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Title: The Young Lovell: A Romance

Creator: Ford Madox Ford

Release date: May 24, 2013 [eBook #42801]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG LOVELL: A ROMANCE ***




Produced by Al Haines.


                            THE YOUNG LOVELL

                               A ROMANCE


                         BY FORD MADOX HUEFFER



"When they were come to Hutton Ha’
  They ride that proper place about,
But the laird he was the wiser man,
  For he had left nae gear about."
    _Border Ballad_.



                                 LONDON
                            CHATTO & WINDUS
                                  1913




                               PRINTED BY
                    WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED
                           LONDON AND BECCLES

                         _All rights reserved_




                          HISTORICAL NOVELS BY
                           FORD MADOX HUEFFER

                            THE FIFTH QUEEN
                               PRIVY SEAL
                        THE FIFTH QUEEN CROWNED

                             THE HALF MOON
                              THE PORTRAIT
                        LADIES WHOSE BRIGHT EYES




                            THE YOUNG LOVELL



                                 PART I



                                   I


In the darkness Young Lovell of the Castle rose from his knees, and so
he broke his vow.  Since he had knelt from midnight, and it was now the
sixth hour of the day, he staggered; innumerable echoes brushed through
the blackness of the chapel; the blood made flames in his eyes and
roared in his ears. It should have been the dawn, or at least the false
dawn, he thought, long since.  But he knew that, in that stone place,
like a coffer, with the ancient arched windows set in walls a man’s
length deep, it would be infinitely long before the light came to his
eyes. Yet he had vowed to keep his vigil, kneeling till the dawn ...

When the night had been younger it had been easier but more terrible.
Visions had come to him; a perpetual flutter of wings, shuddering
through the cold silence.  He had seen through the thick walls, Behemoth
riding amidst crystal seas, Leviathan who threw up the smoke and flames
of volcanoes. Mahound had passed that way with his cortège of pagans and
diamonded apes; Helen of Troy had beckoned to him, standing in the
sunlight, and the Witch of Endor, an exceedingly fair woman, and a naked
one, riding on a shell over a sea with waves like dove’s feathers.  The
Soldan’s daughter had stretched out her arms to him, and a courtesan he
had seen in Venice long ago, but her smile had turned to a skull’s
grinning beneath a wimple.  He had known all these for demons.  The
hermit of Liddeside with his long beard and foul garments, such as they
had seen him when they went raiding up Dunbar way, had swept into that
place and had imperiously bidden him up from his knees to drive the
Scots from Barnside, but he had known that the anchorite had been dead
this three years and, seeing that the Warden of the Eastern Marches and
the Bishop of Durham, with all his own father’s forces and all theirs,
lay in the castle and its sheilings, it was not likely that the false
Scots would be so near.  Young gallants with staghounds, brachets and
Hamboro dogs had bidden him to the chase; magicians with crucibles had
bidden him come view their alembics where the philosopher’s stone stood
revealed; spirits holding flames in their hands had sought to teach him
the sin against the Holy Ghost, and Syrians in robes of gold, strange
sins.  There had come cooks with strange and alluring messes whose
odours make you faint with desires, and the buttling friars from
friaries with great wine-skins of sack.  But all of them, too, he had
known for demons, though at each apparition desire had shaken him.

All these he had taken to be in the nature of the very old chapel, since
it had stood there over the tiresome and northern sea ever since
Christendom had come to the land, and it was proper to think that, just
as those walls had seen the murdering of blessed saint Oddry by heathens
and Scots whilst he sang mass, and even as pagans and sorcerers had in
the old times contended for that ground, now, having done it in the
body, in their souls they should still haunt that spot and contend for
the soul of a young lording that should be made a knight upon the
morrow.  But when the tower-warden had churned out four o’clock the bird
of dawn had crowed twice....

Three times would have been of better omen. At that moment Satan
himself, the master fiend, with legs of scarlet, a bull’s hide sweeping
behind and horns all gold and aquamarine, had been dancing with mighty
leaps above a coal fire, up through which, livid and in flaming shrouds,
there had risen the poor souls of folk in purgatory.  And with a charter
from which there dangled a seal dripping blood to hiss in the coals and
become each drop a viper—with this charter held out towards Young
Lovell, Satan had offered him any of these souls to be redeemed from
purgatory at the price of selling his own to Satan.

He had been about to say that he knew too much of these temptations and
that the damnation of one soul would be infinitely more grievous to Our
Lady than the temporary sojourn in purgatory of an infinite number.  But
at the crowing of the cock Satan and his firelit leer had vanished as if
a candle had been blown out in a cavern....

There had begun an intolerable period of waiting. He tried to say his
sixty Aves, but the perpetual whirling of wings that brushed his brow
took away his thoughts.  He knew them now for the wings of anxious bats
that his presence disturbed.  When he began upon his Paters, a rat that
had crept into his harness of proof overset his helmet and the prayer
went out of his head.  When he would have crossed himself, suddenly his
foster-brother and cousin, Decies of the South, that should have watched
in the chapel porchway, began to snore and cried out in his sleep the
name "Margaret."  Three times Decies of the South cried "Margaret."

Then Young Lovell knew that the spirits having power between cockcrow
and dawn, in the period when men die and life ebbs down the sands—that
these spirits were casting their spells upon him.

These were the old, ancient gods of a time unknown—the gods to whom the
baal fires were lit; gods of the giants and heroes of whom even his
confessor spoke with bated breath.  Angels, some said they were, not
fallen, but indifferent.  And some of the poor would have them to be
little people that dwelt in bogs and raths, and others held them for
great and fair.  He could not pray; he could not cross himself; his
tongue clove to his jaws; his limbs were leaden.  His mind was filled
with curiosity, with desire, with hope.  He had a great thirst and the
cramp in his limbs.  He could see a form and he could not see a form.
He could see a light and no light at all.

Yet it was a light.  It was a light of a rosy, stealing nature.  It fell
through one of the little, rounded windows, the shadows of the
crab-apple branches outside the wall, moving slowly across the floor.
When he looked again it was gone and not gone.  Without a doubt some
eyes were peering into the chapel; eyes that could see in the dark were
watching him.  Kind eyes; eyes unmoved.  His heart beat enormously....

And then he was upon his feet, reeling and stretching out his arms, with
prayers that he had never prayed before upon his lips.  Then prudence
came into his heart and he argued with himself.  It was to himself and
to no other man or priest that he had vowed to watch above his harness
from midnight to dawning.  That was a newish fashion and neither the
Border Warden nor the Prince Bishop would ask him had he done it or no.
They would knight him without this new French manner of it. Then he
might well go to see if the dawn were painting the heavens.  He fumbled
at the bar and cast the door open, stepping out.

It was grey; the sea grey and all the rushes of the sands.  The foam was
grey where it beat on the islands at sea and in the no-light the great
cliff of his father’s castle wall was like grey clouts hung from the
mists.  He perceived an old witch toiling up the dunes to come to him.
She had a red cloak and a faggot over her shoulder.  She waved her
crutch to make him await her, and suddenly he thought she sailed, high
in the air from the heavy sand to the stone at his feet.  He thought
this, but he could not be sure, for at that moment he was rubbing the
heavy sleep from his eyes.

"That ye could do this, well I knew," he said, "but I had not thought to
see ye do it over my ground."

Often he had seen the old witch.  Sometimes she was in the form of a
russet hare, slinking into her bed when he had been in harness without
bow or light gun or hounds to chase her with.  At other times he had
seen her in her red cloak creeping about her affairs in the grey woods
by Barnside.

Her filthy locks fell across her red eyes and she laughed so that he
repented having spared her life in the woods.

"Gowd ye sall putten across my hand," she said, and her voice was like
the wither of dried leaves and the weary creak of bough on bough in a
great gale when the woods are perilous because of falling oaks. He
answered that he had no gold because he had left his poke in his chest
in the castle.

And with great boldness she bade him give her one of the pearls from the
cap that hung at his belt. He reached to his left side for his sword,
but it lay in the chapel across his armour of damascened steel and
bright gold.

"Ye shall drown in my castle well when I have this business redded up,"
he said, but he wished he had slain her with his sword, for she was a
very evil creature and it was not well in him to let her corrupt the
souls of his poor.  He lifted from his girdle his tablets to write down
that the witch must drown, but the tablets the pen and the knife were
tangled with their red silken tassels and skeins.  A heavy snore came
from within the chapel porch where Decies of the South was sleeping
against the wall.

"If my bride had not begged your life of me..." the Young Lovell began.

Decies of the South muttered: "Margaret," just at his left hand.

"Bride," the old witch tittered.  "Ye shall never plight your troth.
But that sleeper shall be plighted to my lording’s bride and take his
gear.  And another shall have his lands."

"Get you back to Hell!" the Young Lovell said.

"Look," the witch cried out.

She pointed down the wind, across the miles of dim dunes underneath
where the Cheviots were like ghosts for the snow.  The dunes rose in
little hummocks amongst grey fields.  A high crag was to the left.  It
was all grey over Holy Island; smoke rose from its courtyard.
Dunstanburgh was lost in clouds of white sea spray, and in great clouds
the sea-birds were drifting inland in strings of thousands each.  Still
no sun came over the sea.

The witch pointed with her crutch....

A little thing like a rabbit was digging laboriously at the foot of the
crag; it ran here and there, moving a heavy stone.

"That man shall be your master," the witch cried.

A white horse moved slowly across the dunes.  It had about it a swirling
cloud of brown and a swirling cloud of the colour of pearly shells.

"And that shall be your bane," the witch said, in a little voice.  "Ah
me, for the fine young lording."

Young Lovell coursed to the shed beyond the chapel yew where his horse
whinned at the sound of his voice.  He haled out the goodly roan that
was called Hamewarts because they had bought him in Marseilles to ride
homewards through France; his father and he had been to Rome after his
father did the great and nameless sin and expiated it in that journey.
He had ridden Hamewarts up from the Castle of Lovell so that, standing
in the shed whilst his master kept his vigil, the horse might share his
benediction.

The roan stallion lifted his head to gaze down the wind.  He drew in the
air through his nostrils that were as broad as your palm; he sprang on
high and neighed as he had done at the battle of Kenchie’s Burn.

The horse had no need of spurs, and young Lovell had none.  It ran like
the wind in the direction of the white steed at a distance.
Nevertheless, the rider heard through the muffled sound of hoofs on the
heavy sand the old witch who cried out, "Eya," to show that she had more
to say, and he drew the reins of his charger.  The sand flew all over
him from beneath the horse’s feet, and he heard the witch’s voice cry
out:

"To-day your dad shall die, but you’s get none of his lands nor gear.
From the now you shall be a houseless man."

But when he turned in his saddle he could see no old beldam in a scarlet
cloak.  Only a russet hare ran beneath the belly of Hamewarts and
squealed like a new-born baby.


Whilst he rode furiously as if he were in chase of the grey wolf Young
Lovell had leisure to reflect, he had ample time in which to inspect the
early digger and the beclouded horse.  At eight o’clock he was to be
knighted by the double accolade of the Warden of the Eastern Marches and
of the Prince Bishop, following a custom that was observed in cases of
great eminence or merit in the parties.  And not only was Young Lovell
son to Lord Lovell of the Castle, but he had fought very well against
the Scots, in the French wars and in Border tulzies.  So at eight, that
he might not fast the longer, he was to be knighted. It was barely six,
for still no sun showed above the long horizon of the northern sea.

It was bitter cold and the little digger, with his back to the rider,
was blowing on his fingers and muttering over a squared stone that had
half of it muddied from burial.  At first Young Lovell took the little
man for a brownie, then for an ape.  Then he knew him for Master Stone,
the man of law.

He cried out:

"Body of God, Master Furred Cat, where be’s thy gown?"

And the little man span round, spitting and screaming, with his spade
raised on high.  But his tone changed to fawning and then to a
complacence that would have done well between two rogues over a booty.

"Worshipful Knight," he brought out, and his voice was between the creak
of a door and the snarl of a dog fox, though his thin knees knocked
together for fear.  "A man must live, I in my garret as thou in thy
castle bower with the pretty, fair dames."

"Ay, a man mun live," the Young Lovell answered.  "But what sort of
living is this to be seeking treasure trove on my land before the sun be
up?"

"Treasure trove?" the lawyer mumbled.  "Well, it is a treasure."

"It is very like black Magic," Young Lovell said harshly.  "A
mislikeable thing to me.  I must have thee burnt.  What things a man
sees upon his lands before the sun is up!"

"Magic," the lawyer screamed in a high and comic panic.  "God help me, I
have nothing of Mishego and Mishago.  This is plain lawyer’s work and if
your honour will share, one half my fees you shall have from the
improvident peasants."

At the high sound of his voice Hamewarts, who all the while was
straining after the white horse, bounded three strides; when Young
Lovell took him strongly back, he had the square stone at another angle.
Upon its mossed side he saw a large "S" carved that had two crosses in
its loops, upon the side that was bare was one "S" with the upper loop
struck through.

"Body of God, a boundary stone," he cried out. "And you, Furred Cat, are
removing it."  He had got the epithet of Furred Cat from talking to the
Sire de Montloisir whilst they played at the dice.

"Indeed it is more profitable than treasure-troving and seeking the
philosopher’s stone," the lawyer tittered, and he rubbed, from habit,
his hands together, so that little, triturated grains of mud fell from
them into the peasant’s poor, boggy grass. "This is Hal o’ the Mill’s
land, and I have moved the stone a furlong into the feu of Timothy
Wynvate. There shall arise from this a lawsuit that shall last the
King’s reign out.  Aye, belike, one of the twain shall slay the other.
His land your honour may take back as forfeit, and the other’s as
deodand.  I will so contrive it, for I will foment these suits and have
the handling of them.  By these means, in time, your lordingship may
have back all the lands ye ever feu’d.  In time.  Only give me time...."

The Young Lovell lifted up his fist to the sky. The most violent rage
was in his heart.

"Now by the paps of Venus and the thunder of Jove, I have forgotten the
penalty of him that removeth his neighbour’s landmark!  But if I do not
die before night, and I think I shall not, that death you shall die.
Say your foul prayers, filth, your doom is said...."

Master Stone lifted up both his hands, clasped together, to beg his life
of this hot but charitable youth.  But Young Lovell had leaped his horse
across a dune faster than the words could follow him.

He came upon a narrow strip of nibbled turf running down a valley of
rushy sand-hills. Hamewarts guided him.  They went over one ridge and
had sight of the white horse; they sank into another dale and lost it.

On the summit of the next ridge Hamewarts became suddenly like a horse
of bronze and the Young Lovell had a great dizziness.  He had a sense of
brown, of pearly blue, of white, of many colours, of many great flowers
as large as millstones. With a heavy sense of reluctance he looked
behind him.  The mists were rising like curtains from over Bamborough;
since the tide was falling the pall of spray was not so white on
Dunstanburgh.  Upon his own castle, covering its promontory near at
hand, they were hoisting a flag, so that from there the tower warden
must have already perceived the sun.  From over the castle on Holy
Island the pall of smoke was drifting slowly to sea.  No doubt in the
courtyard they had been roasting sheep and kine whole against the visit
of the Warden and the Prince Bishop who would ride on there with all
their men by nine of the clock.

In every bay and reedy promontory the cruel surf gnawed the sand; the
ravens were flying down to the detritus of the night, on the wet margins
of the tide.  The lawyer was climbing over the shoulder of a dune, a
sack upon his back; a shepherd, for the first time that spring, was
driving a flock of sheep past the chapel yew.  There was much surf on
Lindisfarne.

Suddenly, from the middle of the bow of the grey horizon there shot up a
single, broadening beam. Young Lovell waved his arm to the golden disk
that hastened over the grey line.

"If you had come sooner," he said to the sun, "you might have saved me
from this spell.  Now these fairies have me."

Slowly, with mincing and as if shy footsteps, Hamewarts went down
through the rushes from that very real world.  Young Lovell perceived
that the brown was a carpeting that fluttered, all of sparrows. It had a
pearly and restless border of blue doves, and in this carpet the white
horse stepped ankle-deep without crushing one little fowl.  He perceived
the great-petalled flowers, scarlet and white and all golden.  On a
green hill there stood a pink temple, and the woman on the back of the
white horse held a white falcon.  She smiled at him with the mocking
eyes of the naked woman that stood upon the shell in the picture he had
seen in Italy.

"But for you," he heard himself think, "I might have been the prosperest
knight of all this Northland and the world, for I have never met my
match in the courteous arts, the chase or the practice and exercises of
arms."

And he heard her answering thoughts:

"Save for that I had not called thee from the twilight."




                                   II


The Warden of the Eastern Marches, who was Henry Percy, fourth Earl of
Northumberland, said that there was too much of this silken flummery. He
desired to get back to the affairs of King Henry VII and a plain world
where there were too many false Scots.  The Lord Lovell of the Castle
agreed with him, but said that the women would so have it.  He was an
immense, gross man, the rolls of fat behind his head, growing black
curly hair that ran into his black and curly beard, mantled high up on
his neck.  His eyes were keen, peeble-blue, sagacious and mocking.  The
Lady Rohtraut, his wife, a fair, thin woman of forty-three, one of the
Dacres of the North, leaned across the Bishop Palatine to disagree with
the Warden.  Thin as she was she wore an immense gown of red damask
worked with leaves, birds and pomegranates.  Her sleeves brushed the
ground, her hood of black velvet had a diamond-shaped front, like the
gable of a house, and was framed in yellow gold set with emeralds that
her lord had brought from Venice to get her back to a good temper,
though he never did. The broad edging of brown fur from her sleeves
caught in a crochet of the gilded steel on the Bishop Palatine’s armour
which had been taken from the Saracens in the year 1482, they having
rieved it from the Venetians.

The Lady Rohtraut said that these things had been ordered after the
leaves of a written book that had been sent her by her cousin Alice from
the King’s court in London.  This book was called "Faicts of Arms," and
the King himself who loved good chivalry had bade it be printed tho’
that would be long in doing.  There the order of these things had been
set forth, and she had done her best to have fashion of it right, though
with only men to help her, she imagined that Messire de Montloisir would
laugh if he did not happen to be on his bed of sickness.

But she had them there to the number of eleven score, gentry, priests
and commonalty with many men-at-arms to hold the herd back with their
pike-staves.  The great stone hall she had had painted with vermilion,
green and gold.  Enormous banners with swallow-tails fell from the
gilded beams of the roof.  They displayed the snarling heads of red
tigers, portculles, two-hued roses, and a dun cow on a field of green
sarcenet in honour of the Bishop Palatine.  The table at which they sat,
the men divided from the women, had its silken cloth properly tabled out
in chequers of green and vermilion.  The pages with their proper badges
walked to and fro before the table as they should do, and, as they
should be, the people of no privilege were penned in behind the columns
of the hall where they made a great noise.  She would not have anything
lacking at the sacring of her one son.

Sir Walter Limousin, of Cullerford, who had married her daughter Isopel,
sneered at these words of his mother-in-law.  He sat at the right hand
of his father-in-law.  Sir Symonde Vesey, of Haltwhistle, who had
married the daughter Douce, and sat beyond Sir Walter, said loudly that
too much gear went to waste over these Frenchifications of the Young
Lovell and his dame.  Their two wives said that indeed their mother was
over-fond.

Their mother, who was a proud Dacre with the proudest of them, flushed
vicious red.  She said that her daughters were naughty jades, and if
their husbands had not three times each been beggared by Scots raiders
they might have had leave to talk so. But, being what they were, it
would be better if they closed their mouths over one who had paid all
his ransoms, whether to the Scots or on the bloody field of Kenchie’s
Burn, with sword-blows solely.  She had paid one thousand marks to
artificers of Brussels for stuffs to deck that hall and the street of
the township where it led from the chapel whence her fair, brave son
should come; so that banners and carpets hung from the windows, the
outer galleries, stairways and the roofs where they were low.  And she
wished she had spent ten thousand on her son who had won booty enough to
pay all she had laid out on him and her daughters’ husbands’ ransoms
besides—after the day of Kenchie’s Burn.

The Warden said that he wished by the many wounds of God that the
stripling would come.  There was too much babble of women there.  They
had come into these parts, the Bishop of Durham and he, to see what
levies might be made from castle to castle and so to broom all false
Scots out of the country from thereaways to Dunbar.  And there they sate
who should have been on the northward road before sunrise listening to
this clavering of women.  The young Lovell was a springald goodly enow,
and the knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle were known to blow on
their fingers when they should be occupied with the heavy swords.

Sir Walter Limousin looked down his nose.  He was a grim and silent
craven that did little but sneer. Sir Symonde, who was brave and
barbarous enough, but unlucky, smote so heavily the silver inkhorn
standing before him that it flattened down its supports and stained the
chequered fairness of the table.

The Percy cast his old glance aside on Sir Symonde.

"Aye, Haltwhistle," he said drily, "ye will break more than ye will
take."  And he went on to say that, in his day, he having been dubbed
knight on the field, it had been done with a broken sword and the wet on
it wiped across his chops to blood him the better.  And he wished that
Young Lovell would come.

The Lady Rohtraut said that without doubt her son was saying some very
long and very precious prayers.  The Warden said that belike, and more
likely, the young fellow was unable to fasten the whimsy-marees of his
new-fashioned harness and was stuck up there in the old chapel like a
fool amid the evidences of his folly.  The Lord Lovell said nay then,
that a band of youngsters had gone up to the chapel, and the little Hal
his son’s page had reported that his master would soon be there, the
page having run, whilst the Young Lovell was riding at a foot pace.

"He had better have kept his page to buckle his harness," the Border
Warden harped on.

"Nay then," the Lady Rohtraut said with a flushed and angry face—no
person nor page could enter into the sacred chapel till her son should
be issued out in his panoply least they should disturb the angels of God
who would invisibly assist her son at his harnessing.

The Bishop, whose dark head came out of its steel armour like a
cormorant’s out of a hole, looked all down that board to find a
sympathetic soul.  He had a lean, Italianate face, and had pleased the
King Richard the Third—then Duke of Gloucester—rather because of a
complaisance than a burly strength.  He was very newly come to the
Palatine Country.  For he had been the King’s Friend in Rome many years
and, in fear of King Henry the Seventh—because the Bishop was reputed a
friend of Richard Crookback after Bosworth—he had gone across the seas
until now.

So that what with the clerkly details of his coming into the bishopric,
this was his first tour of those parts and he did not well know those
people. Therefore he had spoken very little.

This John Bishop Palatine was, in short, a cautious and well-advised
churchman, well-read not only in the patristic books but in some of the
poets, for in his day he had been long in Rome and later dwelt in
Westminster, where the printing was done, though the King was even then
pulling down Caxton’s chapel to build his own more gorgeous fane.

This bishop then, set first the glory of God, good doctrine and his see,
as his duty was.  And after that he hoped that he might leave renown as
a great clerk who had added glory, credit, power and wealth, whether of
copes of gold or of lands, to his most famous bishopric.

That was why, throughout this discussion he had observed the face of a
young woman that sat beyond the ladies Rohtraut, Isopel and Douce.  She
was the Lady Margaret of the Wear, coming from the neighbouring tower of
Glororem, and that day he was to bless her betrothal to Young Lovell of
the Castle.  She was a dark girl, rising twenty, and with brownish
features, open nostrils, a flush on her face and dark eyes of a
coaly-sheen, all of one piece of black, so that you could not tell pupil
from iris.

She had never spoken, as became her station, since she was the youngest
woman there.  But the Bishop Palatine had observed her looks as each
uttered his or her thoughts, and from this he knew that she regarded the
Lady Rohtraut with tender veneration, and the lower classes behind the
pillars with dislike and contempt, for when their voices became loud she
had lowered her black brows and clenched her hand that lay along the
table.

Upon the Border Warden and upon the gross Lord Lovell she had gazed with
a tolerant contempt, upon the Knight of Cullerford with a bitter scorn,
upon Haltwhistle with irony, and upon their two wives that should be her
sisters-in-law, with high dislike.  He perceived that, like the Lady
Rohtraut, she had read the book called "Faicts of Arms," for, when the
lady Rohtraut had been speaking of it, she had leaned sideways over the
table, her lips parted as if she could hardly contain herself. He saw
also that she was of great piety, since every time Our Lady was
mentioned in that debate she inclined, and when it was Our Lord, she did
the like and crossed herself.  And this pleased the Bishop Palatine, for
these observances were not so often seen as could be done with.
Moreover, he knew that, plainly to the eye she had given all her
heart—and it was a proud and hot one—to the Young Lovell.  At each
mention of his deeds her dusky cheeks would flush up to her white
forehead and she would pass her gemmed hands before her eyes as if they
saw a mist of gladness.

The Bishop was glad that the will of God and the bent of his own mind
could let his speech, that he was thinking upon, jump so well with that
lady’s desires, and so he addressed himself at first to the Lady
Rohtraut, young Lovell’s proud mother.

He had not, he said, spoken before in that high assembly because he was
so newly come among them that, although he well knew that he was their
father in God and in a sense their temporal protector, yet he did not
wish to show himself to them as a rash and ardent fool by dictating upon
matters that he might well know little of.

But still, having listened a decent while to their minds he would say
something.  Of facts and the practice of arms he would not declare
himself all ignorant.  He was a churchman, but he was of that church
militant that should one day be the Church Triumphant—triumphant there
in Heaven, but here in Northumberland, militant very fully.  It was true
that it would not much become him in those days of comparative peace to
strike blows with the iron mace.  It was rather his part to stand upon a
high place observant of battles and sieges.  And, if he wore arms, it
was rather as a symbol than as of use.  He hoped that, as his reverend
and sainted predecessors in the see had done, he might confer on such
arms a grace of holiness, and therefore with much travel and research,
he had arms as golden as might be found for him by his trusty
messengers, that their fair richness might shine to the greater glory of
God.  For himself he would as lief wear sackcloth and rusty pots.

In most things he must bow to the wiseness of the Earl of
Northumberland.  Being blooded upon a hot field with spurs gilded with
the tide from the veins of men had produced very good men.  It had
doubtless produced better men than to-day might see the doubles and
counterparts of.  Those days before had been simpler and better.  These
days were very evil.  There was in the land a spirit of luxury, sinful
unless it had guidance, bestial unless it had control, and for want of
counsel horrid, lecherous and filthy by turns.  Theirs, by the will and
blessing of God and by the wise rule of His vice-gerent—for so he would
style their good King, though it was not the habit—theirs were days of
near peace.  The kingdom was no longer rent by dissensions; famine and
pestilence came more seldom nigh them than in the days of their fathers
of which they had read.  In consequence, they had great wealth such as
had never before been seen.  Where their fathers had had woollens they
had silks, satins and patterned damasks beyond compare for lascivious
allurements; where their fathers had eaten off trenchers of bread, they
had plates of silver, of gold, of parcel gilt or at the very least of
latten.

Now all these things were the blessing of God in the highest, but they
might well become the curse of Satan that dwelleth in the Pit.  God had
given them bread, but they might turn it to bitter stone; He had given
them peace, but it might turn to a sword more sharp than that of
Apollyon or Geryon.  Arma virumque cano, the profane poet said, but the
man he sang of was blessed and so his arms.

Therefore he, the Bishop Palatine, since he would not see all this
splendour of God go down, as again Vergil saith, sicut flos purpurea
aratro succisa, leant all his weight in the scale for the blessing and
the sacring of arms.  In the books of chivalry they should read not of
vain pomps, but of how arms should be laid upon altars; not of luxurious
feasts, but of how good knights held vigils and fasts and kept
themselves virgin of heart to go upon quests that the blessed angels of
God did love.  So they might read of the blessed blood in its censor and
of the lily-pure knights that sought it through forest and brake.  And
these books were very good reading.

The Warden suddenly laughed aloud.

"God keep your washed capons from a border fray!" he exclaimed, and
shook his lean sides.  The Bishop looked sideways upon him.

"I have not heard that Sir Artus of Bretagne slew the less pagans
because he was of a cleaned heart, nor Sir Hugon of Bordeaux neither."

"I do not know those knights," the Percy said grimly.  "Maybe they would
have slain less if it had been Douglases and Murrays and other homely
names."

"Nay, it was fell pagans," the Bishop said seriously.  "You may read of
it in virtuous and true histories it were a sin to doubt of, so greatly
does the virtue of God and His glory shine through them."

"Well, if it be matter of doctrine my mouth is shut," the Warden said
good humouredly.  "I did not know it had been more than a matter of
fashion. Yet I think it is early days to prate of our peaceful times.
It is but three months since Kenchie’s Burn and not three years since
the false Scots had their smoke flying over the walls of Durham."

The Bishop bent his head obediently before the Warden.

"In these matters I will learn of you," he said; and the Warden
answered:

"They are all I have to teach you.  In my high day there were none of
your books and stories."

It was agreed that the Bishop and the Warden came off with level arms,
the Bishop having spoken the more, but the Warden had sent in heavier
stone shot.  And all people were agreed that the Bishop was a worthy and
proud prince.

At that moment the Almoner whispered in the Bishop’s ear and laid a
parchment before him. He begged the Bishop to sign this appointment. For
the day drew on, they must ride very soon and might not again be in
those parts for a year or more. It was to make the worthy Magister
Stone, of Barnside, bailiff for the Palatinate in those parts, this side
of Alnwick to the sea.  This lawyer was a very skilled chicaner and
there were suits to come very soon between the see and the Lords Ogle
and Mitford, touching the Bishop’s mills at Witton and on Wearside.  The
Bishop was aware that one of the Almoner’s clerks must have had money of
the lawyer; nevertheless he signed the appointment, for he knew they
would never let him have any other man.  A Prince Bishop cannot go
searching for scriveners of honesty like Diogenes lacking a lanthorn.

The dispute as to the rules of chivalry went on in spite of the Bishop’s
abstraction from it.  Indeed, the Lord Lovell of the Castle, who had not
much reason for loving churchmen, spoke the more loudly because the
Bishop was occupied with his papers. He was a jovial man, not much loved
by his wife whom he delighted to tease.  If he had any grief it was that
his natural son, Decies of the South, had never shown himself a lad of
any great parts.  This lad was reputed to be his natural son, though he
was called Young Lovell’s foster brother.  Nevertheless who was his
mother no man knew.

What was known was this.

Six years before the Lord Lovell did some grievous sin, but what that
too was, no men knew. He had been called before the former Bishop of
Durham; the Lady Rohtraut had, then and afterwards, been heard to rate
him soundly.  He had given five farms to the Bishopric and had then gone
on a Romer’s journey, by way, it was considered, of penance.  At any
rate, he had gone to Rome in sackcloth, taking with him his son, the
Young Lovell, who travelled very well appointed and, on the homeward
way, had acted as his page.  They had taken ship from the New Castle to
Bordeaux and from Bordeaux to Genoa, where, falling in with a party of
English _Condottieri_ in the pay of the Holy Father, they had travelled
in safety to the city of the seven hills.

On the homeward road they had travelled more like great lords, having
enlisted a train of followers, and staying in the courts of Princes of
Italy until they came again to Marseilles.  The Young Lovell, who was
then sixteen, had been permitted, by way of fleshing his sword, to fight
with the captains of the Prince of Fosse Ligato against the men of the
Princess of Escia.  He had slept in pavilions of silk and saw the sack
of two very rich walled cities whilst his easy father, who had seen
fighting enough in his day, dallied over the sweet wines, lemons and the
women with dyed hair of the Prince’s Court.

In Venice, whilst his father had toyed with similar cates, the young
Lovell had been present at a conclave, between the turbaned envoys of
the Soldan and the Venetian council, over the exchange of prisoners
taken in galleys of the one side and the other.

Therefore as travelling went, the young man had voyaged with his eyes
open, having made friends of several youths of Italy and learned some
pretty tricks of fence as well as sundry ways of dalliance.

The father regarded his son with not disagreeable complacency, like a
carthorse who had begotten a slight and swift barb.  The boy’s soft ways
and gentle speeches amused him till he laughed tears at times; his
daring and hot, rash passions pleased his father still more.  He had
challenged six Italian squires on the Lido to combat with the rapier,
the long sword, the axe and the dagger, and only with the rapier had he
been twice worsted—and this quite well contented his father, who
regarded him as a queer, new-fangled growth, but in no wise a
disgraceful one.  He set the boy, in fact, down to his mother’s account.
And this he did with some warrant, for the boy was the first blond child
that had been born to the Lovells in a hundred years.

Further back than that the Lovells could not go. They were descended
from one Ruthven, a Welsh brigand of whom, a hundred and twenty years
before, it was written that he and his companions kept the country
between the Rivers Seine and Loire so that none dare ride between Paris
and Orleans, nor between Paris and Montargis.  These robbers had made
that Ruthven a knight and their captain.  There were no towns in that
district that did not suffer pillage and over-running from them, not
Saint Arnold, Gaillardon, Chatillon or even Chartres itself.  In that
way Ruthven had amassed a marvellous great booty until, the country of
France having been submitted to the English, he had set sail, with much
of his wealth, for Edinburgh, but liking the Scots little, after he had
married a Scots woman called Lovell, he had come south into the Percies’
country.  It had happened that the Percies had at that date five squires
of their house in prison to the Douglas and had little money for their
ransoming.  So this Ruthven had bought of them seventy farms and land on
which to build an outer wall round the fortress that, boastfully, he
called the Castle, as if there had been no other castle in that land.
And indeed, it was a marvellously strong place, over the sea on its
crags of basalt.

Thus had arisen, from huge wealth, the great family of the Lovells of
the Castle.  For Ruthven had not wished to be known by his name, and
indeed King Henry V swore that none of that name should have Lordship
nor even Knighthood, though the Ruthven of that day fought well at
Agincourt, losing three horses, two of which he had taken from French
lords. So, since that day they had been the Lords Lovell of the Castle
with none to gainsay them, though till latterly they had been held for
rough lords and not over-reverend.  The Percies looked down their noses
when they met them, and so did the captains of Bamburgh and Holy Island.
However, in the year 1459 the Lord Lovell had found the Lady Rohtraut of
the Dacres to marry him and, having had three daughters, she bore him
the Young Lovell though one of the daughters died.

At any rate; they had travelled home from Marseilles, father and son,
very peaceably together, going from castle to castle of the French lords
and knights, under a safe-conduct that had been granted them by the
French envoy to the Holy Father in Rome, though there was war between
the countries of France and England, the King Edward the Fourth having
suddenly made a raid into the country of the lilies.  And the courteous
way with which the French lords treated them made them much wonder
because they did not think a Scots lord would have so easily travelled
through the Border Country or a Border lord through Scotland.

Therefore, when they came to Calais, they went quietly home to England
without turning back to war in France.  That was according to their oath
to Messire Parrolles at Rome, though some of King Edward’s lords and
courtiers mocked at them and it was said to be in the King’s mind to
have fined them, not for having observed, but for having taken such an
oath.  However, when they came into the North parts, at Northallerton,
they met with the Duke of Gloucester, the King’s brother, who treated
them very courteously and absolved them of ill intentions because at the
time they had taken the oath peace had been between England and France,
or at least no news of the war had reached Rome.  This Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, brother of King Edward, was much loved in the North, of
which region he was then Lord-General.  He dealt with all men
courteously, giving simple and smiling answers to simple questions and
never failing to answer favourably any petition that he could grant, or
refusing others with such phrases of regret as made the refusal almost a
boon of itself.  He inflicted also no harsh taxes and took off many
others, so that in those parts he was known as the good Duke of
Gloucester.

He treated the Lord Lovell and his son with such smiling courtesy that
they very willingly went with him, before ever their home saw them, on a
journey that he was making towards Dunbar, and it was in the battle that
some Scots lords made against them on the field of Kenchie’s Burn that
the Young Lovel did such great things.  He took prisoner with his own
hands a great Scots lord, own cousin to Douglas, in a hot mêlée, where,
before he was taken, the Scots lord, being otherwise disarmed by the
Young Lovell, knocked with his clenched fist, nine teeth down the throat
of Richard Raket, that was the Young Lovell’s horse boy.  And this lord
having cried mercy, the Young Lovell pursued so furiously against the
Scots that he slew many of them before nightfall and was lost in a great
valley between moors and slept on the heather.  There he heard many
strange sounds, such as a great cry of dogs hunting overhead, which was
said by those who had read in books to be the goddess Diana chasing
still through the night the miserable shade of the foolish Actæon.  And
between two passages of sleep, he perceived a fair kind lady looking
down upon him, but before he was fully awake she was no longer there,
and this was thought to be the White Lady of Spindleston, though it was
far from her country. But still that spirit might have loved that
lording and have sought his company in the night for he was very fair of
his body.  And it was held to be a sign that he was a good Christian,
that this lady vanished upon his awakening, for in that way spirits have
been known to follow Good Knights from place to place for love of them,
and in the end to work them very great disaster.

So at least that was interpreted by the young monk Francis of the order
of St. Cuthbert who was with the army when, in the morning, Young Lovell
came to it again after he had been held for dead.  But the monk Francis
had read in no books, having been an ignorant rustic knight of that
country-side, that had become a monk for a certain sin.  The Young
Lovell found, indeed, that, whilst he had been so held for dead this
young monk had much befriended him.  For his father, the Lord Lovell,
had shewn a disposition to adopt that Decies of the South and to give
him the fruits of the young Lovell’s deeds, such as the ransoming of the
Scots lord and the knighthood that the Duke should have given him had he
been found on the field at the closing of the day. The young monk had
however protested so strongly that the Young Lovell was not dead, but
had in his face the presage of great and strange deeds, whether of arms
or other things—so hotly had the young monk made a clamour, that the old
lord was shamed and had for the time desisted.

That Decies of the South was a son much more after the old lord’s heart
than ever the Young Lovell, for all his prowess, could be.  He loved the
one son whilst he dreaded the other, since he was too like his mother
that was a Dacre and despised the Lovells or the Ruthvens.

This Decies the Lord Lovell had picked up at Nottingham on their
homeward road, and, finding him a true Lovell, had made no bones about
acknowledging him for a son though he never would say who his mother was
or how he should come by the name of Decies.  But he was rising
twenty-one, like the Young Lovell, heavy, clumsy, very strong and an
immense feeder.  He was dark and red-cheeked and cunning and he fitted
his father as a hand fits a glove. Nevertheless he had done little at
Kenchie’s Burn, he had slept so heavily.  It had been no man’s affair to
waken him, he having drunk very deeply of sweet wines the night before.
That battle began at dawn and travelled over many miles of land, so that
when Decies of the South came up the Scots were already fleeing.

The old lord did no more than laugh, but he felt it bitter in his heart.
And, as it had been on that day, so it continued, the one half-brother
being always up in the morning too early for the other. They made very
good companions hunting together, though it was always the Young Lovell
that had his dagger first in the throat of the grey wolf or the red
deer, and the Decies who came second when outlaws, or else when the
false Scots, must be driven off from peel towers that had the byres
alight beneath them and the farmers at death’s door above, for the smoke
and reek.  Nor was it because the Decies lacked courage, but because he
was slow in the uptake and, although cunning, not cunning enough.

Or it may have been that he was too cunning and just left the honours to
the Young Lovell who was haughty and avid of the first place.  For the
Lady Rohtraut took very unkindly to the Decies and made him suffer what
insults she could; only the lower sort of the castle-folk willingly had
his company, and the old lord was growing so monstrous heavy that it was
considered that his skin could not much longer contain him.  He had led
a life of violence, sloth, great appetites and negligent shamelessness,
so that the Decies considered that he would soon have need of protectors
in their place.  The old lord might leave his lands, but much of his
lands were the dower of his wife and upon his death would go back to her
hands alone.  For the lands of the Castle and the gear and gold and
silver that were in the White Tower under the night and day guard of
John Bulloc, the old lord might leave the Decies what he would, but the
Young Lovell could take it all.

The Decies would find neither lord nor lord bishop nor lawyer to espouse
his cause.  Moreover, though his father might give him gold and gear
whilst he lived, the Decies had no means whereby to convey it to a
distance and no place in the distance in which to store it, besides it
would surely be taken by moss-troopers and little cry made about it.
For in those days all the North parts were full of good, small gentry
robbing whom they would, like the Selbys of Liddell, the Eures of Witton
or Adam Swinburn.

For the times were very unsettled, and no man could well tell, in
robbing another, whether he were a knight of King Richard’s despoiling
the King’s enemies or a traitor to King Henry robbing that King’s
lieges, and there was little for the livelihood of proper gentry but
harrying whether in the King’s cause or in rebellion.  So that if the
Decies’ money on its way to safe quarters should be taken, there would
be little or no outcry since he was nothing to those parts.  So he was a
very good brother to the Young Lovell and followed him like his shadow.




                                  III


So there they all sat at the chequered table and the Lord Lovell watched
them with his cunning eyes and speculated upon the dissensions that lay
beneath all their fair shew of courtesy.  And he wondered how, from one
or the other, he might gain advantage for his son Decies.  It was not
that he hated the Young Lovell, but he wished Decies to have all that he
might and something might come of these people’s misliking of each
other.

For all Bishop Sherwood’s praising of the security of the times under a
beneficent vice-gerent of God, he knew that the Bishop little loved King
Henry the Seventh, and the King trusted him so very little that never
once would that King send to the Bishop the proper letters of array that
should empower him to raise forces along the Borders.  Thus the Bishop
could raise men only in his own dominions between Tees and Tyne and
westward into Cumberland.

The Bishop had made his speech and shewed great courtesy only for the
benefit of the Earl of Northumberland, whilst for that Border Warden he
felt really little but contempt and some dislike. For this Henry, Earl
Percy, Warden of the Eastern Marches and Governor of Berwick Town, had
deserted King Richard very treacherously on the field of Bosworth, for
all he spoke and posed as a bluff and bloody soldier who should be a
trusty companion.

Thus the Bishop feared the Percy, regarding him as a spy of the King’s,
for King Richard was much beloved in the North and the Bishop of Durham
had been one of the only two Bishops that had upheld him at the
coronation, which was why his banner of the dun cow upon a field of
green sarcenet had then been carried before that King.  And after
Bosworth where King Richard was slain, the Bishop had fled to France,
from which he had only ventured back the August before.  There had been
many rebellions in the North and they were not yet done with;
nevertheless the Bishop feared that the cause of the King Usurper would
prevail.

The Earl Percy, on the other hand, distrusted the Bishop, since, unlike
the Duke of Gloucester, he knew himself to be hated by gentle and simple
in those parts, and more by simple than the others.  Many poor men—even
all of the countryside—had sworn to murder him, for he was very arrogant
and oppressive, inflicting on those starving and disturbed parts, many
and weary taxes for the benefit of his lord, King Henry the Seventh, and
the wars that he waged in other places.  This was a thing contrary to
the law and custom of the North.  For those parts considered that they
had enough on their hands if they protected their own lands and kept the
false Scots out of the rest of the realm.  Nevertheless, the Lord Percy
continued to impose his unjust taxes, taking even the horse from the
plough and the meat from the salting pots where there was no money to be
had.  The Lord Percy knew that he went in great danger of his life, for
when, there, a great lord was widely hated of the commonalty his life
was worth little.  Nay, he was almost certain, one day, to be hewed in
pieces by axes or billhooks, since the common people, assembling in a
great number would take him one day, when he rode back ill-attended from
hunting or a raid.

Thus the Percy desired much to gain friendship of the Bishop and his
partisans to save his life.  So he shewed him courtesy and spoke in a
pious fashion and had invited him, as if it were his due, to ride on
this numbering of the men-at-arms in Northumberland, although, since the
King had sent the Bishop Palatine no letters of array, it was, strictly
speaking, none of the Bishop’s business.

The Lord Lovell himself had taken no part at Bosworth Field, and glad
enough he was that he had not, for he would have been certain to have
been found on the losing side.  But he had been sick of a quinsy—a
malady to which very stout men are much subject—and, not willing that
the Young Lovell should gain new credit at his cost—for he must have
gone with his father’s men-at-arms, horses and artillery—the Lord Lovell
bade his son stay at home and not venture himself against the
presumptuous Richmond.

And, looking upon the people there, the fat man chuckled, for there was
not one person there who had not lately suffered from one side or the
other.  The Lord Percy had spent many years in the Tower under Edward
IV; Henry VII had taken from the Bishop many of his lands and had made
him for a time an exile.  His haughty wife had suffered great grief at
the death of her best brother whose head came off on Tower Hill to
please the Duke of Gloucester, and Edward IV had had Sir Symonde Vesey
five years in the Tower and had fined Limousin of Cullerford five
hundred pounds after Towton Field.  The proud Lady Margaret had lost her
father and all his lands after the same battle, the lands going to the
Palatinate.

The Lady Margaret and her mother—they were Eures of Wearside—had
sheltered in farms and peel towers, lacking often sheets and bed
covering, until the mother died, and then the Lady Rohtraut had taken
the Lady Margaret, to whom she was an aunt. All these Tyne and Wearside
families were sib and rib.  The Lady Rohtraut had had the Lady Margaret
there as her own daughter and kinswoman, and the Lord Lovell had had
nothing against it.  For the Eures and Ogles and Cra’sters and Percies
and Widdringtons and all those people, even to the haughty Nevilles and
Dacres of the North, were a very close clan.  He himself had married a
Dacre to come nearer it, and it made him all the safer to shelter an
Eure woman-child.  And then, in his graciousness at coming into the
North, and afterwards, after the battle at Kenchie’s Burn, the Duke of
Gloucester, at first making interest with his brother, King Edward IV.,
and then of his own motion, had pardoned that Lady the sins of her
father, had bidden the Palatinate restore, first the lands on Wearside
and then those near Chester le Street, and also, at the last, those near
Glororem, in their own part, which were the best she had.  And, finally,
King Richard had made the Lady Rohtraut her niece’s guardian, which was
a great thing, for since she was very wealthy, the fines she would pay
upon her marriage would make a capital sum.

So they had found the Lady Margaret on their coming back from Rome,
wealthy and proud, sewing or riding, hawking, sometimes residing in
their Castle and sometimes in her tower of Glororem which was in sight.
The young Lovell had lost his heart to her and she hers to him between
the flight of her tassel gentle and its return to her glove, so that it
looked as if the name of Lovell bade fair to be exalted in those parts,
by this marriage too, and if the Lord Lovell had anything against it, it
was only that she had not chosen his other son Decies.  But there it
was, and he must content himself with paring what he could from her
gear, and his wife’s and young Lovell’s while he lived, for he intended
to buy Cockley Park Tower of Blubberymires from Lord Ogle of Ogle—and to
set the Decies up in it.  And his wife had some outlying land at Morpeth
that he would make shift to convey to his son, so that Decies would have
a goodly small demesne and might hold up his head in that region of the
Merlays, Greystocks and Dacres.

His son should have the lands of Blubberymires and part of Morpeth;
furnishings for his tower to the worth of near a thousand pounds, jewels
worth nine hundred and more, fifty horses and the arms for fifty men,
and for his sustenance firstly his particular and feudal rights, market
fees, tenths, millings, wood-rights, farmings, rents and lastly such
profits of the culture of his lands as it is proper for every gentleman
to draw from them.  And, considering what he could draw from his own
Castle, he thought that the Decies should have such beds, linen, vessels
of latten and of silver, chests and carvings in wood, tapestries,
utensils, and all other furnishings as should make him have a very
proper tower.  From his wife’s castle at Cramlin, or her houses at
Plessey and Killingworth, he could get very little.  Upon his marriage
and since, he had stripped them very thoroughly, and when he last rode
that way, he had seen that at Cramlin, the rafters, ceilings, and even
the very roofs had fallen in, so that it had become very fitting
harbourage for foxes. And this consideration grimly amused him, to think
what his lady wife should find when he was dead and her lands came to
her again.  For she had not seen them in ten years, and imagined her
houses to be in very good fettle, but he had turned the money to other
uses.  It was upon these things that this lord’s thoughts ran, since he
had nothing else for their consumption.  He was too heavy to mount a
horse in those days; he could read no books, and talking troubled him.
Even the lewd stories of his son Decies in his cups sent him latterly to
sleep; he could get no more much enjoyment from teasing his proud wife
by filthy ways and blasphemy, and he hated to be with his daughters or
their two husbands.  Thus, nothing amused or comforted him any longer
save watching contests of ants and spiders, and even these were hard to
come by in winter, as it was then in those parts where spring comes ever
late.

