Chapter Four.
Waiting and Weary.
“Oh! for the strength of God’s right hand! the way is hard and dreary,
Through Him to walk and not to faint, to run and not be weary!”
E.L. Marzials.
We left the Royal party in conversation in the chamber at Westminster.
“Have you quite resolved, Sire, to expel all the Jews from England?” asked De Valence.
“Resolved? Yes; I hope it is half done,” replied the King. “You are aware, fair Uncle, that our Commons voted us a fifteenth on this condition?”
“No, I did not hear that,” said De Valence.
“How many are there of those creatures?” inquired Lancaster.
“How should I know?” returned Edward, with an oath. “I only know that the Chancellor said the houses and goods were selling well to our profit.”
“Fifteen thousand and sixty, my Lord of Surrey told me,” said Lancaster. “I doubted if it were not too high a computation; that is why I asked.”
“Oh, very likely not,” responded Edward, carelessly. “There are as many of them as gnats, and as much annoyance.”
“Well, it is a pious deed, of course,” said Lancaster, stroking his moustache, not in the dilettante style of De Echingham, but like a man lost in thought. “It seems a pity, though, for the women and children.”
“My cousin of Lancaster, I do believe, sings Dirige over the chickens in his barnyard,” sneered De Valence.
Lancaster looked up with a good-tempered smile.
“Does my fair Uncle never wish for the day when the lion shall eat straw like the ox?” (Note 1.)
“Not I!” cried De Valence, with a hearty laugh. “Why, what mean you? are we to dine on a haunch of lion when it comes?”
“Nay, for that were to make us worse than either, methinks. I suppose we shall give over eating what has had life, at that time.”
“Merci, mille fois!” laughed his uncle. “My dinner will be spoiled. Not thine, I dare say. I’ll be bound, Sire, our fair cousin will munch his apples and pears with all the gusto in the world, and send his squire to the stable to inquire if the lion has a straw doubled under him.”
“Bah!” said the King. “What are you talking about?”
“How much will this business of the Jews cost your Grace?” asked De Valence, dropping his sarcasms.
“Cost me?” demanded Edward, with a short laugh. “Did our fair uncle imagine we meant to execute such a project at our own expense? Let the rogues pay their own travelling fees.”
“Ha! good!” said the Poitevin noble. “And our fair cousin of Lancaster shall chant the De Profundis while they embark, and I will offer a silver fibula to Saint Edward that they may all be drowned. How sayest, fair Cousin?”
“Nay,” was Lancaster’s answer, in a doubtful tone. “I reckon we ought not to pity them, being they that crucified our Lord. But—”
But for all that, his heart cried out against his creed. Yet it did not occur to him that the particular men who were being driven from their homes for no fault of theirs, and forced with keen irony of oppression to pay their own expenses, were not those who crucified Christ, but were removed from them by many generations. The times of the Gentiles were not yet fulfilled, and the cry, “His blood be on us, and on our children” had not yet exhausted its awful power.
There was one person not present who would heartily have agreed with Lancaster. This was his cousin and namesake, Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, who not only felt for the lower animals—a rare yet occasional state of mind in the thirteenth century—but went further, and compassionated the villeins—a sentiment which very few indeed would have dreamed of sharing with him. The labourers on the land were serfs, and had no feelings,—that is, none that could be recognised by the upper classes. They were liable to be sold with the land which they tilled; nor could they leave their “hundred” without a passport. Their sons might not be educated to anything but agriculture; their daughters could not be married without paying a fine to the master. Worse things than these are told of some, for of course the condition of the serf largely depended on the disposition of his owner.
