroke of eleven.

So, although a good dinner awaited him, of five courses, each of fifteen dishes, he had felt so tired that there, in his own vestiary—for he did not wear the vestments of the cathedral or the monastery, but, in all his canonicals, walked across the green from the cathedral down to the castle with the people all kneeling and candles and a great cross and his crozier carried before him—he had fallen down into the deep chair in his mass garments. It made it the worse that his vestiary was up two flights of stairs in the castle that was old and not well arranged.

This vestiary was a large hall, but so tall that it seemed narrow and, in spite of two deep window spaces, its sombre vaulting of stone went up into darkness. The Bishops of Durham had always very many and very splendid vestments of their own, not belonging to the cathedral, and so on three sides of the room and from twelve feet high or more there were chests of oaken wood to hold vestments, with round cupboards in which copes could be laid out. In the two angles of the wall between the windows were all manner of great pegs and wooden bases upon which armour was hung or displayed. Upon three of these pegs were three helmets, the gauntlets hanging beneath them. Below each were the breastplates, the thigh pieces and so on. The great swords, with their crossed hilts, and scabbards covered in yellow velvet, were in stands along the bottom of the wall, like a fence. Above them were the more splendid and bejewelled plumed hoods for his falcons, their jesses, and leashes for his hounds; and tall steel maces made, as it were, panels between them. Spears or lances this Bishop had none, his arm being the heavy mace. He had four suits of armour, a black one, English, and kept well greased, for rainy weather or dangerous times; a French one of bright and fluted steel that he wore on Spring days; and one Milanese, very light and so beautiful in its lines that it pleased him to see it—a steel helmet that seemed to float like a coif, without a visor at all, and steel chain-mail as light as silk yet impenetrable even to the steel quarrels of arbalests.

These three suits were arranged upon the wall. The suit of state, of black steel inlaid thickly with gold, stood upon a stand, like a threatening man, between the two windows and catching the light from each. This piece came from Nuremberg, where it had been worked for the Prince Bishop of Münster, but he dying, the Bishop had bought it of the heirs. Upon the helmet was a prince's circlet of gold and all the breastplate, the thigh and kneepieces were hammered and graved and inlaid in gold with scenes from the life of Our Lady. Her Coronation in Heaven was shown upon the visor. This fine piece the Bishop wore only upon occasions of great state, such as if he should make a progress through the Palatinate with the King upon his right hand out of courtesy, since, of right, his left alone belonged to the King and the right to the Pope of Rome alone. This Bishop Palatine thought himself a delicate rather than a splendid prince; he had, before being Bishop, spent many years in Rome, as the King of England's friend and advocate; so he thought that better could be done by a display of simplicity and elegance, for a sovereign Bishop, than by great profusion of coarse things. Thus, such Bishops as Anthony Bek, that was Patriarch of Jerusalem as well, had had forty suits of mail to his own body alone.