There penetrated into the babble of their voices slight sounds from the
open air, and a hush fell in the place.  Without doubt they heard
cheering, and quickly the pages of all the company ranged themselves in
a parti-coloured and silken fringe before the steel of the men at arms
that held the commonalty behind the pillars.  The great oaken doors
wavered slowly backwards at the end of the hall, and they perceived the
road winding down from them through the grass on the glacis, the
greyness of the sea and sky, and the foam breaking on the rocks of the
Farne Islands.  A ship, whose bellying sails appeared to be almost
black, was making between the islands and the shore.  At times she stood
high on a roller, at times she was so low amongst the tumble that they
could hardly see more than the barrels at the mastheads and the red
cross of St. Andrew on her white flag.  The Border Warden said that this
was the ship of Barton, the Scots pirate, and some held that this was a
great impudence of him, but others said that the weather was so heavy
outside that he was seeking the shelter of the islands, and certainly
none of their boats could come at him in the sea there was.  And this
topic held their attentions until the sound of a horn reached them.
This was certainly the Young Lovell’s page seeking admission to the
Castle, so that he was near enough.

The monstrous head of a caparisoned horse, held back by ribands of green
and vermilion silk, came into view by the arch.  It rose on high and
disappeared, so that they knew it was rearing.  Then it came all down
again and forged slowly into view, the little page Hal and Young
Lovell’s horse boy, Richard Raket, that had lost his teeth at Kenchie’s
Burn, holding the shortened ribands now near the bit on either side.
The common men threw up their bonnets and took the chance of finding
them again; the ladies waved scarves, the Bishop made a benediction.
The man in shining steel was high up in the archway against the sea.
Such bright armour was never seen in those parts before, the light
poured off it in sheathes, like rain.  The head was quite round, the
visor fluted and down, at the saddle bow the iron shaft of the partisan
was gilded; the swordbelt and the scabbard were of scarlet velvet set
with emeralds. This was the gift of the Lady Rohtraut, and those were
the Lovell colours.  The shield showed a red tiger’s head, snarling and
dimidiated by the black and silver checkers of the Dacres of Morpeth;
the great lance was of scarlet wood tipped with shining steel.

Those of them who had never seen the Young Lovell ride before, said that
this vaunted paragon might have done better.  For, when the horse was
just half within the hall, and after the rider had lowered his lance at
once to salute the company, and to get it between the archway, and had
raised it again, the horse, enraged by the shout that went up from that
place like a cavern, sprang back so that its mailed stern struck the
rabble of grey fellows and ragged children that were following close on.
The steel lance-point jarred against the stone of the arch, and the
round and shining helmet bumped not gracefully forward over the shield.
This was held for no very excellent riding, and some miscalled the
horse.  But others said that it was no part of a knight’s training to
manage a horse going rearwards, and no part of a horse’s to face
festivals and cheers.  A knight should go forward, a horse face
war-cries and hard blows rather than the waving of silken scarves.

But they got the horse forward into the middle of the hall, where it
stood, a mass of steel, as if sullenly, on the great carpet of buff and
rose and greens. This marvel that covered all the clear space hung
usually on the wall to form a dais, and the Young Lovell had bought it
in Venice with one half of the booty that he had made in the little war
against the Duchess of Escia.  It weighed as much as four men and four
horses in armour, and had made the whole cargo of a little cogger from
Calais that brought it to Hartlepool harbour, whence, rolled up, it had
been conveyed to the castle upon timber-trugs.  Few men there had seen
the whole of it.  It had been taken by Venetians from a galley of the
Soldan’s, and was said to be a sacred carpet of Mahound’s.  Some men
were very glad to see it, but some of the monks there said that it
favoured idolatry and outlandish ways. But these were the very learned
monks of St. Cuthbert that had a monastery at Belford, near there. They
stood to the number of forty behind the Bishop and had habits of undyed
wool.  But the young monk, Francis, who had befriended the Young Lovell
before, maintained now stoutly that it was a very good thing that the
gear of Mahound should first be trampled underfoot and then coerced into
a Christian office such as that of the creation of a good knight.  The
Lady Rohtraut heard his words, and looking round at him said that he
should have a crucifix of gold for his inner chamber at Belford, if the
rules allowed it, or if not, five pounds of gold and ambergris to anoint
the feet of his poor and bedesmen at Maundy tide.  The young monk
lowered his eyes and thanked her.  He was a Ridley that had killed his
cousin by a chance arrow sent after a hare, and so he had gone into this
monastery to pray perpetually for his cousin’s soul.

That man in armour now delivered his lance to his little page, his
shield to the page of a friend of his, a Widdrington; his sword to
Michael Eure, a cousin of the Lady Margaret, to be an honour to her, and
Richard Raket and other grooms came round the horse while the rider
descended and then they led the horse away.  But he never raised the
fluted steel of his visor.  And when he was kneeling on high cushions of
black velvet, since his steel shoes of tapering and reticulated rings
were near two foot long, as the fashion was, the Bishop asked him if he
would not uncover his face.  But he whispered in the ear of the little
page, and presently that boy said without fear in a high voice that the
worshipful esquire had sworn an oath in the chapel that no woman should
look upon his face or hear his voice until he was both knighted and
betrothed.  Those who upheld pure knight errants said that this was a
very good vow, but the Percy laughed till his tears came.

Then, in a high voice, but in an Italian accent, for he had been many
years the King’s Advocate and Ambassador at Rome and had there learnt
his latinity and love for the profane poets, Ovid, Vergil the Magician,
and many others—the Bishop recited the words of the oath that this
esquire should take. There was his duty to the Bishop Palatine to find
for him, when he came to be a baron, sixteen knights when letters of
array were sent out, and, by the year, sixty bushels of wheat, one
hundred of oats and peas, ten carts of oat straw and ten of wheat when
the Bishop and his men harboured within ten miles of the Castle, and the
Bishop to have the rights of infangthef throughout his lands.  Also he
would observe the privileges of all clerks and of Durham sanctuary
within those lands.  The Bishop read also the oath to the King, for the
Lord Percy had little Latin.  The Knight, when he came to be a Baron,
should find for the King’s service, north of the Humber when the King’s
letters of array were read, twenty-two knights, or six only if the
Bishop had before sent his letters calling for sixteen.  For such lands
as he should get from his mother he should pay the King four horseshoes
of gold whenever the King lay at Morpeth, and for the Lovell lands a
gold cup filled with snow whenever the King lay within the Cheviot
country.  The goods of all those convicted of treason within his
territories at Morpeth should go to the Bishopric; those from the other
parts one-tenth to the King, six-tenths to the Bishop, one-tenth to the
monastery of St. Cuthbert at Belford, and the remainder to himself.

These oaths having been recited, a page of the Bishop’s brought a
feretory that had lain on the coffin of St. Cuthbert, and a Percy page a
testament; the esquire laid his right hand first on one and then on the
other, being still on his knees, and then held up his hand whilst the
page recited that that good esquire vowed faithfully all these things.
Then the Bishop drew his sword and touched the steel left shoulder of
the esquire with the hilt that had the form of the cross, this being the
symbol that he would be a good knight and soldier of Christ and Our
Lady.  Then all the people cheered and cried out and the Bishop said
loudly—

"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.

And suddenly he threw his arms above his head, his face being purple and
his eyes closed like a drunkard’s.  With the passion and strength of his
laughter the blood gushed from his mouth and nose like falling scarlet
ribbons.  His body came forward on the tablecloth; monks and doctors
craned forwards over him.  The Percy moved disdainfully away as if from
a sick and filthy beast, and over the table the body shook and quivered
in the last gusts of laughter.

The Decies, with his sword drawn, moved backwards to the arch at the
door, and first the Lady Isopel of Cullerford, the Lord Lovell’s
daughter, came round to speak to him, and then the Lady Douce of
Haltwhistle, her sister.  They stood looking back at their mother, and
then they called to them their husbands, Sir Symonde and Sir Walter
Limousin. They stood at talk, Sir Symonde shrugging his shoulders and
Cullerford grunting whilst the ladies caught them earnestly by the arms,
leaning forwards. Then they called to them the lawyer, Magister Stone,
who was no great distance away, and he brought with him the Prince
Bishop’s Almoner, a dry man with but one eye who had a furred hood up,
to keep away the draughts, since he suffered from the earache.  Then
they beckoned to them certain of their armed men and Sir Henry Vesey of
Wall Houses, a knight of little worth in morals but a great reiver.  And
so, by little and little, they had a company, mostly ill-favoured but
violent around them.  So they perceived that the Lady Rohtraut had
fallen in a swoon, and the knight of Cullerford went forward and begged
the lords and lordings and the company to avoid that hall and go upon
their errands, since there was sorrow enough, and his brothers-in-law
and their wives would take it kindly if they could be left alone with
their mother.  And, since he was the husband of the lady’s daughter,
they listened to him and went out, and the Vesey of Haltwhistle saw to
it that they had their horses, and soon there were few left in the hall
but the Lord Lovell, who had a leech, bending over him.  The Lady
Rohtraut, having fallen back in her chair, was being tended by the Lady
Margaret and an old woman of seventy called Elizabeth Campstones.  Then
the daughters and the Decies went about in the Castle and were very
busy.




                                   IV


The Young Lovell felt as if he had came up out of a deep dream.  He knew
that the lady of the white horse thought to him:

"And I have all the time of the sea and the sky and beyond," but she
spoke not at all—no words and no language that he knew.  Only it was as
if he saw her thoughts coursing through her mind as minnows swim in
clear water.  And he knew that, before that, he had thought, as if
beseechingly:

"Even let me go in Christ’s name, for I have many businesses."

She had a crooked and voluptuous mouth, mocking eyes of a shade of
green, a little nose, a figure of waves, a high breast crossed with
scarlet ribbons, and hair the colour of the yellow gold, shining with
the sun, each hair separate and inclining to little curls.  In short she
was all white and gold save for her red and alluring lips that smiled
askant, and he thought that he had never seen so bright a lady, no, not
among the courtesans of Venice.  His heart at the sight of her hair beat
in great, stealthy pulses; his throat was dry and the flowers grew all
about her. And she sat there smiling, with the side of her face to him,
and he heard her think—

"This mortal man shall be mine."

It had been then that he had prayed her in Christ’s name to let him go,
and that she had answered that she had all the time of this earth and
beyond it.

He turned Hamewarts slowly down the dune, though his heart lay behind
him, and, like a mortally wounded man upon a dying horse, he rode
towards his Castle where it towered upon the crag.  The day was very
bright, in the white sand the wind played with the ribbed rushes, and
very slowly Hamewarts went. To judge by the sun he had not stayed more
than a half-hour in that place, if so long, for it was very little above
the horizon.  He had not thought the day would prove so bright.  The sea
was very blue: the foam sparkled and was churned to curds, and the
little wind was warm from sunwards.  He saw the shepherd coming down a
very green slope below the chapel, and the white sheep, with whiter
lambs, spreading, like a fan below him.  Behind him, over that shoulder,
Meggot, their goose girl, was driving her charges, a great company of
grey with but three white ones amongst them.

In a stupid way he thought that this great brightness in an early and
raw spring day must come from having seen so beautiful a lady; so, it
was said in stories, were good knights’ hearts elated after such a
sight. But he was aware that his heart was like the grey lead in his
side, and leaden sighs came heavily from him.

When he came to the gate in the outermost wall he tirled wearily at the
pin.  He was aware of a monstrous heaviness and tire in all his limbs.
A man opened the little grating; loud yawns came from him and, very
sleepily, he let down bars and chains and the gate back.  From this
gateway a short, white road went slantwise, up a green bank, to the
chief gate of the Castle.

Young Lovell never looked at this man’s face, and slowly he rode up the
steep.  He heard the man say:

"What lording be ye?" but he rode on mute. The man came running after
him, his armour rattling like pot-lids.  He caught Hamewarts by the
bridle and, looking earnestly at Young Lovell’s face, he said:

"Master, I mauna let ye pass only I ken your name."  And then he cried
out, and his eyes were almost out of his head:

"The Young Lovell!"  He ran like a hare up the broad road; his hose were
russet coloured.

Young Lovell grumbled to himself that it was strange to set so new a man
to the gate that he should not know his master’s son, and stranger still
that the man should be of the men of his sister’s husband of Cullerford,
for all their followers had russet beneath their steel facings.

And then he saw old Elizabeth Campstones that had been help-maid to his
mother’s nurse, coming out of the littlest door of the inner castle wall
and down the path across the green grass of the glacis.  She was all in
hodden grey, she carried a great basket of tumbled clouts upon her head,
and so the tears poured from her red eyes that at the first she did not
see him though she came into the road at his horse’s forefoot.  But when
he said:

"Why greet ye, Elizabeth?" she looked up at him on high as he sat there,
as if the sun dazzled her eyes.  And then she screamed, a high long
scream. She caught at her basket and she ran to his bridle.

"Come away," she cried out.  "Cullerford and Haltwistle have ta’en your
bonny Castle.  Your father’s dead.  Your mother’s jailed.  There is no
soul of yours true to you here."

If there was one thing that distinguished the Young Lovell amongst the
captains of the North—and his name was very well known to the Scots of
the Border—it was that he was quick in thinking. And now, the kindling
passion of war being the one thing that could drive away the thirst of
love, made him see, as if it were a clear table laid out before him, the
minds of his sisters that he knew very well and the dispositions of his
brothers-in-law as well as the reed of the Decies that was not concealed
from him. And, there being very little decency in his age, he knew that
an hour or so in the Castle with his father dead and his mother no doubt
grieved and shut in her bower, the men leaderless, since he, that had
been his father’s lieutenant and ancient was absent—that short hour or
two that had gone by—and it might well have been that his father had
died over his cups at the board whilst he himself, the night before, was
a-watch over his arms—would very well suffice to put Cullerford and
Haltwhistle in possession of his Castle with all his own men butchered
during their sleep.  In those days it was grab while you could and get
back at your leisure.

With the pressure of his knee, he moved Hamewarts a yard forward and
aside; he leant over his saddle bow and caught the old woman under the
shoulders.  He lifted her, basket and all—for in the midst of grief,
fear and danger, she would cling first to the clouts that were her
feudal duty—and the great horse with the pressure on his mouth, cast up
his head and wheeled round again towards the gate at which they had
entered.  There came the bang of a saker, but without doubt it was
rather to rouse the Castle than aimed at them, for they heard no ball go
by them.  Then there was a sharp scratch as if a cat had spat, and just
above his head an arrow stuck itself through the basket of clouts.
Hamewarts went back downwards in long bounds.

Three other arrows set themselves in the grass beside their course; one
fell on the road, one carried off his scarlet cap with its frontal and
jewel of pearls. But that arrow too transfixed itself in the basket and
pinned the cap there; so it was not lost, and that was a good thing, for
the pearls were worth two hundred pounds.  And as he rode he thought
that that was not very good shooting.

The men-at-arms, wakened from sleep, had gummy and unclear eyes; their
bows, too, must have been strung all night and that had made the strings
slacken and be uncertain.  It was an evil and untidy practice, but it
showed him firstly that fear of attack must be in that place, and
secondly that some of his own men might be without the castle and apt to
essay to take it again.  Moreover, though he had not time to turn, he
knew that they must have fired from the meurtrières of the guard house;
if they had taken time to open the great doors they must have struck him
like a hare, for he had not been thirty yards from the walls.

Hamewarts clattered in his heavy gallop under the archway of the gate
out into the village street, and the Young Lovell thanked our Saviour
that the porter had been too amazed to go back and close it, but had run
to warn the Castle.  Without that he had been caught like a fox in a
well.  When he was through and well outside, he caught up his horse, and
turning, gazed in again under the arch.  The inner walls of the Castle
rose immense and pinkish, with their pale stone, above the green grass.
The sun shone on such of the windows—about twenty—that had glass in
them.  One of these casements opened and he saw the naked shoulders of
his sister Douce, holding a sheet over her breasts as she gazed out to
mark why the tumult was raised.  He observed thus that, in one night, as
he thought it, his sister had taken their mother’s bower for herself.
It was no more than he would have awaited of her.

He perceived then the large gate of the Castle on top of the mound
roughly burst open and there came running out thirty men in russet who
ranged themselves in a fan-shape on the slope.  Last came a man in his
shirt and shoes—Limousin of Haltwhistle. The men in russet held bows in
their hands and the man in his shirt waved his hands downwards.  The
archers began to come down, but not very fast and with caution.  The
Young Lovell knew they thought that very belike he had already raised
the country against them and had men posted in ambush behind the outer
walls.

He rode slowly away with the old woman before him.  The street was very
broad and empty in the morning sun.  The cottages were all thatched with
sea-rushes and kelp, all the doors stood open and the swine moved in and
out.  Two cottages had been burnt to the ground and lay, black heaps,
sparkling here and there with the wetness of the dew.  He marvelled a
little that they did not still smoke, for they must have been set alight
since last nightfall.  He considered the sleeve of his scarlet cloak
that was very brave, being open at the throat to shew his shirt of white
lawn tied with green ribbons. He saw that the scarlet was faded to the
colour of pink roses.  He looked before him and, on a green hill-side,
he was aware of a great gathering of men and women bearing scythes whose
blades shone like streaks of flame in the sun.  Also, at their head went
priests and little boys with censers and lit candles.  The day was so
clear that, though they were already far away, he could see the blue
smoke of the incense.

He rode slowly forward, pensive and observing all that he might.  The
old woman sat before him, but she was breathing so fast with the late
galloping of the horse that she could not yet speak.  The windows of the
one stone house in that place were still shuttered and barred, so that
without doubt the lawyer still slept.  Then he remembered that he would
have that man hanged without delay.  Without doubt he left his windows
shuttered to give false news, for certainly, that morning, he had seen
him moving those stones.  He looked about him to see if in the open
barns and byres he could not see any horse of the Prince Bishop or the
Percy or any of their men polishing their head-pieces or their pikes.
But, though many of the barns stood open, none could he observe.

He looked over his shoulder and saw that the archers were come to the
gateway and were peering sideways out, with a due caution.  Then some of
them came through and stood with their backs to the wall, waving at him
their hands and shouting foul words.  They would not come any further
for fear he had an ambush hidden amongst the byres and middens of the
village.  So, still slowly, he rode on between heaps of garbage where
the street was narrow and a filthy runnel went down.

At the top the street grew very wide till it was a green swarded place
with many slender, sea-bent trees to make a darkened shade up against
the walls of the small monastery of Saint Edmund.  He considered whether
he should go in there, but he remembered that there were only a few
monks and they had no men-at-arms to guard those who sought sanctuary
with them from pursuers not afraid of sacrilege.  He determined,
however, to make his way to another monastery—the great and powerful one
of Belford, where they had fifty bowmen and two hundred men-at-arms to
guard them against the Scots.  There he would go, unless the old woman
told him other news when her breath came back.  Then the old thing
whimpered:

"Set me down, master.  I cannot speak on horse-back."  He let her slide
to the ground and, with the basket transfixed by the two arrows, she
fell on her knees.  And then she crossed herself and gave thanks to God
for his coming so well off, and afterwards, his long-toed shoes being
just on a level with her lips and she on her knees, she set her mouth to
the shoe that was on the right side where she was, and then placed it
over her head as far as the basket gave her space.  He wondered a moment
that this old woman should be so humble that was used to treat him as a
dirty little boy, long after he had fought in great fights, she having
nursed his mother before and him afterwards.  But then he considered
that she was doing homage for such small goods as she had and this was
the first of his vassals to do this thing.  And again he observed that
the bright scarlet of his shoe and the bright green—it being
particoloured and running all up his leg to his thigh—these were dull
pink and dull brown.  They had been the brightest colours that you could
find in the North.

Elizabeth Campstones stood up.

"Where will you go to, my master Paris?" she asked.  "Woeful lording,
where will you find shelter?"

"The Belford monks, I think, will give me the best rede and admonition,"
he said.  "There I am minded to ride now."

"Then come you down from the brown horse," she said, "and walk beside me
on Belford road, for ye could go no better journey, only I cannot speak
up to you with this basket on my poll."

He came down from the brown horse, and as he did so his stirrup leather
cracked and that was more than passing strange for he had had them new
two days before.  So when he was come round Hamewarts’ head and had the
reins through his arm, he said to the old woman:

"Now tell me, truly, what day is this?"

"This day is the last day of June," she answered. "My master Paris, it
is three months from the day that you gat you gone, and ye are a very
ruined lord and the haymakers have gone to the high hills."

He answered only, "Ah," and walked thoughtfully forward.  He had known
that that lady was a fairy....

He walked with the old woman beside him, through the little grove of
thin trees, by the bridle gate into the yard of the square, brown church
with the leaden roof, and so out into the field where it mounted towards
the Spindleston Hills.

Halfway up the low hillside there was a spring with blackthorn bushes,
sea-holly and broom in thick tufts about it.  The sun fell hot here,
early as it was.  A grey goat wandered through the rough and flowery
thicket and many great bees buzzed. He sat himself down upon a
soft-turfed molehill and left Hamewarts to crop the bushes.  The old
woman stood looking at him curiously and with a sort of dread, for a
minute.  Then she took the basket from her head and began to lament over
it.

The two arrows transfixed it through and through, so that it was
impossible for her to draw out her cloths and linen.  Lord Lovell came
out of his trance of thought a moment.  He looked upon the woman, and
then, taking the basket from her, he broke off the feathered end of each
arrow and so drew them right through the basket.  The old woman pulled
out her clouts and said, "Eyah, eyah."  Through each clout one arrow or
the other had made one, two or many round holes.

"These," she lamented, "are all that your mother has for her bed or her
body.  All her others your sisters have taken."

"I am considering," he answered her, "how I best may save my mother."

She took her linen to the spring which was deep and clear, and began
sedulously to soak piece after piece, rinsing it over and over as she
knelt, and beating it with an oaken staff upon an oaken board that she
had in her basket bottom.  And as she hung each piece over the bramble
bushes she looked diligently into the scene below her to see what was
stirring in the Castle or the village.  Young Lovell had selected that
high spot so that they might know what was agate by way of a pursuit.
She saw, at intervals, three men on horseback go spurring up the street
from the Castle arch, but she did not disturb her master with the news.
She thought it better to leave him to his thinking, for she considered
that he would hit upon some magic way out of it.  She imagined that he
had dwelt that three months amongst wizards and sorcerers that he should
have met during his vigil in the little old chapel that was a very
haunted place.

At last he raised his head and said:

"Old woman, tell me truly now, all your news."

What she knew first was that, on the morning when the Lord Lovell had
died, all the lords and knights and the Prince Bishop and the others
being gone from the hall, there remained only the dead lord, his wife in
a swound, the Lady Margaret Eure and her.  Then Sir Walter Limousin of
Cullerford with his wife Isopel and the other sister had approached with
several men of theirs in arms and had carried the good body of her
senseless lady up to a little chamber in the tower called Wanshot, in
the very top of it.  She, Elizabeth Campstones, had carried her lady’s
feet, but all the rest of her bearers had been men-at-arms.  The Lady
Margaret had followed them up into that little stone cell and asked them
what they would do with that lady in that place.  But no one of them
answered her a word, high and haughty as she was, and at last they went
away and left them, the Lady Rohtraut just coming to herself on a
little, rotting frame bed that had no coverings but the strings that
held it together.

The Lady Margaret had sought to go out with them, calling them all proud
and beastly names and she was determined to set her own men that she had
there, to the number of twenty, all well armed, to make war upon these
and to raise the Castle.  But when she came to the doorway that was
little and low Sir Simonde Vesey set his hand upon her chest and thrust
her back so hard into the room that she fell against the wall and lost
her breath.  When she had it again the door was locked and it was of
thick oak, studded deep with nails.

Finely she raved, but when she came to, the Lady Rohtraut was in a sort
of stupour, sitting still and shaking her head at all that they said.
She thought this must be a dream that would vanish upon her awakening,
and so it was lost labour to talk.

So they remained until well on into the afternoon, seeing nothing but
the ceaseless run of the clouds and the sky and the gulls upon the Farne
Islands and the restless sea, from their little window.  Then there came
three weeping maids of their lady’s, bearing bedding that they set down
on the floor, and a little food and some wine that were placed upon the
window-sill.  But these girls spoke no word, for Sir Simonde Vesey stood
outside and looked awfully upon them.  The Lady Margaret made to run
from the room, but two men that stood hidden put their pikes to her
breast so that she ran upon them, and would have been sore hurt only
they were somewhat blunted.

The Lady Rohtraut sat for a long while eating a little white bread that
she crumbled in her fingers, and sipping at the wine from the black
leather bottle, but still she said little, which was a great pity.

Towards four of the afternoon, to judge by the shadows, Sir Simonde let
himself in at the door and asked the Lady Margaret if she would
forthwith marry the Decies.  She said no, not if Sathanas himself
branded her with hot irons to make her do it.  Sir Simonde said she
might as lief do it since she was betrothed to that good knight and that
could never be altered.  Then she caught at the little dagger with which
she was wont to mend her pens.  It hung in her girdle, and Sir Simonde
went swiftly enough out at the little door.

The Lady Margaret chafed up and down that small place, but those women
said little, for they knew well what this all meant in the way of
robbery and pillage and bending them to their wills.  But the Lady
Margaret swore that she would have the Eures of Witton and the
Widdringtons and the Nevilles themselves—aye and the spy Percies—who
were all her good cousins, and they should hang the Decies and do much
worse to the Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle.

And no doubt she had the right of it, for long after it was dark they
saw a glow of light illumining in a dreary way the face of the White
Tower, so that the Lady Margaret thought it was a fire of joy or at
least a baal-blaze, but Elizabeth Campstones said that it was houses
burning in the township.  Then a man with a torch came through the
little doorway and lighted in the Magister, or as he now was, the
Bailiff Stone, since the Prince Bishop had signed the appointment for
him that morning.  This rendered him safe against any persecution or
processes of laymen in those parts, nevertheless, when the torch-bearer
had stuck his torch in a ring by the door and gone away, the lawyer
would have the little door left open, and they knew afterwards that it
was done so that the men without might rescue him if the Lady Margaret
meant to strike or slay him, for she could have slain five of such lean
cats.

Before the Lady Margaret could bring out a question, for she was
astonished and could not think why such a person should come there, he
broke into a trembling gibber:

"Oh, good kind ladies; oh, gentle sweet and noble dames, for God His
love and sufferings, save all our lives and houses of which two are
burning!"

The Lady Margaret asked highly what all this claver was and what he
wanted.

"These are very violent and high-stomached people," the lawyer babbled
quaveringly on.  "Two houses of the township they have burned, and
hanged the husbandmen for an example.  So that if you do not save
us...."

He stretched his hands to the Lady Rohtraut, but she looked before her
and said nothing.

"Well, go you and make common cause with them," the Lady Margaret said
to him contemptuously. "So you will save your neck.

"Ah, but no," he answered miserably but with a sort of professional and
cunning air.  "I must be on the side of the law."

"Then what does the law say?" she asked as bitterly.  "I will warrant
you will not be far from the top dog."

He began, however, to whine and wring his hands and said that he had not
long to live if he could not win these ladies to do the wills of the
violent people who had taken that Castle, not but what it might not be
said that they had not some shew of equity on their sides.

"I thought we should come near there," the Lady Margaret said; "come,
Master, what is the worst on ’t?"

"Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer said, "this is at the best a grievous
matter; at the worst it is...."  And he waved his hand as if there were
no speaking of it.

"Go on," the Lady Margaret said grimly.

"I have been so confused," the lawyer answered, "with much running here
and there and seeing such blood flow and the hearing of such
threats...."

"Come, come," the lady said, "you are a man of law and such a clever one
that if I threw you out of this window you could tell the law of it or
ever you fell to the ground."

"I am not saying," he retorted, with a sort of relish, "that I go in
doubts concerning the law. What perplexes and affrights me is the fall
of great and powerful lords.  As to the torts, replevins, fines,
amercements and the other things too numerous to recite, I am clear
enough."

"Well, it is in the fall of mighty lords that the rats of your trade
find bloody bones to gnaw," she answered him.  "But if you are too
amazed at the contemplation of the wealth that you shall make out of
this to tell me, get you gone.  If not, speak shortly, or I warrant you
a few cousins of mine shall burn this Castle and you in a little space."

The lawyer shrank at these words and she went on:

"I trysted with my cousin Widdrington to meet him at Glororem at six
to-night and bade him fetch me hence with what companions he needed at
twelve if I were not home, so you have but an hour."

"Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer said, "it is three hours."

"Well then, you have kept me twelve hours here," the lady said; "I shall
pay you in full for your entertainment."

"Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer sighed, "not me, not me!"

She answered only: "Out with your tale."

He hesitated for a moment, and then began with another sigh:

"For your noble cousin Paris, Lord Lovell, I fear it is all done with
him."

"I think he may be dead that he did not come to his betrothal with me,"
the lady said.  "If that is so you have my leave to tell me."

"It is worse than that," he groaned.  "Woe is me, that noble lordings
should bend to violent passions."

The Lady Margaret looked at him with disdain.

"If ye would tell me," she said, "that the Young Lovell is gone upon a
sorcery, ye lie."

Again the lawyer sighed.

"It is too deeply proven," he said.  "These poor eyes did see him and
two other pairs—both his well-wishers, even as I am."

"Even whose?" she asked.  "And what saw ye?"

"For the eyes," the lawyer said, "they were those of the Decies and of
an ancient goody called Meg of the Foul Tyke."

"For well-wishers," the Lady Margaret answered, "you well-wish whence
your money comes; the Decies would claim my cousin’s land and gear: and
Meg of the Foul Tyke, though the best of the three is a naughty witch in
a red cloak.  I have twice begged her life of my lording."

"The more reason," Master Stone said, "why you should not doubt she is
your well-wisher, even more than the young lording’s.  And that is why
she would see you have a better mate."

The lady said: "Aha!"

"I will tell you how it was," the lawyer said.  "I could not very well
sleep that night because I had been turning of old parchments, where, to
make a long story short, I had found that if the Lord Lovell should, on
the next day, swear to give the Bishop the rights of ingress and
fire-feu over his lands in Barnside he should do himself a wrong.  For,
since the days of that blessed King, Edward the Second, those lands have
been held by _carta directa_..."

"Get on; get on," the Lady Margaret cried.

"But this is in the essence of the thing," the lawyer protested, "for a
_carta directa_..."

"I will not hear this whigamaree," the lady said, "Let us take it,
though no doubt you lie, that you had found certain parcels of
sheepskin.  But understand that we have stomachs for other things than
that dry haggis."

"That is a lamentable frame of mind," the lawyer said, "for look you, a
carta of that tenure is the best that can be come by."  But, at a
gesture of the lady’s hand, he began again very quickly: "I spent a
night of groaning and sighing, for it was a grievous dilemma. On the one
hand, my beloved young lord might do himself a wrong by swearing away
his chartered rights.  On the other hand, if I should tell him that I
had found them, this might be deemed foul play by the Pro-proctor Regis
Rushworth, who is a lawyer for the house of Lovell in the Palatine
districts.  Though how it is that Rushworth knoweth not of this charter
I cannot tell."

"How came you by them?" the lady asked. "Without a doubt you stole them
to make work."

"They were old papers that were there when I bought the study of my
master that was Magister Greenwell," the lawyer answered, and again the
lady said: "Get on; get on."

"So, at the last," Stone continued, "I made, after prayer, the
resolution and firm intent to tell my lord. And so I arose, remembering
how he would be praying in the chapel, and gat me into the street. And
there, in the grey dawn, I lighted upon Meg of the Foul Tyke, who was
returning from gathering of simples by the light of the moon in the
kirkyard."

"There was no moon last night," the Lady Margaret said.

"Then, by the light of the star Arcturus," the lawyer claimed.  "Well,
my first motion was to rate her for a naughty witch.  And so I did full
roundly till that woman fell a-weeping and vowed to reform."

"Well, you were more powerful than the prophets with the Witch of
Endor," the lady mocked him.

"And, seeing her in that good mind," Stone went on with his tale, "I
remembered that she was a very old woman—the oldest of all these parts.
So I told her that if she could remember matters of Barnside years
agone, since she was in a holier mind, without doubt the young lording
would be gracious to her and would grant her a halfpenny a day to live
by; so she might live godly, after repenting in a sheet.... So she
remembered very clearly that one Hindhorn of Barnsides, Henrice Quinto
Rege, had been used, once a year, at Shrovetide, to drag with three
bullocks, an oaken log bound with yellow ribbons to the Castle. This was
direct and blinding evidence that the right of fire-feu ..."

"Well, you went with the old hag to the chapel," the Lady Margaret said.
"I can follow the cant of your mind and spring before it."

"But you may miss many and valuable things," he retorted.  "As thus....
Whilst we went up the hill, this old goody, being repentant and weeping,
cried out when she heard whither we were bound: ’Alas! Horror!  Woe is
me!" and other cries.  And, when I pressed for a reason, she said that
the young lording was a damned soul and that was one of her sins. For
she had taught him magic and the meeting-places of warlocks; one of
which was that chapel that was an ill-haunted spot, and that was why the
lording was there at night.  And she was afraid to go near the chapel;
for the warlocks would tear her limb from limb.  And the familiar and
succubus of the Young Lovell was the toad that was, in afore time, the
step-mother of the Laidly Worm of Spindleston, that to this day spits
upon maidens, so much she hateth the estate of virginity, as often you
will have heard."

The lawyer paused and looked long at that lady.

"So that old witch repented?" she said at last, but she gave no sign of
her feelings.

"There was never a more beautiful repentance seen," the lawyer said.
"So she sighed and groaned and the tears poured off her face to think
that she had corrupted that poor lording...."  And it had been her
repentance, he went on, that had let them see what they had seen, and so
made it possible for them to save him.

Now when they came to the chapel, said the lawyer, the young lording, as
if he were demented, came rushing out from the door, and the Decies who
had watched all night in the porch came out after him, and asked him
what he would.  But he answered nothing to the Decies and nothing to
them, but, with a marvellous fury, like a man rushing in a dream, he ran
into the shed where his horse was tethered, and bringing it out, so he
galloped away that his long curls of gold flapped in the wind.  It was
not yet cockcrow, but pretty clear.

Thus those three, standing there and lamenting, saw how, at no great
distance, but just under Budle Crags, there was a fire lit, and round it
danced wonderful fair women and some old hags and witch-masters, but
most fair women.

The lawyer, saying this, gazed hard at the Lady Margaret, but once again
the lady said no more than—

"Aye, my cousin was always one for fair women."

"So he kissed and fondled them; it was so horrid a sight...." the lawyer
went on.

"Now is it a horrid thing," the lady asked, "to see a fine lording kiss
a fair woman?"

"I only know," the lawyer said, "that at once all we three fell to
devising how you, ah, most gentle lady, might be saved from the embrace
of this lost man; and how that poor lording might be saved from his evil
ways, and have his lands and all his heritage preserved to him."

"And the upshot," the lady asked, with a dry pleasantness, "was what the
Decies did in the Great Hall."

When the Young Lovell, sitting amongst the furze and broom, had heard so
far, he sighed with a deep satisfaction.  The old Elizabeth had told her
tale of sorcery alleged against himself at an intolerable length,
dwelling on the nature of linen clouts here and there, and upon all that
she had said to the Lady Rohtraut when she lay in the swoon. But he kept
himself quiet and did not interrupt her; he had listened to her tales
since he had been a young boy, and knew that if you hastened her they
took five times as long.  Yet he sat all the while on tenterhooks for
fear she should say they had seen his meeting with the lady that sat
upon a white horse amongst doves and sparrows.  Had they seen that it
might have gone ill with him in a suit at law.  For, if they had seen
it, it was twenty to one that there would be other witnesses; the place
was well frequented by people journeying from Bamburgh to Holy Island.
Nay, he would have been visible to the very fishers upon the sea, and to
stay with such a lady, he well knew—though at the moment he sighed
deeply—would be accounted a felony of the deepest magic kind in any
ecclesiastical court.

But now he knew that this lawyer was simply lying, and that was an
easier thing.  He saw, and so he told Elizabeth Campstones, how they had
hit upon that tale.  The lawyer coming by the chapel, after the Young
Lovell had threatened him with death for the moving of his neighbour’s
landstones, and the old witch meeting with him, after she had been
threatened with drowning for her wicked ways; both trembling with fear,
since they knew him for a man of his word and a weighty but just lord in
those lands, had come together to the chapel door.  No doubt they had
entered in, meaning to steal his armour that was visible lying there,
and hold it for ransom as the price of their miserable lives.  But in
the deep porch they would see the Decies snoring like a hog.

Him they wakened, and, the old witch’s mind running on sorcery, the
lawyer’s on suits, and the Decies desiring to have his heritage and his
bride, whilst the other two desired to save their lives; all three
together had hit upon this stratagem that would give them what they
desired.  For in those days there was in Northumberland a stern hatred
of the black arts, which had grown the greater since the twelve children
of Hexham, two years before, had been slain, that their blood and
members might stew in a witch’s broth—a thing proven by many competent
witnesses.  So that, if the Decies should come in and claim the Young
Lovell’s knighthood, name, and the rest, he might, with the support of
his father, make a pretty good suit of it, and, maybe, take the whole.
And, if the Young Lovell should come back soon for his armour, they
would murder him.  Thus, the lawyer, and the witch, the one with a rope
to cast over his neck, and the other with a sharp dagger, hid waiting
behind the thick pillars, whilst the Decies dressed in his
half-brother’s harness.

And it had worked better for them than they had expected, so that now
they held the Castle, and the law might be very hard set, if it ever
made the essay, to get them out of it.

For, as Elizabeth Campstones presently told him, they had taken all the
charters and the deeds of the Castle to Haltwhistle, where the one
knight had them hidden up, and all the deeds and charters of his
mother’s lands and houses to Cullerford, where the other kept them.  The
Castle itself they held all three, the Decies and the two knights—or
rather their two ladies—being captains there by turns of three days
each, and dividing the revenues of it very fairly.

They had cast out all the men-at-arms that were any way faithful to the
Young Lovell, taking away their arms too.  For they, with their armed
men, had been in possession of the Castle and had taken the keys of the
armoury, whilst the Lovell men were without arms and leaderless.  So
that some of the Lovell men had become bedesmen at the monastery at
Belford, and many perished miserably about the country in the great
storm of the second day of April, whilst some had taken to robbery,
which was all that was left them.  Those in the Castle had hired men
from the false Scots and other ragged companions of the Vesty that was
Sir Symonde’s brother, and there they all dwelt comfortable, having
between them about three hundred men-at-arms and a numerous army of
bowmen, but no cannon.  They deemed that they could well await any
assault of the Young Lovell if he should return.  They considered that
he had been slain by the outlaw Elliotts, who had been seen to ride by,
three miles north of the Castle, going up into the Cheviots.

But all these things happened only after they had settled with the Lady
Margaret in that little room. And that had happened in this way,
Elizabeth Campstones said:

After the lawyer told her the tale about the fair witches she had broken
into no cries and oaths as he had expected; not even when he had
particularised one witch with red hair and great breasts that danced and
sprang all naked over a broomstick, with her hair tossing, and how the
Young Lovell had singled this witch out for favours apart.  The Lady
Margaret said only—

"And so you two and the Decies...."

"We stood there weeping and lamenting," the lawyer said.

"I marvel that not one of you had heart to adventure for the caresses of
such fair women as you have told me of.  Had ye been men ye would."

The lawyer answered with an accent of horror:

"But witches and warlocks!"

"Ah, I had forgotten," the lady said.  "So ye wept and turned your heads
away.  And afterwards?"

"After they were gone," Magister Stone answered, "we fell to devising
how we might rescue you, ah gentle lady, from that lost knight and
himself from himself."  That was to be in this way: The Decies should
seek to possess himself of the lands, knighthood and name of the Young
Lovell, and, if he did this with the irrevocable blessing of the Lord
Bishop, the act of the Border Warden, who in those parts stood for the
King, as well as in presence of his father, he might establish a very
good title whether of presumption or possession.  And if in the same way
he might be betrothed to the Lady Margaret in the presence of the Lady
Rohtraut to whom she was ward and with the formal rite of the Church,
which like the other is irrevocable, the Young Decies would be in a very
fair way to achieve his pious desires.

"And that should be as how?" the Lady Margaret asked.

He desired, the lawyer said, to hold the Young Lovell’s heritage only as
a faithful steward and brother and, so holding it with a very arguable
title, neither Prince Bishop or King could extort from it any very great
fines or amercements.  Meanwhile the Decies should consummate that very
night his wedding with the Lady Margaret whom, after the betrothal, he
alone could marry.  And they had a good priest there present and himself
ready to draw up marriage charters enough to fill two bridal chests.
And, the more to incline her to this, it was the mind of the gallant
Decies to allow her such marriage lots, dowers and jointures, out of the
heritage of the Young Lovell as together with her own lands of Glororem
and the other places, and by inducing the Lady Rohtraut to forego the
great fine that they should pay her upon her marriage, would leave them
one of the richest married pairs of that part of the King’s realms.

And when the Lady Margaret asked how that should be brought about, and
the particulars, feudal and direct, of the deeds he would make, he went
off into a great flood of Latin and Norman words of the law.  At last
she said:

"I make out nothing of all this talk.  But I think I will not marry with
a great toad that hath a weasel gnawing at his vitals."

"Ah, gentle lady..." the lawyer began, and his voice rose in its tones.

"To put it shortly," the lady continued, "the great toad is the gallant
Decies, for toads do shelter under other men’s rocks and stones, and
this gallant—for I will not rob him of the title you give him, and I
know no other by which to call him—is minded to shelter under the stones
and rocks of my cousin’s Castle that in God’s good time shall be my
cousin’s and mine.  And for who the weasel is that gnaweth at the vitals
of the gallant Decies I will not further particularise, since I might
well go beyond courtesy. So now get you gone, or I will wave one of the
clouts from this little window which, by the light of the burning
houses, my cousins the Eures and the Widdringtons and the Percy shall
perceive from where they wait upon Budle Crags, and very soon you shall
be hanging from the White Tower to affright the morning sun.  And that I
promise you...."

The lawyer protested in various tones, rising to a sick squeak, but she
said no more to him.  It was not true what she said, that her cousins
were waiting to fall upon the Castle, though they would well have done
it on the next morning or in two days’ time. But the lawyer did not know
that it was not true and so he shivered and went away.

A little later there came Henry Vesey of Wall Houses, the evil knight
that was brother to Sir Symonde.  He had a red nose, a roving eye and
staggered a little.  He affected a great gravity, but she laughed at
him.  His cloak was monstrous and of green, slit all down the great
sleeves to show the little coat of purple damask.  His shirt was wrought
up into a frill very low down in his neck, so that it showed much of his
chest, and in his stiff biretta of scarlet he had a jewel of scarlet
that held five white feathers.  His hair, which was reddish, fell almost
to his shoulders, for he affected very much to be in the fashions of his
time—more than most lordings and knights of that part.  And, indeed, the
Lady Margaret considered him a very proper, impudent gentleman.

"Cousin Meg!" he began, and then he stammered with the liquor that was
in him.  But he achieved again an owlish gravity and a sweet reason. His
proposition was that, still, she should marry the Decies and that he
himself would wed the Lady Rohtraut so that he could defend her
interests the better.  And so they could all live there comfortably
together, for it was better to live in one great family than scattered
here and there.  The Lady Margaret was already laughing, but he
continued with a great gravity, that, as for the Decies, he loved her so
desperately he did not dare to come nigh her, but, now he had no need to
conceal it, was rolling about the carpet in the great hall, bellowing
with the pain of his passion.

"Well, I have been aware of it this many months," the lady said, "and it
is a very comfortable love that will not let him come nigh me.  I pray
it may continue."

At that Vesey of Wall Houses fell to laughing.

He tried to explain that he had come to her with the idea that she might
be more apt to wed the Decies if she knew that, by his wedding the Lady
Rohtraut, the Castle should have for its head and guidance, such a
sober, answerable, prudent and valorous head as himself.

"So the cage of apes made the parrot their captain when they went
a-sailing to the Indies," she said, and then he laughed altogether.

"Nay, indeed Meg, sweetmouthed Meg," he said, "will ye still keep troth
to the monstrous wicked, idolatrous, blaspheming lording called Lovell
that dances with fair naked witches and all the other horrid things that
we would all do if we could? Consider your wretched soul!"

But his liquorish manner showed that he believed nothing of that
witches’ dance, and indeed he was pretty sure that the Young Lovell had
been carried off by the outlaw Elliotts that had been seen near that
place, and that he would return and send them ransom.

"Friend Henry," the Lady answered, "good Sir Henry, if my love, who is a
gallant gentleman, would not dance and courteously devise with beautiful
women, naked or how they were, I should think the less of him supposing
they entreated it.  But I do not believe that he did this thing such as
the calling up of succubi, however fair, since his desire for me only
was so great, and that ye well wis."

"Ah well," the Vesey sighed, "sweet mouth that ye are, if it was I that
had the ordering of this Castle I should not let you go so easily."

"That I well believe and take it kindly," the lady said.

"But, being as it is," he continued, "the poltroons, my brother and
Cullerford and their wives and the Decies and the lawyer tremble so at
the thought of your kinsmen camped on Budle Crags that they are minded
to open the gates on this pretty bird.  But well I know that it is a
lie, though they will not hear me."

"In truth there is a monstrous great host awaits the waving of my
kerchief," she said, "with nine culverins planted there and all; and ye
know what the culverins did to Bamburgh?"

He closed one eye slowly and then he sighed. "Well, I must take you
down," he said, "I am a reckless devil, woe is me, and if there are no
Widdringtons and the rest there now, I know that Wall Houses would burn
to-morrow and I should hang when they caught me....  But oh, I repent me
to let you go...."  And he regarded her with very amorous and melancholy
laughing eyes.

"Friend Henry," she laughed, "if you will open the doors for me, for me,
for your good behaviour you may kiss me twice, once here and once at the
gate, for I dare say, if the truth be known, though you are too much
drunk to be clear and not drunk enough to speak the truth, you are more
the friend of me and of my love than any here."

"Well, they are a curst crew," he said, "and I will not hang with them;
only, where there are pickings I must have my poke, and that is good
Latin."

So, approaching and lifting his legs, as high as he might in the politer
fashion of the day, though once in his progress he fell against the
wall, he took her by the hand and kissed her on the cheek.  She said she
wondered how a man could make himself smell so like a beast with wine,
and so he led her forth from the room, after he had waved away the
guards and after she had taken leave of the Lady Rohtraut who spoke
never a word.  And that was as much as Elizabeth Campstones knew of her
at that time, except that she promised not to rest a night in bed until
she had roused all the Dacres of the North to come to her aunt’s
assistance.

But afterwards Elizabeth heard that the Vesey of Wall Houses had
conducted the lady very courteously, not only to the gate, but, having
found her a horse and guards, to her very tower of Glororem.  And on the
way he gave her very good counsel as to how she should aid her aunt.
But that had proved a very difficult matter, for the Dacres themselves,
in those disturbed and critical times, lay under such clouds of
suspicion that the best of them were detained in London near the King
and his court; so that, if they were not actually in the Tower or some
other prison, they might as well have been.  As for coming to rescue the
Lady Rohtraut by force, they could not do it and, as for aiding her by
any process of law, that was a matter well-nigh impossible for its
slowness and because the Knight of Cullerford had stolen all her deeds
and titles.  Moreover, all the middle part of Yorkshire was in a state
of rebellion, so that it was very difficult for messengers to come
through, either the one way or the other.  It is true that a lawyer from
Durham came to the Castle and sought an interview with the lady on
behalf of the Prince Palatine, but they pelted him from the archway with
dung at first and then with flint-stones so that they never heard what
his errand was.  And although many in that neighbourhood would gladly
have set upon the Castle and sacked it, it was difficult to find a
leader and head. For the Percy was afraid, not knowing how the law was
or how he should best please the King, and the Nevilles were in the
South, so that there was no one left of great eminence.