The journey from Oakham to Westminster was a pleasant change to all the bower-maidens but one, and that was the one selected to travel with her mistress in the litter. Each was secretly, if not openly, hoping not to be that one; and it was with no little trepidation that Clarice received the news that this honour was to be conferred on her. She discovered, however, on the journey, that scolding was not the perpetual occupation of the Countess. She spent part of every day in telling her beads, part in reading books woefully dry to the apprehension of Clarice, and part in sleeping, which not unfrequently succeeded the beads. Conversation she never attempted, and Clarice, who dared not speak till she was spoken to, began to entertain a fear of losing the use of her tongue. Otherwise she was grave and quiet enough, poor girl! for she was not naturally talkative. She was very sorry to part with Heliet, and she felt, almost without knowing why, some apprehension concerning the future. Sentiments of this sort were quite unknown to such girls as Elaine, Diana, and Roisia, while with Olympias they arose solely from delicate health. But Clarice was made of finer porcelain, and she could not help mournfully feeling that she had not a friend in the world. Her father and mother were not friends; they were strangers who might be expected to do what they thought best for her, just as the authorities of a workhouse might take conscientious care in the apprenticing of the workhouse girls. But no more could be expected, and Clarice felt it. If there had only been, anywhere in the world, somebody who loved her! There was no such probability to which it was safe to look forward. Possibly, some twenty or thirty years hence, some of her children might love her. As for her husband, he was simply an embarrassing future certainty, who—with almost equal certainty—would not care a straw about her. That was only to be expected. The squire who liked Roisia would be pretty sure to get Diana; while the girl who admired Reginald de Echingham was safe to fall to Fulk de Chaucombe. Things always were arranged so in this world. Perhaps, thought Clarice, those girls were the happiest who did not care, who took life as it came, and made all the fun they could out of it. But she knew well that this was how life and she would never take each other.
Whitehall was reached at last, on that eve of Saint Botolph. Clarice was excessively tired, and only able to judge of the noise without, and the superb decorations and lofty rooms within. Lofty, be it remembered, to her eyes; they would not look so to ours. She supped upon salt merling (whiting), pease-cods (green peas), and stewed fruit, and was not sorry to get to bed.
In the morning, she found the household considerably increased. Her eyes were almost dazzled by the comers and goers; and she really noticed only one person. Two young knights were among the new attendants of the Earl, but one of them Clarice could not have distinguished from the crowd. The other had attracted her notice by coming forward to help the Countess from her litter, and, instead of attending his mistress further, had, rather to Clarice’s surprise, turned to help her. And when she looked up to thank him, it struck her that his face was like somebody she knew. She did not discover who it was till Roisia observed, while the girls were undressing, that—“My cousin is growing a beard, I declare. He had none the last time I saw him.”
“Which is thy cousin?” asked Clarice.
“Why, Piers Ingham,” said Roisia. “He that helped my Lady from the litter.”
“Oh, is he thy cousin?” responded Clarice.
“By the mother’s side,” answered Roisia. “He hath but been knighted this last winter.”
“Then he is just ready for a wife,” said Elaine. “I wonder which of us it will be! It is tolerably sure to be one. I say, maids, I mean to have a jolly time of it while we are here! It shall go hard with me if I do not get promoted to be one of the Queen’s bower-women!”
“Oh, would I?” interpolated Diana.
“Why?” asked more than one voice.
“I am sure,” said Olympias, “I had ever so much rather be under the Lady Queen than our Lady.”
“Oh, that may be,” said Diana. “I was not looking at it in that light. There is some amusement in deceiving our Lady, and one doesn’t feel it wrong, because she is such a vixen; but there would be no fun in taking in the Queen, she’s too good.”
“I wonder what Father Bevis would say to that doctrine,” demurely remarked Elaine. “What it seems to mean is, that a lie is not such a bad thing if you tell it to a bad person as it would be if you told it to a good one. Now I doubt if Father Bevis would be quite of that opinion.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” was Diana’s reply.
“Well, but is it nonsense? Didst thou mean that?”
It was rather unusual for Elaine thus to satirise Diana, and looked as if the two had changed characters, especially when Diana walked away, muttering something which no one distinctly heard.
Elaine proved herself a tolerably true prophetess. Fête followed fête. Clarice found herself initiated into Court circles, and discovered that she was enjoying herself very much. But whether the attraction lay in the pageants, in the dancing, in her own bright array, or in the companionship, she did not pause to ask herself. Perhaps if she had paused, and made the inquiry, she might have discovered that life had changed to her since she came to Westminster. The things eternal, of which Heliet alone had spoken to her, had faded away into far distance; they had been left behind at Oakham. The things temporal were becoming everything.
In a stone balcony overhanging the Thames, at Whitehall, sat Earl Edmund of Cornwall, in a thoughtful attitude, resting his head upon his hand. He had been alone for half an hour, but now a tall man in a Dominican habit, who was not Father Bevis, came round the corner of the balcony, which ran all along that side of the house. He was the Prior or Rector of Ashridge, a collegiate community, founded by the Earl himself, of which we shall hear more anon.
