The Lady of Blossholme

by H. Rider Haggard

“Will you? Will you indeed? If so, stay a moment,” and she ran down the chapel, bolting the doors; then returned to him, saying—

“Now come forth, Thomas, and since you are once more a man, kiss me as you used to do twenty years ago and more. You’ll not confess to that, will you? There. Now, kneel before the altar here and swear an oath. Nay, listen to it before you swear, for it is wide.”

Emlyn said the oath to him. It was a great and terrible oath. Under it he bound himself to be her slave and join himself with her in working woe to the monks of Blossholme, and especially to their Abbot, Clement Maldon, in payment of the wrongs that these had done to them both; in payment for the murder of Sir John Foterell and of Christopher Harflete, and of the imprisonment and robbery of Cicely Harflete, the daughter of the one and the wife of the other. He bound himself to do those things which she should tell him. He bound himself neither in the confessional nor, should it come to that, on the bed of torture or the scaffold to breathe a word of all their counsel. He prayed that if he did so his soul might pay the price in everlasting torment, and of all these things he took Heaven to be his witness.

“Now,” said Emlyn, when she had finished setting out this fearful vow, “will you be a man and swear and thereby avenge the dead and save the innocent from death; or will you who have my secret be a crawling monk and go back to Blossholme Abbey and betray me?”

He thought a moment, rubbing his red head, for the thing frightened him, as well it might. The scales of the balance of his mind hung evenly, and Emlyn knew not which way they would turn. She saw, and put out all her woman’s strength. Resting her hand upon his shoulder, she leaned forward and whispered into his ear.

“Do you remember, Thomas, how first we told our young love that spring day down in the copse by the water, and how sweet the daffodils bloomed about our feet—the daffodils and the wood-lilies? Do you remember how we swore ourselves each to each for all our lives, aye, and all the lives that were to come, and how for us two the earth was turned to heaven? And then—do you remember how that monk walked by—it was this Clement Maldon—and froze us with his cruel eyes, and said, ‘What do you with the witch’s daughter? She is not for you.’ And—oh! Thomas, I can no more of it,” and she broke down and sobbed, then added, “Swear nothing; get you gone and betray me, if you will. I’ll bear you no malice, even when I die for it, for after more than twenty years of monkcraft, how could I hope that you would still remain a man? Come, get you gone swiftly, ere they take us together, and your fair fame is besmirched. Quick, now, and leave me and my lady and her unborn child to the doom Maldon brews for us. Alas! for the copse by the river; alas! for the withered lilies!”

Thomas heard; the big blue veins stood out upon his forehead, his great breast heaved, his utterance choked. At length the words came in a thick torrent.

“I’ll not go, dearie; I’ll swear what you will, by your eyes and by your lips, by the flowers on which we trod, by all the empty years of aching woe and shame, by God upon His throne in heaven, and by the devil in his fires in hell. Come, come,” and he ran to the altar and clasped the crucifix that stood there. “Say the words again, or any others that you will, and I’ll repeat them and take the oath, and may fiery worms eat me living for ever and ever if I break a letter of it.”

With a little smile of triumph in her dark eyes Emlyn bent over the kneeling man and whispered—whispered through the gathering bloom, while he whispered after her, and kissed the Rood in token.

It was done, and they drew away from the altar back to the painted saint.