The Lady Margaret and some young squires of degree raised a force of a
couple of hundred or so and began to march on the Castle.  But before
they reached it the men-at-arms repented, saying that they would not be
led by a woman and a parcel of beardless boys; and when the Lady
Margaret beat them with a whip these men shrugged their shoulders and
rode back the faster to their homes.  She had two of them led to the
gallows and the ropes round their necks till they fell on their knees
and sued pardons. But that did not mend things much and there the
business sat.

The Lady Rohtraut came to herself one night and knew it was no dream.
And she would have letters written to the Lord of Croy in Germany, that
was her mother’s father, that he might come to her rescue. And no doubt
he would have sent ships, though he was a very ancient man.  He was a
mighty prince, and had taken prisoner, in the old time, Edward Dacre,
the Lady Rohtraut’s father, in a battle that his suzerain the Duke of
Burgundy, who was of uncertain mind, fought against the English in
Flanders.  So, waiting in the Castle for his ransom to come, Edward
Dacre loved the Duke’s daughter, the Princess Rohtraut, and was beloved
by her.  And, at the intercession of the Talbot, for the better
soldering of a new friendship between the English and the Burgundians,
the Duke, though sorely against his will, had given his daughter to
Edward Dacre, he being made a baron of England on the day of the
wedding. Her mother, the Princess Rohtraut, was still alive and lived
with her son, the Lord Dacre, in London.  But between mother and
daughter there was a lawsuit about some of these very lands that her
daughters sought to take from her, and in that way there was no commerce
between them.

Thus it was that the Lady Rohtraut was very haughty, and would in no way
submit to the importunities of her daughters and their husbands, for she
had the pride of the Dacres and of a Princess of Low Germany.  The
daughters would still have had her marry the Vesey of Wall Houses, so
that they might have the management of her properties, but she answered
that for nothing in the world would she do that thing, and that it would
be to give them both to Satan.  She had the right to an annual dower of
3,000 French crowns and to all the furnishings that had been taken by
her husband, upon their marriage, from her Castle at Cramlinton, as well
as her houses at Plessey and Killingworth.  And she had the right to
enter again, her husband being dead, into the possession and
administration of those places as well as of her lands by Morpeth.

She was minded to live as a proud and wealthy dowager and she was not
minded to abate one jot of her rights and possessions to buy her
freedom, though her daughters and their husbands came day by day and
clamoured to her to do it.

So there abode, like a prisoner in that little room, the Lady Rohtraut
till that hour.  All of her servants were driven away from her, and she
had only Elizabeth Campstones to dress and undress her: and of linen she
had so little that the old woman must come forth and wash it every three
days.  And, when she brought it forth, the daughters searched it into
the very seams to see that there was no letter to the Duke of Croy or to
the Dacres concealed within it.  And the Lady Rohtraut fell ill, and she
thought her daughters had poisoned her with a fig laid down in honey,
till the doctor cured her with another such fig, the one poison, if it
were a poison, driving out the other.




                                PART II



                                   I


So the Young Lovell sat listening to the old Elizabeth in the sun that
grew hottish amongst the flowering bushes.  He thought to himself nigh
all the time, and still every second thought was of that lady.

His thoughts went like this—

There could be no doubt that the law would not help him to retake his
Castle; but he longed for her red, crooked, smiling lips.  He must
therefore get together a band and besiege that place; and at the thought
of climbing through a breach in great towers whilst the cannon spoke and
the fascines fell into the ditches, arrows clittered on harness, greek
fire rustled down, and the great banners drooped over the tumult, his
blood leapt for a moment.  But her hair he remembered in its filaments
and it blotted out the blue sea that lay below his feet and was more
golden than the gold of the broom flowers and the gorse that surrounded
him.  He thought that, first, he must have the sanction of the Bishop
Palatine and his absolution from any magic he might in innocence have
witnessed; but, in longing for her queer smile, he could scarcely keep
from springing to his feet. He knew he must be moving over the hills,
but the remembrance of her crossed breasts with her girdle kept him
languishing there in the hot sun as if his limbs had lost their young
strength.

So, when the old woman had finished her story, she sat looking at him
with a queer glance.  He spoke no word until she could not but say—

"Master, where did ye bide?  Was it with the bonny witch-wives?"

He contemplated her face expressionlessly.

"Tell me truly, old woman," he said, "where will ye say that I did bide,
to save my name?" for he knew that this old woman could tell a very good
tale.

"I will say Gib Elliott took ye up into Chevyside and held ye there in
an old tower, till a scrivener of Embro’ could be found to take your
bond for a thousand marks.  And ye shall send fifty crowns to Gib by
me—he was my mother’s sister’s foster son—and he shall say that so it
was."

"Say even that," he answered, without either joy or sorrow in his tone.

"Oh my fair son," she cried out in an unhappy and lamenting voice, "I
knew ye had been among the witch-wives; and shall your face, a young
comely face of a golden lording...."

"What ails my face?" he asked.

"Sirs," she cried out, "his face is like the very still water of old
grey rock-pools, with no dancing before the wind and sun."

"Even let it be so," he answered.

"Ay, ye are in a worse case than your dad," she cried.  "All the
Ruthvens had these traffics."

He looked at her hardly.

"My brother Decies was a witch’s son?" he said.  "That was my father’s
sin that sent him roaming?"

"Of a witch that dressed as a nun and stole into a convent," she said,
and rocked herself woefully where she sat beside her washing board at
the edge of the pool.  "They found witch marks upon her. They should
have drowned the child, but he took it by force and with great oaths and
sent it into foreign shires.  And that made his sin the heavier."

"Ah, well!" the Young Lovell said.

"You Ruffyns," the old woman went on lamenting, "for, call yourselves
never so much Lovells, Ruthvens ye will remain, and ye are never of this
countryside but of the Red Welsh or the Black Welsh or of some heathen
countryside.  And always ye have had truck with witches and warlocks.
The first of ye that came into these parts was your grandfather’s father
and he had a black stone, like a coal but not like a coal.  That was
given him by a witch that loved him, as she went on the way to the
faggots, for they burnt her.  And without it, how could he have made his
marvellous booties, riding thro’ the land of France, from how ’twas to
how ’twas, and sacking the marvellous rich and walled cities?  And I had
thought to have saved you from these hussies, seeing that you might well
be of a better race, your mother being of a German house and the
Almains, as all the world tells, being foul and dirty in their lives,
but almighty pious so that nine crucifixes in ten that we buy come from
there.  Therefore as you came first from your mother’s womb I put the
fat of good bacon in your mewling mouth, and your sleeves I tied with
green ribbons, and I took you to the low shed in the tennis court and
rolled you down the roof—and the one thing should have saved you from
the fiends and the other from the witches, and the third even from the
fairy people.  And these things are older than holy water, though you
had enough of that...."

"May it save me yet!" the Young Lovell said. "But what I now have to
consider is how to take my mother from these people and to get back what
is mine own."

"Aye," the old woman said, "you were ever a good child to your mother;
therefore I had hopes of you.  For your sisters, they were all black
Ruffyns, bitter and so curst that they had no need for resort to the
powers of evil to help them."

"Tell me truly now, old woman," her master said, "how long may my mother
live and abide the treatment that she now has and not die?"

"Ah," the old woman lamented, "how altered is now her estate from what
it was, who had the finest bower that was to see in the North Country!
Not a Percy lady nor any Neville nor any mistress of a Canon of Durham
had such a one.  Remember the great red curtains there were to the bed,
and the painted windows that showed the story of the man without a coat.
And the great chest carved with curliecues from Flanders, and the other
chest with the figures of holy kings, and the third that was from Almain
and stood as high as my head upon twisted pillars and had angels holding
candles at each corner. And for what was in the chest—the stores of
gowns, the furs of zibelline and of marten, the golden chains joining
diamond to diamond and pearl to pearl! ... And now she lieth upon a
little pallet, and here, upon these bushes, is drying all the linen that
she hath.  The one gown of scarlet is all that there is for her back,
except for the great slit coat that they have given her for fear that
she die of the cold.  And her little dog Butterfly is all that she hath
for comfort, that sits in her sleeve....  But yet I think she will not
die, and it is certain that none of them wish her death that should
bring against them the mighty house of Dacre to have her heritage. But
day after day they come in, now one, now two, now three and cry out upon
her with great and curious words seeking to gar her give them her lands
and render up her yearly dower.  And so she sits still; and sometimes
she gives them back hard words, but most often she says no more than
that they shall give her her due and let her go.  And so they rave all
the more.  But I do not think that she will die..."

"And has she never sent word to her own mother?" the Young Lovell asked,
"I think that ancient dame could do more than another to save her."

"I think she is too proud," the old woman said. "Of the Duke of Croy she
has spoken often enough, but of her mother never one word, so that, God
forgive me, I had forgotten that she had that mother though it was in
her house I saw the first of God His good light three score and twelve
years was.  For you know that these ladies have never spoken together
nor written broad letters since your grandfather Dacre died, and your
father, on the day the funeral was, was sacking the castles and houses
that were your mother’s inheritance.  And the old lady thought they
should have been hers; so that to this day she is wealthy enough in gold
but hath little or no land and dwells in but a moderate house in the
Bailey at Durham, though when her son, the Dacre, is in London she is
mostly there herself."

The Young Lovell stood up upon his legs.

"Then if there is no great haste to save my mother’s life," he said, "it
is the better.  I would else very well have hastened to get together
twenty or thirty lusty bachelors and so we might have burst into this
Castle of mine.  But if my mother may stay out a fortnight or a month it
is the better.  For I will get together money and a host and cannon and
so we may make sure."

"Ay," the old woman said, "but hasten all ye may for the sake of Richard
Bek and Robert Bulmer."

"Now tell me truly what is this?" her master asked.

The old woman burst out into many ejaculations how that with the haste
and her master’s strange looks she did not know what she had told him
and what she had missed out.

Certain it was that Richard Bek, Robert Bulmer, and Bertram Bullock held
the White Tower for him, the Young Lovell.  The others could not come to
them for the White Tower stood on a rock twenty yards from the Castle
and joined to it by such a narrow stone bridge that it was, as it were,
a citadel. It could stand fast though all the rest of the Castle should
be taken, having been devised for that purpose. Richard Bek and Robert
Bulmer, poor squires, or almost of the degree of yeomen, had always been
captains of the White Tower and in it the dead Lord Lovell had kept his
marvellous store of gold—as much as four score thousand French crowns,
more or less—and all these were theirs still, with such strong cannon as
might well batter down the Castle; only Richard Bek would not do this.
And to him there had resorted from time to time certain strong fellows
that were still faithful to their master, creeping in the night along
the narrow bridge into the tower ... such as Richard Raket, the Young
Lovell’s groom that had lost his teeth at the fight of Kenchie’s Burn.
There might be a matter of twenty-five of them that held it and
victualled it by boats from the sea at night.

"Old woman," the Young Lovell said, "ye keep the best wine for the last,
but ye have our Lord’s warrant for that."

So he got slowly up and put the bit in the mouth of Hamewarts, that had
been grazing, and when he was on that horse’s back he looked down on
Elizabeth Campstones and said—

"Old woman, tell me truly, shall I take thee with me upon this great
horse; for I think my kin will very surely hang thee for having talked
and walked with me?"

She looked up at him with a surly, sideways gaze.

"Ah, gentle lording," she said, "if I may not with my tongue save my
neck from thy sisters and their men I may as well go hang, for my
occupation will be gone."  He left her straining a twisted and wet clout
over the dark pool.

When he came to the high uplands where there was some heather, he saw a
man with a grey coat with a hood, and as soon as that man was aware of
him, he went away with great bounds like a hare, but casting his arms on
high as he sprang.  The Young Lovell was well accustomed to that stretch
of land. It was full of soft, boggy places and he knew therefore that
that man had some money in his poke and desired to betake himself where
no horse could follow.  But because the Young Lovell knew that land so
well, he threaded Hamewarts between bog and soft places, calling the
notes of the chase to hasten him.  Thus the great horse breathed deep
and made large bounds.  And the Young Lovell thought that times were not
all that they should be when every footman must run from every gentle
upon a horse and upon Lovell ground.  For either that man was a felon,
which was not unlike, or he feared that the gentleman should rob him,
which was more likely still.  The Young Lovell was resolved that these
things should be brought to better order on his lands, for he would
fine, hang, or cut the ears off every felon of simple origin that was
there.  To the gentle robbers too, he would not be very easy, though
this was not so light an enterprise, since most of them would prove to
be his cousins or not much further off. Still, they could go harry the
false Scots.

In five minutes he was come up to that man in grey, and that man cast
himself at first on his knees in the heather and then on his face, for
his sides were nearly burst with running and leaping.  The Young Lovell
sat still and looked down upon the hind, for he was never a lord of much
haste.  And afterwards, the man, with his face still among the heather,
for he was afraid to look at death that might be ready for him—this man
fumbled for the grey woollen poke that lay under him.  He pushed it out
and bleated—

"I have but three shillings;" and when the Young Lovell asked him how he
came by his three shillings, he said that he was bound for Belford
neat’s fair to buy him a calf.

"Then I wager two cow’s tails," the Young Lovell said, "Hugh Raket, you
owe me those shillings; for such a knave as you, for docking me of my
dues, I have never known.  You should pay me twelve pence and five hens
and three days’ labour a year—yet when did you pay my sire even the half
of the hens in one year?"

This Hugh Raket turned himself right over upon his back and setting his
arm above his head to shield his eyes from the sun he gazed upwards at
the rider’s head.  His jaw fell though he lay down.

"If I am no Scot," he said, "ye are the Young Lovell."

"I am Lord Lovell," he got his answer, "get up and kiss my foot, for
that is your duty."

He looked down at the man whilst he did his homage and said with an
aspect of grimness:

"Ay, Hugh Raket, if you were not my horse-boy’s brother you would be a
poorer man and I a richer!"

The man looked up at his lord with an impudent shade on his face that
had a thin beard.  It was true that he had not many times done either
suit or service since the field of Kenchie’s Burn, for so surely did a
Court Baron come round so surely would Hugh Raket be away on the hills
after a strayed sow or goose, and Richard, his brother, would beg him
off from the Young Lovell.  Nevertheless, from time to time, the Young
Lovell would take a couple or two of hens from him by force, for this
was a very impudent family, and if they had the land scot-free and
lot-free for a few years they were such fellows as would swear it was
their free-holding—gay fellows they were, both brothers, but they had
always a wet mouth for the main chance:

"Friend Raket," his lord said now, "that you are a very capable cozener
I have known very well ever since your brother aided me upon the field.
But, if you are upon Belfordtrod, catch you hold of my stirrup leather
and you may have its aid as far as that town is.  And, if hidden
hereabouts—for you hold this land of me—you have any sword or crossbow
or pike or such arms as naughty knaves like you are forbidden to have,
you may go dig it up and bring it to me and I will look the other way.
For, since I came out of my prison I have no arms at all, and it is not
meet or seemly that I should ride unarmed."

The husbandman looked keenly at his lord; for, since Bosworth Field, the
King had ordered that none of the simple people, unless they bought a
licence at the cost of one pound English, should carry more arms than a
short knife.

"Friend Raket," his lord said, "I think I can find thy arms as well as
thou canst, for well I know this terrain, and they lie in a stone chest
over beside that holed rock.  But, if you will fetch them for me, giving
me the sword and carrying for me the crossbow and for thyself the pike,
I will call thee my man-at-arms, and so you shall have licence to keep
all the arms you will in your own steading, which shall much comfort you
when you think of the false Scots in the night-time."  And at that,
calling out, "O joy!" and ducking his head between his hands, the fellow
ran over the ling to a great stone with a round hole in it that maidens
were accustomed to pass their hands through up to the elbow to show
their lovers or bridegrooms that they were pure.  He knelt down beside
this stone.

The Young Lovell sat on his horse in the summer weather.  He gave one
great sigh and gazed upon the blue sea behind and below him and the
green plain before and on a level.  The husbandman came back to him.
Upon his head he had a cap of steel; over his back a small target was
slung; in his left hand he held a pike with a steel head three foot long
and armed with a hook such as the common sort use in battles to pull
knights from off their horses.  Bundled together in his arms were a
Genoese cross-bow, a great sword and a little dagger, whilst slung
across his back was a leather bag filled with such heavy steel quarrels
and bolts as should fit the cross-bow.  These arms Hugh Raket and his
fellows used when they went raiding into the Scots or the Middle or the
Western Marches; for they cared little whom they journeyed upon; even,
when they heard that the Scots marched with a strong body upon Carlisle
or the Debateable Lands they would take a hand with the Scots and bring
back what they could.

And without any manner of doubt these arms—the knight’s great sword and
dagger which were a pair, and the Genoese bow—had been taken in a foray
when the Lord Dacre was Warden of the Middle Marches and had some
Genoese and many gentlemen to help him, though he had not made much of
it.  The little target had certainly been taken from the Scots, for it
was such a one as the Murrays and the Macleods use, being not much
larger than a cheese-top with many bosses and bubbles.  But the pike and
the steel cap this fellow might have made himself, for they were rude
enough.

He stood looking up at his lord with a face of anxious roguery, but the
Young Lovell never heeded him till the husbandman spoke; he was gazing
to northward as if his eyes would start from his head.

The man continued watching his lord and thinking his thoughts as to
where that lord had been until he spoke and asked the Young Lovell
whether he should indeed have leave to bear all these weapons and be a
man-at-arms.  The Young Lovell came out of his reverie and said:

"Yes, yes; ye shall be my man-at-arms."  And then he said: "Give me the
great sword and the dagger.  I will make them serve as arms enough till
we come to Belford."

The bondsman was intent upon his own bargaining.

"Then if I be a man-at-arms," he said, "I shall no longer be a
bondsman."

"If you will give me back your lands, that is so," said his lord.  He
was buckling on his sword and he hung the dagger from the belt.  He drew
the sword from the scabbard to see that it was not rusted in, and it
came out very easily, for it had been lately greased.

"It is not very long since you used this sword in gentle feats of arms,"
the Young Lovell said.

"For using it," the man said, "I will not say that; cudgels and stones
proved enough."

"Well, you shall tell me," Young Lovell said. "But now take my stirrup
leather and let us go to Belford, for the sun is high."

The man took the stirrup, and whilst he ran lightly beside the great
horse over the ling and the mosshags he called, a little coyly, his
story up to his lord.  It was a long tale, or he made it so, for there
was a great deal to tell as to how a Milburn called Barty of the Comb
and Corbit Jock had called the bondsmen of the Castle Lovell together,
and of how they had said that in the absence of the Young Lovell they
would pay no heriots, nor yet hens, nor yet bolls of wheat.  So, when
the bailiff of the Castle had come among their steadings and had sought
to take heriots for the death of the Lord Lovell and tythes in hens and
pence, they had greeted him at first civilly and had asked to see the
charters and papers of their lands, saying that that was the custom upon
the death of the lord.

That had occasioned some delay, since the charters and papers had all
been taken to Cullerford, to the tower of Sir Walter Limousin that had
married the Young Lovell’s sister, the Lady Isopel.  So a strong guard
was sent to Cullerford and brought the charters back for the time.  At
beat of drum the charters, customs, the number of the rent-hens and such
things had been read out by the bailiff and the lawyer called Stone,
standing upon a little mound at the head of the village.  From here
these things had been read from time immemorial, even to the oldest ages
when it had been called the Wise Men’s Talking-place.  The lawyer Stone
had told them that the heritage of the old Lovell had fallen to those
three, the Decies, called now Young Lovell and the husbands of the
ladies Isopel and Douce.  They had, the lawyer read, fyled a suit
against the late Young Lovell for sorcery, at a Warden’s Court held in
the Debateable Land on St. Mark’s Day last gone.  Since the Young Lovell
had not appeared, that bill had been fouled and those three had taken
his lands and all he had.  And the lawyer Slone, standing upon that
mound had bidden them go back to their byres and, peaceably, to do suit
and service and pay their heriots and rent-hens and bolls of corn and
the rest.

Then Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock, his friend, and Robert Raket,
had answered for the other bondsmen that they would think upon it.  Then
the three of them had ridden to Lucker, where there was a lawyer called
Shurstanes, and had taken counsel with him.  So when, upon the morrow,
the bailiff of that Castle came again, those three cunning ones had met
him courteously, and said that, for a suit of sorcery, a Warden’s Court
could not foul or find a bill.  It must go before a court of the Bishop
Palatine.  They had great respect for the Lord Warden, but so it was and
his court was only for raidings in the Marches.  And for the
dispossession of a barony that could only be tried (after the Bishop’s
Court in Durham had found a true bill of sorcery) in an assize of the
King’s justices travelling, Alnwick or wheresoever it might be.  And any
such finding of the assize court must be ratified by the most dreadful
King of England in council before ever the Young Lovell could be
dispossessed of his lands.

And those three cunning men had further answered the bailiff that they
were very willing to pay rent-hens and tythes and heriots and pence and
whatever was rightfully to be had of them.  But first they must be
assured of what the King said in his council.  Else the Young Lovell,
coming again, might have it all of them a second time, and that, being
poor men, they could not well abide.

Then the bailiff went back to the Castle—he was not the old bailiff of
the Lord Lovell who had been cast out of his dwelling in the King’s
Tower and had gone to live at Beal—but it was a new bailiff that Sir
Walter Vesey had brought from Haltwhistle, where he had been a
surveyor’s clerk.

But, in three days, the bailiff had issued again from the Castle and had
gone to the byres of the poor widow of Martin Taylor, having about him
ten pikemen for his protection.

Then Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock and Richard Raket considered that
if this thing were done, even upon the poorest of them, it might well
serve as a precedent.  They had called together all the bondsmen and
their sons, and the number of sixty-seven men and all the women had
come, being ninety in number, and the more noisy because it was a woman
and a widow that the bailiff sought to oppress.  So they had thrown
stones at the pikemen who were bearing off the widow’s donkey, and had
broken out the bailiff’s teeth, and driven them all back to the Castle.

And, in expectation that the bailiff should come again with a greater
force, they had fetched from their hiding-places all their arms, and had
them ready.  But the people from the Castle never came again; without
doubt they thought they were not strong enough; the bondsmen of Castle
Lovell were all very notable reivers and fighting men.

Thus, if Sir Walter and Limousin and the Decies came out with such
forces as they had, it was very likely—nay it was certain—that the men
who were in the White Tower and still faithful to the Young Lovell would
issue behind them into the Castle with their cannons, and so, if they
might not take the Castle they might at least set free the Lady
Rohtraut, and have her away by sea; for they of the Castle had no boats,
and no fisherman would help them.

The Young Lovell listened as attentively as he might to what Hugh Raket
had to say, and, at the end of the story, they were come to the hill top
where the heather and marshy ground ceased.  They saw before them great
plains of green grass with people going about everywhere, and there
getting their hay. And a little way away there were going, along a
trodden road, some ten armed men and another amongst them, all on
horseback.

So the Lord Lovell kept himself apart, but sent Hugh Raket to look who
these men were that went abroad upon his lands.  Before him, but a
little to the right was the town of Belford, but the monastery, with its
great church and its great tower just in building, was a little to the
South, near the wood called Newlands.  Further to the South was the
little hamlet of Lucker.  He cast his eyes behind him and he frowned.
For, apart from the sea and the sky, the two Castles and the islands set
in foam, he had seen mostly the square tower of Glororum. A little
company, in the clear weather, were riding out of this tower, and there
the Lady Margaret dwelt.  It seemed a weary thought to him since he
remembered the lady with the crooked smile.

Hugh Raket came back to him and said that those ten men rode with a
prisoner that had been convicted of theft in the Courts of the Nevilles.
He had appealed to the Bishop’s Courts in Durham, and so they were
taking him there.  Hugh Raket thought that it was a folly to make such
matter of a felon. Let them hang him to the first tree and ride back.
For this appeal, before they had the thief strung up, should cost the
Neville lord, for guards and victual and horsemeat and harbouring,
nothing less than ten pounds which was a great sum of money, and a folly
too.

He was of opinion that, if such great lords as the Nevilles and the
Darceys and the Young Lovell suffered none to appeal from their courts,
but hung every man that came before them, it would be much better; for
then there would be none of this monstrous outlay that was for ever
occurring, and the great lords could excuse their poor bondsmen their
rent-hens and their suit and service.

The Lord Lovell made Hugh Raket tell all over again his story of how
they had contended with the bailiff.  For, the first time, he had not
been very attentive.  But now he bent his brows firmly on the face of
this cunning bondsman and gave him all his mind.  And then it speedily
appeared to him that it was this fellow that had really moved in the
resistance to the bailiff, and that Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock
had had little to do with it, for they were simple, slow fellows.  So
the Young Lovell frowned upon Hugh Raket and called him a naughty knave,
for the Young Lovell prized good order in his dominions above
everything.

The bondsman began to cry out then, that if they had paid their
tributes, heriots and what not to the bailiff of the false pretenders,
they would have none wherewith to pay the Young Lovell’s bailiff when he
came in turn as come he would.

"Now are you a very naughty fellow," the Young Lovell cut into his
outcry, "for well ye knew ye thought I should never come again, but was
away amongst the false Scots and dead, or amongst the false witches and
worse.  So ye were minded to escape all your suits and services for
ever.  And, for the bailiff of a great lord, proclaimed with drums upon
his hill, he is no person for such scum and vermin as ye are to protest
against, or against whom to cry out to lawyers.  It is for you to do
your services to those whom God for the time sees fit to set over you,
and to our Lord the King and the Prince Bishop and the Lord Warden and
others.  For, if such fellows as you are to question whom ye shall pay
and whom ye shall not pay, what peace or order should we have in these
my lands?  Nay, we shall see ye rise up against mine own bailiffs, so
that, by God His sorrow, I must speedily come against ye with fire and
brands...."

The Lord Lovell set his teeth and the bondsman shrank back.
Nevertheless, he mumbled that they were very poor folk and could never
pay two sets of masters, the one against the law and the other their
rightful lord.

"Sir, you lie," the Lord Lovell said.  "For very well ye know that such
a parcel of rich scoundrels are not between Tweed and Tyne.  For my
Castle is a very strong Castle, and I have been and shall be to you a
very powerful lord at whose name all the false Scots do tremble.  So
that, from the shadow of that my Castle, ye go burning and reiving into
Scotland and the Marches, whereas none dare ever come against ye to take
what ye have by right or what ye have falsely stolen.  I have had
complaints against ye, in my father’s time, that, in one winter season,
you and Barty of the Comb and the other Milburns and Jock Corbit and his
fellows and others that are upon my lands, with fellows from
Haltwhistle, and God only knows where or under whose leadership (though
I think it was a Wharton that led ye), you cast down or burned
ninety-two towns, towers, stedes, barnekyns, and parish churches; ye
slew one hundred and seven Scots, and prisoners taken were two hundred
and nine, who were ransomed with whitemail and black; 2,700 horned
cattle ye took, and 3,039 sheep, along with nags, geldings, goats, swine
and eight hundred bolls of corn...."

Hugh Raket mumbled that he had had very little of all this.

"Filthy knave," his lord said, "I know not what you had but you had your
share, you and Barty of the Comb and Jock Corbit.  And well I know that
I was—God help and save me—surety for you and my other men at the
Warden’s Court where complaint was made against ye.  And well I know
that when ye should have assoiled yourselves by arms, it was my armourer
that had made the arms ye wore, and so war-like did ye appear that none
came into the field against ye, the complainers being mostly Scots
widows that ye had made.  God keep and save me! now I wish I had never
done those things for you, for you came away with no bills fouled
against ye and ye had the Scots horned cattle, and black and white mail,
and their nags and geldings and goats, and so ye have waxed fat, and
would rise up against your betters."

The bondsman was silent, deeming that the better course before the
visible anger of his lord, and the Young Lovell continued:

"If ye would not pay your just dues to me where then should ye be?  If
it were not for the fear of my name how should you be safe in the
nights?  And how may I make my name feared but by keeping a great store
of knights and men-at-arms and bondsmen and my Castle very strong?
Where should ye be if I had no lead upon my roofs, and the rain and
frost destroyed my towers?  Ye would be men undone, for the false Scots
would come burning and slaying, and the Lords Percy should take all ye
had, and the Bishops Palatine would sell ye into slavery.  So I rede ye
well, pay me what ye owe me, or I will be in your steads and barnekyns a
very burning torch, and upon your nags and geldings a death rider such
as ye never saw."

The bondsman fell upon his knees before his lord’s horse.

"Ah gentle lording," he cried out, "God forbid that we should not pay ye
all that we owe.  Then indeed were we all undone, for no men ever had
lord so gentle and so kind."

"Foul knave," his lord said, "I know that if by my murder ye might well
profit, murder me ye would, you and your fellows; but ye dare not for
fear of the Scots."

The bondsman wept and groaned with his hands held up, and his hood
fallen from his face.

"Now, by God’s dreadful grace, that is not so," he cried.  "For if I
would have murdered ye—and I tremble at that word—might I not have done
so even now, when I had the arms and weapons that I surrendered to you
so that ye might have killed me? Ye are my very dread lord, and well I
know it.  For I have sate under the mass priest and heard his sermons,
and well I know how that the lion is the symbol and token of Antichrist,
the dragon of Satan, the basilisk of death, and the aspic of the sinner
that shut his ears to the teachings of life.  And have I not seen all
these trampled beneath the feet of the Saviour in stone set upon the
church door?  And shall I be like unto the aspic and pass from life to
hell ... the aspic that shutteth his ears?  Alas, no!  I do know that
there are set over me, God and the Saints and the most dreadful King
Henry, Seventh of that name, and the Bishop Palatine and the Border
Warden and the monks of St. Radigund.  But before all these men and next
only to God, comes my most dread Lord Lovell of the Castle, and that if
I do not serve him with all rights and dues, fire and sword will be my
portion in this life or else the barren hillside and hell-flame in after
time...."

The Lord Lovell said:

"Well, ye have learnt your lesson, the mass priest has taught you well."

Then the crafty bondsman, seeing that his lord’s face was softened, and
hoping, by means of his brother, still to escape his due payments,
sighed and said:

"I would indeed, and before the saints, that I must give greater
payments to my lord if there were none to other people.  For there is no
end to this payment of taxes and tithes.  No sooner is my lord’s bailiff
gone than there come my Lord Warden’s men seeking to take my horse for
the King’s wars in France—God curse that Lord Warden!  And he gone,
comes the Bishop Palatine’s bailiff seeking payment for the milling of
my corn at his mills on the Wear though the grists were all my own.
Then comes the prior of St. Radigund’s for a half tithe; then Sir John,
the mass priest, for a whole.  Then there are the market dues of
Belford—for God His piteous sake, ah gentle lording, set us up here in
Castle Lovell a market where we may sell toll free—we of the Castle.
Now if I will sell some bolls of wheat and ship them to the Percies at
King’s Lynn, I must pay river dues at Sunderland according to the brass
plate that is set in the Castle wall at Dunstanburgh.  And if I pay that
due it is claimed of me again a second time by the Admiral of the
Yorkshire coast, saying that I should not have paid it the first, though
God He knows what maketh the Admiral of Yorkshire in our rivers and
seas.  So with wood haulage to Glororem, and maltings to the King’s
Castle guard at Bamburgh, and a day’s work of service here and two days
in harvest there, God knows there is no end to a poor man’s payments.
But this I know..." and the peasant scowled deeply, "that my Lord of
Northumberland may rue the day when he taxed us for the French wars.  It
is not that Lord Percy that shall live long."

The bondsman allowed himself these words against the Percy partly out of
his great hatred, and partly because he knew his lord did not love this
Earl of Northumberland for his treachery to King Richard upon Bosworth
Field.

They were still halted at the edge of that plain that the lord might the
better hear his bondsman. But the Young Lovell heard only parts of what
the peasant said, for he was nearly lost in thought whilst the great
white horse cropped the grass.  At last the Young Lovell spoke.

"For what you say," he exclaimed, "as to the multiplicity of burdens
there is some sense in it. And it might well be that I could buy some of
these rights from the King, or the Prince Bishop, or others, as it
chances.  And, for a market, I am well minded to buy the right to hold
one from the King.  And so was my father minded before me.  But you know
very well that your gossip, Corbit Jock—like the tough rogues that ye
all are—this Corbit Jock stood in the way of it.  For the only piece of
land I have that is fitting for a market lies under the wall of that my
Castle on the way running through that my township of Castle Lovell.
And amid most of that, as ye know, Corbit Jock has a mound of his
holding. How his father got it I know not.  But there, running into my
Castle wall, is his mound, and on it a filthy barn leaning against my
Castle wall, and before the barnekyn a heap of dung and a shed that
might harbour five goats.  The whole is not worth to him ninepence by
the year, and it is far from his house and of no use to him.  Yet,
though I would well and willingly buy this of him, and my father would
have bought it of his father that there we might have a market holden,
ye know very well that this Corbit Jock will not sell and I have no
power to take it from him.  For, though I might get a broad letter from
the King in his Council to take this mound by force, and to pay him full
value, yet such a letter must cost me much gold, and it is doubtful if
the King’s writ, in such matters, runneth in these North parts.  In the
country of France, as I heard when I was there of the Sieur Berthin de
Silly, such things are done every day by the King’s letters.  Nay, he
was about then engaged in such a matter with a peasant, whom he
dispossessed, but paid well and so has a fair market below his Castle of
La Roche Gayon.  And so it may well be in the South of this realm for
aught I know.  But here it is different, and I am not minded to have a
hornet’s nest of lawyers about my ears in order to give a market
place—that should cost me dear enough when I bought the rights of my
lord the King—to such rogues and cozeners as you and Barty of the Comb
and Corbit Jock and the widow of Martin Taylor.  But, if ye will talk of
the matter with Corbit Jock that he may sell his mound to me, I will
promise you this, that you shall have your market.  For I am your very
good lord.  And so no more of talk for this time."

He set his horse towards Belford, going decently by roundabout ways and
paths from landmark to landmark that he might not trample down the long
grass of which his bondsmen were making their hay all about him.  Of
late years, since his father had been too heavy to ride, the Young
Lovell had considered much the matters of his lands, and he had done
certain things, such as selling by the year to third parties of the
rights to collect his dues, whether on malt, hens, salt, housing and of
other things.  And these new methods, of which mostly he had heard in
the realms of France, Gascony and Provence, had worked well enough, for
his incomings had been settled and the buyers of his rights had neither
the power to steal his moneys nor so much to oppress the bondsmen as his
own bailiffs had.  So that, in one way and another, he could talk of
these things to his bondsman whilst he thought of other matters.  And
one of these matters came into his head from that talk of the shed of
Corbit Jock that leant against the very rock below his Castle wall.

From below the flags of the men-at-arms’ kitchen, in the solid stone of
the rocks, there ran a passage going finally through the earth not ten
feet from the mound of Corbit Jock.  The only persons that might know of
this passage had been the dead lord and Young Lovell himself.  The
Decies might know of it, for the dead lord had prated of all things to
his bastard.  But it was odds that it would never come into the Decies’
head, for he was a very drunken fellow and remembered most things too
late.

Now if, under cover of night, the Young Lovell could introduce a dozen
or twenty lusty fellows with picks and other instruments into Corbit
Jock’s barnekyn, in five hours or less they could dig a way into that
tunnel where it went under the ground. Then it was but pushing up the
flagstones of the kitchen and they would be terrifyingly and
surprisingly within the Castle whilst all the men-at-arms could be drawn
off from those parts with a feigned attack on the outer walls.  Or, if
by chance there were men in that passage and guarding it, they could put
into it a great cask of gunpowder and so kill them all.  It was a task
much easier than my lord of Derby and Sir Walter Manny had, who
tunnelled under the Castle of la Réole for eleven weeks when Agout de
Baux held it and yet could not take that place which is in Languedoc,
though he had with him three Earls, five hundred knights and two
thousand archers.  The young Lovell thought he would have his Castle
more easily.

And as he rode through the fields, the thoughts of war driving out those
of the lady with the crooked smile, the siege of that Castle grew clear
to him and like a picture, red and blue and pink, at the edge, or the
head of a missal.  At first, hearing that the White Tower was held for
him with its gold and cannons, he had thought that, going by sea into
that place, which was like a citadel over against a walled city, such as
he had seen at Boulogne and Carcassowne and other places, he would set
the cannon to batter down the walls and so enter in with what many he
could get together.

But then it had seemed to him that that was his own Castle and, if he
beat down its walls, he must build it up again at his own pains and
great cost—for the building of castles is no light work to a lord,
however rich.  Moreover, his sisters would certainly set his mother in
whatsoever part of the Castle he began to batter—so that he must either
kill his mother or leave off; for that was the nature of his good
sisters.

And then he began to think of stratagems and devices by which he might,
more readily and at less cost, come to his desires.  And so he cast
about for a cunning device by the means of which he might get possession
of the great gate of that Castle.  But at that time he thought of none.

So he rode an hour through the fields, diverting himself with that
picture in his mind and with his bondsman stepping beside him.  Then
they came to a brook which was a bowshot from the frowning and high
tower of Belford monastery.  This was so new that the stones were still
white and the scaffold poles and planks all about its crenellations. The
Young Lovell stayed his horse by the streamside and spoke to his
bondsman.

"Now this I will do," he said, "and you may set it privately about the
countryside.  For I know well, Hugh Raket, that it is you that are the
masterful rogue in these affairs.  Although in your story you have
sought to make it appear that Barty of the Comb and others had a great
share in devising a mutiny against that bailiff, yet it was you alone
that stirred up the people.  So let it be known to my men a fortnight
hence, at nine at night they shall meet me at a certain place of which I
will warn you later. And each man shall be armed as he is when he goes
against the Scots.  Then they shall come into my service for four or
five days each, as if it were harvest time and they doing their services
due to me.  Then they shall sack a tower and have their sackings.  And
of the prisoners that they take in another place they shall have the
ransoming, unless I prefer to hang those prisoners.  In that case I will
pay them what the ransoming would have been.  And, for the men out of
the sea, they shall be excused all rent-hens and services and heriots
that they owe me.  You—that is to say—have called them heriots, but
rather they should be called deodanda.  For a heriot is paid, the tenant
being dead, by the tenant’s heirs. But in this case it is the lord that
is dead and what is paid is paid by the bondsmen as a fine or a forfeit,
because they did not save the life of their lord."

The bondsman looked upon the face of his lord and marvelled what manner
of man this was that, in the very conception of a martial scheme, could
so hang upon the niceties of words.  But the Young Lovell was a very
sober, hardy and cunning lord. In all that he said he had his purpose.
So that, before the peasant could speak and ask him for more particulars
of that bargain, the young lord drew up Hamewarts’ mouth from the water
where he had drunk sufficiently and went on, lifting his hand in the
sunlight.

"So that it is in the nature of deodand rather than of heriot.  And how
it works is in this wise—that, every tenant having to pay and suffer
upon the death of his lord, so he works very carefully to keep his lord
alive.  So mark you well that, Hugh Raket.  For, if I succeed in this
enterprise, two out of three of you shall be excused all rent-hens and
deodands due at the death of my father.  But if I fail and die—and, full
surely I will not live if I fail—ye must all of you pay double,
rent-hens, deodands and all.  For then shall my sisters be my lawful
heiresses and you must pay to them firstly all that you owe upon my
father’s death and then all that you owe upon mine who am your rightful
lord.  So you will be in a very pitiful case if I die, and it will well
repay you to fight well for me.  Mark that very carefully and report it
where you will.  But, if you think rather to make favour with my
sisters, you know very well it is not they that will go to the sweat and
cost of getting leave of our lord the King to hold markets.  No, but
they will get them to Cullerford and Haltwhistle and strengthen these
places, and the Castle will be thrown down, and the Scots will come in
upon you and you will be in a very lamentable case."

He paused and looked earnestly upon his bondsman. And then he continued:

"So I have spoken what was in my mind very soberly and I think well.
For this business of being a great lord is not merely the riding about
in summer time and the sacking of castles.  But I have to think what is
good for me to do for my people.  For your good is mine and I study how
to bring it about. And that I learned of the Lord Berthin de Silly when
I was in France.  Now think well upon what I have said and give me your
answer, yea or nay.  For I know well that the others will be guided by
you."

The bondsman looked upon the stream and upon the monastery whose wall,
like a castle’s, lay new and square in the sunlight.

"I take thought," he said, "not that I doubt the upshot, but that I may
find words.  For these matters are above my head that you have deigned
to speak of.  But of this, gentle lording, you may make sure that, at
eight of the clock a fortnight hence, I will meet you at any place of
which you shall send me the name.  And there shall be with me
sixty-eight or seventy stout men and well armed after our fashion."

He went on to try to say that this lording was a soldier so cunning and
so great a knight that all the countryside said they would very gladly
go a-riding or a-foot with bows, into Scotland or Heathenesse or the
South, whatever his enterprise.  But, since he was a better hand at
grumbling at taxes than in praising his lord, he got little of it out.
Nevertheless he made it plain that fighting men would be there on the
appointed day, and so they parted—the lord riding across the stream to
the monastery and the hind along it to Belford town.




                                   II


The monk Francis was a small, dark, quiet man and not overlearned.  He
was rising thirty and he was always at work.  The monastery of Belford
was one given over rather to study and learning so that he, the active
one, had always much upon his hands.  But all such time as he could save
from his duties he devoted to praying for the soul of the cousin he had
slain by mischance, taking her for a deer and slaying her with an arrow,
as she came to him amongst thick underwood to tell him that the Scots
were marching southwards through the Debateable Lands.

That had been ten years before; nevertheless he had prayed that morning
very reverently for his cousin’s soul, walking up and down between the
rows of haymakers and their cocks, in the sunshine; keeping one finger
between the leaves of his book of prayers and yet marking diligently
that none of the bondsmen slipped away into their own grass to use the
scythe there.  For it was marvellously fine weather, and such as had
never in the memory of man been known in those parts for the heat of the
sun and the dry clear nights.  So that it was considered that the saints
must be blessing that part. Nevertheless, these naughty bondsmen, owing
some three, some five days’ labour of themselves and their wives and
children to the monastery, must needs always be seeking to slip away to
their own lands and doing their scythe work there.  This they would do,
if no monk watched them, though by so doing they robbed the monastery
and went in danger of excommunication.  But those, as the learned Prior
said, were evil days, so that it might almost be said, as was said
aforetime of the accursed robber who came against the Abbey and Church
of St. Trophime, that he proclaimed that a thousand florins would get
him more soldiers than seven years of plenary absolution from the Pope
at Avignon.  As to whom, said the Prior, Froissart, the chronicler
declared that men-at-arms do not live by pardons nor set much store
thereby.  And as much might be said of their bondsmen.

For it was to be said for this monastery of Belford that the monks set
more store by a great chronicle that they were assisting the monk Oswald
to write—all of them searching here and there—than by the work done by
their bondsmen, the good estate of the lands of the monastery or even
the saying of the offices.  They set more store by learning than by
aught else.

Their lands were administered by laymen, so that they were often robbed,
and when the monk Francis had come amongst them their revenues had been
scarcely an hundred pounds by the year, or very little more.  And, even
at the time of his coming, the monks had been against receiving him, for
they said that here was a man, though of piety undoubted, who could not
tell the chronicle of Giraldus Cambrensis from that of the monk
Florence, or Asser from Vergil and Flaccus.  But, in those days, the
Prior had over-ridden them, pointing out that this novice was very
wealthy; that their kitchen and dinner tables were in a sad state, that
they had no longer money enough to pursue, upon a princely scale, the
succouring of the poor that sat upon their benches, and that they could
with the greater serenity pursue their studies and sleep after meat, if
they had amongst them a knight who had proven himself diligent upon his
own affairs and had increased his substance in the world.  For, though
they had butlers and cellarers amongst their number, yet the butler
thought more of Brute than of his office and the cellarer was more
minded to know where lay the bones of the British Kings than where were
his keys.  The ungodly came in and drank their wine in the cellar, yea,
and carried away the mead in black-jacks.

These monks were portly, learned and somnolent, religious with a solid
contempt for the unlearned—though they would upon occasion, being large
men, line the walls and hew down attacking raiders with balks of timber,
bars of iron and other weapons that drew no blood, those being,
according to the canon, the proper arms for churchmen.  These haughty
monks accepted this Francis, who was known to the world as Sir Hugh
Ridley, to be of their holy and learned brotherhood.  But yet they
regarded him as little more than a lay brother, though he wore the
monk’s frock, and they never voted for his advancement to any office
such as sub-prior or the like.

Yet that day he had said two offices for them, had watched in the hay
fields and was now coming in, at noontide to check accounts with the
bailiff of the Priory about the great tower that was then in building.
Seventeen monks there were and twenty lay brothers who were a lazy band.
Thirty men-at-arms they had for their protection under the leadership of
a knight, Sir Nicholas Ewelme, and they afforded shelter and victuals
for 136 poor men, each of the seventeen monks being the patron of eight
of them.  These poor men sat in the sun on benches, each before their
patron’s room and should be served by him at meals.  But this was
nowadays, mostly done by the lay brothers, the learned monk laying one
finger beneath a dish or vessel served to the poor men, so that it would
not be said that the custom had died out.

The monk Francis, in his grey cloak came in by the little postern gate
from the hayfields.  He went to his rooms across the quadrangle; and he
perceived how certain peasants in hoods of black cloth with belts of
yellow leather were bringing in sacks and baskets.  These sacks and
baskets, as the monk Francis knew from the dress of those peasants,
contained ammunition, small round balls of lead or, in the alternative,
well-rounded stones from the beach. These peasants were workers in the
lead mines upon the lands of the monastery and it was so they paid
tribute with balls to shoot against the false Scots if they came
a-raiding to Belford.

And, as he was going into his room, before his benchful of poor men that
stretched their legs in the sun, it happened that one of the peasant’s
bags burst open and all the round, leaden balls ran out under the
archway.  Then there was a great bustle, the guards on duty and the
guards that came out of the chambers in the arch starting to pick up the
balls. And the monk Francis smiled to think how universal is the desire
in men to help in picking up small, round objects that fall out of a
sack.  So that if the false Scots had been minded to take that place,
they could have done it very well then, all the guards and peasants and
others being on their hands and knees, huddled together and the gate
open.  And it seemed to the monk Francis that that would be a very good
stratagem for the taking of a tower or the gateway of a strong place.

One of the poor men had been a man-at-arms at Castle Lovell, but was put
out now and masterless. He came to the monk Francis as he went in at his
door, and reported that it was said that the young Lord Lovell had been
seen, having come out of captivity of the false Gilbert Elliott.  The
monk said he hoped well that that was so, for then all the men-at-arms
from Castle Lovell that were there could go again to his service, and
that he was a very good lording and his good friend in God.

He wished to cut the matter short for that time because he knew that
there awaited him in his outer room John Harbottle an esquire, and the
receiver of many domains of the Earl of Northumberland. This esquire was
come with the accounts for the building of the great new tower that the
Earl had given to the monastery.  But the former men of the Lord Lovell
crowded before the monk and after him into his outer room, all bringing
tidings that the Young Lovell had been seen to ride through his
township.  And, to the number of thirty or so, they clamoured all at
once, asking for his advice as to how they should find their lord and
what to do when he was found.

The monk Francis was very glad to think that the Young Lovell was come
back, not only because he was his true friend but also because this
rabble of disemployed men-at-arms was a burden to the monastery and he
had it on his conscience that he let them bide there.  For that he had
done, so that they might serve his friend if he came back.  That
monastery was rather for the relief of poor men ruined by raiders, for
travellers and for criminals seeking sanctuary.  He would very gladly
have had news of his friend whom he loved, and have settled the disposal
of these sturdy, idle and hungry men.  Yet, being a man of many affairs,
he thought that the day could only be got through by doing all things in
order, and behind all these ragged men in grey, he perceived the
esquire, John Harbottle, a portly, bearded man in a rich cloak of
purple, with a green square cap that had a jewel of gold.  This John
Harbottle appeared not greatly pleased at the clamour, for he also was a
man of many affairs, being the Percy’s receiver, and a very diligent
one.

So, without many words, but quietly, the monk Francis drove out some of
these fellows, and then, calling to a grizzled and dirty lay brother, he
bade him drive out the rest and bar the door.  And so he took John
Harbottle by the sleeve of his purple coat and drew him through the
doorway into his inner room and closed the door.  Then there was peace.

