Looking from the highest tower of the castle, a dim line of heavenly blue marked the Ocean. More than any other view Ginevra loved that. When the day was fine, she could see the curlews and herons in the glancing light, and almost hear their screaming and the lapping of the water among the stones of the pebbly shore. Sometimes it showed as many tints as though the sea-shells from the depths had swum to the surface, opened to the sun, and floated on the top of the waters like many colored blossoms. And when the sun went down it was a path of gold, a splendor like the pathways of angels. In calm or storm, in leaden sky or roseate light, through every change, Ginevra loved the sea. Ban used to watch her to the top of the tower, and grumble and mutter: “My Lady will come to grief all along of her skipping and racing into strange places. She’ll be sorry for it some day.”
“Is it so very hard, my good Ban,” she would say, laughing at him, “for a strong soldier, who fought in Flanders, to follow one girl over one house?”
And he would bow and smile back again, as he said:
“I was only thinking of my Lady’s safe keeping. There’s no tiring me. No, no, no! I would march my feet off for her.”
So petted and guarded, so gay and full of pleasantness was her life, that every day of the year was happy as a birthday.
The Baron did not worry Ginevra with teachers and grammars. He did not think much of book knowledge, calling it a weariness of the flesh, and a wiser man than any Baron called it that, three thousand years ago. Nor was her nurse allowed to tell her frightful tales, though the old woman liked nothing better than to scare the servants with ghost stories in windy nights. Her orders were to tell no Christmas stories, except such as the Bible told; and she used to show a book with pictures of the Holy Family, the shepherds listening to the angels’ songs, heard but once on earth, and the flight into Egypt. This last was a very choice engraving of Mary, the Virgin Mother, asleep under a palm-tree, and baby angels bending back the leaves, smiling sunnily down on the Divine Child, whose light lightened the bank of lilies where they lay. Then the nurse would explain how the Mother of Christ still lives, and is always near motherless children, listening to their prayers and waiting to comfort them. And Ginevra loved the tale and believed it, and never spoke a word she would not wish the Holy Mother to hear.
In those good old times people played and laughed more than we do, and a first-rate story-teller was better thought of than a fine musician nowadays.
So, with play and needlework, time went on. Knights, earls, and gentlemen tried to win Ginevra from her vows; but she sent them away more madly in love than when they came to offer hand and heart. At the hour when the nightingale sings, minstrels and lovesick troubadours harped under her lattice; but she kept true heart and constant mind, and when six months had passed, a carrier-dove—a tame, fond thing—flew to the balcony, bearing a letter tied around its neck, sealed with red, and stamped with a rose. It was from Lord Lovel, who wrote he would be home Christmas.
The Baron went to London for her wedding-clothes. They were rich and rare as any princess’s; her veil was like silver mist; but nothing was so fine as a pair of slippers of white velvet, embroidered with pearls. Had you seen them, you would have said they were for some little child.