This inner cell was a light room with no glass in the windows.  Beside
the bed head there was a shelf that had on it the water-bottle of the
monk Francis, his plate, his cup, his napkin and the book of devotions
in which he read during the dinner hour, his needles and bodkins, his
leather book of threads and such things as he needed for the repair of
his clothes.  Beneath this shelf was a curtain, and this hid the spare
garments of the monk, as the vestments in which he said the simpler
offices, his spare breeches, stockings, braces, and belt.  At the other
side of the bed head was a large crucifix of painted wood, from which
there hung Our Lord who was represented as crying out in a perpetual
agony.  Before the crucifix was a fald stool, that had across one
corner, a great rosary of clumsy wooden beads, and upon it a skull whose
top was polished and yellowed by this monk’s hands.  For he had it there
the better to be reminded of what death is when he prayed for the soul
of the cousin he had slain.

When he had killed that woman he had been possessed rather with the idea
of what he could do for her poor unhanselled soul than with agonies of
ecstasy.  And so, with a strong will he prayed, year in, year out, for
her sooner relief from the pains of purgatory, knowing God to be a just
Man and prayer most efficacious.

So, having brought John Harbottle in, he sat himself down on his
three-legged stool of wood before his double pulpit.  This had in its
side a round opening, and in the interior such books, papers, or
parchments as the monk Francis had in immediate use.  He was of a very
orderly nature, rather like a soldier than a priest.

He reached into the inside of his pulpit for his parchment that he was
to peruse with John Harbottle, and that esquire stood behind him leaning
over his back.  Then John Harbottle said:

"Meseems the Master of Lovell has come back?"

"That I hear," the monk Francis answered.

"I think there is heavy trouble in store for him," John Harbottle said.

"I think there is but little," the monk answered. John Harbottle meant
that the Earl Percy, in the Border Warden’s Court, had given judgment
against the Young Lovell.  The monk meant that the religious of that
countryside were not best pleased with the Earl Percy; they considered
that sorcery was a matter for the courts ecclesiastical.  But each was a
man of few words, and without any more, the monk Francis unfolded his
parchment.  They went to their accounts, John Harbottle standing behind
the monk and checking each item as he read it:

"And in the like payment of money to the prior of the house of the
Brethren of St. Cuthbert, within the parish of Belford, near the wood
called Newlands, for this year, (as well for that part of the work of
the new tower there as for the carriage of stone and other stuff by the
contract, in gross) 100 shillings...."  The Earl was giving the tower to
the monks, they employing two contractors called Richard Chambers and
John Richardson to build it for them and the Earl paying the accounts.

"Just!" John Harbottle said, and the monk read on—

"Carting four loads of lead, 24s. 6d.; bought eight loads of stone,
10d.; iron, with the workmanship of the same, for the doors and windows,
8s.; bought seven locks 4s. 2d., with keys; six latches 12d.; and snecks
and other iron 4s. 2d...."  So the monk read on, and the receiver nodded
his head, saying, "Just."

Once he said—

"I wish I could have things so cheap for my lord."

"Then," the monk answered, "you must haggle as I do and in God His high
service."

So they made out between them that all these things, and making the arch
between the great chamber and the tower came to £10 6s. 4d., and since
they owed Robert Chambers and John Richardson already £17 13s. 4d., the
whole payment then to be made was £27 19s. 8d.

The esquire, John Harbottle, pulled his money bag from beneath his
girdle and counted out the money, throwing it on to the bed, for there
was no table in that cell.

Then he drew from his belt two papers and so he said:

"My lord will have you buy from Christiana Paynter the armorial bearings
of my lord to set up upon the tower, and that shall cost you 3s.  And
this you shall have carved upon the same stone:

    "’In the year of Xt. jhu MCCCCLXXXV
    This tower was builded by Sir Henry Percy
    The IV. Earl of Northumberland of great honour and worth
    That espoused Maud the good lady full of virtue and beauty
    ... Whose soule’s God save.’"


"That shall be set up," the monk said.

"Then," John Harbottle said, "there is this you may do to convenience me
who have been your favourer in all things.  That you may the earlier
come to it, read you this paper which I have written out, but in
English, for I have no Latin beyond mass-Latin."

"What we may do to please you," the monk said, gravely, "that we will,
if it be not to the discredit of God."

"It is rather to His greater glory," the esquire said.

So the monk took the paper and read:

"The Prior of Belford, Patent of XX merks by yere.  Henry Erle of
Northumberland...."  The monk glanced on, and his eye fell upon the
words, "myn armytage builded in a rock of stone against the church of
Castle Lovell," and, later on ... "the gate and pasture of twenty kye
and a bull with their calves sukyng,"—"One draught of fisshe every
Sondaie in the year to be drawen fornenst the said armytage, called the
Trynete draught...."

The monk looked up over his shoulder at the esquire.

"I perceive," he said, "that you would have us to take over the
commandment of my Lord’s hermitage at Castle Lovell."

John Harbottle looked down a little nervously at his hands.  That was
what he sought.

"I have heard that the holy hermit is dead?" the monk asked.

"It is even that," John Harbottle said.  "I am worn with the trouble of
riding over from Alnwick to Castle Lovell.  It is a great burden, yet
there is the hermitage that must be kept up for the honour of the
Percies."

"That," the monk said, "was because it was esteemed a privilege to house
a holy anchoret."

"Then," John Harbottle asked, "may not my lord save his soul as well by
making your brotherhood a payment to watch over the holy man?"

"I am not saying that he may not," the monk said.

"Then of your courtesy, do this for me," John Harbottle said, "for it is
a troublesome matter. This last year, once a month, news has been sent
me that this holy man was dead.  Then I have ridden over to Castle
Lovell and lost a day, calling into the hole in his cell to see if he
would answer ’Et cum spiritu tuo,’ as his manner was.  And, after a
whole day lost, he will answer; or maybe not till the next day, and
there are two days lost when I should be getting rents or going upon my
lord’s business.  And I am not the man to have much dealing with these
holy beings.  A plain blunt man! It gives me a grue to be thus calling
in at a little hole.  And the stench is very awful.  I do my duty by the
blessed sacraments on Sundays and feast days.  And if he be dead, I must
find a successor. It will not be very easy for me to find a man to go
into that kennel and be walled up.  And never again to come out...."

The monk looked again at the paper with the particulars of the gift.

"Well, I will think of it," he said, "or rather I will commune with the
worshipful Prior and Sub-Prior.  But I would have you know that if they
agree to do this thing it is upon me that the pain and labour will fall,
for there is none else in this monastery to do it.  So I must go over to
Castle Lovell once by the week at least to see that the holy hermit is
given bread and water.  And if he be truly dead it is I that must find
his successor; that will not be easy."

"But twenty marks by the year for doing it," John Harbottle said, "that
is a goodly sum to fall to your brotherhood."

"I do not understand," the monk answered him, "for this patent is not
very clear—whether that twenty marks is in addition to the grassground,
the garden and orchard at Conygarth, the pasturage of kine, bulls,
horses and the draughts of fishes.  Or are the draughts of fishes and
the rest to be taken as of the value of twenty marks by the year?"

"It is the last that is meant," John Harbottle answered, a little
dubiously.

"Then it is not enough," the monk said firmly and made to roll up the
paper, "I cannot advise the Prior to accept this gift.  For the
monastery must lose so much of my time and prayers, though, God knows,
those are little worth enough; yet I, a not very holy man, am all that
these saintly brothers have to care for their temporalities."

John Harbottle grumbled some retort beneath his breath, and then he
sighed and pushed the paper with his hand.

"Then take and write," he said, and when the monk had mended his pen he
dictated.  "’And in addition the said stipend of XX markes by year to be
taken and received of the rent and ferm of my fisshyng of Warkworth, by
thands of my fermour of the same for the tyme beynge, yerly at the times
there used and accustomed to, even portions.  In wytnes whereof to these
my letters patentes, I the said erle have set the seale of my names.’
... That," John Harbottle continued, "if you will agree to, you shall
have written out fair on parchment, and so the matter ends."

"I think it will end very well," the monk answered, "and the Earl of
Northumberland shall have honour of it in Heaven.  And, since I am about
to do this thing in your service, and to relieve you of travels and the
fear of a holy man, having no advantage myself and seeking none, since I
am a monk, so I will take it as a kindness if you will do, for my sake,
what you can at odd moments to advantage the cause of my friend, this
Young Lovell, who is lately come, as I have heard, from prison amongst
the false thieves of Rokehope and Cheviot."

John Harbottle did not answer this, for he thought there was little love
lost between his lord and that young lording.  Within himself he thought
that, if the religious should espouse that lording’s cause it would be a
good thing for the Percy to be advised to let him be, and this monk had
great voice with the lower order of people whom the Earl had cause to
fear, since they were sworn to have his blood because of the taxes that,
in the King’s name, he laid upon them.  But he did not speak upon those
matters, saying aloud:

"It is strange, though I know it to be true, that my lord shall have
honour in heaven by reason that a man be found to be walled up in a
space no larger than the kennel of my hound Diccon and so live out his
life."

"My friend," the monk said, "I may not listen to you further, for that
would come near conversing with a heretic.  And the penalty for such
conversation is that at every Easter and high feast I must stand beside
the high altar, in a robe of penitence, having in my hand a rod or
peeled wand ten foot in length and other penances, a many I must do."

"God forbid!" John Harbottle said, "for I am no heretic and no more than
a plain, blunt man. And surely these things are hard to understand."

"My son," that monk said, and by the creasing of his tight lips John
Harbottle knew that he had been pleasant with him before and had not
meant in earnestness to call him a heretic.  "Every day you hear of the
ways of God that are hard to understand. You have heard to-day or
yesterday of the miracle that was wrought on Tuesday in the Abbey of our
own town of Alnwick—how that the foot of Sir Simon de Montfort, that
there they have and that is incorruptible, cured a certain very wealthy
burgess of Newcastle called Arnoldus Pickett.  For he was not able to
move his foot from his bed or put his hand to his mouth or perform any
bodily function. And so, in a dream he was bidden to go to your Abbey of
the Premonstratensian Brotherhood and the foot of Simon de Montfort
should cure him. Which, when it was known to the canons, there serving
God, in order that this merchant might approach more easily—for as yet
he heavily laboured in his lameness—and lest he should suffer too much,
two of them brought it reverently to him, in its silver shoe.  But,
before the patient was able to approach for the purpose of kissing it,
and by the mere sight of the slipper, on account of the merits of Simon
de Montfort, he was restored.  And this, to-day, our monks are writing
in their chronicle and praising God.  And consider what glory there will
be in this foot of Simon de Montfort when it is reunited to his whole
body after the great judgment, by comparison of its efficacy before
Doomsday, when such healing virtue went out of it as a dead member,
concealing itself in a slipper of silver...."

The monk was determined very thoroughly at once to abash and edify this
minion of the Earl of Northumberland and so to bring that Lord more
thoroughly to the reverence of the Church and more particularly of the
Bishop Palatine with whom these monks had a great friendship.  And this
not only in the matter of the Young Lovell, where the Earl had sought to
give judgment in a matter that was full surely ecclesiastical and not
pertaining to the lay Court of the Border Warden.  So that monk
continued in a loud voice:

"Shall you seek to understand these miracles that are of daily happening
and occur all round you, God knows, often enough?  For in the monastery
or priory of Durham they have not only the most famous bodies of St.
Cuthbert and St. Bede, but the cross of St. Margaret that is well known
to be of avail to women that labour with child.  And in the Cella of
Fenkull they have St. Guthric, and in Newminster the zone and mass-book
of St. Robert, and in Blondeland the girdle of St. Mary the Mother of
God.  And all these cure, according to their marvellous faculties, the
halt, the blind, those who have the shaking palsy and those with the
falling sickness.  And in Hexham they have the Red-book of Hexham, and
at Tynemouth they have not only the body of St. Oswin, King and martyr
in a feretory, but also the spur of St. Cuthbert, the finger of St.
Bartholomew and the girdle of Blessed Margaret....  And all these things
being under your very eyes or at a short day’s journey, you will
question the glory and the strangeness of God and you will set yourself
up—oh, stiffnecked generation! ..."

A gentle knocking came at the cell door and the old and dirty
lay-brother who was in the outer room pushed it ajar.  They heard
immediately a great outcry from beyond and the lay brother whispered
that, at the outer door stood the Young Lovell asking for admittance
with all his men-at-arms around him.

The monk opened a little door in the wall that gave into a passage
leading to the church of the monastery.  Through this he led John
Harbottle, and at the entrance to the church he let him go. For, because
John Harbottle was receiver for the Earl of Northumberland, he was not
much beloved by the Lovell men-at-arms, and the monk Francis feared that
they might offer him some violence now that their spirits were inflamed,
and their stomachs rendered proud and rebellious by the return of their
lord who should take them into his service again. And when the monk had
thrown himself down before the image of the Mother of God that was in
the Lady Chapel near that entrance, and had laid there long enough to
say twelve "Hail Maries," he arose and went back to his cell and bade
the lay brother let in Young Lovell.




                                  III


When the Young Lovell was admitted to the inner cell, a fine smile of
friendship came over the monk’s hard face.  He loved this young lord for
his open features, his frank voice, his deeds of arms and his great
courage.  He stretched forward his hand towards the Young Lovell, but,
in his faded scarlet cloak, and with his pierced cap in his hands the
young lord went down upon his knees and wished to confess himself.

The monk Francis blessed him very lovingly, but said that he did not
wish to hear a confession, and that the Young Lovell should seek a
holier man. But he was ready to hear the Young Lovell’s true story, and
to take counsel with him as to how all things might be turned to the
greater glory of the Most High.  He observed with concern the saddened
and blank eyes of his friend, his faded clothes, in which he appeared
like a figure in a painted missal that the dampness of a cell had
rendered dim.  And he was determined, if he could, to render aid to his
friend, for twice already he had befriended the young man, once after
the battle of Kenchie’s Burn, and he had done it since.  For indeed,
when he had had time, he had gone to the township of Castle Lovell, and
had talked with the lawyer Stone and with the witch called Meg of the
Foul Tyke.  With the Decies he had not talked, but he had heard him on
that day in the Great Hall and knew him for a false knave.  He had
observed, too, that the stories of the lawyer Stone and of the old women
did not in all things tally. One talked of the naked witch as having
black hair and six paps; the other said she was most fair and had no
deformity.  The lawyer placed the witches’ fire to the left of the large
rock called Bondale that was before the chapel, and the old woman said
it was to the right, with the wind from the east, so that if it had been
a real fire there must be the marks of burning upon it.

The monk had asked his questions very cunningly, rather as a religious
anxious for information as to the ways of sinners, in order that he
might the better detect and punish them, than as one desiring to sift
their answers.  But he was very certain that they were evil liars, and
he was sure that, were they brought before the Bishop’s courts in
Durham, he would be able to bring their perjuries to light.  So he was
very certain that the lording had been taken by Gib Elliott and held for
ransom, and well he knew that no one in the Castle would ransom him, so
that it was small wonder if they had heard nothing of it. The Decies and
his confederates would conceal any news they had from Elliott, and
perhaps slay his messenger or keep him jailed that the outlaw might be
angered and slay the Young Lovell.  So that it was with a great
cheerfulness that now he offered to have brought to his friend, food and
clean linen and hot, scented water, and a serving man to wash his feet;
for he thought he must be come from far after having fared ill enough.

But the Young Lovell would have none of these things, neither would he
be persuaded to rise from his knees; but, being there, he said a long
prayer to Our Lord that hung from the crucifix and appeared in an agony.
And the monk sat himself at the foot of the box of straw covered with a
rug that was his bed and again marvelled at the face of his friend.  For
the long, brown hair was blanched by the sun, the closed eyes were
sunken, the lids gone bluish, the lips parched as if with desire.  And
so, whilst the lording prayed, the monk sat on the bed foot.  Then he
heard a rustle of wings and, on the sill of the glassless window, he saw
a blue dove and, in the sunlight without, a fair woman that peered in at
that window and smiled—all white and with the sunlight upon her.

The monk got down from the bed foot, to reprove her courteously, for no
woman should be seen there between the church and the monk’s cells.  But
then he considered that it might be a penitent of one of the other
monks, and when he looked towards the window again, the woman and the
dove alike had vanished from the view of that window, and he judged he
had better let the matter be.  And so he sat down upon the bed foot.

The Young Lovell groaned several times in his praying, and most he had
groaned when that fair woman had looked in at the cell.  His breathing
made a heavy sound in the silent room.  And then he cried out in a
great, lamentable voice:

"I have been with a fairy woman!  Three months long I have looked upon
the whiteness of a fairy woman!  Who shall absolve me?"

The monk slipped down from the bed.

"Ah misericordia!" he cried out and: "Jesu pity us!"

His face went pale even to the edges of his lips and, involuntarily, he
moved backwards away from that sinner until he crouched against the
wall.  Then they were silent a longtime and the large flies buzzed in at
the window and out.

Then the monk took his courage to himself again.

"But if you truly repent," he said quickly, "lording, and my friend, and
sinner, you may be pardoned."

And since the young lord still kept silence he asked many swift
questions: What sort of woman was this?  Where was her bower?  How had
she entertained him and he her?  Had he eaten of fruits from her dishes?
Had he done deeds of dishonesty with a willing heart?  How did he know
her for a fairy woman?  Had he partaken of magic rites; sprinkled the
blood of newborn babies; taken gifts of gold; witnessed a black mass;
gathered fernseed?

The monk asked all these questions with a breathless speed that they
might the more quickly be affirmed or denied.  And at last the young
lord cried out as if in an agony:

"All that is a child’s tale!  All that is a weary folly!  It was not
like that...."

And then he cried again:

"I say I looked upon this woman, clothed in the white of foam and the
gold of sun....  I looked but spoke no word....  Three months went by
and I knew not of the wheeling of the stars, or the moon in her course,
nor the changes of the weather.... I had seen Sathanas and Leviathan and
Herod’s daughter in the chapel...."

The monk now came more near him and with a calmer eye regarded him.  He
had known of knights and poor men, too, that had had visions born of
fastings, vigils, hot suns and the despair of heaven. For himself he had
desired none of these visions, for to each, as he saw it, God gives his
vocation.  But some that had seen such visions had been accounted holy
and had taken religious habits; others, truly had been deemed accursed
and burned or set in chains; and yet again others had proved later true
knights of God, had fought with Saracens and the heathen, and at their
deaths had been accounted saints.  And he looked upon his friend whom he
had loved, and he considered how tarnished and stained he was with the
air and with fasting.  And he remembered how, in the tents before and
after Kenchie’s Burn, they had talked together.  Then it had seemed to
him, from the way Young Lovell spoke, that it was as if it were more
fitting that he, the monk, should be a rough soldier, and that the
esquire and lord’s son a churchman.

For the Young Lovell had talked always of high, fine and stainless
chivalry, of the Mother of God as the Mystic Rose, of the Tower of
Ivory, and of the dish that had the most holy blood of God.  Of none of
these things had Sir Hugh Ridley that was afterwards the monk Francis,
heard tell, when he had been a knight of the world.  He had considered
rather his forbear Widdrington that fought upon his stumps at Chevy
Chase as the very perfect Knight; and, rather than of the death of King
Arthur of Bretagne, he was accustomed to sing:

    "Then they were come to Hutton Ha’!
    They ride that proper place about,
    But the Laird he was the wiser man
    For he had left na’ geir without."


But this young Master of Lovell, who had lain in those tents, had
travelled far and seen our father of Rome and the courts of France and
the envoys of Mahound.  Therefore, he might well have other knowledges.
And certain it was that the monk Francis had never heard him speak
otherwise than decorously of the lords set over him, charitably of the
poor, firmly of his vassals and bondsmen and with yearning and love for
Our Lady, St. Katharine, Archangel Michael, St. Margaret and of our
blessed Lord and Saviour and St. Cuthbert.

And, remembering all these things, the monk Francis considered that too
much fasting and too much learning might have made this lording mad. And
he deemed it his duty rather to bring his mind back to regaining of his
lands so that he might prove a valiant soldier in the cause of the
Bishop Palatine and Almighty God.

Therefore he said now:

"Tell me truly, ah gentle lording and my son, what it was that befell
you.  So I may the better judge."

And when the monk heard first how the young man had watched his harness
within the chapel, that alone seemed to him a proof of a midsummer
madness such as a reasonable confessor should have persuaded him
against.  And he gained in this conviction the more when he heard how
Behemoth, Leviathan, Mahound, Helen of Troy, the Witch of Endor and
Syrians in strange robes had visited the young man and had tempted him
there in the darkness.  All these things were strange to the good and
simple monk whose knowledge of sorceries ended at crooked old women and
the White Lady of Spindleston.  He knew not more than half the names of
the Young Lovell’s hobgoblins.

Then he marked how the young man spoke of a woman’s face that looked in
on him in the chapel and seemed to tempt him, and the monk considered
that that might happen to any man, for had he not, a minute gone, seen a
woman, fair enough to tempt any man to follow her, looking into his
cell.  For he remembered her as the fairest woman he had ever seen, with
dark and serious eyes; though she smiled mockingly too, which was what,
in the life of this world, this monk had asked of women.  And he had yet
to learn that the desire to follow after a fair woman was, in a gallant
lording, any mortal sin, else Hell must be fuller than the kind Lord
Jesus would have it Who died to save us therefrom.

Thus all things hardened this monk in the conceit that the Young Lovell
suffered more from over fasting than from any cardinal sin, and when it
came to the story of the very fair woman sitting upon a white horse
amidmost of doves and sparrows and great bright flowers, though it gave
him some pause to think that this had lasted for ninety days, yet it
abashed him very little.

Then the Young Lovell was done with his tale. The monk asked him first
of all:

"Now tell me truly, my gentle son; how can you tell this lady from one
of the kind saints or from the angelic host?"

"In truth I could not tell you that," the young lording said, "it is
only that I know it."

"And if you spake no word with her," the monk asked further, "how may
you know that her thoughts were wicked?  Had you not fasted long?  Had
you dwelt especially upon lewd thoughts before that time?  Should you
not have been, if any poor mortal may be, in a degree of as much grace
as we may attain to?"

"It is true," the Young Lovell said, "that I had done my best, but we
are all so black with sin as against any true and perfect knights...."

The monk would not let him finish this speech.

"Hear now me, Young Lovell," he said, "and what my reading of these
matters is.  I am not thy confessor, but until a better shall come I
order you to believe what I say and that is your duty as a Christian
man.  And I bid you believe that this lady was from heaven itself, and
if not one of the saints then one of the blessed angels of God.  And how
I read that is this: Firstly, is it not written that the hosts of heaven
shall be clad in white raiment, with the glory of the sun about them and
the light of the dawnstar upon their faces?  And as for the doves, is it
not written that those fowls of the air are the symbol of innocence, it
being said: ’Be ye wise as the serpent and free of guile as the dove’?
For the sparrows we have the words of our Lord God His well-loved Son,
that the Almighty had them in His especial keeping, and many such may
well flutter about the fair courts of heaven. So that if you had seen
serpents that are horrible monsters you need not have been abashed, yet
you saw only doves and sparrows.  And for the white horse, it was upon
such a beast that the blessed Katharine, the spouse of Our Lord, rode to
the confrontation of the forty thousand doctors.  It may well have been
that most happy and gracious Lady; though if you did not mark that she
had a wheel, which as I think is the symbol of that saint, perhaps it
was not she.  Or again it may have been.  For without doubt the blessed
saints in heaven are relieved of the labours of bearing what were their
symbols here on earth.  And indeed that is most likely. And for the
great flowers, what should they be but the blessed flowers of paradise
itself.  And that they should be in that place is in nowise wonderful.
Are we to think that, having been once set around by those blossoms like
the jewels of Our Lady’s diadem, any one of the hosts of heaven would
willingly go without them?  Not so, but assuredly our Lord God will let
them have the company and stay of such flowers, Who hath promised to
those bright beings an eternity of such bliss as shall surpass mortal
imaginations....’

The monk had spoken these words with a tone nearly minatory and full of
exhortation.  But now he approached the Young Lovell and set his arms
around his shoulder and spoke soft and in a loving fashion.

"My beloved son in religion whom I should hold as a brother if I were of
this world," he said, "I cannot say if you were pure in heart at that
season, yet I hope you were.  If you were you may take great pride and
be very thankful.  If you were in a state of sin then consider this for
a warning and amend very much your ways.  And it may well be that the
hosts of heaven who are all round us and watch very attentively that
which we do on earth—that they are and have been concerned to see how
that you regard too little the needs of the Church that is militant here
in earth, forgetting it in the too frequent contemplation of the Church
Triumphant that is in heaven.  For I think that your tales of chaste
knights of Brittany and the pursuers of the Holy Grail are rather
glimpses vouchsafed to us of how it shall be with the Church Triumphant
than of anything that can be until that day.  In these North parts the
times are very evil and we have more need of a great lord and one ready
to be a strong protector than of ten Sir Galahads seeking mysteries,
though that too may be a very excellent thing in its time and place.
Yet I would rather see you Warden of these Marches, since the one that
we have, though an earl pious and generous enough, turns rather his
thoughts in fear to the King in London Town than in love and homage to
the Prince Bishop that is set above us.  And I make no doubt that it was
to exhort you to this that that angel or that saint came down.  And, in
token, you have, for the time being, lost your lands to very godless
people who have sought to dispossess you by having recourse to the
courts temporal upon a false charge.  You say to me that ever since you
saw that lady’s face this world has seemed as a mirror and an unreality
to you so that you cannot cease from sighing and longing. I will tell
you that those very same words were written of Gudruna, Saint, Queen and
Martyr of these parts.  Being an evil and lascivious queen she had in
sleep a vision of the joys of paradise and so she said that she never
ceased from sighing for them all the days of her life.  Yet nevertheless
that did not hinder her from waging war against the heathen and winning
a great part of this kingdom from Heathenesse, so that she converted
forty thousand souls.  And, for the fact that three months have passed,
I will have you remember the case of the founder of this
monastery—blessed Wulfric.  For walking in the fields here, Our Lady
came to him and so he remained upon his knees by the space of forty and
nine days in a swoon or trance, being fed by such as passed by or as
gradually flocked there to see that wonder.  And so, being restored to
himself, he said that Our Lady had but just gone from him, having staid,
as he thought, but a very short while. And that is explained by this,
that to the dwellers in heaven and in the sight of God, even as marriage
is not, so time is not, it being written that in His courts one day is
as a thousand years.  So it may well be that that angel—and by that I
think it may have been rather an angel than a saint—having no knowledge
of time and none either of the necessity of mankind for shelter or
food—for the heavenly host have no need of either—so this fair, pretty
angel in staying ninety days before you may have thought it was but the
space of a minute, for it is only God that is all-wise.  Yet may God,
observing these things from where He sate in Heaven, and desiring
neither to abash the angel nor to starve and slay you, have conveyed
nourishment to you by the hands of other angels and have rendered mild
the winds.  And now I think of it, in these last ninety days, there has
been very little or no rain at all so that the hay harvest and fenaison
is a month before its time and all men have marked this for a marvel.
So I read these wonders, and so I command you to regard them until you
come upon a man more holy, to interpret them otherwise. And for that, if
I be wrong, we shall very soon know it, for I will have you go with
me—as soon as I shall have arranged certain matters of this monastery—to
the Prince Bishop himself in Durham.  And there, if he do not find me at
fault, we will devise with him how best you may again be set in your
inheritance.  For I will tell you this.  A fortnight gone I had speech
with that gracious prince for a space of two days touching the affairs
of the diocese, and he said that he would very well that you should be
set back in your lands.  And I ask you this: If such a mighty prince and
wise and reverend servant of God shall say that, commending you, what
would it be in you but a very stiff-necked perseverance in humility and
the conviction of sin to gainsay him, a prince palatine that hath spent
many years in the city of Rome before the face of the pope himself?"

The Young Lovell sighed deeply.  In all those long speeches he had heard
rather the voice of a friend that sought to enhearten him than that of a
ghostly pastor and comforter.  And at last he said:

"For what you say, father, of my retaking my Castle I will do it very
willingly, and so I will administer my lands that, with the grace of
God, it shall be to His greater glory, if so I may.  And for what you
have bidden me believe I will seek to believe it, but strong within me
is the thought of what before was in my mind that I may not change it
all of a piece.  Nevertheless, by prayer and fasting I may come to it."

The monk, who had observed his penitent’s face to light up at the
mention of his Castle, said quickly:

"Why, I think you have fasted enough," and so he bade the lay brother to
bring there quickly wine and meat, and hot water to wash with, and clean
linen if they had any good enough.  And so he bade the young lord lay
off the heavier of his garments and unbrace his clothes, for it was hot
weather.  And so food and a table were brought and the lay brother
washed the feet of the lord, whilst he reclined upon the bed-foot.
Whilst he ate, little by little the religious brought the Young Lovell
to talk of how he should have arms and money for his men-at-arms and
other costs.

And the Young Lovell saw that he had still in his cap his string of
great pearls and this he pledged to the monk Francis for the sum of two
hundred pounds.

Of this sum, one hundred pounds the monk Francis had of the funds of the
monastery, and he could just make it with the twenty-eight pounds that
John Harbottle had paid him.  This hundred pounds the Young Lovell
should take with him upon his adventure to Durham and the other hundred
should remain with the good monk.  And this should pay for the keep of
thirty men for a fortnight, at the rate of fourpence a man, and that
would be seven pounds. And the men should have arms from the armourer of
the monastery and from the men-at-arms there until they came to arms of
their own.  And if they should return those arms unbroken and unharmed
the Lord Lovell should pay for their hire at the rate of one shilling
the man per week, and all that should be matter of account out of the
hundred pounds that remained.

So the monk Francis bargained for the good of his monastery, for he held
it against his conscience to give these things for less.  Moreover, he
perceived that in talking of these things the Young Lovell appeared to
come back to life.  Then the Young Lovell told this news to his
men-at-arms who stood before the door.

Afterwards the Young Lovell bought of the knight of the monastery, Sir
Nicholas Ewelme, some light armour for his horse; and for himself he
bought a light helmet, a breastpiece and an axe, which were not very
fair, but sufficient to make the journey to Durham.  And all these
things having taken many hours, it was decided that they should put off
their departure until the next day at dawn when the Young Lovell should
take with him ten of his men-at-arms. By that evening, the news of his
being at the monastery having spread, more than twenty more of his men,
with an esquire called Armstrong, came there and entered his employment.




                                   IV


The Lady Margaret of Glororem had that day, near dawn, abandoned hope
that the Young Lovell, her true love, would come again, and for that
reason she rode south to Durham to set about the releasing of the Lady
Rohtraut in good earnest.  She had been unwilling to do this before hope
departed of his returning, because he was her lord and might have plans
for the retaking of his Castle and the rest, and any action that she
might take might hinder these.

She had said that she would ride to Durham on the day when the Young
Lovell should have been ninety days away and that was the ninety-first.
That night she lay at Warkworth where she had the hospitality of the
Percies.  She had with her an old lady called Bellingham and three maids
with forty men-at-arms under the direction of the husband of the lady
called Bellingham, an old esquire who had never come to be a knight, but
yet a very honest man and capable for such a post.  For if he had little
skill or desire to take fortresses or the like, he could very well set
out his men so as to drive off any evil gentry.

And that night the Lady Margaret, after supper—which was late because it
was the time of the haying when every man of the largest castle must be
in the fields whilst daylight lasted—the Lady Margaret held a hot
discussion with the Earl of Northumberland. The Lady Maud his wife was
by, that was daughter to the Earl of Pembroke, and she sought to
moderate at once the anger of that lord and the importunities of that
hotheaded damsel.  The Lady Margaret would have the Percy raise his many
with cannon and siege apparatus and march against Castle Lovell to
release her aunt, the Lady Rohtraut who was also that Earl’s cousin.
And so she exhorted him, in the light of a great fire of sea coal, for
the nights were chilly enough if the days were fine.

She said many words in that sense to the Earl before he answered her.
At last he spoke to a page standing behind her, that was son to the
esquire, John Harbottle, and gave him a key and bade him bring a little
box that he would find in an aumbry in the tower where his muniments and
charters were locked up.  For this Earl, according as he was at Alnwick
which he did not much love, or at Warkworth where he much delighted to
be, so he moved his window-glass, his muniments and his charters from
the one Castle to the other, and for their greater safety they were
placed in the tower called the Bail.  Night and day watch was kept in
the chambers that were both above them and below, with the best ancients
and lieutenants that he had, keeping watch upon the men-at-arms.  So
high a value did his lord set upon his charters.

And when the box was brought to him he opened it with another key and
took out certain old and stained papers and parchments which he bade
this lady read. And she could make little of them because there was no
light but the firelight, for the Earl and his wife were accustomed to go
to bed after supper.

When she could not read them, the Earl took them from her and read them
easily enough, for he had them nearly by heart, though the writing was
cramped and nearly fourscore years of age, or more. And once, whilst he
read them, the Earl looked over the edge of a parchment at the Lady
Margaret and asked her if she had heard of a Percy called Hotspur.  She
answered, yes, indeed; so he read out lugubriously what was in that
writing.

"The King to the mayor and sheriffs of York, greeting: Whereas of our
special grace we have granted to our cousin Elizabeth who was the wife
of Henry de Percy, Chevalier, commonly called Hotspur, the head and
quarters of the same Henry to be buried: we command you that the head
aforesaid, placed by our command upon the gate of the city aforesaid you
deliver to the same Elizabeth, to be buried according to our grant
aforesaid."  And, with a droning voice the Earl followed other pieces of
the body of that Henry Percy about the realm, a certain quarter of him
having been placed upon the gate at Newcastle, another at Chester,
another at Shrewsbury, and so on.  And when he had done with Hotspur,
the Earl went on to read of the fate of the father of Hotspur, Henry,
the Fourth Lord Percy of Alnwick.  This lord fell at Bramham Moor
fighting against King Henry IV, as Hotspur had done at Hately Field,
fighting against the same King four years before.  This lord’s head and
quarters were placed upon London Bridge: one quarter upon the gate of
York, another at Newcastle, and yet further pieces at King’s Lynn and
Berwick-on-Tweed.  Lugubriously and in a level voice this Earl read out
all the writs that he had collected, whether by the King’s hand or Privy
Seal, whether of setting up or for burial.  He looked gravely upon the
Lady Margaret and asked her what she learned from them.  And when she
said that she learned that those Percies were very gallant men, he shook
his head and said that he found from them this lesson, that it is not
healthy for a Percy to rebel against a King Henry that slew a Richard.
For, just as Henry IV had put down King Richard II by the aid of the
Percies that afterwards rose against him, so King Henry VII had put down
and slain King Richard IV on Bosworth Field with the aid of that Percy
that there spoke to her.  And very surely it would be upon no Bramham
Moor or Hately Field that that Percy would fall, for he was determined
to be a very good liege man of King Henry VII and that was all he had to
it.

Then the Lady Margaret said boldly that, for this present King she knew
nothing of him, nor either could anybody, seeing that he had reigned but
a little while.  The Percy made sounds of disagreement and anger, for he
was afraid of having such things said in his Castle, and moreover
desired to be in his bed.

She exclaimed loudly that she regretted having seen the day when a great
lord should talk of loyalty to a King not a year on the throne, where
they, the great barons of this realm, had set him.  For the Percies were
a respectable family though they were not of the standing and worth, in
those parts, of the Eures, the Dacres, or the Nevilles; they had
acquired the most part of their lands by a gradual purchase of Bishop
Anthony Bek, who betrayed his ward the young Vesey, so that the Veseys
ever since were poor enough and some of them as they knew had taken to
evil ways.  Still the Percies had had some very good knights amongst
them, such as that Hotspur and his father Henry, and others.

At that point the Countess Maud sought to calm her, but the Lady
Margaret would not be quieted. For she said that this was what all the
North part was saying, and it was better for the Earl to hear it than to
sit all day surrounded by flatterers of the make of John Harbottle and
his like, or than setting up tablets on the walls of towers as John
Harbottle was doing at Belford, praising the credit and renown of this
Earl.

The Lady Margaret looked a very fair woman and the Earl had an eye for
such, or very certainly he would have had her taken away, for he
regarded himself like a second king in those North parts. Her eyes were
very dark and flashed with the firelight; her black hair fell in two
plaits, one over her back and one over her shoulder, and when she
pointed at him her white hand, on which were many rings set with green
stones and red stones, her ample sleeves of scarlet damask touched the
firelit carpet.  In the dark hall of that place her angry figure
appeared to wave as the flames went over the logs of the sea coal, and
over her shoulder looked the white face of the old lady, Bellingham, her
duenna, who was much afraid.  For the Lady Margaret continued her rude
speeches.  She was so vexed that the Percy would not go to the rescue of
her aunt, the Lady Rohtraut.

"Sir Earl," she said, "this is the manner of the governance of this
realm of England, that, if the great barons dislike a King they set him
down.  So they did, for one cause or another, with Edward II and with
Richard II and with Henry VI and with Edward V and with Richard III.
He, I think, was a very good King; nevertheless you and others betrayed
him on Bosworth Field, God keeps the issue. And when we put down Edward
II we set up Edward III; misliking his grandson we set up Henry
Bolingbroke instead.  And that Bolingbroke, called Henry IV, we did not
well like when we had set him up.  Yet I do not blame anyone either for
setting him up nor yet for seeking to force him down again.  For
somebody must be King.  He will make fair promises before we come to it,
and if he break them afterwards it must be put to the issue of swords,
pull devil, pull baker.  So this Henry IV was too strong for Hotspur,
God rest his soul...  Then came Henry V that was a King after my heart
and all good people’s hearts, and so it went on...  But that you, a
Percy, should cry out before this King has sat in his saddle a year,
that you are afraid of the fate of your grandsire Hotspur; that I think
is a very filthy thing and so I tell you.  And we of the North parts are
not like to suffer it."

The Percy smiled a red smile in the firelight.

"Then you of the North parts," he said, "women and jackanapes, will do
what you are held down to do...  For I tell you this: this Henry Tudor
sitteth so firm in his saddle by my aid that we will break all your
necks or ever you raise them from the dust where you belong.  And that I
say to the North parts, brawling and fighting brother against brother as
ye are ever doing...  And this I say to you Margaret Eure and my gentle
cousin: that your aunt, who has broad lands should be in prison to your
cousins of Cullerford and Haltwhistle and to Bastards suits well my case
and there she shall stop for me. For she has broad lands and the Lovells
have broad lands and so have the Dacres, to whom she belongs, and whilst
they are at each other’s throats it is well for the King in London Town
and for me at Alnwick. And I wish you were all at each other’s throats
more than you are; for the King shall have his pickings by way of fines
and amercements, and so will I, and so will lawyers and bailiffs and
others, and so ye are weakened the more.  And it was for this reason
that I gave judgment against your true love, the Young Lovell, in my
Warden’s court, though I knew that judgment should not stand...  For I
think that Young Lovell was a dangerous whelp, with his prating of this
and that, and his being a very good knight and commander.  And so I
would be very willing to pull him down again if the Scots had not hanged
him, as I hope they have.  And I have written a broad letter to the King
in London that these Lovells are a dangerous race with their hearts full
of love for Richard Crookback.  If the King do not forbid it, and, if
Young Lovell shall come again to raise men and march upon Castle Lovell,
I will march out with men and cannon and hot-trod and hang him upon the
first gallows I come to.  So say I, Henry, Earl Percy."

The Lady Margaret swallowed her hot rage and considered that she might
better sting this lord with a low voice.  So she spoke very clearly as
follows:

"Henry Earl Percy, thou art a very filthy knave, and so thou knowest and
so know all thy neighbours. Thou wast a foul traitor to Richard; thou
art a foul traitor to thy kith and kin and to thy peers. For thou
mightest well put down Richard Crookback. That was open to any man that
could.  And thou mightest well set up Henry and seek to maintain him
till he has time to prove himself.  But to seek to weaken thy kith and
thy kin and thine order and thy kind that he may sit firm rivetted
whether he deserve it or not, with the house of Percy as his flatterers,
servants and pimps—that is not a pretty and gallant thing.  For my
cousin Lovell, I do not think ye dare set out against him, for if ye
did, all the North part—and it is not yet so cast down—should rise upon
you, and there should not remain, of Alnwick, nor yet of Warkworth, one
stone upon another.  And for this thing of my cousin and true love, I
think you have a little mistaken it.  For whiles my true love is away
we, such as the Eures and the Dacres and the Nevilles and the
Widdringtons and the Swinburns and the commoner sort, and the Elliotts
and Armstrongs, go a little in doubt.  For, if my true love be dead, it
is his sisters that are his heirs, and to set them out of that Castle
would be to set down his heirs, which is a thing not to be done. But if
the Young Lovell should come again I think you should see a different
thing, for there is not one of these people but should rise upon you,
aye, and the Prince Palatine.  I think you could not stand against us
all.  For that so they would do I have upon their oaths...."

The Countess Maud said then:

"So there you have the end of it."  But the Earl was in haste to seize a
point:

"Then there you are convicted by your own mouth," he said hatefully to
Lady Margaret.  "I hold that Young Lovell to be dead and his sisters’
husbands are the heirs of that Castle.  How then shall I march upon a
Castle that is the lawful property of Cullerford and Haltwhistle upon an
idle peasant’s tale that a lady there is captive?"

The Lady Margaret made him a deep reverence, leaning back in her scarlet
gown that had green undersleeves.

"Simply for this," she said, "that there are Percies that would have
done it."  Then she laughed; and after she was done with her curtsy that
took a long time, she said:

"So, now I have what I wish, I will get me gone from this your Castle of
Warkworth."

So she made her way to her room that had dark hangings all of the
crowned lion of the Percies. And when she was there she called to her
the old squire, John Bellingham, that had charge of her men-at-arms.  He
had gone to his bed and was some time in coming.

So she bade him rouse all her men because she would ride forth from the
Castle.  Then he said it would be very dangerous, seeing the darkness of
the night and the rumours of Scots being abroad.  She answered that, if
the night were dark it would be as hard for the Scots to see them as for
them to see the Scots.  And she had chosen him, John Bellingham, to be
the ancient of her men because he was said to possess much knowledge of
the different ways of that country-side, that never the Scots could come
to him if he had but two minutes’ start by night.

In the middle of that dispute came the Countess Maud a knocking at the
door.  She cried out that it was not to be thought of that this lady
should leave their Castle in that wise.  She, the Countess, had done as
best she might to make hospitality for that lady, and it would be an ill
discourtesy if she left them so.  This Countess Maud, daughter of Sir
Herbert Stanley, Earl of Bedford, was of the South parts, and she was
amazed at all these clamours.  Indeed she had not well understood all
that had been said, for when the Earl and the Lady Margaret had become
heated they spoke in the Northern fashion of which she knew nothing.  So
the Countess said again that she had done all she knew to do honour to
that her guest.  If she had fallen short of due hospitality, very gladly
she would amend it.  This Countess was a large, white woman that had
once been very fair.  And she wrung her hands.

Then the Lady Margaret laughed and bade peremptorily John Bellingham to
bid her men arm themselves and lie all together under arms, for they had
been scattered about the Castle.  And, at all those noises the women of
the Lady Margaret awakened and came into the little room where they
slept; two were in their shifts and one had her bed clothes about her.
Then the Lady Margaret bade them dress themselves and lie down upon
their beds; but to be ready.  After that she answered the Countess Maud
that her entertainment had been such as she had seldom had before,
lacking nothing, but with certain dishes added, that in their rough
North parts they had seldom seen before though they had heard of them.
Such were the scents in the water for washing hands, the golden apples
of Spain, and the fowl called a Turkey.  And indeed the Countess had
made her great cheer.  Nevertheless, since eating these things she and
the Earl had become sworn enemies, and it would be contrary to the rules
of hospitality if she stayed longer in that Castle.

The Countess wrung her hands again and said, "What was this of making
enemies and why could they not live amicably together as cousins did in
the South?"  The Lady Margaret laughed and answered that if the people
of the South were better than they of the North in these matters, then
they were better than God meant men to be; nevertheless she was glad of
it.

Then came John Bellingham, who by now understood the danger of the
matter, to say that the Lady Margaret’s men were all together and armed
in a room in a wall by the postern gate and at the foot of a stairway
just beside that lady’s chamber-room. Then the Lady Margaret bade him
let her men lie down upon straw in that room; but upon any sound that
the Percy’s men were arming or at any movement of lights in the Castle,
he should come at once to her.

Then the Countess Maud asked what was this, for she had not understood
what had passed between the lady and her ancient, by reason that they
spoke in the Northern tongue.  Then came a knocking at the door and the
dame Bellingham said that there stood the Earl Percy in his night-gown.
So the Lady Margaret said that was what she feared—that the Earl should
come down at night with amorous proposals; but she was jesting.  The
Countess did not know this and she went to the door and began to cry out
upon that lord for desiring to dishonour her.

Then between the two of them came a great clamour, the Countess holding
to that, and the Earl crying out that she was a fool and that this
matter might lead to the deaths of them all if she would not let him
come in to speak to the Lady Margaret. This the Countess did not wish to
allow, for the Countess Maud had no comprehension at all of what all
this trouble was about, and it seemed to her to be nonsense to say, as
her lord did, that this matter might lead to the deaths of them all.

Nevertheless, when the Lady Margaret heard those words she laughed very
silently but long to herself.  For she knew that now, if she could come
out of the Castle and get safe away, she had a power that might well
drive that Earl to do all that she wished later, or some of it.

Henry, Earl Percy, had indeed said much and so much to his kinswoman in
his anger.  For it was indeed his intention, secret but resolute, to
break the power of all the barons and great nobles in the North, so that
King Henry VII should be almighty and himself the King’s viceregent.
When the day came there would be indeed no end to his power in those
parts, for the King would be very distant and there would be no one to
oppose him.  So he fomented all the quarrels that he could amongst these
people, and he had seen with joy the troubles that were afoot about the
Castle Lovell.

But as yet he was not ready; for all these people were still very strong
in armed men, wealth and lands, and, if they joined together they might
well overset both himself and King Henry VII with him.  Thus he wished
he had bitten his tongue out before ever, in his anger, he had revealed
what was his secret design to his cousin.  For the Lady Margaret was a
great gadabout and, if he could not come to her, either to modify what
he had said or to bind her to secrecy, there would not be a Dacre or a
Eure or a Widdrington that would not soon know the worst of his design.

He had sought his bed, but his pillow had seemed to be of nettles, and
since he had discerned that it might be her design to ride away early,
he had sought her chamber door to have speech with her.  He did not in
truth know what to do.  He was very willing to have laid her by the
heels and to keep her a prisoner in that tower.  But he was afraid that
that might bring about his ears a hornet’s nest of his cousins, and even
it might bring him reproof from the King.  The King was not at all
willing or ready to have the whole of Northumberland rise upon him at
that time.  Nay, Henry VII had bidden him to be very careful that,
whilst he weakened these troublesome people as much as he could, he
should rouse their anger as little as he might.

All this, laughing behind the door, the Lady Margaret knew very well,
even to the fact that the Lord Percy might come to shutting her up in
prison. But she knew that, whilst the silly Countess kept him crying at
the door, he could not bid his men to arm against her, and whilst her
men were armed and his not, he could do little or nothing at all.  They
could all go out at the postern gate and so into the trackless sedges of
the sea and the marches.  Moreover, the Percy and his Countess were such
married people that, upon any occasion they quarrelled furiously and at
great length and so they did now.

For the Countess was well begun upon her grievances such as, as how the
Earl had dealt with his lands of her dowry, as to the little attention
he paid her as his wife, as to the fact that she had no more than four
damask dresses and, very particularly, as to the store he set by one of
her ladies called Isabel.  And at the last she pushed the door to
against his resistance and set the bar across it.

The Earl thundered upon it very violently but in the end he went away.
The Lady Margaret did as best she might to comfort the Countess Maud
until at last John Bellingham came to tell her that people were astir in
the Castle with some lights, though whether they were about arming
themselves or getting ready for the day and the hay harvest, he could
not well say.  But indeed the Earl Percy had twice ordered his men to
arm and seize the lady and twice he ordered them to desist, during that
night; for he was in a very great quandary.

So the Lady Margaret went down the little stairway, after she had roused
her women, and found her men by the postern gate.  The keeper of the
gate did not dare to withhold the keys for he knew that they, being
thirty to one, could slay him very peacefully.

When they had walked from the walls of that Castle over the bridge and
two good gunshots beyond and the day was beginning to break, they all
stood together upon a little mound, and the Lady Margaret sent a little
boy called Piers, that was her kinsman and page, back to the Castle to
ask for their horses. For they could not have taken horses out by the
postern way which went narrowly down twisting steps.  She did not think
that the Earl would dare to come and take her there.  It would have been
too great an outrage, to set upon a lady of her quality in the open;
besides, being thirty and more, they would be able to give account of
themselves and no doubt get away by tracks that John Bellingham knew
very well.  So the ladies sat down upon shields of the men-at-arms, for
the grass was wet with the night’s dew, and they watched the dawn come
up over the sea and across the wide stretches of the Coquet river.  The
Lady Margaret and her handmaidens made merry and played a game with
white stones that they picked up; but the old lady Bellingham moaned and
grumbled a great deal, for she was weary with having watched and stiff
with the rawness of the air.

So, after a time, when it was quite light, the page called Piers came
back.  He reported that at first the Earl had been in a great rage and
had threatened to hamstring all the Lady Margaret’s horses; but,
afterwards, he had seemed to change his mind and had given orders that
all the horses should be sent out to her.  Moreover, he sent her word
that, if she would come back into the Castle he would give her news of
the Young Lovell, for his receiver, John Harbottle, had sent him,
through the night a messenger from Alnwick with very certain tidings,
and these she should have and might make a treaty with the Earl if she
would go back.

But she believed this to be more lying in order to get her back into his
power; so she sent ten of her men to fetch the horses from the Castle
gate and very soon they perceived all the horses come round the Castle
wall, to the number of thirty-two with eleven mules.  The Lady Margaret
rode a tall horse called Christopher, a brown, that she loved, and John
Bellingham had another tall horse.  But the old lady and the three maids
had mules, and there were seven pack mules that carried the Lady
Margaret’s hangings, furnishings for her room if she slept in an inn,
her dresses and much things of value as she would not willingly leave in
the Tower of Glororem. The men-at-arms rode little, nimble horses, such
as the false Scots had, very fit for picking their way amongst springs,
heather and the stones of hillsides. This lady could not bring herself
to believe that her true love was not dead, so that, although she
laughed and jested to keep up the hearts of her maids, as her plain duty
was, within herself she was a very sad woman.

When the sun was off the horizon they broke their fast with small beer
and cheese that they got from a husbandman’s tower near Acklington, for
they were sticking inland.  This husbandman advised them to go by way of
Eshot Hill and Helm, for, by reason of the dry weather, the road from
this latter place to Morpeth was very good travelling, and it ran
straight.  The Lady Margaret was minded to sleep that night at
Newcastle, which would be twenty-four miles more or less, for she had no
haste to be in one place more than another.  She had little pleasure in
life; although she wished to rescue the Lady Rohtraut she thought this
could only be done by means of the Lady Dacre, her mother, that had been
a Princess of Croy.  And, from the news she had, it was very unlikely
that that ancient lady would reach her house in the city of Durham
before that night or the next day.

So, as they rode between the fields, the sun rose up—its rays poured
down fiercely and smote on them.  It was marvellously hot weather, so
that those ladies must at first lay off their gray cloaks and then open
their shifts at the neck and fan themselves with their neckerchers.  A
great langour descended upon the Lady Margaret; her head ached sorely
and her sadness grew unbearable.

And all, even to the men-at-arms and the page Piers, complained of the
great heat and because they had had little sleep the night before, and
the ladies yawned and half slept upon their mules.  So, when they came
to a little green hill where ash trees climbed to the top, the Lady
Margaret said, out of compassion to them, that when they were at the top
of the hill, so that they could see the flat country all round, they
might get down from their horses and mules and sleep the noontide away
in the shade. And so they did.

The men-at-arms got down from the sumpter mules mattresses that the
ladies might lie upon them, and there, in a shady grove, they lay and
slept.  The men set their backs against trees and let their heads fall
forward between their knees.  One or two were set to walk as sentries
outside that wood, to watch the flat country below, so that no sound was
heard in that little wood save the light noises of steel and of buckles
clinking as the watchmen walked.  And so they lay a long time, all
recumbent, some covering their faces with their arms, some casting them
abroad.

The Lady Margaret awakened from a slumber, and the sun had climbed far
round in the heaven. Then she perceived a lady watching her through the
trees and smiling.  So beautiful and smiling a lady she had never seen.
She stood between the stems of two white birch trees and leaned upon
one, with her arm over her head in an attitude of great leisure. The
Lady Margaret rose from her mattress and went towards that lady; she had
never felt so humble, nor had her eyes ever so gladdened her at the
sight of the handiwork of God.

Then that lady walked through the wood, very light of foot, so that the
long grass was hardly trampled at all, and no briars caught at her gown.
Yet the Lady Margaret could not overtake her. So that lady came to the
edge of the wood and the hill to the west, looking over the tower called
Helm, where the white road ran southward and the green lands swung up
towards the distant hilts.  And here there was a white charger and a
great company of ladies-in-waiting, all very beautiful, in gowns of
sea-blue silk with girdles of silver and gold.  The Lady Margaret had
never seen so fair a company, though she had seen the Queen of Richard
Crookback with all her court.  Then it seemed to her that that lady
pointed down into the plain as if she wanted to show her lover and her
lord.  On the road that came from the North, the Lady Margaret perceived
one that she knew for a knight, by the sun upon his armour, and a monk
that walked beside him. And a mile behind, by the cloud of dust that
rose, she knew there were men-at-arms, and perceived their spears above
the dust.  The Lady Margaret knew that this must be the other lady’s
husband, for certainly such a troop of fair women would never ride
abroad in that dangerous country without men to guard them.

Then she saw that lady riding down the hill, with all her many, towards
the little figures in the plain; but they went so quickly that it was
like a flight of blue doves in the sunlight below her.  Then the Lady
Margaret wondered who that lady must be, for she knew of none in that
neighbourhood that could keep up so fair a state, except it were the
King of Scots, and not even he, and that could not be the Queen of
Scots, for she was a stout, black lady, whereas this one had been a tall
woman with red-gold hair, such a one as she could have loved if she had
been a man.  And, at the thought that that woman was going to her lover
and her lord, the Lady Margaret wept three or four tears, for that she
would never do herself, and going back to her guards, she upbraided them
for that they had let that lady pass unchallenged.  But they said they
haD seen no one.




                                   V


The Princess Rohtraut of Croy, Tuillinghem and Sluijs, Duchess of
Muijden and Lady Dacre, dowager of the North, was a vociferous old
German woman who passed for being ill to deal with.  She would cry at
the top of her voice orders that it was very difficult to understand,
and, when her servants did not swiftly carry these out, she would strike
at them with the black stick that she leaned upon when she hobbled from
place to place.  This she did so swiftly that it was a marvel; for she
was short and stout.  She could not move without groans and wheezing and
catching at the corners of tables and the backs of chairs.  Nevertheless
she would so strike with her stick at her servants, her stewards, the
gentlemen attendant upon her son, the Lord Dacre, or even at knights,
lawyers, or lords that frequented her son.  She had told the King,
Richard III, that he would come to no good end; she had told the Queen,
Elizabeth Woodville, that she was an idle fool, and King Henry VII that
his face was as sour as his wine.  For that King, being a niggard,
served very sour wine to his guests.  Richard III had laughed at her;
the Queen Elizabeth Woodville had gone crying with rage to King Edward
IV.  King Henry VII had affected not to hear her, which was the more
prudent way.  For her father, the Duke of Croy, who still lived, though
a very ancient man of more than ninety, was yet a very potent and
sovereign lord in Flanders, Almain, and towards Burgundy.  Seventy
thousand troops of all arms he could put into the field either against
or for the French King, and eighty armed vessels upon the sea.  The
Emperor of Rome was afraid of him, for he was very malicious and had
great weight with all the Electors from Westphalia to Brunswick and the
Rhine.  Moreover, though he himself rode no longer afield, his son, the
brother of the Princess Rohtraut, was a very cunning, determined, and
hardy commander.  And that was to say nothing of the powers of the
Dacres in England.

So those Kings and Queens did what they could least to mark the
outrageous demeanour of this Princess.  They did no more than as if she
had been a court jester, and affected to wonder that she had once been a
beautiful and young Princess, for love of whom her husband, then a
simple esquire, had languished longer than need be in prison in Almain.
Yet so it was.

This Princess spent the winter of most years, latterly, in London for
the benefit of the climate. The summers until lately she had been
accustomed to spend in Bothal Castle or Cockley Park Tower, which she
hired of Sir Robert Ogle, who had lately been made Lord Ogle of Ogle.
Upon the death of her husband she had inherited much land near Morpeth
and she considered that she would have had much more had not the Lord
Lovell, lately dead, seized so much of it by reason of his marriage with
the Lady Rohtraut, the Princess’s daughter.  The lawsuits about these
lands were not yet concluded, and it was these that the knights of
Cullerford and Haltwhistle were seeking to force from the Lady Rohtraut
by keeping her imprisoned.  The Princess had, however, by no means
abandoned her claim to these lands and it was to prosecute her lawsuits
that, each summer, she came to the North.  She was otherwise a very rich
woman, having many coronets, chains with great pearls, rubies, ferezets,
silks, hangings, furniture and much gold.  Moreover, she was for ever
trafficking in parcels of land with the Ogles, the Bartrams, the
Mitfords and other families round the town of Morpeth.  In that way she
had both occupation and profit, and she harried the leisure of the
several receivers of her son, the Lord Dacre whom the King kept in
London.


Now, upon a day, being the second day in July of the year 1486, this
lady sat upon a chair resembling a high throne upon three stone steps
covered with a carpet.  She had behind her yet another carpet that
mounted the wall and came forward over her head in the manner of a dais.
This old lady inclined always to the oldest fashions.

Thus, upon her round, old head she had an immense structure that bent
her face forward as if it had been that of our Father at Rome beneath
the triple tiara.  It was made of two pillows of scarlet velvet, covered
with a net of fine gold chains uniting large pearls.  Such a thing had
not been seen in England for two or three score years, but the ladies at
her father’s court had worn them when she had been a girl.  For the rest
of her, she was dressed in black wool with a girdle, from which there
hung ten or a dozen keys of silver, steel, or gold inlaid with steel.

The room was fair in size, but all of stone and very dark because of the
smallness of the windows. The roof went up into a peak.  All painted the
stone walls were, with woods and leaves, with fowlers among trees
setting their nets, and maidens shaking down fruits, and men and women
bathing in pools, and the vaults of the ceiling showed the history of
the coffin of St. Cuthbert.  Each history was divided from the other by
ribs of stone painted fairly in scarlet with green scrolls.  There you
might see how the good monks set out from Holy Island, or how the coffin
floated of itself, or how the women called one to the other about the
Dun Cow.  This room without doubt had formerly been some council chamber
or judgment room of the Prince Bishop’s in old days.  But its purpose
was by now forgotten, and the Lord Dacre had bought the house lately,
for he considered the practice of living always in castles to be
barbarous and uncomfortable.  It was his purpose to pull down this old
stone house and build there a fair palace where he might dwell in
comfort. But, for the time being, it suited his mother well enough to
dwell there.

She was sitting in the chair like a throne, leaning forward and perusing
a great book of accounts held up to her by an old fellow who knelt
before her in black cloths with the badge of the Dacres upon one
shoulder and the silver portcullis of Croy upon the other.  The old lady
puzzled over this tale of capons, pence, eggs, bolls of wheat, oats and
the rest that her tenants owed her.  She thought it was not enough. And
consequently messengers came in from the Prince Bishop, from the Dean,
from the Chapter, down to the sacristan, to ask how it was with her
health after her long journey from London city to Durham.  She had come
there the night before. And one brought her the offering of a deer,
another of two fat geese, a third a salmon, a fourth a basket of
strawberries grown beneath a southern wall.  And, as each of these
things was brought before her, she would lean forward and look upon it,
and so she would lose her place in the book of accounts and scold
perpetually at the old man that held it up for her.

In one of the deep, narrow window spaces stood a notable man of forty,
stout and grave, with a brown beard cut squarely, and wearing a very
rich blue cloak and blue round hat with a great white plume. He said
nothing at all, but pared his finger-nails with a little knife.  He
looked between whiles out upon the high, wooded banks of the Wear that
confronted his gaze across the river, and were all ablaze with the
sunlight: once the Princess Rohtraut turned her head stiffly to have
sight of him.  But he was standing too far in the depth of the window,
her chair being between one window and the other.  So she cried out in a
rough voice that was at once insulting and indulgent:

"This is very easy spying for King Henry."  Then she chuckled and added,
"Do you hear me, Sir Bertram of Lyonesse?  This is very easy spying for
King Henry."

He made no answer to this gibe, but instead he pushed open the window
and carefully surveyed the deep gorge beneath him, for this place was
new to him.  The night before they had come in by torch-light, over a
steep bridge above a black river.  The gate into the tower had been
opened for them only after long parleying, but he had perceived walls
well planned and formidable, great heights in the blackness, and steep,
up-and-down streets amongst which they went between strong, stone
houses.  But he had been aware that this city of Durham was a very
strong place.

He had been set to sleep that night in a room that faced inwards, and
rising in the morning he had seen that just before his face were the
great stones of the wall surrounding and fortifying the cathedral.
Beneath his gaze were two great towers, pierced with meurtrières, which
are slits through which arrows may be shot.  Between these two towers
was a gateway which he doubted not had a double portcullis, devices for
dropping huge stones and rafters upon any enemy that should break
through the first portcullis and be captured by the second, so that they
would be like rats in a trap.  By craning his head out of his window he
could see, further along, both to his right and to his left, tall towers
in this inner wall, each tower having the appearance of an arch let into
its face.  But this Sir Bertram was an engineer well skilled in the
plans of fortresses, and he knew that what appeared to be arches led up
to two slanting holes in each tower, and that the slant of each hole was
directed with a fell and cunning purpose.  For, to each tower foot a
steep and narrow street of the town came up.  So, if any enemy should
have won the town itself and should come up those streets, then those in
the tower would set running down these slanting holes balls of stone
weighing two, three or four hundred pounds.  By the direction of the
slantings, those balls of stone would run bounding down those narrow
streets and cause dreadful manglings, maimings and death, principally by
the breaking of legs.

By those and other signs, this Sir Bertram knew that here, even within
the walled town was a fortress almost impregnable and dreadful to
assault.  This Bishop might well be a proud and disdainful prelate. He
was safe, not only from foreign foes, but from his own townsmen, which
was not so often the way with Bishops.  For it is the habit of townsmen
to be at perpetual strife with their Bishops, seeking to break in on
them by armed force and to make the Bishops give up their rights and
rents and fees in the towns, which if the Bishops could not prevent was
apt to render them much the poorer.  But at this Prince Bishop the
townsmen could never come, so strong was this citadel within the town.

So he would become ever richer, not only for that reason but because of
the great shrines of St. Cuthbert and of the Venerable Bede.  To these,
year in, year out, at all seasons and in all weathers, thousands
resorted with offerings and tolls and tributes.

So this Sir Bertram perceived it would be no easy thing to humble this
Palatine Prince even though the Percy had reported to King Henry VII
that he could smoke out Bishop Sherwood at very little cost.

It was true that, as the Percy thought, King Henry VII heartily desired
the downfall of this Bishop Sherwood.  He had supported Richard
Crookback and loved little King Henry.  And indeed, Sir Bertram knew,
for he had the King’s private thoughts, that the King would very
willingly see the downfall not only of the Bishop Sherwood but of this
whole see of Durham.  For it was contrary to that Prince’s idea of
kingship to have within his realm a Palatine county with a Bishop there
having such sovereign powers that it was as if there was no King at all
in the realm.  But, to be rid of the bishopric, even King Henry thought
would be impossible since it would raise against him all the Church and
get him called heretic and interdicted as King John had been.  So that
the King would very willingly have had the Percy to act as his catspaw
and make civil war upon Bishop Sherwood and so drive him out of the
land.  That might impoverish and weaken the see a little, but not much.
For a Bishop is not like a temporal baron; though Sherwood be cast out
another must succeed him and have all his rights and grow as strong or
stronger.

It was upon these things that this Sir Bertram—a cool and quiet knight,
loving King Henry and beloved by him above most men—meditated whilst
that old lady cast up her accounts, and he trimmed his finger nails.
So, when he leaned out of that bright window, he perceived how steeply
perched was the house in which he was.  Sheer down to the river ran
rocky paths with here and there a tree.  At the bottom was a high wall
well battlemented and slit for archers to hold it.  The river ran very
swiftly.  On it there was a fisherman casting his nets from an anchored
boat. The boat tugged and tore so at its chain that even the practised
fisherman had difficulty to stand.  So the river must be very swift, and
there would be no mining there.

On the other side of the river the banks rose as steeply and were
clothed with trees.  There cannon might be set against the town.  But to
shoot so far they must be great guns and the Percy had none of these,
nor were there any large enough nearer than Windsor.  If the Percy had
them, it was difficult to think that he could drag them there into
position, and all that would take a year or two years.  So, this Sir
Bertram, who had been sent there by the King to advise him, considered,
as his first thoughts, that if the Earl of Northumberland attacked this
Bishop Palatine he might take the city, but hardly the inner citadel,
and never at all the castle within.  Or, if the King lent him cannon, he
might break the wall of the citadel.

On the other hand, having the Bishop shut up in the castle the Earl
might starve him out—but this he could not do unless all the country
round were friendly to the Earl and hated the Bishop.  Without that
there would be no doing it.  And the same might be said of any project
for dragging cannon on to those heights.  For the cannon must be brought
up narrow valleys where ambushes very easily could lie, and that could
not be thought of in a hostile country.

The Percy had reported himself to King Henry as being cock of all the
North parts; if that were true, he might very well be loosed upon the
Bishop. But from conversations that he had had with the Lords Dacre and
Ogle, as well as with the Abbot of Alnwick and lesser men, this Sir
Bertram thought it was possible that the Earl Percy was not so strong
nor yet so beloved in those parts as he would have the King believe.  In
that case, if he relied upon this Earl and this Earl’s faith, the King
might get great discredit and no profit either in those parts or
elsewhere.  It was in order to study and inquire into these things that
this cautious Sir Bertram was come into those parts.  So he leaned upon
the sill of the window and looked down upon the river that appeared two
hundred feet below.

After he had watched the river and reflected a long time, for he was a
slow thinker, adding point to point in his mind, to have as it were a
strong platform on which to build, he heard a woman’s voice say highly:

"I tell you, ah, gentle Princess, that there is no man more hated in
these North parts, and if you will lend your sanction and your wealth we
may speedily have down not only these robbers that hold your daughter
imprisoned by his encouragement but also that flail of the North
himself."

Sir Bertram turned slowly on his elbow, leaning upon the sill and looked
into the room.  There he saw a monstrous beautiful young lady that
kneeled with her voluminous rich gown all about her and held out her two
hands towards the Princess whom he could not see.  The Princess did not
speak, and that lady held her peace, so that knight moved softly and
deliberately forward, and when he was near the younger lady he asked
her:

"Even who is this man who is so hated in the North parts?"

That young lady looked at him with astonished lowering and resentful
eyes, as much as to say, who was he that he should ask her such a
question?  The Princess had been leaning back in her chair with both
elbows upon the arms and a hand caressing her chin, for all the world as
if she had been an old man considering a knotty point.  But, when she
saw Sir Bertram and heard his voice, she said hastily and harshly:

"Get up, child and your ladyship.  It is not decent that a lady of high
rank and my kinswoman should be spoken to kneeling by a Cornish knight
of nowhere and yesterday, God help me, if he be ten times a King’s spy!"
And so she bade the lady, who was the Lady Margaret of Glororem, to
fetch a stool from a corner of the room and set it by her throne on the
step.  And there she had the Lady Margaret sit beside her and that Sir
Bertram fetch off his hat with the large feather and so stand before
them.  "For," said she to that knight, "you may well be the King’s
companion, but in this place the King’s writ does not run and I am a
royal Princess and this is my cousin and niece."

It was nonsense and a tyranny, but Sir Bertram did it with calmness.  He
cared little about forms when there was news to be had that could help
him and only one old woman and one very beautiful and proud one before
whom to abase himself.  So he made an apology, saying that he had not
known that lady to be of such high rank, she being in the dim room and
not over plain to his eyes which had been gazing on the sunlight.  He
bent one knee and stood there composedly with his hat in his hands
before him.

Then that old Princess, who had affected anger affected now a
complaisance towards that gentleman. She spoke as follows, formally to
the Lady Margaret:

"This Sir Bertram of Lyonesse," she said,—"though God knows where
Lyonesse is; I have heard it is some poor islands in Scilly or Cornwall
or where you will,—so this Sir Bertram of Lyonesse is the King’s
commissioner to inquire into the state of these North parts.  And if you
will ask me what make of a thing a commissioner is, I will answer you
that he is what you and I and other simple folk do call a spy.  But the
King calls him his commissioner and that is very well."

She looked upon Sir Bertram maliciously to see if he winced.  But that
knight turned his face composedly to the Lady Margaret.

"Ah, gentle lady," said he, "you may count that for truth.  I am here to
find out what I can."

The old Princess liked this Sir Bertram, in truth, very well.  She
counted him so low, on account of his obscure and distant birth and his
former poverty, that she could jest with him as if he had been a peasant
boy.  She considered English lords as of so low a rank against her own
that she thought not much about them, one with another, except may be it
was the Dacres and their kin.  So she was very glad to keep this Sir
Bertram, if she could do it without trouble or expense, and have some
amusement from it.

She turned upon the Lady Margaret and said again:

"You must know that, though in a concealed manner, this Sir Bertram is
of great worth in the counsels of King Henry VII.  Why this should be
so, God knows, for one says one thing and one will say another.  But so
it is; in all matters in which a king may be advised this new knight
rules the King."

Then again Sir Bertram looked upon the Lady Margaret:

"Ah, gentle lady," he said, "to dispel what may appear of mystery in
this royal Princess’s account of me, let me say this—for I would not
have you think evil of me: I have twice saved this King’s life, once by
discovering assassins sent to murder him in France before he was King
and once, since, at Windsor where I caught by the wrist a man with a
knife that came behind him when he walked in the gardens.  And I have
farmed the King’s private lands to greater profit than came to him
before and, having studied the art of fortifying of a pupil of the monk
Olberitz that made most of the strong castles of France, I have designed
or strengthened successfully certain strong places for this King.  If I
could say I had saved this King’s life in gallant battles I would rather
say it, for it would gain me greater honour in your sight.  But I am
rather a man of the exchequer board than of the tented field.  It is for
caution, defence and prudence that the King trusts me rather than for
things more gallant that should stir your pulse in the recital.  I wish
it were the other way, but that is not the truth of it."

"Well, it is true what this knight says," the old Princess confirmed
him.  "He has twice saved the King’s life by caution and has increased
the King’s gear and so on.  Now he is sent here as the King’s spy—the
King’s reconciler or the King’s trumpeter or what you will.  For his
mission is to take a survey of these North parts first and then to prove
to them that the King is a mild, loving, gracious and economical
sovereign."

"Well, that is my mission," Sir Bertram said to the Lady Margaret, "and
I hope I may do it."

"I will tell you what I think of it," the Lady Margaret said then, "as
soon as I have your opinion on certain words I said two nights ago to
Henry Percy, my cousin, Earl of Northumberland."

"I shall hear them very gladly," Sir Bertram answered.

Then, in her own way, the old Princess exposed all these matters to Sir
Bertram of Lyonesse, how certain filthy rogues had taken prisoner her
daughter Rohtraut, and the rest.  Sir Bertram had heard all that before.
The King had ordered him to travel to the North with the Princess of
Croy, protecting her the better with his train and bearing a share of
her expenses, so that he might the better make out the affairs of the
Dacres, what was their wealth, who resorted to them, and whether they
seemed to conspire with other rebels.  And, upon the road, in three
various towns, three delayed messengers had met the Princess of Croy,
coming from that very Lady Margaret with broad letters in which she told
the story of the things that passed at Castle Lovell.  So Sir Bertram
had heard most of the tale before, nevertheless he heard it very gladly
again, more particularly as the Lady Margaret corrected the old Princess
here and there and made things the plainer.

It was a very long congress that they held in that room with the vaulted
ceiling and the painted walls, that were all sprays of leaves and dark
green boskage with the figures of men and women in scarlets and whites
and blues, holding bows and fowling nets and fish nets and falcons.
For, when the Princess had told that story she was impatient to know,
but with sarcastic and hard words, what this adviser of the King would
advise her to do.  For her own part, she said, it was her purpose to go
with a small train, and unarmed, up to that Castle Lovell and in at the
door. And she did not think it was those robbers who would withstand her
when she set free her daughter, opening the door of her prison with her
own hands, and so leading her out into the light of day and so there to
Durham, where she might dwell till justice was done about the lands and
other things that were in dispute.

The Lady Margaret said she was very glad to hear this, for she had been
afraid that the Princess had too much displeasure against her daughter,
seeing that in fifteen years she had not spoken to her or written broad
letters.

The Princess erected her old, round head stiffly, with the pillows upon
it, and exclaimed that it was not the fashion of their royal house to
quarrel with its daughters or to do less than decency demanded for their
rescue and sustenance.  She would not wish that Lady Rohtraut to dwell
in her house and at her charges for ever, for she must have her due
train and estate, and that would make a great charge.  But, until she
were set up in her own lands and had her wealth again, that Princess
would there maintain her and her train.

The Lady Margaret said again that she was very glad of it, and she was
certain that those robbers would very quickly release the Princess’s
daughter. For they would fear the might of the Dacres and the Duke of
Croy with his tall ships, his cannon, and his thousands of men that
would come by sea and burn that Castle.

It was at that that Sir Bertram said that the King of England would not
very willingly seE Flemings and Almains landing in his dominion; but the
Lady Margaret might be certain that that King would see justice done to
that injured lady by his own knights and the terror of his name.

Then the old Princess scowled upon both that knight and the lady so
fiercely that her eyes grew red and dreadful.  She smote her breast with
the handle of the black crutch that dangled from her wrist and cried:

"Mutter Gottes!  By the mother of God!  It is not the King of England
nor my father, the Duke of Croy, that shall go to that Castle but I
alone and _bij Gott_!  It is at my wrath that the knees of these robbers
shall knock together and the keys fall from their hands."

Then the Lady Margaret said that that might well be the case and Sir
Bertram said that so it would be much better.  The old Princess bent her
brows upon that knight and asked him, jesting bitterly, if he had any
better advice to give her.  He said that he had none, but that he would
very gladly hear what Henry, Earl Percy, had had to say to the Lady
Margaret and she to him and also something of Sir Paris Lovell, that
well-esteemed lording.

The Lady Margaret told him very clearly all that she knew, and that
knight considered her to be as sensible as she was fair.  When she told
him of the disappearing of her true love and of the rumours that were
told against him he had a pensive air; but when she told him of the
Percy’s high words of how he was minded to break the great lords of the
North and that that was the King’s mind, Sir Bertram frowned heavily.
When she said that it was the duty of great lords not to support too
readily a new King that they had set up, nor too abjectly to obey him or
lavishly fawn upon him, that knight’s eyebrows went up, for this was a
new thought to him.  And so, whilst she recited to him the history of
this realm of England as she had done to the Percy, he continued with
his left hand behind his back holding his blue hat with the white
feather and his right hand to his mouth whilst he hit the knuckles and
reflected.

The old Princess of Croy said that all that the Lady Margaret uttered
was nonsense; the truth of the matter was that all the English and their
lords were murderers and wallowers in blood, slaying their kings without
reason or pity or the fear of God, but like hogs fighting at a trough.

When she was done Sir Bertram took down his hand from his mouth and
smoothed his beard.  He said that if that was the mind of the Northern
lords, though it was a new thought to him, he need quarrel little with
it.  For, though he might need to reflect further upon the principle,
yet undoubtedly the case of King Richard III had gone in favour of the
Lady Margaret.  He was a King set up by certain lords and pulled down
again when they found him evil.  And, as far as the practice went, he
would be satisfied to have that the touchstone for King Henry VII.  For
he was certain that that King would prove a dread lord benign, loving
and prudent; all mighty lords and Princes of the North parts would
gladly acknowledge—in the course of a year or two—that there had never
been so good a King and they would all of them very willingly support
him.  And, if King Henry VII did not prove as good a King as he then
reported, Sir Bertram, though he loved him, would very willingly see him
cast down as Richard Crookback had been.

The Lady Margaret said she was very glad to hear it, and that upon such
terms they might soon be good friends.  Then Sir Bertram smiled a little
in his beard and said:

"Ah, gentle lady, I perceive from certain words you have dropped that
you did not think all these thoughts of the constitution of this realm
of England by your lonely self."  And so he perceived certain tears in
that lady’s eyes.

"Nay, truly," she said, "I learned them of the lips of my lord, Sir
Paris Lovell, in sweet devising and conversations that we had before his
death, and may God receive his poor soul and give him sweet rest in
paradise!  For such a gentle lording or one so wise in the reading of
books, anxious for the good of his estate, so fine of his fair body, so
fierce in war and fightful in the breach, or so merciful to his foes,
they being down, God never did make.  Though he was of young age yet he
had fought in Italy, in Ferrara, in Venice, in France, in harness; in
this realm against the false Scots and upon fightful journeys into
Scotland."

Sir Bertram lowered his head a little.

"I wish I had been such a one," he said.  "This was a very gallant
gentleman.  I have heard other such reports of him."

The old Princess said:

"I did not know I had had such a swan and phoenix amongst my
grandchildren."

"Why, it is true, madam," Sir Bertram said.  "You have lived too much
amongst the Dacres to know that you had this lording for part heir."

Now this house, built in the old days before that time, and all of
stone, like a fortress, had for its greater strength only one staircase.
It wound round in a little space, all of thick stone, so it would be
very difficult for an enemy to come up it if it were at all defended.
On the lower floor there were no windows at all towards the street, to
make it the stronger, and that staircase served all the rooms.  This old
fashion struck the Lord Dacre as very barbarous, and he would have it
all pulled down, with a big hall and hangings upon the ground floor and
large square windows with carvings on them, as was the pleasanter
fashion of London and that new day.  The paintings, too, in that room he
would have whitened over, and the stone ceilings covered in with wood
and beams, that should be bossed and carved and gilded and with coats of
arms.  But, for that time, so it was, and the staircase came up from the
street.

Now it happened that, below, the door into the street was open, and a
fisherman owing a tithe of fish for that Princess’s table stood before
it offering fish.  The old steward had gone to him and complained that
his fish and trout, eels and lampreys, were not fine enough to set
before that Princess. Much of this could be heard in that room, and then
came the sounds of the feet of a company of horse and the clank of
armour and loud knockings upon the gate that went into the cathedral
precincts and voices crying out and answering.  With one thing and
another none of those three could hear a word that there they uttered.

So the Princess was angry and clapped her hands for an old woman to come
that had a white clout hanging down before her chin, for all the world
as if it were a beard.  The Princess bade take that fisherman into the
kitchen and he to be given twenty stripes—for she had heard what passed
between him and the steward—the door into the street was to be shut and
news to be brought her what knight that was that rode with his many up
the street.  And if it was a knight of these parts and one she knew, she
ordered him to come to her for she desired news of that countryside.

So that old woman, as best she could, went down the stairway sideways,
for she was very old and fat and the stairway very little and winding.
Then they heard her clamorously upbraiding alike old steward and the
fisherman for the clamour they had made. Afterwards, the door was closed
and there was peace. Then Sir Bertram looked gravely upon the Lady
Margaret.  And:

"Ah, gentle lady," said he, "from what I have observed of your
conversation I can tell you this much.  You tell me that this Sir Paris
Lovell was a good friend to Richard Crookback that is dead.  And I do
not much blame him for it, since, as you tell me, that late King showed
great courtesy here in the North parts when he was Duke of Gloucester.
And well King Richard III knew how to bear courtesy when it suited him,
though at other times he was a false tyrant.  So that this Sir Paris
Lovell was a friend to Crookback and could have aided him against my
King if his father would have given him leave.  But this his father
would not do and it is so much the better.

"And further you have reported to me that this Sir Paris Lovell has said
to you, in his own words: ’Now this King Richard is dead and alas for
it! And we have another King of whom I, Sir Paris Lovell, know little,
though I fear he may be a heavy ruler.  But so as it is’—so you say you
remember the words of this lord—’what I am minded to do,’ said he, ’is
to set up a chantry where masses may be said for the dead King’s soul.
If he had been alive I would have fought for him, but now I will see if
I may live at peace with Henry of Richmond for a King.  For to be sure,
what we need in these North parts is peace amongst ourselves, that
husbandry and mining and fisheries may flourish on my lands and others.
And so one may make such a great journey into Scotland that the false
Scots may not raise their heads for fifty years or more again.  And so
we may have leisure to go upon our own affairs.  Therefore I, Sir Paris
Lovell, for one will, if I may, live at peace with King Henry VII and be
his subject if he will be bearable.’ ... Now therefore I, Sir Bertram of
Lyonesse..."

"God keep us," the old Princess cried out here, "you speak more like a
lawyer drawing a bond than a gallant knight."

"Madam and gentle Princess," Sir Bertram said, "I am more like a lawyer
than a gallant knight."  And so he looked again gravely upon the Lady
Margaret who, in her voluminous gown, sat on her little stool beside
that kind of throne and leaned her arm along its arm, folding her hands
together.  She looked upon him earnestly and, after a time, she said:

"Good Knight, if you talk with me thus to make an agreement with me in
the gentle Lord Lovell’s name, I tell you that can never be, for he is
dead."

"Ah, gentle lady," Sir Bertram answered, "how can it be said that any
man is dead that is but three months away?  These are strange and evil
times. God knows I am no very learned knight and one not overways
well-read in the lore of Holy Church.  Yet nowadays strange things are
seen, books not written by hand, Greek sorcerers, as I have heard,
driven out of Byzantium by the Sultan, who press with new learnings
across Christendom.  I have heard there was lately one new Greek Doctor
at London called Molossos, or some such name, though I never came to see
him.  And he had crabbed books of Greek and other sorceries.  So, if
your true love and lording be but ninety days away..."

"Sir," the Lady Margaret said, "my lord was never for so long a prisoner
amongst the false Scots or the thieves of Rokehope without news to me.
Surely they have killed him."

"I do not well know this country as you tell me; but let me ask you
this: if the false Scots had killed so great a lord would they not boast
and say great things?  Or if the thieves of Rokehope or the Debateable
Lands, or of those places that I do not know, had taken him, would they
not have made more attempts at his ransoming than once sending to Castle
Lovell? For you tell me that you think he was taken by Gib Elliott, as
you call him, or some such naughty villain, and that Gib Elliott sent to
Castle Lovell for his ransom and that the Knights of Cullerford and
Haltwhistle refused to give either white mail or black, as the saying
is.  And maybe, as you think, they clapped that messenger into prison
for greater secrecy, so that the countryside might have no news of your
lord but consider him gone away with warlocks and others. But, in the
first place, is it to be thought that such a messenger could be come
from that Elliott to Castle Lovell and no one know it?  Would not the
Castle Lovell bondsmen see him and report it to your bondsmen and so on
through all the countryside?  For what cause should that messenger have
in going to Castle Lovell, to be very secret, though Cullerford and
Haltwhistle should desire to keep it secret afterwards?  Or again, why
should Gib Elliott, if that be his name, slay the Lord of Castle Lovell
merely because Haltwhistle and Cullerford refused ransom or imprisoned
his messenger?  Gib Elliott I take it, is as other men, and seeketh
money and how best he may have it.  Moreover, Castle Lovell is a great
Castle, and cannot be taken in a little corner.  I will tell you this:
that within a fortnight that news was known to us in London Town; for
merchant wrote it to merchant at the bottom of his bills, and packman
passed the news on to packman from town to town."

"Say you so!" the old Princess called out at this. "Ye knew it and I did
not, yet ye never told me!"

"Madam and gentle Princess," Sir Bertram answered, "that is the duty of
the servants of a King, to be all ears and no tongue.  And partly that
is why I am here, for the King desired to know if such lawless robberies
could be done in any part of his realm. So now I am inquiring into this
matter.  And this I will ask you, my fair and gentle lady—if that news
was known in London Town under a fortnight, should not that Gib Elliott
know it in a day or two days at the most, seeing that all the
countryside talked of that and nought else?  For it is not every day
that a great lord dies and robbers seize upon his Castle and imprison
his sad widow.  So, very surely, this Gib Elliott would hear of this
thing or ever his messenger could come to Castle Lovell and back again.
And then, very surely, he would send another messenger to some friend of
the Young Lovell, to see if he might not get a ransom of them, since his
enemies held his Castle.  Consider how that would be with a cunning
robber.  Full surely he would have sent a messenger to yourself, ah,
fair and gentle lady, to have money of you, if of none others?"

"Sir," the Lady Margaret interrupted him hotly and with a sort of
passion—"I am very certain that that lord is dead.  For three times
Saint Katharine, whom I love above other saints, appeared to me in a
gown of gold and damask and leaning upon her wheel.  She looked upon me
sorrowfully, as who should say my true love—for whom I had besought that
saint many times—was dead to me."

The Cornish knight raised his hand.

"God forbid," he said, "that I should say anything against that sweet
madam Katharine.  Yet there are true dreams and false dreams and dreams
wrongly interpreted.  And of this I am instantly assured, that this Lord
Lovell is held prisoner by no border raiders.  It is not to be thought
upon."

The Lady Margaret spoke to him contemptuously and almost with hatred, so
her breast heaved as she bade him say then where he considered that that
lord should have been or should even then be hiding.  The Cornish knight
answered slowly:

"Ah, gentle lady, what to believe I do not so well know.  But this I
know that I would rather believe in tales of sorcery in this matter than
in that idea of border robbers.  For these are strange times of
newnesses coming both from the East and the West. From the East is come
new learning which is for ordinary men, a thing very evil at all times,
leading to sorceries and civil strife and change.  And from the West is
talk of a New World possessed with demons and pagans and dusky fiends as
is now on the lips of all men.  And I hold it for certain that, if
anything evil and inexplicable shall occur in this land from now on it
shall come from that East or that West.  The path to the West having
been found, shall it not lead those demons and dusky fiends in upon us?
And, all the contents of Byzantium having been set flying in upon us,
shall we go unharmed?"

"This is very arrant folly," the old Princess said; "what shall a parcel
of soft Greeks or Indian savages do to this island in the water?"

"Madam and gentle Princess," the Cornish knight answered, "I speak only
the misgivings of wealthy and sufficient men of London Town.  It may be
a folly here.  But this I hold for strange: this lording was the one of
all the North parts to have most of new-fangled lore, as I have heard:
he has read in many books of which I know not so much as the name; such
as _Ysidores Ethimologicarum_ or _Summa Reymundi_—or maybe I have the
names wrong.  And he has travelled to Venice where many evil, eldritch
and strange things are ready for the learning....  And now I will ask
you this: ah, gentle mistress ... Have you of late had news of a
monstrous fair lady that several people have seen to ride about these
parts, attended, or not attended at all ... upon a white horse?"

"Such a one I saw yesterday," the Lady Margaret said, "and so fair and
kind a lady it made me glad to see her."

Then Sir Bertram crossed himself.

"And have you," he asked, "heard where she dwells or who she is?"

"I never heard," she said; "I thought she was the King’s mistress of
Scotland, for a lesser she could not be."

"I have heard of her this many months," Sir Bertram said, "for, for this
many months, I have been set by the King to gather information about
these North parts.  And now from one correspondent, now from another;
now by word of mouth, now here, now in Northumberland, I have heard tell
of this White Lady.  And this again I will tell you....  An hour agone,
as I looked out of this window, I saw a knight, with a monk and a small
company of spears go over Framwell Gate Bridge.  The sun was upon their
armour.  And, as they rode over it, I perceived upon the banks before me
a wondrous fair figure of a woman in white garments, going among the
thick of the trees as lightly as if it had been a flower garden. And, as
she went, she held her hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun so
as to gaze upon that knight.  And I think that was that strange lady.
And, if you ask me what she is, I think she is a vampire, a courtesan or
a demon from the East. And if you ask me where your lord is, I will say
I think she has him captive amongst weary sedges and the bones of other
knights, if they have been dead long enough to become bones.  And there
he sits enthralled by her and she preys upon his heart’s blood...."

The Lady Margaret stood up with her hand to her throat.  Her face was
blanched like faded apple blossom.

"Good sir," she said, "I think ye lie.  For that lady had the kindest
face that ever I saw."

"Yet such fair faces," Sir Bertram said, "are, as is known to all men,
best fed by the heart’s blood of true knights."

"Before God," the old Princess cried at him, "I have heard such tales of
my bondsmen’s wives...."

"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.

So there, now, Bishop Sherwood sat, leaning back in his chair and
crushing up his cope which was a grief to his vestiarius, an old and
orderly man.  For this was a very splendid cope of black velvet from
Genoa; it was worked with broad silver in pomegranates, the sacred
initials being of seed pearls over silver, and the vestiarius did not
like to see it crushed. The crozier leant against an oaken case in the
corner; and a great cross was against the heavy table where the Bishop
sat.  The Bishop had sent away his pages and attendants, saying that his
head ached so that he could not bear the opening and closing of cases
where these things should be placed.  He had sent for some wine, a
manchet of bread and a little salt to refresh himself with and these, in
vessels of silver, stood before him.  He had made shift to pull the rich
glove off his right hand, and so he had taken a sip of wine and was
dipping the bread in the salt. He felt himself a little refreshed.
Before him, upon the table, stood two mitres, and his glove lay between
the silver dish of bread and the wine cup.

Then the vestiarius, who stood in the doorway, perceived that Bishop,
all black and silver, lean forward in his chair, gazing out of the
window with his jaw falling down.  The sunlight was streaming in. The
vestiarius considered with disfavour—for he was a sour old priest—that
the Bishop was undoubtedly ill, and God knew when he should get those
vestments put away, which should be done before the stroke of noon.  So
the Bishop passed his hand across his eyes, after he had made the sign
of the cross repeatedly.

"Gilbert," the Bishop said, "my eyes are very tired."

"It would be better, then," the vestiarius said, "not to look out at
that window upon the sunlight.  You have tired them with looking upon
the picture of the new missal while you said mass."

"That may well be," the Bishop said.  He was a little afeared of the
anger of his vestiarius, who had been with him twenty years, and would
not let him do as he would.  So he continued for a little looking at the
napkin they had laid beneath his refection.  It was worked in white
damask with the letter M, being the initial of Our Lady’s name.

After a while, being anxious to lessen his weakness in the eyes of his
servant, the Bishop raised his eyes to the two mitres that stood before
him.  Both were of white silk stuff, very curiously and beautifully
sown, but one was high and the other more squat. The Bishop was about to
speak of these, to placate the old sour man—for it was in such things
that he took most interest.  It was very quiet in that room.

There came a knocking, like a fumbling at the door.  So the vestiarius
went to it, and, opening it by a crack, whispered out by that way.  And
then he turned and said sourly:

"Here is a monk.  A monk of Belford called Francis.  He says he has your
word that he may come to you at all times and seasons."  The Bishop made
a sign with the hand, that hung over the arm of his chair, that that
monk should come in.  And indeed the Bishop had given orders that the
monk Francis should come in to him at all times.

For those, as the Bishop saw them, were evil days and full of sudden
perils that must very suddenly be reported to him.  And, as far as peril
from the North went—and mostly from Alnwick way—he knew no man, monk or
laymen, that could more swiftly warn him.  Besides, the Bishop heard his
conversation with pleasure and counted him a very holy young monk, so
that he would gladly have had him for his confessor.

He accounted him the best adviser that a Bishop could have in that see.
For of the religious that he had round him there, the lay priests were
too ignorant, with a rustic simplicity; the monks of Durham were too
haughty; those of Belford too learned; those of Alnwick too set upon the
glory of their abbey.  The ecclesiastical lawyers quibbled too much over
parcels of land; the knights were too formal and concerned for the state
of the see.  But this monk Francis loved God and considered the world.

The Bishop had been reflecting in that way for some time whilst the
monk, entering in his woollen robes had knelt beside his chair.  Then
the Bishop stretched his hand languidly out and the monk set his lips to
the ring upon it.  So the Bishop pointed a finger to the taller of the
two mitres.

"This is my new one," he said, "it has just come to me from Flanders,
while I was at mass."

The monk Francis looked upon the new mitre.

"I have never seen finer stitching in silver," he said.  The vestiarius
said harshly:

"I consider the old one more fitting.  For a Prince of the Church
Militant it is more fitting.  It sits more squatly upon the head, like a
helmet."

The monk Francis looked upon him, and seeing that the Bishop did not
wish to speak, he said:

"That is true!  But then this new one, with its greater height is more
graceful and seemly.  Moreover there is room upon it for another panel
over the forehead.  The old one, you perceive, has only a picture of the
crucifixion of our Lord worked in pearls and silk.  Whereas the new one
has below it a picture of Our Lady at the Tomb.  It is always good to
have a picture of Our Lady."

This was a thing that the vestiarius could not gainsay.  So he brought
out:

"Well, if the Bishop and monks are content with it, it may work to the
greater glory of God;" and then he said: "Prince Bishop, I would have
you go to another room that I may put away your vestments."

The Bishop stood up upon his feet and the vestiarius went down upon his
knees.  So the Bishop blessed him and put his hand heavily into the arm
of the monk Francis.

"You shall lead me to my chamber," he said.

"God help us," the vestiarius cried, "shall I not first take off your
vestments?"

"I had forgotten," the Bishop said.  So he stood by the table whilst
that old man took off the great cope, the silver cross and the white
robes and stole that were beneath and fetched a purple gown edged with
fur—for he considered that Bishop to be cold and weak with the blood
that had been let from him the day before as the custom was.  Upon the
Bishop’s head he set a furred cap, covering his ears, and hung round his
neck once more the silver chain with the great crucifix in silver
dependent.  And so the Bishop, when he had drunk a little more wine,
went up the stairs slowly to his chamber, and the vestiarius called in
several pages and young boys and saw to it that they laid those
vestments away in due order.


The Bishop’s chamber had been taken out of a Norman gallery with pillars
and arcades.  Here many men-at-arms in parti-coloured woollen garments
of natural wool and yellow, sat about on the floor or between the
arcades, playing at dice together or drinking from flagons.  Their
immensely long pikes stood against the arches beside them.  One, with
his eyes shut, leaned back against the wall, saying prayers in penance
for a crime he had committed.

The Bishop, upon the monk’s arm passed slowly down this corridor to his
chamber which had bare walls painted yellow in honour of St. Cuthbert; a
great quantity of books, very big or very little, were upon shelves.  A
great many manuscripts in rolls lay upon other shelves, and papers that
overflowed from chests, of which there were five, along one wall. There
was a pallet bed in this room; a three-cornered stool and a coarsely
hewed lectern; a prie-dieu and a crucifix.  Thus it was a very bare
room.  This Bishop, though he affected somewhat great state before the
people, was, in secret, a very ascetic man.

Few people, however, came into this bare room—not even his highest
officers.  The square windows—but that had been done in Bishop
Skirlawe’s days just a hundred years ago—were filled with bright glass,
showing once again the history of the translation of St. Cuthbert.  All
in little squares this history was, monks with shaven heads crouching
down as if the space would not contain them, and the head of Dun Cow
showing yellow against a background of glass shining like pigeon’s blood
rubies.  One of these little, square casements hung open and through it
the distant landscape showed clear, with hills grey and woods grey-blue,
astonishing for its tranquillity.

So, the monk Francis being sat up on his three-legged stool, the Bishop
began to pace up and down before the long window space—backwards and
forwards over the tiles, with an immense swiftness. Once he turned his
face imperiously to where the monk sat and said harshly:

"Pray God, you bring me no ill news."

The monk, who had been gazing, out of respect, at the tiles, raised his
glance to say:

"I think it is rather good news."

The Bishop said:

"I thank God!" and touched his fur cap.  Once again he resumed his
pacing, biting his lips and clenching and unclenching his fingers.

Suddenly, in the stillness there resounded a rustle of wings, and,
balancing unsteadily upon the iron frame of the open window, there
appeared a blue pigeon that craned its head to one side or the other,
watching the Bishop.  From outside there came a still greater rustle of
wings.

Then the monk’s face grew colourless.

"Father in God," he said in a low voice, "what is that fowl?"

The Bishop turned his lean head round over his shoulder, when he saw the
pigeon that gazed anxiously at him, he smiled a kindly and soft smile.

"That is my weakness, Brother Francis," he said. With his brushing step
he crossed the smooth tiles towards one of the chests that was filled
with parchments. As he lifted the lid that pigeon flew from the window
on to his shoulder.  And immediately another pigeon took its place in
the opening.  "Brother Francis," he continued, "you are a stern man, yet
be indulgent to my weakness.  It was your namesake that was called ’of
the Birds.’  And in Scripture you may read the exhortation: ’Be ye
guileless as doves and with the wisdom of the serpent.’"  So he lifted
that chest-lid and took from it a little linen bag of pease.

Then the face of the monk became radiant.

"Father in God," he said, "I thank heaven for this.  For those very
words I used twenty hours ago and now you use them again."

"Why," the Bishop said, "what harm ever came from these pretty fowls of
heaven?"  The pigeon on his shoulder stretched its neck out to reach his
mouth with its bill.  Urgently and insistently it did this. And others
were entering the window space.  Then, before the flutter of their wings
should drown his voice, the Bishop said that these birds reminded him
that his dinner hour was come.  And he begged the monk Francis to tell a
page that he should find amongst the men-at-arms in the gallery that the
Lord Bishop would have his guests sit down to dinner and eat with a good
appetite; whereas he himself was a little indisposed and would have his
own cook send up to him four eggs with a little saffron and some of the
drink called clary, such as the cook knew he wished for when he was ill.
So, the monk Francis went out and, after some time, found that page, who
was playing knucklebones with another in the stairway.  And when the
monk had cuffed him well he sent him upon his errand, and so went back
to the room.  The Bishop was smiling down at from twenty to thirty
pigeons.  They were around his feet, upon his bed where he had sat down,
upon his knees and, precariously they found footholds, fluttering their
wings upon his moving arms.

So there he sat, looking upon those fowls of the air and smiling.  And
in a little time that page brought him the four eggs, the saffron and
the beverage called clary.  And so the Bishop ate his meal, sprinkling
the saffron upon the eggs.  He scattered fragments of the hard yolk
amongst the pigeons.  And when he was done and had drunk his drink he
shook the crumbs off his gown and came over towards the monk Francis,
all the pigeons scattering before his feet.

The Bishop was a man much taller than the monk and much thinner in the
features.  That is to say that, of late years, he had grown thin with
his cares, but his purple and furred gown gave him a certain bulk.  So
he looked down upon the monk and said:

"My brother in God, you have perceived my weakness, for each day I spend
certain minutes upon these birds and gain comfort from the contemplation
of their beauty and guilelessness.  And I think they are the only
friends I have, so lonely is my state in these great and peopled halls.
Time was, no doubt, when a Prince Bishop was beloved, dwelling amongst
people of a simple piety.  And in such a day I could have done well.
But, as I have often told you, my brother, in this place I cannot see my
way. I am troubled with many doubts.  If these were again the days of
St. Thomas of Canterbury, I could at least extend my neck to the
butcher’s sword.  I think I should have had that courage....  But this
then is my road and in which God has set me.  And very willingly I
totter along it.  Only, from time to time, my brain reels; I seem to see
nothing, amongst great defiles, with rocks that roll down upon me. And
this my see appears like a little church set between towering
precipices....  And so I rest my brain by playing with these birds."

"So," the monk Francis said, "St. Gerome had a lion, that lightened his
labours and the solitude of his cell, and so many other saints had."

"But I am no saint," the Bishop said, "and have no licences so to
disport myself as they had.... But even so it is!  God give me guidance.
For it is certain that the King that we have hates me a little and in
some sort fears me.  And he is a strong, persevering and cunning prince.
And I do take him to be an evil prince that murdered a very good King,
my friend and the friend of this see.  And if I had courage and could
see clearly, I should raise up the standard of this my see and call to
me the barons and the knights and so, in a crusade, march to the
dethroning of this King.  But, as you know, I am not framed for such a
part.  I am no commander, neither has God given me the golden gift of
oratory to inflame men’s hearts to a holy war.  Nor yet, in this age, is
the spirit of piety abroad among the people, and I know not who are my
friends....  So here I sit in doubt and perplexity.  And now there is
come, even to this my city, a man calling himself commissioner of this
upstart King.  For such a man thundered upon the city gates last night.
And very willingly I could have refused him entrance, but in my trouble
and perplexity I did not dare.  What say you then, brother Francis, to
all these things, for I will hear you very willingly?"

The monk kept his eyes for some time longer upon the floor and at last
he spoke:

"My lord and prince," he said, "pardon me beforehand if in what I shall
tell you now I have done aught amiss.  But this I will tell you at once:
this commissioner of King Henry’s is a subtle spy. Therefore, taking
upon my own person the shame, if shame there be, I have set myself to
counterspy him.  For it fell out in this way: in certain secret
manners—not under seal of confession—I have known for some time past
that this Sir Bertram of Lyonesse, was gathering news of the North
parts.  There are certain contractors for the building of our Tower in
Belford, and one of them is called Richard Chambre, a burgess of
Newcastle. And because I have lent him now and then a little money and
much good advice, this contractor is my good friend and child.  So one
day, last September, this Richard Chambre told me, whilst devising of
other things, that there was one, John of Whitley, a burgess of
Newcastle, that went gathering news for a knight of the King’s court
called Sir Bertram, of Lyonesse.  He was writing him letters and the
like, and this John of Whitley had come to Richard Chambre, and had
asked him for news of our monastery of Belford, and of how we monks were
affected towards the new King....  And so, gathering here a piece of
news and there another, I gathered that this Sir Bertram had agents here
and there—one a monk in Alnwick called Ludovicus and another, a bailiff
of our own, called the Magister Stone at Castle Lovell.  But that
Magister is much in Durham...."

"God help me," the Bishop said, "I have seen him often upon the affairs
of the Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle...."

"Well, he is an agent of that Sir Bertram’s," the monk said.  "Now let
me go on further with my story."

"But this is very terrible hearing," the Bishop said.  "All this spying
and treachery is a new thing. It is even as it is in Italy."

"This is a new age, Father in God," the monk said, "and you will find
this King to employ as many spies as any Duke Borgia or of Ferrara.  And
so it will go from bad to worse.  Therefore let us be prepared....  So
this matter is: I came this morning, riding with a certain knight and
lord, to Framwell Gate Bridge, just as they opened it.  And because I
would speak certain private words with that lord I had ridden with him a
mile ahead of his spears.  So we waited at the bridge for them to come
up.  Then I fell a-talking with the captain of the bridge as to the news
and so I heard, as ye know, that this same Sir Bertram, calling himself
commissioner of the King had come in last night with the old Princess of
Croy and her train—but his own train had been sent to lodge in Old
Elvet.  So I learned where he was, for every woman in the street could
tell me.

"I went swiftly afoot to the house of the Princess of Croy, and the door
stood open with the old steward before it, chaffering with a fisherman.
So, frowning fiercely upon that steward, I crept up that stairway, my
sandals making no sound, and going higher than the door, I stood upon
the stairs and had a fair view of this Sir Bertram and heard much of
what he said....  I would have come to you the sooner, Father in God,
but this was a very pertinent matter and I heard you were saying of
mass."

Then the monk Francis reported to the Prince Bishop much of what that
Sir Bertram had said, but keeping back some of it for the time.  The
Bishop stood before him, clasping and unclasping his hands; the pigeons,
having dispersed about the tiles in the search of pease that had rolled
away, flew now, by ones and twos, out of the little window again.


In the view of the monk Francis the coming of this Sir Bertram meant, as
he under-read that knight’s words, an immediate calm in those parts, but
afterwards, in three years or four, a much greater danger. For, as the
monk saw it, it was the design of that King Henry Seventh to show
himself to the great lords of the North, a very kind, indulgent and
lenient ruler.  So he should gather them under his wing to be a potent
engine against that see of Durham, that powerful kingdom within his
kingdom.  Thus, for the time being, the monk perceived no danger for
that see. He thought—and time would very likely prove him right—that
that Sir Bertram would begin, to the Bishop as to the great lords, with
kind and soothing words, or even with presents.  So, peace being there
established and the memory of King Richard forgotten, the King would
begin to move the lords of the North against that bishopric.  And,
doubtless, the further extent of his design—the bishopric being weakened
by the meeting of the lords—would be to lop off the great lords, one by
one, advisedly and with caution until the King had the upper hand of all
in those parts....

"This is a very fell scheme, my brother," the Bishop said.  "I had
rather the King would march upon me with his flags on high."

"So would all the King’s enemies," the monk Francis said, "for that
would bring him down.  He is not strong enough for that."  He paused for
a moment: "If my lord and prince will let me speak my mind..." he began
again.

"You are here for that," the Bishop said.  "What I need is counsel."

"Then I will say this," the monk Francis began again: "To a mine you set
a countermine and so may we.  This subtle King will by acts of
graciousness win the North parts to him.  My lord and prince under God,
you may do this very much more easily than he.  For, by the grace of
God, in these days you are a very wealthy Prince but he for a King is
very poor, he having great expenses for wars in France and elsewhere
where rebellions break out.  And acts of graciousness, in this world,
end either in gifts of money or the remission of fines, rents and
amercements. These this King cannot come to do, or he will starve.  But
all these things you can do very easily.  If he can spare the nobles a
little he will do it, but he must then press the more heavily upon the
commons and so great cries against him will rise up in these parts....
But you, lord and prince, can be gracious to all.  And so I would have
you show yourself.  Thus, at the end of three or four years this King
may find himself only the poorer for his efforts."

"I hope you may be right," the Bishop said.

"Time will show it," the monk answered, "and the grace of God.  Now I
will talk to you of the Young Lovell....  He is come here again."

"God help me," the Bishop said, "I have been talking of him all this
morning."

The monk Francis said:

"Ah, that is what I had thought.  And it was with that bailiff—the
lawyer, Master Stone."

"It was even with him," the Bishop said.  "He seemed a worthy and a
pious man and full of zeal for this see of Durham."

"Well, you shall hear," the monk said.  "I will wager he came with this
advice—that you should lay hands upon the estates of the Young Lovell
under a writ of sorcery, and so divide them between yourself and the
Knights of Haltwhistle and Cullerford. Thus you should be beforehand
with the Earl of Northumberland who would do as much for the King’s
disgrace in these parts."

"It was even that that he reded me do," the Bishop said.  "He urged the
see should gain much good land thereby."

"And lose much worship," the monk said.  "It is that that Sir Bertram
wishes."

"I can see as much as that," the Bishop answered. "And this Master
Stone—who is an ill-looking man—never told me that the Young Lovell, as
you say, was come again, but said that he was dead and that Cullerford
and Haltwhistle, being by marriage his heirs, would very willingly
divide with me.  He was insistent with me to issue that writ this
afternoon."

"Well, it was a clever, foul scheme," the monk Francis said.  "For well
that bailiff knew the Young Lovell had been seen riding into Castle
Lovell! Hard he has ridden here—if a lawyer can ride hard—to get that
writ against the Young Lovell or ever we could come to you.  So with
that he would have earned great disgrace for you and this see.  But what
I would have you do is to confirm, as far as the see goes, that Young
Lovell in his inheritance.  So it will rest with the King, the Earl of
Northumberland, and this Sir Bertram to dispossess him.  And thus shall
their names stink in the nostrils of all this country-side.  For that
young man is very beloved, by gentle and simple, having fought well
against the false Scots at Kenchie’s Burn, as these eyes did see."

The monk spoke long and earnestly in that sense; and indeed he had the
right of it.  There would have been none in that country that would not
have cried shame on the Church for her greed, if the Bishop had divided
these lands with foul knights like Sir Walter Limousin and Symonde Vesey
and Vesey the outlaw and the Decies.  But if the Bishop would confirm
Sir Paris Lovell in the lands over which the see had rights and
overlordships, great discredit would fall upon the Percy for having, in
a Warden’s Court, essayed to ruin the Young Lovell on a false charge.

And after the monk Francis had talked in that way for some time, the
Bishop was convinced of—nay he shuddered at—the trap into which he had
nearly fallen.  But, he said, the lawyer Stone had so bewildered him
with one legal point and another—such as how the Decies, being knighted
and plighted by the Prince Bishop himself in the name of the Young
Lovell, had all the rights forfeited by that lording.  He would very
willingly resign a portion of his rights by way of fine; it was,
moreover, in the protocol of the Bishops of Durham that no Bishop could
refuse such a gift freely made, to the disadvantage of the see.  And the
lawyer said, from his knowledge of canon law, that, the Bishop having
made the Decies into Young Lovell and a knight of the Church and the
betrothed of the Lady Margaret of Glororem, nothing could undo all those
things but a bull or dispensation of the Pope.

"Well," the monk Francis said, "I have considered that point and have
read in such books as our poor monastery hath, both upon the canon and
the civil law—such as the book of decrees of which the first leaf begins
’_Jejunandi_’ and the penultimate leaf ends ’_digestus erif_,’ or the
book of decretals which begins ’_Nullain res est_’ and ends: ’_in causa
negligenciae_.’  Also I have spoken with the most learned of our
brethren upon this case and with your sergeants of law and your justices
and all with one accord agree that a long law case might be made out of
it.  That Decies hath his grounds of appeal, at least upon the matter of
knighthood and betrothal. For it is very uncertain if you could unknight
him or break his betrothal with the Lady Margaret of Glororem without an
appeal to our Father in Rome.

"As to the matter of the other rights conveyed by that name, that is
much simpler.  For the Young Lovell has only to make appeal to you
through a person of the Church as his best friend.  Then you shall give
him licence, under the decretal ’_in causa negligenciae_’ and he may at
once enter upon his lands by force or how he may...."

"What then should the man called Decies do?" the Bishop asked.  "I am
not very learned in these laws; but that lawyer Stone said he may do
great things."

"For that," the monk Francis said, "he might. But, if I can have a say
with that Decies, he shall hang from a very high tree.  Or, if the Young
Lovell is too tender of his half-brother, for that the Decies is, the
Decies shall at my complaint to your officers and, after a fair trial,
be broken upon the wheel. For before a court non-ecclesiastical he hath
brought false witness against a vassal of your see upon an
ecclesiastical charge, to wit sorcery.  There is no escape for him."

The Bishop was, by that, hot to do grace to the Young Lovell.  And,
after he had made the monk Francis recite over again all that he had
said, he agreed very heartily to do all that that monk asked of him.
For that was a position that jumped very well with Bishop Sherwood’s
character, and one that made all things the plainer to him.  Being a
churchman, subtle rather than vigorous, he desired above all things the
good and glory of his see.  He desired that, so much above his own glory
and good, that in later years he left his see and went into exile rather
than that the bishopric should suffer from the King’s hatred of his
person.  But he could see very well that the bishopric of Durham would
lose rather than gain by taking the lands of a young lord, well loved
and deserving well of those parts.  The Church, as he was aware, was
called, in those days, avaricious, gluttonous and avid of lands and
rent.  But here, by a shining instance, he might show that the
see-palatine of Durham held its hand and so that see should gain in
credit and renown at the expense even of all other bishoprics in the
realm and of the realm itself.  And here was a course of action that
this Bishop could very well understand and set going.  Besides, of his
own predilection, he had a hearty inclination towards such high and
chivalric natures as was the Young Lovell’s.  He saw in him a shining
and armoured protector against the foes of his see.  Seeing things very
much in symbols and pictures, this Bishop seemed to see that young lord,
in silver harness, shining in the sun and raising his sword against the
mists, fumes and flames that beset this fair city of Durham.

Therefore he said hastily to the monk Francis that if that monk would
take a sheet of parchment and write the various matters of canon law and
the rest, he, the Bishop, would commit them to memory, and, that evening
he would call before him the lawyer Stone, the Young Lovell and, if it
seemed advisable, the King’s commissioner and announce to them what his
rede was in all these matters.

So he gave the monk a great sheet of parchment from a chest and the monk
turned round to the pulpit and began to write.  The Bishop walked up and
down behind his back, rubbing his hands delicately together with
pleasure at that their scheme and at the discomfiture of the King’s
commissioner that must ensue therefrom.


Now let us turn for a moment to what passed in the house of the Princess
Rohtraut of Croy, Lady mother of Dacre, during this time, whilst the
monk wrote.




                                  VII


At that heavy beating of iron upon the stair the Lady Margaret and Sir
Bertram of Lyonesse looked into each other’s eyes, crossing glances of
apprehension in the one case and of terror in the other.  For the Lady
Margaret was divided between joy and love and the sad and sorrowful gaze
that three times the Bride of Christ had cast upon her in her dreams.
Sir Bertram, for his part, was filled with dread of sorceries, fearing
for his soul.  For, if in matters of statecraft and the affairs of this
world he was a very cool man, yet—as is often the case with those who
are half men of law, half men of state, new and rising men not very
scrupulous of means but solidly set upon matters of their day—this Sir
Bertram quailed like a dog before thoughts of death, sorcery, the omens
of superstition and hell fire.  So he crossed himself again and again.
For, though much of his talk with those ladies had been wary and
cautious, he had very sincerely believed when he said that this Paris
Lovell had been carried off by a white witch or a magic courtesan.  Such
things he believed in as he believed in treachery, guile, want of faith
in men and the deceit that lies in women, coming from Adam’s snake-wife,
called Lilith.

Only the old Princess leaned forward in her throne-chair, watching the
dark stone doorway with pleasant eyes, for she believed neither in the
sorceries nor the prowess of her grandson, but made sure of finding him
an arrant fool.

So a figure in very shining steel stood in that little painted arch.  At
sight of it, at the very first, the Lady Margaret cried out.  For she
knew very well every detail of the silken dresses and accoutrements of
her lord and love.  And there he stood in his armour of state, fluted,
with long steel shoes and a round helmet without a plume, like the head
of a bull-dog.  This suit of armour she had last seen upon the Decies,
and it seemed to her like a sort of sorcery that he should wear it
there.  For she never thought it was the Decies that stood before her;
she had known too well the young lord’s voice upon the stairs.

How he had come by that suit was no sorcery but a very simple matter.

At Castle Lovell, since they could by no means come at the late lord’s
gold in the White Tower, they were much in need of money; for they could
gather no rents and no fines and no tolls.  The people would not pay
them.  Therefore, in those months past, without remorse they had sold
all such furnishings of the Castle as they could find buyers for.  For
the jewels of the Lady Rohtraut they could not do it very easily, since
the goldsmiths of Newcastle set their heads together and would have none
of them, fearing the reprisals of the Dacres and suits at law and the
like.  But certain hangings and furniture they sold for a good price to
a German of Sunderland, who shipped them beyond the seas.  And certain
arms that they had, more than they had men for, they sold for what
little these would fetch to certain armourers of the town of Morpeth.
Amongst these had been this suit of state.  For this suit was too small
for the Decies; it had galled him very uncomfortably beneath the
arm-pits and between the thighs, when he had played the part of his
half-brother, and he had been heartily glad to be out of it.  It had
been too large for the Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle, so that
they rattled inside it like walnuts in their shells in June.  As for
Henry Vesey of Wall Houses, the evil knight, he said he would be hanged
if he wore the Young Lovell’s armour, for it would bring him ill-luck.
So they sold it for forty shillings to a Morpeth armourer called Simon
Armstrong, who thought he had a bargain.  But he found that neither
knight nor esquire of that countryside would take it of him, for the
reasons given by Henry Vesey.  So there it was in his store.

Now two days before, very early in the morning, the monk Francis, Young
Lovell and ten men-at-arms, well found, had set out from the monastery
of Belford, the monk upon a trotting mule, the Young Lovell, in light
armour, upon Hamewarts, and the men-at-arms upon little galloways, small
horses such as the Scots use when they came raiding over the borders.
But at the monastery gate they found nine men of the old Lovell
men-at-arms waiting to come into Young Lovell’s service.  There was no
room for them to be harboured in the monastery, so they must come along
with the Young Lovell.  And, ever as he rode along—and he went slowly
for that purpose—came men-at-arms and bowmen hastening out of the
hay-fields, where they had taken service, to come under the banner of
the Young Lovell, until he had forty men and more.  And at a cross in
the hill-paths, ten miles below Belford, there were awaiting them
Cressingham and La Rougerie, esquires that had been in service at Castle
Lovell.  They were well armed, upon little Scots horses, and came out of
the hills where there was a deserted tower.  They had with them
seventeen men, and four women that had served in Castle Lovell, and all
were well fed and found, so what they had done in the meantime it was
better not to inquire, though they swore that all they had came from the
Scots’ side of the border.  The Young Lovell was well heartened by the
sight of all these men, and they rode onward, to the number of
sixty-five men and two esquires; twenty-two men having no horses and
holding by the stirrups of them that had.

They made a circuit round Alnwick, for the monk Francis doubted the
friendship of the Earl of Northumberland.  So they went from the high
ground by Hagdon to Eglingham and so, holding always to the hills and
moors, above Broom Park and Overthwarts and across the North Forest,
going south and to the east of Rothbury.  There they deemed themselves
safe of the Percy, and they could take to the lower grounds and such
roads as there were. There being a good road from Eshot Hill to Morpeth,
they made for that, and hit upon it towards two in the afternoon, having
come nearly forty miles since four of that morning because of the
roundabout path they had followed.

There, because they were near his mother’s lands, it came into the Young
Lovell’s head, and seemed good to him to visit these places and take
possession of them in her name.  Therefore they made what haste they
could and so came to the Castle at Cramlin by six of the evening.  This
Castle of his wife’s the late Lord Lovell had very much neglected,
having stripped it of all its furnishings and even of much of the lead
upon the roofs.  And, where there were slates or stone roofing, the
rains and snows had penetrated to the upper floors.  Nevertheless the
lower rooms were sound enough.  So the Young Lovell said that that night
he would sleep there. Mattresses and bedding were brought from the
bondsmen of that place for the Young Lovell, the monk and the two
esquires; the men slept very well upon straw in the stables.  Also the
Young Lovell sent the esquire Cressingham with the men to his mother’s
house at Killingworth, and the esquire La Rougerie with the men to her
other house at Plessey, which stood in a pleasant place.  So then the
monk Francis went to his prayers and the Young Lovell round the
battlements of that smallish Castle.  He noted carefully what stones
were sound and which tottered, and so he came to the conclusion that,
with a little mason’s work well expended, his men might hold it very
well for a space.

Then came back those two esquires, having left five men each in the
houses at Plessey and Killingworth. The houses they reported to be in as
sad a plight as that Castle, or worse, so that it seemed that they must
fall into utter ruin.  At a bondsman’s house the esquire Cressingham had
come upon a fellow calling himself the receiver for the Knights of
Cullerford and Haltwhistle.  This man the esquire had brought with him
and he proved of much use. For, in the first place, he had taken some
money which he had about him and, in the second, he had a great book of
accounts which showed what was due to the Lady Rohtraut from each
holding.  So they kept that fellow in a stable, taking from him the
money and the book.  Both these esquires said that all the men of these
villages and hamlets welcomed the coming of their lord and were ready to
do him suit and service.  In those parts the Lady Rohtraut had nine
thousand acres of serviceable land and twenty of heathery and
indifferent.  So they slept very well that night.

On the morrow they had much to do.  Thus the monk went with the esquire
Cressingham and men bravely armed from farm to farm, warning the men
there that those were the lands of the Lord Lovell and his mother.  They
had that false bailiff well trussed upon a little horse to show them the
way; but long before noon he had begged to be allowed to take up the
service of the Lord Lovell, and so they were the quicker done and had no
hindrances, all the peasants vowing to do their services very willingly.

One other thing was good, and that was that the esquire La Rougerie was
the son of a Frenchman, very skilled in matters of fortifying and
building in stone.  This Frenchman the old Lord Lovell had brought from
France to see to the building of the White Tower, which he wished to
make a citadel, as it were, of Castle Lovell.  And this esquire had
learned much of his father; the Young Lovell could trust him very well.
So the Young Lovell sent that La Rougerie into the countryside to find
masons and stone workers, and he found some, though not many, for most
men of that class worked in the fisheries in summertime, coming back to
building only when the storms drove them off the seas.  The Young Lovell
was minded to have that Castle put first into a state to withstand an
assault and later to have it roofed and rendered fair, with the lower
part of one of the round towers turned into a wheat-pit and another made
into a great pit of brine, in which they could cure whole carcases of
oxen, swine and sheep, to the number of five hundred or more.  So, when
he had showed La Rougerie the weak places he had discovered the night
before, he took thirty of his men for the greater safety and rode unto
the town of Morpeth, Here he sent for the bailiff of that town to come
to the market place and told him that his errand was very peaceable.
For he desired to buy arms and bows for twenty of his men, with
twenty-five pikes and two hundred barrels of arrows and several
pack-horses, and a saker or two for the defence of Castle Cramlin and
ten or more pack-horses to carry all these things.  So the bailiff of
that town answered him very civilly saying that he was glad of that
lord’s visit because he was akin to the Dacres and the Ogles and the
Bertrams and other lords that had been friends to the good town of
Morpeth.  And he did what he could amongst the armourers and citizens
that had arms to sell.  So, in a short time, the Young Lovell had a good
part of what he sought. This would not have been the case so easily but
for the arms that those of Castle Lovell had sold to these very
armourers.  As it was, many of the Young Lovell’s men got back arms that
they had borne in that Castle before.  Then came the armourer called
Armstrong to the Young Lovell and begged him to be his good lord and
pardon him.  This the Young Lovell said he would do if his crime was not
very great.  So that armourer revealed to the Young Lovell that he had
that lord’s armour of state which he had bought for forty shillings, but
no knight of that part would buy it of him.  And he said that if the
Lord Lovell was his very good lord he would pay him again that forty
shillings, but, if not, he might take it and welcome.  Then the Young
Lovell was glad of that armourer, and said that if Armstrong would put
new straps to all places where straps should go he would pay him fifty
shillings for his honesty. So the armourer was very glad.

It was four of the afternoon before the Young Lovell came back to
Cramlin Castle, having nearly all that he needed of harness, pikes,
bows, pack-horses and the rest, but only one hundred and twenty barrels
of arrows, three sakers and a little gunpowder, for the town of Morpeth
could not supply more at that time.  Still it was well enough, and there
he found that La Rougerie had brought masons and carpenters enough to do
his work roughly in a week’s time, and afterwards to amend it fairly and
in permanence. And, towards six, came back the monk Francis and the
others with good news of the bondsmen’s submission.  They drove before
them three young oxen and over thirty sheep and lambs, and these things
were offerings from the various hamlets of the Lady Rohtraut, together
with eleven hogsheads of beer and other things eatable that should come
after.  And these bondsmen promised that for six months they would
supply all that should be needed for the support of such men as the Lord
Lovell should see fit to leave in that Castle, the price being left in
account between that lord and them, and the men-at-arms to be ready to
defend them against raiders if any should come.

So the Young Lovell began to be of better spirits for, with all these
preparations for warfare, he had thought less of the lady of the doves.
And the monk Francis encouraged him in this, though once or twice he
sighed.  But when the Young Lovell asked him why this was, he said it
was because of his cousin that he had slain.  One thing that had given
heart to the Young Lovell was this, that amongst the arms that had come
from Castle Lovell unto the hands of the Morpeth armourers was a fair
lance and rolled round it a small fine banner of silk with the arms of
Lovell upon it.  Now, the Lord Lovell, because of his estate in those
parts, had the right to ride across the lands of the Bishop of Durham
with his banner displayed, and he would have ridden to that city very
unwillingly without it.

So, after taking counsel together, they decided that they would lie down
and sleep at six and, rising at twelve, should ride to Durham so as to
come there at the dawn.  The Young Lovell would take with him twenty
spears and the esquire Cressingham to bear the banner, who was a fine
man of thirty with good armour of his own.  And the twenty spears should
be all fine men on the best horses that they had.  So they should make a
fair show when they rode into the city of Durham; and, the more to that
end, the Young Lovell took with him his armour of state upon a pack
horse, that he might put it on when he was a mile or so away from the
bridge.

The remaining five and forty men with the esquire La Rougerie, who was a
man to be trusted, should remain to hold Castle Cramlin for the Young
Lovell and to aid in the buildings that should go forward there.  In
that way the Young Lovell rode out from a Castle of his own.

And, in that way too, he came before the Lady Margaret and his
grandmother, the Princess Rohtraut, as well as Sir Bertram of Lyonesse,
in his armour of state.  He seemed to survey them for a space through
the opening of his helmet.  This he had kept closed in riding through
the city for fear any friend of the Knights of Cullerford and
Haltwhistle should by chance be in those streets and aim an arrow at him
from a window or from behind a buttress.  Then he pushed up the visor.

Stern he always looked when his face was framed in iron, but so stern as
he looked that day the Lady Margaret considered that she had never seen
him. He had broad, level eyebrows of brown, a pointed nose, firm lips
and a determined chin.  The Lady Margaret knew that he had a pleasant
smile but he showed none of it then, and he paid no attention either to
her or to the Cornish knight.  His grandmother regarded him with a keen,
hostile glance, and with his eyes set upon hers he advanced grimly
towards her.  His short dagger was girt around him, but he had no sword.
So, in that shining harness, he knelt before that old lady on the second
step.  He lifted up his hands and said:

"Madam, Princess and my Granddam, to whom I owe great honour...."

"That is a good beginning, by Our Lady," the Princess said.

"I would not so soon have come to you," he continued in firm tones, "but
that you sent me your commands."

"Well, this grows better and better," the old woman said.

"It is neither out of lack of duty, nor of due awe and natural
affection, that I had not the sooner come," the Young Lovell said.

"That passes me!" the Princess cried out.  "By Our Lady, I do not
understand that speech."

The Young Lovell who towered on high when he stood, and was tall enough
though he knelt, appeared like a great hound, attacked by this fierce
little woman as by a savage lap-dog.

"Madam and gentle Princess," he said slowly, "I cannot easily say what I
would say, for no man would say it easily."

"Then you are on a fool’s errand," the Princess said, "for a wise man
can say most things."  She considered him for a moment and then said
jeeringly: "If you had business in the town, stiff grandson of mine, say
you had business: if you were gone after wenches, lie about it.  But I
care very little.  I sent for you to have your news; so leave the
complimenting and give me that."

"Madam and gentle Princess," he began again, though the old lady grunted
and mumbled.  "I did not come before because I sought assoilment."

"What is assoilment?" she asked.

He answered briefly:

"Pardon for sin, witting and unwitting."

"Well, get on," she said impatiently.

"Lacking that assoilment," he said, "I did not know if I were a fit
knight to come into your presence."

"Why, I am an old horse," she said, "and not to be frightened by a dab
of pitch.  If you never showed yourself but after confession you might
live in a cave, or so it was in my time."

"Then," said he, "know this.  I came to my Castle and they shot upon me.
So I have gathered together certain of my men and have taken my mother’s
Castle of Cramlin and hold it.  So that is my news.  And when I have the
pardon of the Bishop and have paid forfeit, or what it is, I will get
more of my men.  For my standard is set up in Castle Cramlin and my men
come to it from here and there.  So in a fortnight or less I will retake
my Castle; and I shall hang my brothers-in-law, send my half-brother
across the sea, and put my sisters into nunneries.  These are my
projects."

"Body of God!" the old lady said.  "By the Body of God!"

Then the Cornish knight moved round and stood beside the Princess and
spoke to the Young Lovell.

"Ah, gentle lord," he said, "may I ask you a fair question?"

"By God’s wounds," the Young Lovell said, "you shall ask me none.  Who
be you?"

"A poor knight," Sir Bertram answered, "but the commissioner of the most
dread King Henry!"

"Then you are a friend of the false Percy," the Young Lovell said.  "Get
you gone.  You are no friend to me."

And at that the old Princess cried out:

"Body of God!  You have taken Castle Cramlin? Then without doubt you
have taken Plessey House and Killingworth?"

"Madam and gentle Princess," the Young Lovell said, "I have taken and
hold them for my mother. And so I will do for all my mother’s lands
whether round Morpeth or elsewhere."

"Then I have no more to say," the old Princess said.  "Get you gone."
The Young Lovell remained nevertheless kneeling for a space.

"Madam," he said, "it comes to me now that ye have a lawsuit with my
mother for certain of those lands."

"Aye, and I will have them," she said.  "It is not you nor any stiff
popinjay shall hold them from me."  She leaned out from her chair and
cried these words into his face, her own being purple and her eyes
bloodshot.  So he crossed himself with his hand of bright steel.

"Madam," he said, "I cannot talk of lawsuits. They have done me too much
wrong."

"But I will talk of lawsuits," she said.  "By God, I will take a score
of my fellows and drive your rats from my Castle of Cramlin!"

"Madam and gentle Princess," he answered, "you could not do it with ten
score nor yet twenty.  For I have there forty of the best fighting men
of this North country; and in two days I think I shall have six score.
How the rights of this lawsuit may be I do not know.  But my mother’s
necessity is great. She has languished for a quarter year in prison
during which time you have done nothing for her. When the lands fall to
me upon my mother’s death you and the Dacres may have them again.  That
is all that I know.  And so I pray our gentle Saviour to have you in His
keeping; and so I get me gone."

All this while the Lady Margaret had sat motionless, gazing upon her
true love’s face that never cast a glance aside at her.  For it was not
manners that she should speak before that old lady.  But when he was on
his feet and near the door, she ran down from that throne-step, and her
rich robes and her great veil ran out behind her.  The Cornish knight
was already in the stairway, and the Lady Margaret came to it before the
Young Lovell, for he walked slowly on account of the weight of his
armour.  So in the stairway she came before him and held up her hands to
his steel chest:

"Ah, gentle lord," she said, "will you speak no word with me?"  And, in
having said so much, because she had spoken before he had, she had said
too much for manners, and she hung her head and trembled, for she was a
very proud woman.

He looked at her with stern and affrighting eyes.

"Ah, gentle lady," he said, "you are plighted to my false brother."

"No!  No!" she said, "not with my will.  Would you believe I am in a
tale against you, with your false sisters?"

He raised his voice till it was like the harsh bark of the male seal;
his eyes glowed with hatred.

"Gentle lady," he cried out, "ye should have known!"

The sight of this lady had been to him a sudden weariness, like the
sound of a story heard over and over again.  And hot anger and hatred
had risen violently in his heart when she spoke.

But then he perceived her anguished face, the corners of the proud lips
drawn down and the features pale like alabaster.  And he remembered that
all things, to pursue a fair course, must go on as they before would
have gone—even all things to the end.  So that, although his heart was
weary for the lady of the doves and sparrows, he said:

"Ah, gentle lady, I believe you.  I remember me.  My false brother was
inside these pot-lids. You could do no otherwise.  All these things
shall be set in order.  We will sue to the Pope.  So it shall be."  He
could not easily find words; that was very difficult speaking for him;
for still this lady was wearisome beyond endurance to him, because of
the lady of the doves and sparrows.  But he would not let her see this,
for he knew she was a loyal and dutiful friend to him, and he must take
her to wife when he had his Castle again and the dispensation of our
Father that is in Rome.  And indeed she fell upon her knees before him
there in the stairway:

"Gentle lord, my master and my love," she said, "I smote your false
brother on the mouth in that day.  And all my lands are yours and my
towers of Glororem and on Wearside; and all my red gold and all my
jewels of price.  And all my men-at-arms are yours, to the number of
eight score, and two esquires; and all my bondsmen that can bear bows,
and my rough pikemen...."

He stepped back stiffly in his arms, so that he was nearly within his
grandmother’s chamber again. And this he did that he might avoid her
touch. And he said "No!  No!"  That he said because it seemed horrible
to him to have her aid in the retaking of his Castle.  But, before she
was done speaking with her deep and full voice, he knew that these
things too must be.

Therefore he advanced upon her courteously, and stretched out his hands
in steel and raised her up.

"Ah, gentle lady," he said, "all these things shall be, and I thank you.
And peaceful times shall, God willing, repay these troublous ones."

She looked upon him a little strangely; but she held her cheek to him.

"Ah, gentle lady," he said, "I may not kiss you.  For, as I stand before
you, I am a man under a ban, so I think I may not do it until my lord
the Prince Bishop shall have assoiled me and taken cognisance of my plea
to Rome against my false brother."

She wished to have said: "Ah, what reck I of that!" and so to have taken
him in her arms, steel and all.  But that she might not do for fear of
her manners.  For she had been well schooled, and, whereas, she might
well, if she would, give him her towers and lands and men and bondsmen,
still she could not go against the ban of the Church; for the ladies of
her house of Eure were very proud ladies. Neither, for pride, though the
tears were wet upon her cheeks, would she ask him what ban it was that
he lay under.

So, seeing those her tears, he said as gently as he could—for when the
head of the axe is thrown the helve may as well go with it:

"Ah, gentle lady, be of very good cheer!  For I am assured of assoilment
by such a very good churchman that I know no better.  And, that once
had, shall we not make merry as in the old time? Aye, surely, for if you
will, I will well.  And so, that it may be the sooner done, I will go to
that good prince."  Yet, as he said these words, he sighed.  Then he
added: "In a little while, gentle lady and my true love, I will come
back to you."

So she stood back in the stairway to let him pass; but it was piteously
that she looked after him. For she had never seen him so earnest and so
sober. He seemed the older by twenty years, and never had his foot been
so heavy on the stairs; it was like the beating of a heart of lead.


Now when the Young Lovell came to the stair-foot where there was a
square space, there there was standing the Knight Bertram of Lyonesse.
And so he stood before the Young Lovell that that lord could not pass
him or get to the street.  And hot rage was already in that lording’s
heart, for never had he talked so painfully as he had done to that Lady
Margaret, and it seemed as if his breast must burst its armour.  Up to
him stepped that Cornish knight and spoke in gentle tones, bending his
particoloured leg courteously, in the then fashion of London town.

"Gentle lording," he said, "you called me even now the friend of Henry
Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Let me say presently that by my office I
stand above that lord, though far below him in my person.  So I am no
friend of his, though not his foe."

The Young Lovell held his brows down and gazed upon this man beneath
them, breathing heavily in his chest.

"Go on," he said.

"Then I will tell you this," the Cornish knight went on.  "I have heard
you twice say ye were beneath a ban.  Now that may well be and I think
it is along of a White Lady."

The Young Lovell loosened his dagger within its sheath.

"My silken knight," he said, "ye were never so near your death."

"Gentle lording," that knight answered, "if I die another will take my
place and no one will lament me.  But it is my function and devoir to
talk and so I take it."  He paused for a moment, and then he went on:
"God forbid that I should say word against Holy Church; I am not one
that does it.  Yet I will say this: If Holy Church will not raise the
ban from you, yet I, Sir Bertram of Lyonesse, who have some skill at
inquiries, will so put this matter to the King and dread lord that,
without more words said, that judgment of the Warden’s Court against you
shall be revised, and if those false Knights shall withhold your Castle
from you you shall have instant licence to take it again and do justice
upon them as you will. And the fines due of you under that judgment
shall be remitted to you.  For I acknowledge that therein the Percy hath
overstepped himself; for firstly he can give no judgment and foul no
bill upon a suit of sorcery.  And secondly, I am convinced that here was
no sorcery.  For, touching that White Lady...."

"Sir Knight," the Young Lovell said, "I bid you stand aside from that
door and see a thing...."  Then Sir Bertram stepped down into the
roadway.

The Young Lovell took out his dagger and raised it above his shoulder.
It was of the length of his forearm.  The door that stood against the
wall, being open, was of thick oak, studded with large bosses of iron.
The Young Lovell brought forward that dagger over his head and it sank
into that door up to the hilt, and sank in and passed through the door,
and so into the mortar between two stories and the door was nailed
there.

"Sir," the Young Lovell said, "seek to withdraw that dagger."

"Nay, that I cannot do," Sir Bertram said.

"Neither can I nor any man," the Young Lovell said.  "And I am glad of
it.  For if you had spoken more upon that theme, that dagger should have
gone through your throat.  And this I tell you: there is no knight in
all the North parts that could have done that, and I think none in all
Christendom.  How it may be in Heathenesse I do not know, for I hear
that the Soldan has some very good knights.  And that I did to show you
that I am no braggart if you will hear me further."

"Very willingly will I hear you further, ah, gentle lording," the
Cornish knight answered, and again he bent his knee where he stood in
the street.

"Then," the Young Lovell said, "it is because I can do such deeds as
that you have seen that all the men of the North parts will willingly
follow me upon any journey.  So it would be well if the Percy let me be.
For—an he will not I will come to Alnwick and to Warkworth with twice
four thousand men for this Percy is little beloved.  And so, with
scaling hooks and hurdles and faggots and the rest I will smoke him out
of Northumberland and hang him upon the first tree in this County
Palatine.  And that you may tell your King."

"Ah, gentle lording," Sir Bertram said, "I tell you that judgment is
already reversed."

"Of that I know nothing," the Young Lovell said. "But so it is as I have
told you.  If your King will dwell at peace with us of the North parts
he may for me, and I ask nothing better.  And so much more I will say,
that he has good servants; for no man ever went nearer his death than
you when you spoke to me now.  And I think you know it well, yet you
gave no ground and spoke on.  I do not like your kind, for I have seen
some of them about the courts of princes, here and elsewhere and you are
the caterpillars upon the silken tree of chivalry that shall yet destroy
it.  Yet that was as brave a feat as ever I saw, and your King is happy
if he have more such as you."




                                  VIII


In the meanwhile that monk Francis sat writing in the Bishop’s room and
the Bishop walked up and down behind his back.  Once or twice the Bishop
paused in his walking as if he wished to speak to the monk, but again he
walked on and the monk Francis continued to write rapidly, pausing now
and then and looking upwards as he sought to remember the words of the
decree beginning: "Jejunandi," or the Decretal: "Nullam res est...."

So at last the Bishop stood for a long time near the door, looking down
at the nails of his fingers, and then suddenly:

"Touching the matter of sorcery, my brother in God...." he said.

The monk swung quickly round upon his stool:

"There was no sorcery," he said determinedly. "Those three of Castle
Lovell were perjured."

"So I gathered," the Bishop said softly; "I considered that; it appeared
so from what was said to me by the lawyer, Magister Stone."

The monk looked with the greater respect at the Bishop.

"Father in God," he said, "will you tell me how you came upon that
thought?"

The Bishop smiled a little faint smile of pleased vanity.  For he liked
to be considered that he was a subtle reader of the hearts of men.  In
that he thought that he was the superior of this monk.

"When a man comes to me," he said, "with two tales, to each of which he
will swear to find many witnesses, I am apt to think that one is false.
So it was with this our friend called Stone."

"May I hear more?" the monk asked.

"It was in this way," the Bishop said, "and now you will see why I was
troubled in my conscience when you found me.  This lawyer Stone took it
for postulated that I thirsted for the lands of this Young Lovell.  He
would have it no other way.  Though once or twice I said I loved justice
better than land he would have it no other way, but took my protestings
for the solemn fooleries of a priest.  He is, I think, a very evil man,
with the face of an ape, stiff gestures, and the voice of a door hinge."

"I know the man very well," the monk Francis said.  "He has twice
proposed to me the spoliation of widows with false charters for the
benefit of our monastery."

"So," the Bishop said, "he would have it that I was greedy of gold and
lands for my see.  And indeed I am if I may have them with decency.  So
he saith to me under his breath that, in two ways I might have Castle
Lovell.  One tale was that this Young Lovell had capered with naked
witches and others round a Baal fire.  For that he had as witnesses
himself and another gossip called Meg of the Foul Tyke and that bastard
called the Decies."

"It is because of that false witnessing that the Decies shall be broken
on the wheel," the monk Francis said.

"Well, it was false witnessing," the Bishop said. "And so I divined.
For, afterwards, this lawyer, brings along another story.  And it was
easy to see that this lawyer considered this the better story of the two
and would be mightily relieved of doubt if I would adopt it.  And it was
this."

The monk Francis looked now very eagerly upon the Bishop, who stood
straight and still in his furred gown, lifting one hand stiffly:

"There is in the village of Castle Lovell," he said, "a fair lovechild
called Elizabeth.  Some will have it that the father is the Young
Lovell, some that it is of the Young Lovell’s father.  How that may be I
do not know, but it is certain that that child is of the Lovell kin and
Harrison is its name.  Now, as May comes in, that child, as children
will, goeth afield seeking herbs for a coney that the mother had
a-fattening.  So the child Elizabeth goeth further and further amongst
these hills of sand where green stuff is rare.  For, that she might not
pluck herbs in the bondsmen’s fields, that are laid down to hay, that
child very well knew.  So, looking up suddenly, that child perceived
upon a high sand-hill, and sitting upon a brown horse that she well
knew, a knight that very well she knew too, being the Young Lovell.  For
this lording was accustomed to bring the child Elizabeth pieces of sugar
and figs and to give her fair words and money to the mother.

"So that child had no fear of the Young Lovell, but ran up to him crying
out for sugar and figs.  But he paid no heed to her, only sat there upon
his horse. So the child looked further and perceived, upon a white
horse, a lady in a scarlet gown, in a green hood, who smiled very kindly
at her.  So that child was afraid, as children are, and ran home.  That
was in the midst of May....

"Now came fell poverty into the hut where dwelled that woman and her
child.  The last pence were gone, the fatted coneys eaten; they must go
batten upon roots, and when that mother sought relief of the Ladies
Douce and Isopel in the Castle they jeered and spat upon her.  And ever
the mother cried that if the Young Lovell would come they would find
relief.  Then at last that child took courage and said that she knew
where the Young Lovell was and would lead her there.

"So she leads her mother through these hills of sand—and it was then
close to July, the 29th of June as it might be.  There upon the hills of
sand that mother perceives the Young Lovell.  He sat upon his brown
horse, in his cloak of scarlet, with his parti-coloured hose of scarlet
and green.  He wore his cap of scarlet set about with large pearls...."

"These pearls," the monk Francis said, "I have as a gage in my aumbrey
of Belford."

"His long hair fell down upon his shoulders and he looked away.  Then
wearily that mother climbed the sand-hill crying out to the Young Lovell
for gold. He never looked upon her but gazed always away; nevertheless
he fingered his girdle and found his poke and cast down to her a French
mark of gold."

"I thank God he did that charity," the monk Francis said, "even if he
did not know it; and I think he did not."

"Why let us thank God," the Bishop said.  And he asked: "Then this is a
true tale?"

"I think it is," the monk Francis answered. "But, of your charity, tell
me more."

"Then," the Bishop said, "that poor woman fell upon that piece of gold
in the sand and kissed it. And, as she looked up over it to kiss too the
Young Lovell’s hand, so she saw a fair, kind woman.  Red hair she had
and was clothed in white with a jewel of rubies in a white hat.  Such a
kind, fair lady that woman had never seen, and the Young Lovell gazed
upon her and she into his eyes.  Then tears blinded that woman and grief
and pain at the heart.  So she came back to her hut, she knew not how;
and, indeed, she knew no more until there came the lawyer Stone holding
a cordial to her lips.

"For, you must know that that child, taking that piece of gold from her
mother’s fingers and being all innocent, went away into the village to
buy food for her mother.  So the first man she came to, seeing her with
it, took her to the house of the lawyer Stone to have the right of it.
Then the lawyer having beaten her, she told him that the Young Lovell
had that day given it to her mother.

"So the lawyer, avid of news of the Young Lovell, jumped like an ape to
that poor hut.  But it was two days before that woman could speak,
though he nursed her and fed cordials to her never so.  Then that lawyer
got men-at-arms and scoured the country according to her directions.
But upon the Young Lovell he never came."

"By that day," the monk Francis said, "he was in my cell commending
himself to God."

The Bishop looked apprehensively upon the monk Francis.

"Then this you take for a true tale," he said. "Woe is me."

They were both silent for a while, and then the monk said—for they were
looking with faces of great weariness upon the tiles:

"Father in God, tell me truly, I do pray, all that you know from this
lawyer."

"Brother," the Bishop said, "God help us, this lawyer was insistent that
the tale of sorcery against this lording should be let to lapse or
changed for another, such as that he consorted with old fairies and
worse."

"How then," the monk Francis said, "would he put aside his former
perjuries?"

"He would say," the Bishop said, "that his eyes deceived him, magic
being in the air, and that on that morning the Young Lovell rode
furiously past him going as if he knew not whither."

"Why so he did!" the monk Francis said, "but that shall not save the
lawyer.  His former oaths are written down."

"Brother," the Bishop said, "it is that lawyer’s plan to begin another
suit in the courts ecclesiastical and there not to swear at all, but
ignoring the bill before the Wardens, to bring many witnesses about this
fairy lady."

"What other witnesses has he?" the monk Francis asked.  He spoke like a
man without hope.

"You must know," the Bishop said, "that this lawyer during these months
was enquiring of the Young Lovell in the past.  So in Newcastle he found
a master-tailor to whom the Young Lovell for long owed four pounds.  And
one day in February this tailor, needing money, went out from Newcastle
towards Castle Lovell, riding upon an ass.  And so, upon the way, he saw
a lady that had a white horse and was little and dark.  He was in
tribulation for his money and pondered much upon the Young Lovell
whether he was a lording that would pay him or one that would have him
beaten at the gate.

"And, as he thought that, this lady looked upon him as if she would ask
the way to where the Young Lovell dwelt.  She was little and swart and
had a green undercoat.

"And again in February there was a ship boy that went from Sunderland
with a white falcon his ship had brought from Hamboro’, for the Young
Lovell.  Now, upon this voyage, this ship boy had conceived a great love
for that falcon even as boys will that upon ships are beaten by all and
conceive loves for dumb beasts.  So that ship boy went pondering with
the white hawk and wondering and almost weeping to think that that
lording might be a cruel master to the falcon.  For he loved that falcon
very well.  So he was aware of a kind, fair lady with a white horse that
looked upon him as much as to say that the Young Lovell would be a
gentle and kind lord to that fowl.  She was a great fair woman in a
German hood of black velvet—such a one as that ship boy had seen and, as
boys will, had conceived an ardent love for, in Hamboro’."

The monk Francis said: "Ah," and then he brought out the words: "Father
in God, I too have seen her—and twice.  When I thought of the Young
Lovell."

Then the Bishop groaned lamentably; three times and very swiftly he
walked from end to end of the cell, holding his hands above his head.
Then he ran upon a shelf and with a furious haste pulled out a large
book bound in white skin.  He threw it open upon his bed and bade the
monk come look at a picture.

This picture was all in fair blues and reds and greens, going across the
two pages of the book.

"I had this book in Rome," the Bishop said, "of a Greek called Josephus.
Look upon this picture."

The picture showed a mountain with trees upon it. And round the mountain
went a colonnade of marble pillars.  In between the central columns,
where it was higher, sat a grey-bearded and frowning man.  Naked he was
to the waist and he was upon a throne of gold. At his left hand was an
eagle; in his right the forked lightning of a thunderbolt.  Beside him
stood a proud woman in purple with a diadem of gold.  In the next temple
was a helmed woman that leaned upon a great spear; next her, a man all
furious, that held up a great round shield and a pointed sword.  Over
against him reclined a great man with a lion’s hide who leant upon a
club; beyond him a man all white with the sun in his hair and beyond
that a youth with wings upon his feet, upon his cap and upon a rod,
twined with snakes that he held.  All these were in the temple, and many
more, such as a woman in a chariot drawn by oxen, and an old crowned man
rising from the blue waves of the sea.

Then the Bishop laid his trembling imperious fingers upon a place higher
up the mountain, above the temple.

"Look upon this," he said.  There, amongst olive trees, the monk
perceived a pink, naked woman.  In one hand she held a mirror into
which, lasciviously, she smiled.  Her other hand held out behind her a
wealth of shining hair like gold.  Above her, clouds upon the blue sky
turned over and let down a rain of pink roseleaves.

"I do not know who these be," the monk Francis said.  "I was never in
Rome."

Then the Bishop said harshly:

"Was the woman you saw like this woman?"

"Not so," the monk answered, "she had dark hair divided down the middle
and parted lips.  She was like the cousin that I slew and so she
smiled."

The Bishop groaned.  And so he wrung his hands and cried out:

"As God is good to me, I saw that naked woman stand so and smile so, in
my vestiary, this morning after I had said mass.  Six times I made the
sign of the cross and she went not away.  I was pondering upon the case
of the Young Lovell....  She went not away....  Pondering....  God help
me, a sinful man....  The eremites of the Libyan desert.... But no, it
was not so....  No temptation...."

The waves of terror shook that Bishop with the thin features.  His hands
were so knitted and squeezed together in a paroxysm that it seemed the
blood must spurt from his finger nails.  And even as he stood, so he
groaned with a hollow and continuous sound.  Then the monk Francis cried
out:

"Those are the fairies!  Those women are the fairies!  God help you,
Lord Bishop, you cannot condemn my friend because he has seen them, if
you cannot keep them out of your own vestiary....  For all about this
world they are....  They peer in upon us.  Thro’ the windows they peer
in!  Looking! Looking!  You cannot condemn my friend....  Like beasts of
pray in the night they peer into the narrow rooms....  Hungering! ...
Hungering!"  His voice was like heavy, fierce sobs and it sounded
against the Bishop’s moans.

"God forgive me," he cried out, "it was upon these that I thought when I
comforted my friend with talks of angels and saints....  I lied and
thought I was lying....  Angels!  These are the little people! The
little angels, as the country people say, that were once the angels of
God.  But they would not aid Him against Lucifer, doubting the issue of
the combat.... They it is, have brought this fine weather we enjoy. A
great host of them, like fair women, is descended upon this country.
They cannot live without fine weather...."

Both these churchmen were weakened with fasting and prayers when they
might have slept.  The monk Francis had great fears, their minds leapt
from place to place.  That long, bare room seemed surrounded with hosts
of fair, evil fiends.  He imagined devils with twisted snouts and long
claws scraping and scratching at the leads of the painted glass and at
the stones of the mortar.

Then the Bishop cried out upon him with a fearful voice, calling him
ignorant, a fool rustic monk, a low, religious filled with barbarous
superstitions.  He came close to the monk Francis and cried into his
very face:

"God help me, thou fool, bleating of fairies.... All those women were
one woman! ... And again God help me!  When I heard thee bleat
ignorantly of the prowess of that young knight I did not believe
thee....  But now I do believe he is the most precious defender we have
in this place....  I will asperge his shining armour with holy oils....
I will bless his sword....  God help him....  How shall he fight against
a goddess with a sword of steel.... Yet she is vulnerable!  All writings
say she is vulnerable...."

He began a pitiful babble that the monk could not well understand, of
Italy where he had lived many years as the King’s Friend.  So he spoke
of cypress groves and the ruined corners of old temples, and fireflies
and nights of love.  He spoke of earth crumbling away in pits and great
white statues with sightless eyes rising out of the graves on
hill-sides, tall columns that no one could overset, and the gods of the
hearth.  Of all these things the monk Francis knew nothing.  The Bishop
spoke of crafty Italians with whom he had spoken, and of subtle Greeks
of the fallen Eastern Empire; and of how this subtle creature, as the
credible legends said, dwelt now, since the fall of Byzantium, upon a
mountainside in Almain, and of an almond staff that flowered....

Then that Bishop cast himself upon his bed, face downwards, and so he
lay still.

That monk sat there many hours upon the little stool, and whether the
Bishop slept or thought he could not tell, for the Bishop never moved.
Then that monk considered that that Bishop had many and strange
knowledges, having passed so long a time in foreign parts.  And there
was fear in that monk’s heart, for he thought he was with a sorcerer
that aimed to make himself pope by sorceries.  And afterwards he fell to
considering of how this Bishop should deal with his friend the Young
Lovell, for that Bishop was master and lord.

And so, being the harder man of the two, he went over in his mind the
necessity that that see had for a champion in those parts and how there
could be none so good as the Young Lovell, even though that knight were,
as he feared, a man accursed and certain of a pitiful end.  Yet he might
as well do what he could for the Church before that end came.  And the
monk thought of the evil King and the subtle Sir Bertram and the grim
coward that the Percy was and the discontent of the common sort and how
that might be used.  And he thought of all these things for a long time,
as if they were counters he moved upon a chess-board.  And he cried to
himself: "Ah, if I were Bishop I would control these things."

And then he remembered that it was long since he had prayed for the soul
of his cousin that he had slain.  So he set himself upon his knees and
sought to make up for lost time in prayer.  Those windows faced towards
the west, being high over the river that rushes below.  And from where
one knelt he could see the tower of St. Margaret’s Church through the
open casement of stained glass.  And at last, towards its setting, the
sun shone blood red through all those windows of colours, ruby, purple,
vermeil, grass green and the blue of lapis lazuli.  All those colours
fell upon the tiles of the floor that were hewn with a lily pattern in
yellow of the potter.  Twenty colours fell upon the figure of the
Bishop, lying all in black upon his bed and as many upon the form of the
monk where he knelt and prayed.  Scarlet irradiated his forehead, purple
his chin and shoulder, and to the waist he was bluish.

The voices of the pigeons on the roofs lamented the passing of the day
with bubbling sounds, the great bell of the cathedral and many other
bells called for evening prayer in the fields; it was late, for that was
the season of hay-making.  Then that praying monk perceived, through the
small window, a great red globe hastening down behind the tower of St.
Margaret’s Church and, with a sudden deepening, twilight and shadows
filled that long room because of the opaque and coloured windows.

And ever as the monk prayed there, he was pervaded by the image of his
cousin’s face—Passerose of Widdrington she had been called, for she was
held to exceed the rose in beauty.  In that darkness where he knelt he
was pervaded by the thought of her face with the hair divided in the
middle, the smooth brow, the so kind eyes and the parted lips.  He knew
she must be in purgatory for that space, for he had killed her with an
arrow in the woodlands, unassoiled, and he could not consider that his
prayers yet had sufficed to save her so little as five hundred years of
that dread place.  Yet, tho’ he knew her to be in purgatory, in those
dark shadows he had a sense that she was near him so that he could hear
the rustle of her weed moving around him.  She had loved green that is
very dark in shadowy places.  A great longing seized upon him to stretch
out his arms and so to touch her.  Then he remembered that it was that
face that had looked kindly in upon him in his cell, and he groaned and
cried upon our Saviour and His Mother to save him from such carnal
longings.  He had much loved his kind cousin whilst he had been a rough
knight of this world.  Many had loved her, but he alone remembered, and
he considered how she that had been most beautiful was now no more than
a horrible and grinning skull, God so willing it with all beauty that is
of this world and made of the red blood that courses through the veins.

At the sound that he then gave forth he heard another sound which was
that of the Bishop where he stirred upon his bed.  And, in the deep
shadows, he was aware that that Bishop sat up and looked upon him.  And
at last John Sherwood, Bishop Palatine spoke, his voice being harsh and
first.

"Brother in God," he said, "I have determined that this Young Lovell
shall have my absolution and blessing upon his arms and the sacrament of
knighthood and all the things of this world that you desired for him.
Touching the things that are not of this world I will not say much, but
only such matters as shall suffice for your guidance.  For of these
matters I know somewhat and you nothing at all."

The Bishop paused and the monk said humbly:

"Father in God and my lord, I thank you."

"I lately rebuked you," the Bishop said, "for meddling brutishly in
things of which you knew nothing.  For you cried out to me ignorant and
rustic superstitions, such as it is not fitting for a religious to
meditate upon.  And so I rebuke you again and I command you that you ask
of your confessor such a penance as he shall think fitting for one that
has miserably blasphemed, and in a manner of doctrine.... Now this I
tell you for your guidance.... This apparition that you have seen and I,
appeareth with many faces and bodies, being the spirit that most snareth
men to carnal desires.  So doth she show herself to each man in the
image that should snare him to sin, with a face, kind, virtuous and
alluring after each man’s tastes.  That is the nature of such false
gods.  For this is a false god, such as I have discerned you never, in
your black ignorance, to have heard of.  But Holy Writ, which I have
much studied and you very little, after the fashion of certain monks,
enjoins upon us to believe in the existence of false gods.  So there are
ever strange and cold creatures, looking upon this world with steadfast
eyes. For Lucretius says, that was a writer, pagan yet half inspired:
’The universe is very large and in it there is room for a multitude of
gods.’  So I rede you, believe of false gods."

"Father in God, I will," the monk said, "I perceive it to be my duty.
For now I remember me the Church enjoins upon us to be constant in
fighting against such, therefore they must exist."

"Then this too I command you as a duty," the Bishop said from the thick
darkness, "that for the duration of his life you quit never this knight
but be ever with him, seeking how you may win him from the perception of
this evil being.  For signing of the cross shall not do it, neither
shall sprinklings with holy water such as avail with the spirits of men
deceased or with Satan and such imps.  For this is even a god and the
only way you may prevail against it is by keeping the mind of your
penitent upon the things of this world of God.  If you shall perceive
this form of a woman here or there you shall speak to him quickly of
setting up an oratory, or charity to the poor, or riding, in the name of
God, against the false Scots.  This shall avail little, but somewhat it
may. Do you mark me?"

"Father in God," the monk said, "you put me in much better heart than I
was before.  For if I may, I will tell you how once I have done."

So the monk, from the darkness, told the Bishop how for the second time
he had seen that lady.  This was upon the road below Eshot Hill, going
to Morpeth, near the farmhouse called Helm.  Here, as he rode with the
Young Lovell, a little before his men, he had seen that lady come out of
a little wood and mount upon a white horse with a great company of
damsels upon horses about her.  And so all that many, brightly clad,
rode down to a little hillock and watched that lording pass them, all
smiling together. So that monk for the first time had been afraid that
this was no St. Katharine and no angel of God.

But the Young Lovell had gone drooping in the hot sun and thirsting
within himself and had not seen that lady.  And at first that monk had
wished to pull out his breviary and bid the Young Lovell read a prayer
in it.  But in his haste he could not come upon it amongst his robes for
he was riding upon a mule.  So, in that same haste, he had made certain
lines with his finger nail upon the saddle before him and commanded the
Young Lovell to look upon them saying it was a plan of Castle Lovell
that he scratched, and the White Tower.  And to have money, he told the
Young Lovell, that lord must go with a boat to below the White Tower
where it stood in the sea.  And so Richard Raket should lower him gold
in baskets at the end of a rope.

And the Young Lovell had looked down upon these markings attentively and
said it was a good plan and never looked up at that lady and her company
who sat there, all smiling, until they were passed.

"Well, she can bide her time," the Bishop said; then he said: "Brother
in God, I have never seen this Young Lovell, but I perceive that he must
be fair in his body."

"He is the fairest man of his body that ever I saw," the monk answered,
"And as I have heard said by servants that went to meet him and his
father, to Venice, he was esteemed the fairest man that those parts, as
all the world, ever saw.  But how that may be I know not."

"You may say he is the fairest knight of Christendom," the Bishop said.
"That is very certain.  I know it that have never seen this lord....
But so it is that I see you are not so great a fool as I had thought.
And it is ever in such ways that you shall deal with this Young Lovell
as you did then."

"I will very well do that, if I may," the monk said.  "And if I may do
nothing more I will spit upon that foul demon who without doubt beneath
a fair exterior beareth a beak or snout, claws, and filthy scales...."

"Nay do not do that," the Bishop said, "for if God who is the ancient of
days permitteth these false gods to walk upon this godly earth that is
His, shall we not think that they are in some sort His guests? Or so I
think, for I do not know."

So by that hour both these churchmen were very hungry and weary too.
For that reason the fury was gone out of them, and it was ten at night.
So the Bishop called for torches in the gallery and went into a little
refectory that he had in that part of the Castle.  Whilst these two ate
heartily together, the Bishop sent messengers to the higher officers of
the monastery to rouse them from their beds and to say that shortly
after midnight, as soon as they might, the Prince Bishop begged them to
rise from their sleep and sing a _Te Deum_ in the cathedral, upon a very
special occasion.

In the black cathedral, near the steps that pass into the choir, the
Young Lovell knelt.  Beside him, since he was so great a lord, stood the
esquire Cressingham supporting his banner and his shield and having in
his arm the helmet of state.  There were lay brothers up before the
altar, moving into place a great statue of Our Lady that ran upon
wheels. This they were bringing from near the North door to stand before
the high altar.  This statue was twelve foot high of brass gilt and, the
better to see, these lay brothers had placed a candle upon Our Lady’s
crown.  That was all the light there was in the great space that smelt
of incense and was sooty black.

As near as she might to the black line in the floor—beyond this no woman
may go in the cathedral of Durham and even Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine
had been beaten with rods by the monks when she passed it to join King
Edward—beyond this line knelt the Lady Margaret of Glororem in the
darkness, and behind a pillar was the lawyer Stone who would fain speak
some words with the Young Lovell.  For he wished to have sold the people
of Castle Lovell to him if the Young Lovell would pay him a small price.

The lawyer had waited all that night from seven or earlier.

Then a little noise began to be heard in the great cathedral, and two
little boys came in and lit candles by the North door and then came a
page bearing a great sword.  He leant it against a vast pillar and began
to laugh with the little boys that had lit the candles.  Then there came
in the Bishop with his chaplain and the monk Francis.

So the Bishop went and stood before the Young Lovell and said he had
permission of them of the monastery to hear that lord confess himself
there where he knelt.  So the esquire Cressingham removed himself to a
distance and drove away the little boys when they would have approached.
And so the Bishop absolved the Young Lovell and bade him rise from his
knees and go with him to where the Lady Margaret of Glororem knelt in
darkness.

Her too he bade rise from her knees, and so walked up and down between
them, saying comfortable things and exhorting them, when the Pope should
have given them licence, to marry one another and live faithful each to
each and to be charitable and piteous to the poor and be good children
of Holy Church. And so by twos and threes monks began to come in, and,
going behind the high altar, they sang a mass with a _Te Deum_, for it
was just past midnight.

Then the Prior of that monastery placed between the lips of the Young
Lovell the flesh of our Lord. The Prior wished to do this that he might
do honour to that young lord, and that great boon of giving him the
sacrament.  And, afterwards, with the sword that page had brought,
sitting in his stall the Bishop made a Knight of that lord.

In that way the Young Lovell had his knighthood and his pardon.




                                PART III



                                   I


On the fourteenth day of July in the year of our Lord, 1486, in the dark
of the night between two o’clock and four, the Young Lovell took the
Tower of Cullerford, setting fires all round it and beneath it and
driving out all its inhabitants.  On the seventeenth, a little before
six in the morning, he stood on the height of the White Tower and looked
down into Castle Lovell.  This was a very still dawn, the sun being
already risen, for it was near midsummer.  The sea was a clear blue, and
in a sky as clear that sun hung, round and pale gold.  To the eastward,
towards the seas called The Lowlands, were several monstrous grey
shapes, going up into the heavens like tall columns in a church and
twisting in a writhing manner as if they had been pallid serpents in an
agony.  They advanced towards one another as if they had been dancers.
Separated again and so ran before the pale sun, that they appeared to be
sentient beings.  But, waterspouts such as these, far out to sea, were
no very unfamiliar sight in those parts during hot weather and no man
heeded them very much.

The better to have a sight of this Castle of his—for the great courtyard
was occupied with many hovels, so that even from on high it was
difficult to see who there was moving—the Young Lovell mounted upon the
parapet of the battlements and stood looking down.  He was all in his
light armour, for it would fall to him to be very active that day, so
that he had steel only upon his chest, his arms, and the forepart of his
thighs, shins, and feet.  In such accoutrement he could spring very
easily over a wall five foot in height, and his round helmet was a very
light one of black iron surmounted by a small lion’s head.

This Castle that he now looked down upon was a very fair great Castle.
The battlements which were a circle of nearly a quarter of a mile, had
in them three square towers of three stories each and two round ones of
two, the peaked roofs of all these towers being of slate.  In the centre
of the space enclosed by the battlements rose up the keep, a building of
four stories, four round towers being at each corner that spread out at
the top with places for pouring down lead, Greek fire, or large stone
bullets upon any that should assault those towers.  But, in between the
keep and the battlements, there had gradually grown up a congeries of
hovels like a dirty thatched town.  The Young Lovell had never liked
this in his father’s day, but then he had been the son and had had no
say in these matters.

This state of things had arisen, although the tenure of the lands
appertaining to the Lovells was as follows: that is to say, that in time
of war each of the outer towers should be manned by able-bodied fellows
from the one hundred and twenty-seven hamlets, villages, townships, and
parishes that the Lovells owned.  Thus, giving on the average five
capable tenants to each of these, there should have been six hundred men
to hold the outer walls, being forty men to each of the towers in the
walls and two hundred and eighty for the battlements between.  The inner
keep should in such a case be held by the best men-at-arms and the
knights and the squires that a Lord Lovell should have about him.  And
the tenure of the six hundred bondsmen from those hamlets and parishes
was such that, by giving their services for indefinite periods during
times of war for the defence of that Castle, they were excused all
further services, or service in any other parts.  For it was held, that
the defence of that Castle was very necessary for the protection of the
realm from the false Scots if they should take Berwick and so come down
into England by that way.

That had been the original tenure, but by little and little, when the
Percies had had those lands of the Vescis by the treachery of Bishop
Anthony Bek, they had begun to make changes in these tenures, desiring
to have men to accompany them upon journeys whether against the Kings of
England or Scotland, as suited their humour.  So that in many townships
and parishes the Percies bargained with their bondsmen for so many days’
service in the year and rent-hens and other things.  And this the
bondsmen had agreed to readily enough.  For, on account of the perpetual
takings and re-takings of the town of Berwick by the Scots and the
English, there was never any knowing when they might not be called in to
defend that Castle for a year’s space at a time, and so their farmings
would go to rack and ruin, and their towers, barnekyns and very parish
churches lie undefended at the mercy of the false Scots.  And when the
Lovells had bought these lands of the Percies they had changed the
tenure still more, not so much because they desired to ride upon
journeys, for by comparison with the Percies, they were stay-at-homes,
but because, as a family, the Lovells were greedy of money and desired
rather the payments of rents and the service of men in their own fields
than much military doings.

So they had had to hire men-at-arms by the year or for life.  Thus, in
that Castle, which had been meant to be defended by six hundred men upon
varying services, sleeping on the floors of the towers, or here and
there as they could, the Lovells would have a certain number of
men-at-arms, but seldom more than two hundred and fifty that dwelt there
in the Castle. And because these men-at-arms would have wives and
children and kith and kin, or they would not stay there, they could not
sleep to the number of many families in these towers, whether round or
square, that went along the battlements.  Some of them, it is true, took
these towers for homes, making great disorder, keeping them very foul
and filthy, shutting up the meurtrières, or slits for arrows, in order
to keep out draughts, and much unfitting that Castle for defence when
sieges came.  For there, in those towers which should be places of
defence, there would be warrens of children crying out and shrieking
women.  And other men-at-arms had built them hovels between the
battlements and the keep, building with mud and roofing with rushes, so
that all that space was like a disorderly town with little streets and
sties for pigs and middens and filthy water that ran never away.

Thus this place had become a source of manifest danger, but the Young
Lovell’s father would not clear out all these places, because to him
they were a source of much profit, for he employed the women and
children and the hangers on and rabble to work in his fields all the
year round, and so he had much money by that means.  But because he
recognized that his Castle was thus in some danger—for any enemy that
won on to the battlements might, by casting down a few torches, set all
these roofs on fire, and so the inner keep would stand in the midst of a
furnace and all those people within the battlements be burned and slain
like rats in a well—the old Lord Lovell had determined to make a safe
place for himself and for the money that he and his father had hoarded
up, being a very vast sum.  So he had hired to come to him out of France
an esquire called La Rougerie, being the son of the man that the King
Louis XI of France used to build all his fortresses. So this La Rougerie
had considered very well the situation and extent of this Castle that
upon three faces was thundered upon by the seas at high tide. Then that
La Rougerie perceived at about ten yards from the North-east end of the
Castle, a crag of rock well in the sea even at high tide, in shape like
a dog’s tooth and nothing useful except to gannets, and not even to them
of much use, for they would not build their nests so near the Castle.
So this La Rougerie had advised that Lord Lovell that he should build
upon that rock a great slender but very high tower, with walls of stone
six yards in thickness.  For the first eighty feet of its height there
should be no openings at all, not so much as slits for the firing of
arrows.  And in the windowless chambers there the Lord Lovell should
keep his treasure walled up. And above these there should be rooms for
the guards with arrow holes in the form of crosses, and above these
fairer rooms with somewhat larger windows, where the Lord Lovell and his
family might retire, if so be his Castle should be taken, and above
these dwelling rooms should be attics and granaries where gunpowder and
ammunition should be stored and arrows and the quarrels of cross-bows,
and there the sakers should be kept so that they should not rust upon
the battlements in time of peace.  And there were pulleys for hauling up
these cannons on to the battlements above.  Seven of these sakers there
were that could cast a bullet weighing thirty pounds of stone or fifty
of iron, in full flight into the furthest part of that Castle upon which
those battlements looked down as a church steeple looks into the
graveyard.  For this tower was intended solely for the protection of
that lord and his people in case any enemy should take the Castle
itself.  They would retreat there by a little narrow drawbridge giving
into a very little door at the foot of the tower, being thirty feet
long, and over a piece of sea that by nature of the currents, and by
reason that the Frenchman hollowed out the rocks, ran there almost
tempestuously if there were any wind at all, which happened on most days
in these parts.  And once there, the Lord Lovell could thunder upon his
Castle thus taken by enemies with cannon balls of stone and iron, with
arrows and with iron bolts shot by arbalists.  There could not any inch
of that Castle go unsearched, for the battlements were one hundred feet
above the keep itself.

This then was the White Tower upon which the Young Lovell stood.  Up to
the seaward side of this tower he had come from a boat, just before
sunrise, climbing up iron spikes that were inserted in the mortar for
that purpose, and coming to a very small door in the guard room.  This
tower had been held for him by Richard Bek, Robert Bulman, and Bertram
Bullock, who had been its captains, and dwelt there in his father’s day,
being much trusted by the old Lord Lovell.  These esquires, with ten
men, had held this tower very stoutly against them of the Castle that
could in no wise come to them.  To them had resorted ten or fifteen
other stout fellows, that had slipped in over the drawbridge or came
there by climbing up the spikes of the seaward wall.  They victualled
themselves how they could from the sea; but indeed they had food enough
within the tower of the old lord’s storing, except that at first they
lacked of fresh meat, which in the summer time was a grievous thing.

What the Young Lovell could not tell was how many men they of the Castle
had, for some reported that they had as few as a hundred and eighty, and
others as many as three hundred.  How that might be it was very
difficult to say, for there was a constant coming and going between
Castle Lovell and Cullerford and Haltwhistle, as well as Wallhouses,
where the evil knight, Henry Vesey, had his men.  In short, if they had
withdrawn all their men into Castle Lovell they might have three hundred
well armed between them.  And this the Young Lovell thought might be the
case, for when he had taken the tower of Cullerford there had been very
few men there, or none at all.  So he judged that Sir Simonde Vesey
would have been forced by agreement to withdraw all his men from
Haltwhistle to the defence of that Castle if Sir Walter Limousin had
agreed to leave Cullerford defenceless.  And without doubt, too, the
Vesey of Wallhouses would have his men there as well.  Thus there might
be as many as three hundred stout fellows there, and that might make the
adventure a difficult one, for the Young Lovell had not gathered any
more men himself, though what he had were mostly very proved fighting
men, there being five knights that were his friends, twenty-seven
esquires, one hundred and twenty of his own men, and those the best, and
one hundred and seventy that were the picked men of his friends and of
the Lady Margaret of Glororem.

So he had gone up to the battlements to see how many men he could
observe in that Castle.  But because he could not very well see between
the openings in the battlements, he seized his chance and sprang on to
the very top of the stones.  He had observed the watchman on the keep
below him. This man walked regularly from side to side, keeping his
watch, and at each turn he would be gone regularly for as long as you
could count ninety-eight. So, in the absence of that watchman, he stood
there and looked down.

But until he stood there many things had gone before; there were so many
people active about his affairs.  There were the Bishop Palatine, Sir
Bertram of Lyonesse, the old Princess of Croy, the Lady Margaret, the
Earl of Northumberland, the bondsman Hugh Raket, and the people in the
Castle themselves.  And all these ran up and down that county of
Northumberland upon the Young Lovell’s affairs.

Let us consider them in that order.

First there was the Bishop Palatine, John Sherwood. He did not stir
himself much.  Nevertheless he sent a messenger to the people of the
Castle—the Knights of Cullerford, Haltwhistle, and Wallhouses, as well
as the Decies.  He warned them that he had given his full absolution to
the Young Lovell, and had accepted his homage as a tenant-in-chief of
the See of Durham.  He commanded them, therefore, on pain of absolution,
to evacuate the Castle and lands of that lord.  Those in the Castle
replied with an assurance of their ready and prompt obedience to the
Prince Bishop.  They said that they would immediately set the Young
Lovell in possession of all such lands and emoluments as he held as
tenant-in-chief of the Palatine see.  They would do it immediately upon
his producing to them the title deeds and charters of such lands of his.
For, as matters were, they did not know which of his lands and townships
he held of the Prince Bishop and which of the King, their most dread
lord.  As for his holdings from the King, those they could not, nay,
they dare not, surrender; for these had been adjudged to them by a writ
fouled in the court of the Warden of the Eastern Marches.  That might be
a small matter in itself, but, in addition to the assigning of the lands
to themselves, there went certain huge fines to the King, as was fit and
proper.  At that moment they were very ready to surrender their own
holding of the Castle, but they could not themselves pay the fine to the
King, for they had not so much money amongst them.  Supposing,
therefore, that the Young Lovell held that Castle of the King, they
would be guilty of high treason if they surrendered it without paying
those fines, and they could not pay themselves, neither could they have
any security that the Young Lovell would do so.

So they said they would very willingly surrender all the lands that that
lord held of the Palatine see as the Young Lovell should produce to them
his charters and show which was which.

This was a very cunning answer, for by professing to be so ready to
surrender at the command of the Bishop that prelate was precluded from
proceeding to their instant excommunication which he would have done.
That would have caused at least half of their men, if not a greater
proportion, to fall away from them, for there was a sufficiency of piety
left in the North parts.  Moreover, as against that answer, the Bishop
was advised that he could not, as he would willingly have done, send his
own forces with the Young Lovell against the Castle.  For it was true
enough that, until the Young Lovell could appeal against that judgment
of the Lord Percy’s, those false knights held a certain part of his
lands in the interests of the King, so that the Prince Bishop could not
well war upon them.

As for the Young Lovell’s deeds and charters they were hidden up by the
Knight of Haltwhistle in his tower at that place, so that, for the
moment, he could by no means come at them and it was difficult for the
Bishop’s advisers to say how he might have them again.  For they had not
even any certain evidence that those muniments were at Haltwhistle.  The
Young Lovell had the news of Elizabeth Campstones, his old nurse, and
she was a prisoner in the Castle.  It was true that the lawyer Stone had
by that time come round to the side of the Young Lovell, and he was
assured that those charters and deeds had been removed to the tower at
Haltwhistle.  Still he had not seen this done, for they had gone at dead
of night.

Therefore the Bishop wrote another letter to them of the Castle, saying
he was assured that they and no others held all those deeds and
summoning them immediately to surrender.  To this the Decies answered
that he had not those deeds and papers: that they were very certainly
not in that fortress as far as he commanded it: that he would very
willingly surrender them, but he did not know where they were.  He
imagined that they might be in the White Tower over which he had no
control.

The lawyer Stone said that that might very well be the truth that was in
the Decies’ mind.  For that ignorant fool was mostly heavy with wine.
The evil Knight of Wallhouses had counselled the others that they should
make the Decies commander in name of that Castle at the very first, so
that if any penalties should fall on any heads for the seizure it should
be on the Decies’.  Moreover, they had removed the muniments without
telling the Decies, so that they might the more easily be rid of him
when it served their turn.

Thus the Bishop’s advisers said that here was a very difficult and
lengthy matter to deal with.  For if the Bishop should write to any one
of those cunning people for those deeds he would immediately, or
beforehand, pass them on to the other and say he could not surrender
them since he had them not.  If on the other hand he wrote to them all
at once they would give the deeds to their wives or to some safe person
and so make the same answer.  So they must issue writs against all the
county at the same moment.

So far the Bishop had got in those fourteen days. In the meantime it was
the turn of the Knight of Lyonesse.

This Sir Bertram rode well attended to the Castle of Warkworth to talk
with the Earl of Northumberland and to lay before him all the truth of
that matter, and how the King did not wish that the North parts should
be enraged against him.  And at first the Earl treated this Cornish
knight with little courtesy.  But very soon that Sir Bertram showed to
the Earl a paper that he had of the King to empower Sir Bertram to
remove the Earl from the wardenship of the Eastern Marches if the Earl
would not do all that Sir Bertram bade him.  And Sir Bertram proved to
the Earl how necessary it was, the King’s purse being at that time in no
good condition, to win the goodwill of the great lords of the North.  He
said that the Earl might take all that he could get from the poorer
people, but the nobles he must keep his claws from.

Then the Earl agreed with Sir Bertram upon that matter and they set
their heads together to see what they might do.  And here again it was
no easy matter to act by course of law.  For there was no doubt that the
Earl had given his judgment against the Young Lovell, and there was no
process that he knew of by which he could reverse a judgment that he had
once given.  The Young Lovell must make an appeal to the King in Council
and that was a long process.  The Earl was willing—though not
over-willing—to call out his own ban and arrière ban and to take Castle
Lovell by due course of siege.  But, if he did that, he must kill
utterly the Decies, the two other knights, Sir Henry Vesey of
Wallhouses, and the two sisters of the Young Lovell.  Moreover, to do as
much, the Earl must draw off a great number of his men, and he did not
trust some of his neighbours over much.  Also, if any one of those
persons escaped he or she would have cause to begin endless lawsuits
against the Percy for slaying the others or even for taking the Castle
from them.  For they had his own writ for holding it.  Moreover, the
Young Lovell would by no means hear of the Percy’s laying siege to his
Castle.  For all that Sir Bertram could say, he declared that if the
Percy did this he would fall upon the Percy’s forces with his own men.
He said that, in the first place it would be black shame to him; in the
second, the Percy must needs bang Castle Lovell about more than he
himself would care to see, before ever he came in; and finally the Young
Lovell shrewdly doubted whether the Percy would ever come out again once
he was in.

In the same way the Young Lovell would have no men of the Percy to help
him in the attack on his Castle, for he would not trust the Earl of
Northumberland. Thus the Knight of Lyonesse did very little of what he
was most minded to do.  For he wished not only to help the Young Lovell
and so make him a friend to the King, but he desired to reconcile him
with the Earl of Northumberland that there might be peace in the North
parts.  However, Sir Bertram achieved this much, that the Young Lovell
would let the Lord of Alnwick be in peace if the Lord of Alnwick would
let him be, and that was something gained, for at first the Young Lovell
had declared that he would try it out with the Percy as soon as he had
achieved his first enterprise. But the Percy sent him a very courteous
apology, saying that he had delivered his judgment against the Young
Lovell only because he must do so as a justice according to the law as
the lawyers advised him and that now he was very sorry that he had done
it.

For now the raider Gib Elliott was boasting in all the market towns that
he had access to, saying that he had held the Young Armstrong prisoner
for three months and had ransomed him in Edinburgh.  This Elizabeth
Campstones, his foster-cousin, had got him to do, sending him word by a
little boy and the promise of fifty French crowns.  And indeed he was
very glad to do it, since it might not only cause strong fellows to
resort to him for the renown of it, but it might gain him the friendship
of the Young Lovell, which would be a good thing for his widow when he
came to be hanged at Carlisle.

And everybody was very glad of that rumour—the Bishop Palatine because
it was more to the credit of the Young Lovell whom he supported; the
Earl of Northumberland and Sir Bertram of Lyonesse, because it afforded
them an excuse for writing broad letters to the King and his Council,
asking that the former judgment given by the Earl might be reversed
because of the perjury by which it was obtained. The Young Lovell was
glad of it too.  He thought that it was better for his bondsmen that
they should not believe that their lord had spent three months gazing on
a fairy woman.  For that otherwise they would believe and that it was
some make of sorcery, for all that the Bishop had given him absolution.
The Young Lovell considered that it is not always good for the lower
orders, set in their places by God, to know truths apart from the truths
of Holy Church. For the lower orders have weak brains wherein too much
truth is like new wine in feeble bottles.

But the Knight of Lyonesse, who had been bidden by King Henry, if he
could, to establish himself in the North parts with lands and worship,
and to do it, if possible, without calling upon the King to pay for it,
went upon another enterprise before June was fourteen days old.  For on
all hands he heard that the Lady Rohtraut of Castle Lovell was the
richest dowager for lands in all Northumberland, and by the disposition
of his mind he was not desirous of marrying a young girl that might make
a mock of him or worse.  Moreover, he heard that the Lady Rohtraut was a
fair enough woman of forty-three, with a good temper if she were
well-used and not dishonoured, and that he thought he could do well
enough.  So he was doubly anxious to be of service to the Young Lovell,
for, the more he heard of it, the more he was certain that this lady
would make a good match for him, and that so he would please King Henry.

For her lands were broad and mostly fertile for the North; her Castle at
Cramlin would be a very strong Castle after the Young Lovell had
finished the repairs to it at his own expense and it stood very handy at
the entrance into Northumberland, so that with help in men from the
King, he might very easily work against troubles in that part, whether
they came from the North or the South.

So, being in that mind, he went after ten days to pay his devoirs to the
old Princess of Croy, for, after he had dwelt with her for one day, he
had considered that she desired to charge him too much for his lodging
and that he could do better for himself at an inn, where he could send
out for his meat and have it cooked by his own man at the common fire.
He had enquired of the prices of meat in that town and found that that
was so.

But now he wished that he had not done that, since he might have gained
more of the old Princess’s favour by paying her exorbitant prices.
However, he found that that was not the case, for that Princess had so
great a respect for money that she esteemed a man the more for being
careful of his purse strings, even though it hurt her own pocket.  So
she greeted him with pleasure and said that she wished her son, Lord
Dacre, had been another such.

Sir Bertram had observed a great white mule—the largest he had ever
seen—to stand before her door, and she told him that she was just about
to set out upon a journey.  For, said she, and her face bore every sign
of fury, the Young Lovell, as Sir Bertram had heard, had treated her
with lewd disrespect and she was minded to read him a lesson.  "Madam
and my Granddam and gentle Princess," he had said to her—and she
mimicked his tones with so much anger that she spat on each side of her,
"my mother has languished in prison during half a year and all that time
you have done nothing for her."

And now, the old woman said, she was going to do something for her
daughter that the Young Lovell would never dare to do.  For upon a
pillion on that mule, behind her old steward, she was about to ride to
Castle Lovell.  No guards she would take and no bowman, and there was no
other Christian in the City of Durham that dare do as much in those
dangerous lands.  And being come to Castle Lovell, she would release her
daughter with her own hands and all alone, and what make of a boasting
fool would that Young Lovell appear then!

The Knight of Cornwall, when he heard those words, bent one knee on the
ground and begged that that Princess would take him with her, for he
would gladly do so much for that fair lady as well as witness the
Princess doing these things.  The Princess looked at him sideways in a
queer glance and said that he might do if he would bring no men-at-arms
to spoil the fame of her feat.  He answered that he had the courage for
that, but he said gravely that it might be for the comfort of the Lady
Rohtraut, who had not the courage of her mother and would fear to travel
alone, if his men-at-arms to the number of forty followed behind them,
and so, meeting them at Belford or somewhere in that neighbourhood,
guarded them on the homeward road.  The Princess said that he might do
that.

So they rode out and in four days’ time they came to Castle Lovell.  The
Princess was on the white mule behind her steward and Sir Bertram was on
a little horse.  For, although he would have presented a more splendid
appearance to the Lady Rohtraut upon a charger, he did not wish to be at
the charges for horsefeed for such a great animal, whereas the galloway
could subsist off the grass and herbs that it found by the roadway,
though all green things were by that time much withered by the drought.
Such weather had never been known in the North parts.

They met with no robbers; only, as they went near the sea to avoid the
town of Morpeth so that the Young Lovell should not hear of this
adventure, he being at Cramlin all this time—near High Clibburn and just
north of Widdrington Castle there met with them Adam Swinburn, a broken
gentleman with ten fellows and would have robbed them.  But when he
heard how they were going to rescue the Lady Rohtraut that all the world
was talking of he burst into an immoderate fit of laughter.  For he had
never had such cause for amusement as to see this fat old woman holding
on behind a lean old servingman, with a man all in silks and colours
with a great brown beard upon a little horse beside her, his feet
brushing the ground.  And these three were going to storm a mighty
Castle that no forces before ever had sufficed to take.  So, when he had
done laughing, he rode with them a great piece of the way, even as far
as Lesbury and past Warkworth.  For he said that if the Earl of
Northumberland saw them he would certainly rob them and so deprive that
countryside of a great jest.  Sir Bertram found this Adam—who was
red-headed like all the Swinburns—very pleasant company, and when they
parted Sir Bertram swore that when it came to hanging that Adam he would
pray the King, if he could not save his life, at least to let it be done
with a silken rope.

So, on the fourteenth day of June, at eleven in the morning—and that was
seven hours after the Young Lovell took and burned the tower of
Cullerford—the mule being very tired and the galloway none too fresh,
that company of five, men and beasts, climbed wearily up the hill to
Castle Lovell.  The captain of the tower called Wanshot where the gate
was, let them pass, for he could not see any danger from this old woman
and the man in silks.  At the door of the keep the Princess slid down
from her mule, and pushing the guards there in the chest with her
crutch, she went past them into the great hall and the guards let Sir
Bertram follow her.  In the hall, and crossing it, they found Sir Henry
Vesey devising beside a pillar with his sister-in-law Douce that was a
little woman.  The Princess with a furious voice bade this Lady Douce
fall upon her knees, for this was her granddam.  That the Lady Douce
did, for she could think of no reason to excuse her from it.

Then the Princess Rohtraut began to call out for the keys of her
daughter’s room, and various men came running in as well as the Lady
Isopel, that was the other grand-daughter.  There was a great noise, and
so Sir Bertram of Lyonesse drew Sir Henry Vesey behind a pillar, and in
a low voice strongly enjoined on him to let the Lady Rohtraut go.  For
he said that he was the King’s commissioner and that all that were in
that Castle were in a very evil case, for very likely it would soon be
taken and all the men there hanged.  And he said that Sir Henry was in a
different case from the other leaders and that he, Sir Bertram, promised
to save his life and gain favour for him with the King if he would let
the Lady Rohtraut go.  Moreover, he whispered that, Sir Symonde his
brother being dead, Sir Henry might have his lands and be free to love
his sister-in-law as he listed.  For the rumour went that this evil
knight was over-fond of the Lady Douce, and it was in that way Elizabeth
Campstones saved her life.  For, when there was talk of hanging her for
having talked to the Young Lovell, she told the Lady Douce that she
would inform against her to her husband—which well she could do. So the
Lady Douce begged her life of the others.

And after Sir Bertram had talked for a time to Sir Henry Vesey, making
him those fair promises, Sir Henry sent a boy for the keys of Wanshot
Tower. When he had them he begged that Princess very courteously to
follow him, saying that he would take her to her daughter and so set her
free.  Then began a great clamour between the Ladies Douce and Isopel.
The Lady Isopel said that Sir Henry should not do this, the Lady Douce
that he should, for she was in all things the slave of Sir Henry, and
that the Lady Isopel told her very loudly.  But the Knights of
Cullerford and Haltwhistle had ridden out to see if they could have news
of the Young Lovell, for they knew that he was gathering his forces to
come against them.

So Sir Henry did not at all heed the clamour of the Lady Isopel, but
walked very grandly before the Princess Rohtraut to Wanshot Tower, and
sparks of triumph came from that hobbling old woman’s eyes. So when he
was come to the door on the inner side of the wall Sir Henry gave into
the hands of the Princess the two keys, one of that door and one of the
room where the Lady Rohtraut was.  Then the Princess went into that
tower, and after a space down she came again, and with her were the Lady
Rohtraut and Elizabeth Campstones.  The Lady Rohtraut took nothing away
with her but the clothes she had on her back.  Only in her great sleeves
she had her little lapdog called Butterfly.

They went as fast as they could up the Belford road, for they were
afraid of meeting with Cullerfurd or Haltwhistle.  But they had only
been gone a little way—the Lady Rohtraut and Elizabeth Campstones riding
on Sir Bertram’s galloway—when they came upon Sir Bertram’s men that
were riding over the lea to find him.

That was the first sight Sir Bertram had of that lady whom afterwards,
to the scandal of all the North parts, he married.  For he was accounted
a man of very mean birth and she a very noble lady.  But he made her a
very good husband, doing her proper honour and very ably conducting her
lawsuits, so that she had never a word to say against him.


As for Sir Henry Vesey, when the Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle
came back, the Lady Isopel cried out against him, calling him a false
traitor.  But Sir Henry said that the King’s commissioner had given him
very good reasons why they should let the Lady Rohtraut go.  As thus:
The Young Lovell, as they had known for a week, held that lady’s Castle
of Cramlin as well as her houses of Plessey and Killingworth and all her
lands.  They, on the other hand, held her title deeds, so that was all
they could have.  If they could have known of the taking of Castle
Cramlin earlier, they might have taken it again, by going there in a
hurry, but now the Young Lovell sat there, and he was a very difficult
commander, and every day more men came in to his orders.  They could
never get him out of that Castle.

But they held that lady only in order to force her willingly to resign
those very lands to them.  What, then, would it avail them to hold her
any longer, since, if she resigned them twenty times over, the Young
Lovell would never let them go?  As for threatening to slay that lady if
the Young Lovell did not give them her lands, that was more than they
dare, so it would enrage all that countryside against them.  Even as it
was, some that they had counted on as being their friends had fallen
away and, if that went further, they would never be able to have fresh
meat from their towers.

So Sir Henry gave them many excellent reasons for his action.  The
Knight of Cullerford would have grumbled against him, for his wife, the
Lady Isopel, set him to it.  But his brother, Sir Symonde, said he had
done very well, for his wife made him say that. The Decies was drunk and
took no part in that council.  Moreover, they were all afraid of Sir
Henry Vesey, and he treated them like children that must do his bidding.




                                   II


Indeed they had few of them much joy in that Castle where at first they
had thought to have had great mirth.  Only three days before Adam
Swinburn, that had sworn to stand their friend, had ridden to a knoll
near at hand and had asked to have speech with Sir Symonde Vesey, who
was more his friend than the others.  So Sir Symonde had gone to a
little window that was near the ground in the tower called Constance,
and from there had spoken with him.  And Adam Swinburn had said that in
no way could he any longer promise to aid them, for it was grown too
dangerous.  He preferred to rob upon the roads.  And he counselled them
very strongly to make a peace with the Young Lovell who was gathering
many men, all the countryside being his friends, and had sworn to hang
every man of them that was a leader from the White Tower, and to put his
sisters into nunneries.  And he said that John of Rokehope and James
Cra’ster the younger, as well as Haggerston and Lame Cresswell, who
desired to make their peace with King Henry, were all of like mind with
him.

It was upon his homeward journey from saying this that Adam Swinburn had
come upon the Princess Rohtraut and Bertram of Lyonesse.

All these people, Cra’ster, Haggerston, Lame Cresswell, Adam Swinburn,
and others had, in the earlier days of their being at Castle Lovell,
held high revel there with them.  They were mostly rude and boisterous
gentry of very good family who, having been ruined fighting for or
against King Edward IV, King Richard or King Henry, were outlawed and
lived by robbery, which was also the case with Sir Henry Vesey, of
Wallhouses.  And when those of the Castle had at first seemed to be
triumphing these raiders had made great cause with them.  They hoped
that thus they might get their lands again of the King.  So they had
feasted there and drunk and slept in one tower or another along the
walls, and had sworn to hold those towers if ever Castle Lovell was
attacked.

But, by little and little, all of these gentry had wanted money, and of
that those of that Castle had very little or none at all to give them.
All the old Lord Lovell’s money was in the White Tower, and the bondsmen
and other feudal debtors of Castle Lovell refused them their dues.

These things were very sore blows to those of the Castle.  They had
hoped that Richard Bek, the captain of the White Tower, would surrender
that money to them so that they would have been able to give some of it
to those boon companions.  But Richard Bek would not even answer their
summonses; and when they had begged the outlaws to aid them to take the
White Tower, James Cra’ster had answered courteously for the rest that
they would very willingly have done it had they had wings, but they were
not gannets nor yet the angels of God, and so they could not.  It was
the same thing when those of the Castle asked the outlaws to ride down
among the bondsmen that would not pay their rent-hens.  None of them
would do it.

For the truth of the matter was that Adam Swinburn and the rest were too
good friends of Hugh Raket, Barty of the Comb, Corbit Jock, the Widow
Taylor with her seven able sons, and the rest. They were the most
capable rievers that they could find to ride under their leadership into
Scotland or elsewhere.  Even Sir Henry Vesey, of Wallhouses, had their
aid and company at times.

For the matter of that, Sir Henry Vesey, of Wallhouses, was not so very
eager to aid them of the Castle; as the time went on he grew less keen
about it.  For what they got out of it beyond the shelter of the stone
walls he could not tell.

At the first his brother and Sir Walter Limousin had promised him his
share of the plunder in the Castle and the money in the White Tower.
But the plunder in the Castle had been a small matter. It was not much
they had got for the armour sold to Morpeth, though he had taken some of
the best pieces and sent them for safety to Wallhouses; they had got
very little for such furnishings and carpets as they had sold to the
German at Sunderland, and the jewels, as has been told, they could not
sell at all.

They had the Castle, but in it not much more than two hundred men, which
was little to hold so so great a place with.  Thus they could not hold
it, as castles are held, as a place from which to ride out and rob in
the Borders; they could not spare the men.

So, when Adam Swinburn and the others understood how that case really
was, they went, one after the other, away from the towers in the wall
where they had slept with their men.  They went with courtesy, saying
that they would come again and defend those towers if there were need of
it.  But the truth of the matter was that all of the fresh meat was
eaten, which is a thing very unbearable in summer; the best wine was all
drunk, for they had pressed heavily on the liquors in the early days;
they had tired of all the serving maids that there were in the Castle;
the Lady Douce was occupied with Sir Henry Vesey; the Lady Isopel was
ugly and a shrew.  So they had neither desirable wine nor women; not
much prospect of meat nor gold, and what else should keep them?
Therefore they rode away.

Then those of the Castle sat down there to wait until Richard Bek, the
captain of the White Tower, should surrender, so that they might take
the gold. But that was a long matter.  For Richard Bek and his men had
at their command a great store of the best commodities that had belonged
to the late lord. He had stored them in that strong place that was made
for it.  Sugar even they had and pepper and pippins, and the best wine
and figs in honey.  They of the Castle had not even fish for Fridays or
none but salted cod.  But they could see Richard Bek and his men
catching fish from the sea with long lines.  The water did not come up
far enough to let those in the Castle catch fish even at high tides; but
to the foot of the White Tower which was further out it came at all
times, and the Lord Lovell, under the directions of the French
castle-builder, had had the rocks there hollowed away so that a boat
could ride there very comfortably when the weather was not too rough.
Nevertheless, over that sort of boat-house a machicolation jutted out,
so that the boats of any enemy could be swamped with great stones or set
burning by means of Greek fire.

Thus those in the Castle could perceive those of the Tower receiving
from the sea the carcases of sheep, goats, and small bullocks, so that
those men lived very well and comfortably, and there seemed little
reason for their ever rendering up that place which the Lord Lovell had
built very cunningly for just such an occasion.  Of wheat in the Castle
they had a sufficient store, and also of salt meat and stock fish.

For two of the towers in the outer wall, that called Constance and that
called de Insula, after the Bishop of that name, were nothing less than
the one a wheat pit and the other a brine cistern.  Those towers
contained a chamber each, in the upper story, but all beneath it, to the
ground, was windowless space.  In the brine that filled thus the tower
Constance there floated the carcases of two thousand sheep, one thousand
swine, five hundred goats, and five hundred oxen.

Thus they had enough of that sort of food, and in addition they had a
great quantity of peas in a barn. But of fresh meat they had none at
all.  When they wished for it they must send for beasts to Cullerford or
Haltwhistle, and on the second occasion that they did this they lost
fourteen steers and a quantity of sheep and goats.  For, as their men
drove these beasts along by the Roman Wall, in a very lonely spot, there
came springing down upon them a great number of men well armed, but with
their faces blacked.  These killed two of the Castle Lovell men and
drove away all their cattle through a gap in the Wall towards the North.
Those in the Castle thought that this had been done by Haggerston and
Lame Cresswell, who were fast friends, and by Barty of the Comb and his
fellows.  But they had no proof of this, so they could not even fyle a
bill against them in the Warden’s Court.  Moreover, three weeks before
they had heard that a vessel was come to Hartlepool that had a number of
cannon on board and more than she needed for her defence.  These they
desired to buy so as to try conclusions with the White Tower.  They had
with them at that season a Ridley of Willimoteswick as a guest.  He was
going by sea into Holland, and to this Ridley they confided the buying
of such cannon as he could get for them from that ship as well as a
great store of gunpowder, for this Ridley was a very honourable man and
they could well trust him.  So they gave him a hundred and fifty pounds.
One or other of those knights might have gone on this errand, but by
this time they were all grown very irritable and suspicious, and
believed each of them that the others would work him some mischief if he
went away even for a little time.  For there they were kicking their
heels in that fine summer weather, without comfort or occupation.  They
hardly dared to ride hunting without such a troop of men-at-arms as
scared all the deer out of the woods, and at that season of the year
they should have been riding into Scotland for their profit and to do
feats of arms.  Yet there they sat.

A week after that they had a letter from that Ridley of Willimoteswick
to say that he had not bought their cannon and should not.  For he had
heard from his cousin Ridley, that was the monk Francis of Belford, how
the Young Lovell was alive that they had sworn to him to be dead.
Moreover, that lord had done no sorcery at all, but all that was false
witnessing.  Therefore Ridley of Willimoteswick counselled them very
earnestly to give up that Castle to its rightful lord or he would never
be their friend again.  Moreover, he said that the monk Francis advised
him that the hundred and fifty pounds they had given him for the
purchase of cannon was no money of theirs but belonged of right to the
Young Lovell.  How that might be he did not know, but he was determined
to buy them no cannon and to hold that money in his own hands until the
rightful ownership should be determined.

Then those of the Castle cried out on the evil that there was in their
world and time, and that there was neither faith nor truth in man.  The
heat blazed down upon them; the Castle stank, and now terror began to
come into their souls so that the women wakening in the night or walking
round the corners of the stony corridors would scream out suddenly. For
on all hands they heard how the Young Lovell’s men resorted to him and
how Richard Bek had sent him basketsful of gold from the White Tower,
lowering them to boats that came on his behalf in the dawn. And knowing
him as well as they did, they knew that he was a very fierce and cruel
man to evil-doers and destroyers of order in his lands.

Then there came those letters from the Bishop and spread dismay amongst
them, for the Lady Isopel had a great dread of priests and raised
perpetual outcry in the Castle, asking that it should be given up to the
Bishop.  So they answered those letters as best they could.  Then came
other letters from the Earl of Northumberland in which he reded them
very strongly to give up that Castle and sue for mercy. For, said the
Earl, he must now withdraw from them all his countenance and he had
written a broad letter to the King in his Council praying him to reverse
the judgment that that Earl had given, on false witness brought before
him, against the Young Lovell.

So, upon that, they sent for all the armed men they had from Cullerford
and Haltwhistle and Wallhouses, and kept men continually on the walls in
arms, for they could not tell at what moment the Young Lovell might not
break in upon them like a raging wolf. And at last Sir Henry Vesey said
that the moment was come for them to make the best terms that they could
with their kinsman, and that if they would not he would get him gone
from that Castle with all his men, for who could tell at what moment
that lord might not burn down Wallhouses itself?  Therefore they sent a
letter to the Young Lovell at Cramlin Castle where they heard that he
was, saying that if he would surrender to them half his mother’s lands
and ten thousand pounds in gold they would give up to him that his
Castle and go to live in their own houses and towers, and as for the
Decies the Young Lovell might deal with him how he would.

To that letter no answer came and their messenger that bore it never
came back.  Fear fell still more upon them because of this silence, in
which they seemed to read better than in any letter the menacing nature
of their kinsman’s fell spirit.  And at that time they began to talk of
running each to his own home, and this they would have done but that
they feared that in that way the Young Lovell would fall upon them the
more easily, each one in his little tower.  Moreover, their own men
would by no means suffer this.

These men were of several minds.  Some had been promised great sums of
money to come into that Castle, and they would by no means let the
Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle go unless they had their pay, but
proposed to hold them prisoners there in the hope of receiving pay from
the Young Lovell.  Others thought that they could very well hold that
strong Castle, beat off the Young Lovell and take the White Tower, if
one of their number were elected their captain instead of these
irresolute knights.  Others desired to murder those knights and their
ladies, and to take the jewels that they had and so to scatter about the
country each to his own intent.

The men of Sir Henry Vesey were, however, faithful enough to him.  He
made the others pay them at least, though they could not pay their own,
and even without it they would have been his very good servants, for he
was always a fortunate commander in raids, being as cunning as a fox and
very brave.  So he knew himself to be very safe, and he assured the Lady
Douce that she need have no fear, for his men would protect her as well
as him.  Of late he had thought much of the Lady Margaret Glororem in
the way of love—more particularly when he had considered the Young
Lovell to be dead.  And indeed that lady had no hatred for him, since
she considered him to be cunning and humorous and brave.  And possibly
she would have married him, for marry somebody a rich young maiden must,
be her heart never so broken, in the North.

So, in that time, Sir Henry Vesey and the Lady Douce had quarrelled
bitterly, for she was most jealous.  But since the Young Lovell had come
again they were once more friends.

So there they all sat and waited, the Knights of Cullerford and
Haltwhistle riding out daily a little way to see what news they might
get.  They heard that there was a great gathering of Eures, Ridleys,
Widdringtons and others at Glororem, and at the neighbouring Castle of
Bamborough where the King’s captain gave them shelter.  But of where the
Young Lovell might be they could get no news; only they heard that he
had left Cramlin, having with him nearly a hundred men.

Of when he would come against them they could not tell at all; they
could not even tell whether their own men would fight for them.  Only
they thought they might; for the men of the North parts of those days
were great fighters and would seldom miss an opportunity of a tulzie,
unless there was a great football match to go to, and even for that
generally they would contrive to leave off a fight for the time being,
to resume it after the game was over.  And they would do as much for a
horse-race, though they preferred football, as being the more dangerous.




                                  III


In the meantime the Young Lovell had dwelt at Cramlin.  There was
nothing that had not prospered with him, or that by diligence, cunning
or swiftness he had not made to prosper.  Daily men resorted to him and
sought his service, coming in from the hills and moors and Debateable
Lands, all strong and hardy men so that it was difficult to make a
choice.

In a week’s time it was known what his terms were.  To every man that he
took with him he would give three pounds English, for there would be
little booty; such prisoners as they took he would ransom himself, for
he wished to have them at his disposal to spare or to slay as seemed
best to him. Such cattle as they took they might keep for themselves, or
he would buy them at a fair price, for he understood that there were
none left at Castle Lovell, where he would need them when he was the
lord settled in that place.  These terms he would make with every man,
whether of his own men-at-arms, those he hired especially, or those that
were the men of his friends.  In the meantime he would find them in
wine, meat, beer, bread and shelter.

In that way he had soon four hundred picked men—being one hundred and
fifty archers, two hundred men-at-arms, and fifty of his bondsmen or
bondsmen of his friends, men that were notable, light and swift-moving
rievers.

There had joined him at Cramlin five young knights and eleven esquires
that had been his friends before.  These were Eures, Ridleys,
Widdringtons, Riddells of Felton, Greys and Roddams, all being young men
of his own generation.  At first those of them that had fathers, uncles,
or guardians found it a hard thing to get the consent of these to their
going.  For the days were past then of riding upon knight errantry,
crusades, chevauchees, and other enterprises more splendid than
profitable, and most fathers would not very willingly let their young
men go fighting unless the gain in money much outweighed the costs.
They would ride very well into Scotland if they were a great many
together, so that it was a safe journey; but at that day France was lost
to England.  Most fathers would have gladly let their sons ride into
France; such an enterprise as that of the Black Prince was still talked
of.  In that chevauchee he had ridden through France from north to
south, from Calais to Marseilles, and had sacked more than six hundred
towns and slain more than sixty thousand men, meeting with very little
resistance.  That had been a very chivalrous, gentle, joyous, and
splendid raid.  But since then France was gone; no Prince should ever
make such a chevauchee again across that pleasant land; and the wars
between King Henry VI and King Edward IV, and later between King Richard
III and him that was then King Henry had impoverished and embittered all
the older men of the North that knew things by hard facts rather than
books of faicts of arms.  These men were rather bitter, cynical, and
perforce mercenary, than loyal, pious, and chivalric. They viewed with
disfavour this enterprise that meant the attacking of a strong Castle,
strongly held, with only a few men, no cannon, and not so much as a
mangonel, a catapult, or such old-fashioned things. On the other hand,
if their sons went to such a siege, they must go, richly caparisoned, in
the best armour that they or their fathers had, and at great cost, for
the Young Lovell was a great lord, and they could not let their sons and
nephews come before him in ill harness.  Yet, in such a desperate siege,
such armour must at least be battered and dinted, the silken housings
torn, the great chargers lamed, even if the young men were not killed or
held for ransom in black mail or white.  And even if that Castle should
be taken there would be no great rewards—they could not sack it, for it
would be their friend’s.  They would have nothing for it but praise,
renown, the love of God, and the approval of Holy Church, as well as
some plenary indulgences.  But these were all things that filled no
bellies and brought no cattle home.

Nevertheless, as from the first news of Young Lovell’s home-coming the
days went on, there came every day fresh news of how blind Fortune held
her wheel still and favoured that lord.  Those elders heard how, as it
seemed, miraculously, he had taken Cramlin and held his mother’s broad
lands; how the Bishop had blessed and knighted him; how the King’s
commissioner hastened to do him service, and bent before him, and the
Earl of Northumberland at his side.  Then they heard of men-at-arms
flocking to him, and, at last, how the White Tower was held for him that
had in it one hundred and forty thousand pounds in gold and many rich
stores.  And they heard how, in boats, during four days at dawn, Richard
Bek had sent him six thousand pounds, so that he could very sumptuously
entertain any knights that came to him.  Then, indeed, it seemed to
these elder men that it might be profitable then, and in the future, to
aid this favourite of the blind goddess—for some of them had learning
enough to have heard that Fortune is blind, though many had not.

And all this while their sons and nephews and bastards pressed them
unceasingly for leave to go on this enterprise, saying that it was not
easy to have experience in the taking of strong castles, and that the
Young Lovell was a leader that it would be great glory to serve under.
So the elders yielded under these considerations, doing what they would
not for the love of God at the bidding of Holy Church, or for the sake
of oppressed chivalry.  Therefore, the monk Francis, who heard of many
of these discussions, and took part in one or two where the lords were
in easy reach, said that those were very evil times where no thought was
of anything but money, and God so nearly forgotten.  And he said that
before long a great calamity should fall upon England; nay, that the
saints of God must soon leave hovering over a country so vile.

Nevertheless, afterwards he somewhat changed his note when he saw how
many young knights of good family came to join the Young Lovell.  These
were, as has been said, five knights and eleven esquires of the families
of Eures, Ridleys, Widdringtons, Riddells of Felton, Greys and Roddams.
Amongst them was one older than the others, being Sir Matthew Grey, that
had seen the French wars under Edward IV.  Of him the Young Lovell was
very glad, for he intended to divide his forces into two camps, and
needed a commander.

So, on the flat ground around the Castle of Cramlin arose many tents,
and it was like a fair in the sunshine on the short and baked grass.
The Lady Margaret of Glororem had had made in the city of Durham a great
tent all of fair silk, in the green and vermeil colours of the house of
Lovell, and from that city the Young Lovell had had brought many vessels
of silver, salt-cellars and great dishes and goblets that he had bought
of a Canon of Durham, having more than he needed.  A silversmith had
wrought on them very swiftly the arms of that lord, and it was his
intention to leave those furnishings in Castle Cramlin, that his mother
might be fairly served when she came there.

They set up that tent on the eleventh of June, and were two days
arranging the banquet that there was given by the Young Lovell.  Many
fair ladies came from Durham and Morpeth and the Castles around, and
cooks came, and scullions and servers, for those knights and esquires
lent to the Young Lovell their pages, that they might go to all the
places around and deliver his invitations.  Those ladies might all sleep
in that Castle, for by that time he had bought for it, out of the gold
that Richard Bek had sent him, furniture, hangings, beds a many and all
such silken stuffs as should make it fair. This he did to be an honour
to his mother when she came there.

So all those esquires and knights, and the ladies and the Lady Margaret,
and the Young Lovell sat to take their dinner in the silken tent.  That
banquet began at noon, and at seven in the evening they still sat at the
board.  Five courses that meal had, each of sixty dishes, each dish
being different, so that it was agreed that such a banquet had never
been given in those parts, unless it was one that the Earl of Warwick
gave upon the occasion of the marriage of his daughter.  The sides of
that tent were held up upon gilded staves, for it was very hot and
breathless weather, so that many men said a storm must soon come.  The
haze of heat ran all across that champaign country; the high banks of
the river were all clothed with green and whitened here and there with
elder. The men-at-arms marched before them in shining steel; the bowmen
in green, each with the badge of the esquire or knight that he served
upon his shoulder; and the bondsmen, having each a little target, a
great sword, and a very tall pike with a hook at its end.  Upon these
pikes they could set torches the better to put fire upon roofs or in at
the upper windows of peel towers.  So, before their eyes, the bowmen set
up targets and shot at them for their entertainment, and they passed
these hot hours very joyously.  When the cool of the evening was come,
the Young Lovell took Sir Matthew Grey apart into a grove beside the
river.

He told that knight very carefully how he would have him dispose the men
that should be under his command, for he should not see those men again
before they met victoriously in the Castle.  Sir Matthew Grey listened
to him and said that that was a very good scheme and he would observe it
carefully.  So, just as the young moon set, Sir Matthew Grey with all
the men-at-arms, all the bowmen and fifty of the rievers, making in all
two hundred and fifty men, having with him all the knights and esquires
as well as the Young Lovell’s most trusted esquire, Cressingham, that
knew very well the ways into Castle Lovell—all rode over the whiteness
of the river at the ford and were lost beneath the light of the stars.
Then such of the ladies as would sleep at Castle Cramlin went into it;
the others had already ridden away with their attendants.  The cooks and
scullions and serving men began to take down that great silken tent, and
the men-at-arms that remained struck those that had sheltered their
former comrades.  The Young Lovell begged the Lady Margaret very
courteously that she would walk with him in the grove of the river where
he had talked with Sir Matthew Grey.  The white small moon looked in on
them through the branches; the river ran very swiftly.

There walking, he told once more to that lady very carefully his plan
for the taking of Castle Lovell, for it was such things that she heard
of more willingly than of any others.  Sieges, tourneys, journeys, feats
of arms and dangerous quests, of these she was never tired of talking;
she loved them better than putting on the newest hood made after a
Queen’s model of France.

This plan for the taking of Castle Lovell was as follows, and it was to
get under way at the hour of five on the sixteenth day of June —— that
was to say, in three days’ time.  There were three entries to be made
into that Castle within five minutes, one through the great gate that
was beneath the tower called Wanshot: one through the passage coming up
beneath the flagstones in the men’s kitchen that was built into the wall
between the towers Constance and de Insula; the third was to take place
from the White Tower over the little drawbridge that connected that hold
with the Castle.

The first entry, that through the great gate, was to be conducted by the
Young Lovell’s esquire Cressingham that well knew the ways into the
Castle.  This was a very dangerous enterprise, or one with no danger at
all as it turned out.  Besides the esquire Cressingham there were to be
engaged upon it four young knights greedy of glory—Sir Michael Ridley,
Sir Thomas Eure, the Lady Margaret’s cousin, Sir Hugh Widdrington, and
Sir Edward Riddell of Felton.  It was in this way.  There were usually
five guards at that great gate, four to man the meurtrières and one to
go to the grille; the space there was scarcely sufficient for more, nor
were more necessary, so strongly was the gate protected from above by
machicolations, stone balls and bowmen.  So there were usually no more
than five men there.  Now those four knights, under the command of the
esquire Cressingham, covering their armour completely with peasants’
clothes and cloaks, should go up to that gate in the quiet of the
morning with sacks on their backs.  In these sacks they should have a
good store of last year’s walnuts and apples—though it was difficult
enough to find these in June, yet some they had found that had ripened
very late the year before. So these pretending peasants should say that
they had heard that there was a great dearth of agreeable meats in that
Castle, and that they were come with some fruits for sale from the
neighbourhood of Sunderland.  Then, very surely, those guards would
desire to see those fruits, for it was certain that they all in the
Castle were thirsting for such things.  The false peasants should make
to open a sack, and it would be a very easy thing to let the contents of
one whole one fall to the ground and run rolling here and there.  Very
surely, too, then those guards would bend down to pick up those fruits
and nuts, for it is not in human nature to withstand such a temptation.

The four knights and the esquire Cressingham should have their daggers
privily ready under their cloaks and so they might very easily stab each
of those guards in the back of the neck, and if they did that with skill
they might slay them so peaceably that they would speak never a word.
It was in that way that the Spaniards won the city of Amiens from the
French a little later.

If then those guards died without tumult the esquire Cressingham should
go quietly to the within-side of the gateway and wave a little cloth up
to those on the White Tower.  If, on the other hand, they make a noise,
that outcry in itself should serve for a signal.  The danger of this
enterprise was this, that if the Castle was at all diligently guarded
there would be in the chamber above that gate a great company of archers
under a captain, and if those guards should make an outcry the archers
might very easily come down and work some mischief to those knights.
Moreover, the herse or portcullis was worked from that upper chamber by
means of pulleys and chains.  Thus the archers there if they knew what
was passing below might let down that portcullis and thus not only
should they catch those knights like rats in a trap, but they should
prevent others entering in.

To guard against this the Young Lovell gave the following directions: In
the first place, as soon as those guards were over-mastered or slain,
one of the knights should close the door that let men down from the
upper chamber.  A very strong door it was, at the bottom of narrow
steps, so that it would be no easy task to break through it.  Thus, if
those archers desired to come at those knights they must run along the
battlements and down by the steps of the tower called de Insula, and
that would take time. As for the portcullis, there was across the great
gate a very strong and stout balk of wood, running in bolts.  This they
should take out and set upwards in the slots down through which the
herse descended. Once that was there there should be no closing that
way.  This the Young Lovell knew very well, for once when he had been a
boy he had done it out of devilment to plague the captain of the
archers.

Upon the sign from the esquire Cressingham, or upon hearing a tumult in
the gate house, the Young Lovell, from the top of the White Tower,
should fire cannon shots into that Castle, and the firing of those shots
should serve a double purpose.  In the first place they should be for a
signal to all the others to go forward; in the second, they should serve
to frighten and distract the archers in that upper chamber if that were
necessary.

Upon those sounds at once the men in the tunnel should issue out into
the kitchen and fall upon the hovels that were around the keep and slay
all that would not yield and afterwards set fire to the hovels
themselves, for that would make not enough flame to burn down the keep
but enough to smoke out all that were in it.  Those that were in that
tunnel were to be the Castle Lovell bondsmen, Hugh Raket, Barty of the
Comb, and others.  They should have introduced themselves secretly and
under cover of the night into Corbit Jock’s Barn that stood, as had been
said, against the Castle wall, not fourteen feet from where that tunnel
came into the grassy mound. Under cover of that same darkness Sir
Matthew Grey, the elder knight, should have hidden himself with one
hundred men-at-arms and esquires, all mounted, and one hundred bowmen in
the houses of the township of Castle Lovell and in the barns, some of
which were not twenty yards from the Castle gate.  And upon the firing,
those bowmen from behind the middens and the hillocks should rain arrows
at those that were on the battlements, and Sir Matthew Grey with his
men-at-arms should ride furiously up to the gate that should be kept
open for him by those five knights, and a little afterwards those bowmen
should follow, putting up their bows and drawing their hangers and
dirks.

Then, when all these engaged the attention of those of the Castle, the
Young Lovell, giving up his firing of artillery, should issue fiercely
from the White Tower over the drawbridge with the twenty or thirty men
that that tower held, and he could not well doubt that that should be
the coup de grâce to those of the Castle.  Then he would hang the
Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle and Henry Vesey.  His sisters he
would put into nunneries, and the Decies send beyond the seas if the
monk Francis did not claim him for the courts ecclesiastical to be
broken on the wheel.  But this the Young Lovell did not wish, for the
Decies was his father’s son.

The Lady Margaret said that that was the very properest scheme she had
ever heard for the taking of a castle, part by stratagem and part by
force.  And they walked, devising of that scheme for a long time,
beneath the night-black boughs, with the thin white moon that peeped
between and the swiftness of the river below their feet.  And ever the
Lady Margaret was aware of a bitter grief in his tones, spake he never
so hotly.  Ever the Young Lovell was aware that the thought of marrying
with this woman was an intolerable weariness to him, though she was
gallant and fair and loving.  He looked upon her face in the moonlight
and saw how fair it was with the shadows of the hazel wands across it.
That place was called the banks of Cramlin, and bitter banks they were
to him.  For there was no mark against that lady and none in those parts
could be a fitting mate for him but she.  And he considered how she had
cherished him and helped him, and that he had no grief against her.
Ever he sighed deeply and yet talked of the joy they would have in
pleasaunces and in the wilderness hawking, in devising, in the stables,
picking the wild flowers in spring, watching their husbandmen with the
ploughs, sitting in the little chambers before the fire in winter, and
at bed and board.  And ever the Lady Margaret put aside the talking of
those things and talked of firing cannon into Castle Lovell with the
bitter tears on her lids. She knew him so well she read his heart.

So with a heavy sigh he kissed her on the cheek her that had been used
to lie in his arms, and her tears were wet upon his lips, and in the
darkness, amidst the waternoises of those Cramlin banks—for the miller
had let down his sluices whilst they talked—amidst the glimmer of the
birch trunks that grew with the hazels, he left her that he should never
see again for many weary years.  Then, with his fifty bondsmen, he rode
north into the black night beyond the ford.


It was three in the morning when the Young Lovell came to Cullerford
Tower, and it was very dark.  By daylight that baleful place upon the
open moor was smoking to the sky, and that was not much more difficult
to do than cracking a walnut, though a very great and square tower it
was, more like the keep of a castle than a peel, though it followed
those lines.  Forty-seven paces it was in length and twenty across, the
walls being three yards deep in solid stone.  It was entered from the
ground by a door like that of a barn, and indeed the lowest story was no
more than such a barn, containing no rooms nor partitions, and serving,
in dangerous times, to store wheat, cattle or whatever the Knights of
Cullerford had that was of value.  No staircase led from this story to
the rooms above, but only a ladder going to a trap hatch, so that when
that ladder was drawn up there was no coming to them of the tower. At
that time there were no men-at-arms there at all, only several old
fellows under the command of an old man called Hogarth, together with a
few women and several children, and the cattle were all in the barn
below them.  The hay that they had lately got stood in stacks round
about that tower, and a hundred yards away were nearly three hundred
lambs that should have been driven to market the next day, and filled
the night with their bleatings, for they were but newly taken from their
mothers.  But so sorely did Sir Walter Limousin need money that he
wished to sell them before they were ready.

The Young Lovell had with him fifty rievers mounted on little horses and
fifty men-at-arms that he had taken from Cramlin, where he had left one
hundred men under the command of the esquire La Rougerie, and that
bleating of lambs aided those rievers to creep up to that tower door.
They had the door half burst down before ever those above were aware
that they had come.  Then a great wail went up from those women and
children in the tower, for they thought it had been the false Scots and
that their deaths were near.  Some old men came running up on to the
battlements on the top of the tower, intending to cast down rocks and
other things on the rievers that were at work upon that stout door.  But
the Young Lovell bade shoot so many arrows up that that handful of old
men could not stay there, and very loudly he called out to them his name
and titles.  So an old man came to a window and said that his name was
Adam Hogarth and that he had command there.  So the Young Lovell bade
him render up that tower, for he was in a hurry and could not stay to be
gentle with them, which was the greater pity, for the number of women
and children that he could hear were there by their cries.  Adam Hogarth
said that he would not render up that place until they had fought well
for it, not to the brother of his lady and mistress or to any man.  Then
the Young Lovell said that he was sorry for it.

It was very dark then, but those rievers were skilful men, and whilst
the Young Lovell spoke with Adam Hogarth they had that great door open
and began to drive out the cattle that came willingly enough in the
darkness, but it was dangerous work because of the horns.  One hundred
and forty-seven steers were there and nineteen cows with calves, as well
as over a dozen heifers.  Whilst these came out an old man at a window
above that door came with a crock of boiling water and poured it out.
It fell on no man, but on the backs of several bullocks that stampeded
into the night and came amongst the men-at-arms that were upon
horseback.  This caused some confusion and the Young Lovell bade light a
torch or two, and indeed there were some torches lit in that lower barn
so that it showed like an illuminated caravan beneath the black shape of
the tower. The stars were very fine and it was very dark just before the
dawn.  All the while cries went up from the women and children in the
tower; so that the night was unquiet.

Then that old man came again to the window to pour out boiling water,
but there was a little light behind him from the fire that he had used
for the heating.  The Young Lovell had a bowman ready and that man
loosed an arrow.  It sped invisible through the night and went in that
old man’s mouth and killed him there, so that he never poured any more
water.  The Young Lovell said that was very well shot, considering the
darkness of the night, and he gave that bowman two French crowns for
having done it.

Then Adam Hogarth loosed off a demi-saker that he had in an upper room.
He aimed it at the Young Lovell who stood upon a little mound with a
torch flaring near him.  But that bullet went a shade wide, nevertheless
it killed a steer, striking that beast on the cheek beside the eye.
Then the Young Lovell bade put out the torches and commanded his bowmen
to direct a stream of arrows against all the windows that were on that
side of the tower, so that though that demi-saker sent out once more its
stream of flame and spoke hoarsely, that was the last of it. For the
rest of that work they could see well enough without torches; it
consisted in taking mounds of hay into that barn, and when it was half
filled they poured water and fat upon it so as to damp it, and a little
tar.  Then into that mass they cast three or four torches and so they
watched it smoulder.  Of flame there was very little, but the smoke and
stench in verity were insupportable, and that filtered into the upper
part of the tower.

Then the dawn began to point over the Roman wall and grey things
appeared, and fat smoke curling up all around the doomed tower in the
still air of the morning.  It grew a little cold so that they must slap
their arms around them, and said that that waiting was slow work.  As
soon as it was light enough, the Young Lovell began to count those
cattle.  He sent men also to drive up the hurdled lambs that had cried
all night, and others to find their dams that were in charge of a
shepherd in the fields beyond the Wall.  The Wall began to show clear on
top of a rise, running over the tops of hills and down into hollows,
grey, into invisibility.  Then after a time, those men brought in the
sheep.  They had caught that shepherd where he slept, and drove him
before them, pricking him with lances so that he commanded his dogs to
drive those sheep where they should go.  Thus then were all the flocks
and herds of Cullerford collected together in a goodly concourse, and
when the Young Lovell knew that he had them all, he ordered the
men-at-arms that he had brought from Castle Cramlin to drive them to
that place, for he had no more need of men-at-arms.

So they went away over the moors to the north and east, going through a
gap in the wall just after they were out of sight.  Those sheep and
cattle the Young Lovell meant for the provisioning of his mother.  He
thought that his sister would not need them when her husband was hanged
and herself in a nunnery.  So, whilst he stood and watched that fatly
smoking tower from which there came a strong odour of burning grease, a
great sadness fell upon him at the thought that all this profited him
nothing, for he desired none of these things for his intimate pleasure.
It was all for decency and good order in his lands that he did it, and
to punish evildoers.  So his head hung down and he sat his horse like a
dying man.

It was these moods in him that the monk Francis dreaded.  But the monk
Francis thought he had him safe for two days or three, for he himself
had urgent business in his monastery of Belford, more particularly over
the affair of the hermitage of Castle Lovell.  For it was reported to
him that that pious hermit was really dead.  During ten days he had
spoken words none at all and the stench that came out of the little hole
where they put in his bread and water was truly unbearable and such as
it had never been before.  So the monk Francis had gone to Belford to
see how that might be.  The Young Lovell he thought he might well leave.
For with the banquet and the sending off of his troops he would be well
occupied, and he had made the Lady Margaret promise to be a zealous
lieutenant and see that that lord was never unoccupied till he rode on
that raid. For the monk Francis considered that whilst he was upon a
raid, that emissary of Satan or whatever she was would have no power
over him, so ardent a soldier was this young lord.

But here he had reckoned without the obstinacy of Adam Hogarth who kept
all those aged men and the women and children stifling in that fat
smoke.  The Young Lovell was never in greater danger.  He looked down
upon the ground and sighed heavily.  He had it in him to ride into a far
country and leave all those monotonies.  But at last on the top of the
tower he perceived Adam Hogarth, who held up his hands.  So he knew that
that tower had surrendered.  Then he called out that all those in the
tower might come down a ladder that they might set down from an upper
window, and that they might bring down their clothes and gear and take
it away with them where they would—all except Adam Hogarth, with whom he
had some business.  As for that Tower he meant to burn it out.

So down the ladder came thirty or forty poor people with ten or a dozen
children.  Their eyes were red and wept grimy tears, and they were all
in rags of grey homespun, such as the poor wear, for Sir Walter Limousin
and his wife were very bad paymasters, and such a collection of clouts
the Young Lovell thought he had never seen in the grey of the morning.
Nay, he was moved to pity at the thought that this dishonoured his kin,
and to each of those poor people he gave a shilling that they might have
wherewithal to live till they found other masters, and to women that had
children he gave four groats. Some carried pots, some pans, and all of
that ragged company filed away over the moorlands beneath the Wall,
making mostly for Haltwhistle, and showing no curiosity at all, except
two or three old women that had to do with Adam Hogarth.

Then the Young Lovell took Adam Hogarth down to a little grove of trees
that was near the ford and asked that blear-eyed old man where his
master, Cullerford, had hidden the charters and muniments of his mother
the Lady Rohtraut; for he knew that there they were.  Adam Hogarth said
that he did not know and set his teeth.  Without more words the Young
Lovell had a rope brought and a slip-noose made.  He sent a man up a
great elm to drop the noose over a stout branch and Adam Hogarth watched
him dumbly.  Then the Young Lovell had that noose set round Adam
Hogarth, beneath the arm-pits and three men hauled him up till he hung
thirty feet high, looking down with the tears dripping out of his red
eyes.  So when the Young Lovell had watched him for a minute or two and
he spoke no word, the lording walked away to where the womenkind of that
pendard were, and asked which of them were his kinswomen.  One red-eyed
crone was his sister, another his wife.  So the Young Lovell took that
sister to where Adam Hogarth hung and pointed him out.  He bade her tell
him where those charters were, but she would not.  Then he had Adam
Hogarth let down.  The rope was set about his neck and the Young Lovell
bade his men haul slowly. Adam Hogarth choked in his throat and rose up
to his tip-toes, but he would make no sign with his hand and his sister
would not speak.  Then that man was let down again and the Young Lovell
said it was the greater pity, for he must bring the wife.  So the other
old woman was brought, and when Adam Hogarth swung the height of a man’s
thigh with his feet off the ground, and his legs were working like those
of a frog and his face purple with the hempen collar round his neck and
the knot beneath his ear so that he should not die very quickly, that
old woman fell on her knees and cried out that she would tell the Young
Lovell that news.  So the Young Lovell cut through that rope with his
sword to do Adam Hogarth greater honour, and he fell to the ground very
little the worse for wear.

The old woman took the Young Lovell to a haystack where, beneath the
trampled hay around it, there was a well-head locked with a great
padlock. This padlock a man with a hammer knocked off, and a chain went
down into that well, the well being dry. So they pulled up that chain,
and at the end of it was the muniment-box of the Lady Rohtraut that the
Young Lovell well knew.  So when he had had the iron lid prised open
with a lance-head—for without doubt the Lady Isopel wore the little gold
key of it round her neck—the Young Lovell recognised that the deeds were
there, for, though he had no time to read them, he knew them by their
seals.  Then he was well content for his mother’s sake, for, though it
is a good thing to have lands in actual possession, it is twice as well
to have the muniments appertaining to them.

Then he bade his men get together what balks of timber and wood they
could find and cast them into the hay that still burned in that lower
story so that the fire might spring up, and also to take torches and
cast them through the upper windows so that that tower might well burn
in all parts where it was wooden.  After that he called before him that
Adam Hogarth and commended him for his faith to his master and commended
his sister as well.  And he said that that man and his sister might have
for their own, to divide between them, such steers as had escaped during
the stampede of the night before, as well as three bulls that were upon
the upper pastures with several sheep, and some pigs and hens that were
in a barn by the river and had escaped observation.  And he said that
Adam and his sister might dwell in that tower, after the fire had well
burned it so that it could not be held as a fortress, but it would
shelter them very well until he should decide whether he would hold that
tower himself or till the heirs of Sir Walter Limousin should compound
with him for his sister’s dower.  For Sir Walter, he said, was as good
as a dead man.  As for Adam Hogarth’s wife, they might do what they
liked for her, but he would give her nothing, for he held that she had
not done well in betraying her master’s secret, to keep which should be
the first duty of a servant, man or woman.  And as for his reward to
Adam Hogarth, he gave him those things which would make him richer than
he had ever been in his life before in order to encourage such faith as
he had shown.  And if he husbanded those cattle well they would increase
and multiply. But Adam Hogarth said no more than "Least said is soonest
mended," for he was a crabbed old man of few words.

Then the Young Lovell and his men made a breakfast of some small beer
and bread that they found in that tower, and so they rode away
northwards through the Wall, for it was five o’clock with the sun high
and they had far to go, but their little horses would carry them well.
He left two or three men to see that Adam Hogarth and his wife and
sister did not seek to quench that burning.  But he did not think they
would, for when he looked back he could see against the pale sky the
pale flames rise over the hill.

But as soon as he was gone that Adam Hogarth fell upon his wife and beat
her very furiously.  He said that he knew very well that that Young
Lovell would never have hung him, for there was no priest there to
confess him, and that never would he have betrayed that secret until
after the Young Lovell had let him be shriven.  So the Young Lovell must
have paid him much money.  Besides, he could have borne with hanging for
a quarter of an hour longer and come to no harm.  So he beat that woman
and she screamed out, and the men that the Young Lovell had left behind
roared with laughter and the tower burned.

So, when those men caught up with the Young Lovell, which they did near
Fontoreen, west of Morpeth, they told him of the cunning of that
husbandman.  So the Young Lovell did not know whether to be more vexed
with that peasant, because it was not so much love for his master as
greed that made him be half-hanged, or whether to marvel that such a low
fellow should have read his mind so well, for surely he would never have
hanged him unshriven.

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.

Sir Symonde Vesey, who had been running along the battlements looking
up, perceived, so near his hand could touch them, millions of little
black clouds twisting in an agony like snakes.  Then all that water fell
upon him and hurled him from that height into the inner court, where he
lay senseless a long while, and so was drowned in a gutter.  There was
no man there could stand up against that torrent of rain twisting round.
Four waterspouts struck that Castle one after the other, and for ten
hours so it rained that most of the hovels in the courtyard were washed
down, and the mud there was so deep it was up to a man’s thighs.

Men fought a little in the corridors, and some three or four were killed
in the great kitchen where some had taken refuge.  But they could find
none of their leaders for a long time, and most of them gave over.




                                   IV


At seven of that night the monk Francis with his masons had opened the
hermitage, and lay brothers from the little monastery had borne the
hermit’s rotten corpse in a sheet into the church where a coffin was.
So, because of the terrible smell, they carried the coffin itself out
from that church and set it in the grave, though that was so full of
rain-water that the coffin floated in it and the funeral rites were
inaudible in the heavy gusts of rain.  Though it was no more than eight
o’clock in July the sky lowered, so that in the shadow of the church it
was night.

The monk Francis staggered as he walked; his face was like alabaster
where no mud was on it, and mud was over all his habit, splashed above
the shoulder as if he had torn through brakes above water-courses.  All
that while he groaned and beat his chest and looked fearfully, now up
the hills, now out to sea, now towards Scotland.  Once whilst the masons
worked he had fallen on his face in the water that ran round the church
end.

But he had that hermitage for his charge and he would let no man lead
him away.  So, in that darkness, whilst the wind sighed furiously in the
trees and the rain was in all their faces, they buried that holy man as
best they might, saying that they would hold a fairer ceremony upon
another day, for they were all affrighted and cast down by the events of
that day and the heavy disasters that might follow.  Then, as the lay
brothers were bearing away the stretcher upon which they had carried
that coffin, one of them cried out like a scream.  Against the steely
light of the North he had perceived a great cloak tossing out, over the
churchyard wall.  Then all heard a voice calling to them to send a
religious there.  So the abbot bade an old monk go, for that might be
some sinner that desired to become an eremite in place of that holy man
now dead.  For thus God works in His wondrous way.

And so indeed it proved.  They all stood there in the rain whilst the
old monk talked to that form of darkness.  The monk Francis was on his
knees.  Then that old monk came back to them and said that here indeed
was come one that desired to go into that little hermit’s kennel and
there end his days.  He was one that had been a good knight, but had
sinned so grievously that until he was shriven he would not come upon
the holy ground of that churchyard, and he desired the monk Francis to
come to him and shrive him!  Then that monk cried out with fear, but
afterwards he went without the wall and stayed there.  The tossing form
had disappeared; for the man had kneeled down for his confession.

In the thick darkness the monk Francis came back to those that stayed
and said that he approved that that man should be the eremite.

It all passed in the black night.  That shape passed in at the little
hole the masons had made, and an old mason, so skilled that he could do
his work in the dark, put again those stones in their places.  Then
those monks sang as best they could the canticle "Ad te clamavi," and
all men went away to talk under their beaten roofs of these fearful
things. Upon all that place the black night came down, whipped by the
fell and chilly rain, and all over that churchyard the water gurgled and
washed, for it lay very low and all the gutters of the church poured
down their invisible floods.


In a very high valley of Corsica the mistress of the world sate upon a
throne of white marble in a little round temple that would not hold more
than two or three people.  A round roof it had, like a pie-dish, and
little columns of white marble.  All up the green grass of that valley
amongst the asphodels walked her women, devising and sporting, in gowns
of white and playing at ball with a sphere of gold. Down the valley ran
a fierce stream with great and vari-coloured rocks, and in that warm
place the sound of its torrent was agreeable to the ear.  Agreeable too
was the sight of the dazzling snows upon the Golden Mountain; they shone
in the sun and the sky was more blue than can be imagined.  At the feet
of the goddess sat a large woman and extremely fair. Beside her, so that
he held her hand, sitting on a couch of rosemary, was a dark shepherd
very limber in his bronzed limbs, wearing a tunic of goat skins, a chain
of gold that supported a gourd, a Phrygian cap of scarlet woollen work
that was entwined with the leaves of the vine upon his black locks.  He
had in his hand a bow of ivory with tips of gold.

So they sate at ease and looked out of that temple.  In his shining
armour a young knight that sat upon his steel horse was devising with a
hero of the gentle feats of arms.  This hero was lithe rather than huge
of form.  His face was stern and commanding at the same time that it was
open and courteous and attentive.  He was naked, and whilst he gazed
with attention upon the young knight’s arms, he rested his harmonious
limbs, leaning upon a round shield of triple-plated bronze.  Upon his
head was his helmet of shining bronze with a great plume of horsehair
that nodded far forward over his brows; in his right hand was a very
heavy spear tipped with bronze, and upon his bare legs he had bronze
greaves.  And they were talking of the respective fitnesses of the arms
that they bore.  Just where they stood was a level sward that might be a
quarter of a mile across.

Then that hero signed with his spear and there came out from a thicket a
chariot of ivory drawn by four white horses driven by a helmeted
charioteer. So that hero mounted into the chariot and covered the
charioteer and himself with the great shield and took from the
charioteer three casting spears that were very heavy in the beam, and so
they went at it for the entertainment of the onlookers.  Here and there
over that little plain darted the ivory chariot with the white horses.
That hero was seeking to get to the hindward of the young knight to cast
his spears, for he considered that the war-horse was not limber.  But he
was limber enough, and always the shield with the chequers of green and
scarlet faced the white chariot.  So they went at it.

At the last the hero cast his three spears, one upon the horse, one upon
the shield, and one upon the helmet of the good knight.  But the bronze
bent upon the steel; it would not enter in though it were thrown with
never such a force.  The young knight reeled in his saddle, and his
steed upon his feet. Yet, as that hero drove the chariot in, to cast the
last spear, the young knight spurred his horse suddenly in upon them,
and though the charioteer was very agile with his car, nevertheless the
young lord’s spear met the great shield of bronze and pierced it
through; between the hero and the other the point went, and the ivory
wheels of the chariot broke and the white horses fell one upon the
other, being taken upon the side by that steel-clad horse. Then that
hero sprang from the chariot and ran more swiftly than the young lord
could follow to a great rock that was in the grass by the streamside.
So he had up the great rock of marble before ever Hamewarts was upon
him, and cast that rock upon horse and rider so that both fell down
among the asphodels.  Then that knight in armour drew himself from under
his horse, for the ground there was soft and marshy, and he was but
little crushed. And so he stood up upon his feet, having in one hand his
bright dagger that was the length of his fore-arm.  And that hero had
had no time to cast himself upon the knight, for he was for the moment
out of breath with the exertion of casting that great rock.

So all there were well pleased and declared that that was a drawn
battle.  They had off their harness and their clothes and went all
a-bathing in the foam of that rapid stream.  And, as each one would have
it, so those bright waters were warmed by the heat of the sunlight
through which they had passed, or icy with the snows that had been their
origin.

And afterwards, the women of the goddess anointed the limbs of those
combatants with juices and oils so that all their wounds were healed
whether of the horses or the heroes.  And those women took the harness,
both of the bright steel and of the sounding bronze, and rubbing upon
the dents with their smooth fingers, soon they had all marks of that
combat erased so that the armours shone like waters reflecting the blue
sky or like the beaten gold of a bride’s girdle.  Then all lay them down
upon couches of rosemary, heather or asphodel, that were covered with
the white fleeces of rams, each person being with whom he would.  And
they fell to devising from couch to couch, some of times past, some of
times to come, and others upon what should have been the issue of that
late combat had it been fought upon the wearisome fields known to mortal
man. Some said the hero would have won it though arms he had none, for
he could run the more swiftly, and might make shift with rocks and
stones to pelt that knight until his armour broke.  But others said that
soon that horse would have revived and the knight, mounting there upon
and recovering his great spear would spit that naked hero as he ran,
through the back.

Through the opening of that valley the goddess showed them the blue sea
with triremes upon it, the white foam going away from their oars as they
had fought at Actium.  The galleys of Venice she showed them too, all
gilded and with the embroidered sails bellying before the soft winds.
The cities of the plains they saw, and Rome and Delphi and Tyre, and
cities to come that appeared like clouds of smoke, with tall columns
rising up and glittering. So, courteously, they devised upon all things,
and that knight thought never upon the weariness of Northumberland or
upon how his mortal body lived in the little hermitage not much bigger
than a hound’s kennel that was builded against the wall of the
church....

No, there they lay or walked in lemon groves devising of this or that
whilst the butterflies settled upon their arms.  And when they would
have it night, so there was the cool of the evening and a great moon and
huge stars and dimness fit for the gentle pleasures of love.




                                THE END




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