The Friar sat down on the stone bench near the Earl, who took no further notice of him than by a look, his eyes returning to dreamy contemplation of the river.
“Of what is my Lord thinking?” asked the Friar, gently.
“Of life,” said the Prince.
“Not very hopefully, I imagine.”
“The hope comes at the beginning, Father. Look at yonder pleasure-boat, with the lads and lasses in it, setting forth for a row. There is hope enough in their faces. But when the journey comes near its end, and the perilous bridge must be shot, and the night is setting in, what you see in the faces then will not be hope. It will be weariness; perhaps disgust and sorrow. And—in some voyages, the hope dies early.”
“True—if it has reference only to the day.”
“Ah,” responded the Prince, with a smile which had more sadness than mirth in it, “you mean to point me to the hope beyond. But the day is long Father. The night has not come yet, and the bridge is still to be shot. Ay, and the wind and rain are cold, as one drops slowly down the river.”
“There is home at the end, nevertheless,” answered the Dominican. “When we sit round the fire in the banquet hall, and all we love are round us, and the doors shut safe, we shall easily forget the cold wind on the water.”
“When! Yes. But I am on the water yet, and it may be some hours before my barge is moored at the garden steps. And—it is always the same, Father. It does seem strange, when there is only one earthly thing for which a man cares, that God should deny him that one thing. Why rouse the hope which is never to be fulfilled? If the width of the world had lain all our lives between me and my Lady, we should both have been happier. Why should God bring us together to spoil each other’s lives? For I dare say she is as little pleased with her lot as I with mine—poor Magot!”
“Will my Lord allow me to alter the figure he has chosen?” said the Predicant Friar. “Look at your own barge moored down below. If the rope were to break, what would become of the barge?”
“It would drift down the river.”
“And if there were in it a little child, alone, too young to have either skill or strength to steer it, what would become of him when the barge shot the bridge?”
“Poor soul!—destruction, without question.”
“And what if my Lord be that little child, safe as yet in the barge which the Master has tied fast to the shore? The rope is his trouble. What if it be his safety also? He would like far better to go drifting down, amusing himself with the strange sights while daylight lasted; but when night came, and the bridge to be passed, how then? Is it not better to be safe moored, though there be no beauty or variety in the scene?”
“Nay, Father, but is there no third way? Might the bridge not be passed in safety, and the child take his pleasure, and yet reach home well and sound?”
“Some children,” said the Predicant Friar, with a tender intonation. “But not that child.”
The Earl was silent. The Prior softly repeated a text of Scripture.
“Endure chastisement. As sons God dealeth with you; what son then is he, whom the Father chasteneth not?” (Hebrews 12, verse 7, Vulgate version.)
A low, half-repressed sigh from his companion reminded the Prior that he was touching a sore place. One of the Prince’s bitterest griefs was his childlessness. (He has told us so himself.) The Prior tacked about, and came into deeper water.
“‘Nor have we a High Priest who cannot sympathise with our infirmities, for He was tempted in all things like us, except in sinning.’” (Hebrews 4, verse 15, Vulgate version.)
“If one could see!” said the Earl, almost in a whisper.
“It would be easier, without doubt. Yet ‘blessed are they who see not, and believe.’ God can see. I would rather He saw and not I, than—if such a thing were possible—that I saw and not He. Whether is better, my Lord, that the father see the danger and guard the child without his knowing anything, or that the child see it too, and have all the pain and apprehension consequent upon the seeing? The blind has the advantage, sometimes.”
“Yet who would wish to be blind on that account?” answered the Earl, quickly.
“No man could wish it, nor need he. Only, the blind man may take the comfort of it.”
“But you have not answered one point, Father. Why does God rouse longings in our hearts which He never means to fulfil?”
“Does God rouse them?”
“Are they sin, then?”
“No,” answered the Prior, slowly, as if he were thinking out the question, and had barely reached the answer. “I dare not say that. They are nature. Some, I know, would have all that is nature to be sin; but I doubt if God treats it thus in His Word. Still, I question if He raises those longings. He allows them. Man raises them.”
“Does He never guide them?”
“Yes, that I think He does.”
“Then the question comes to the same thing. Why does God not guide us to long for the thing that He means to give us?”
“He very often does.”
“Then,” pursued the Earl, a little impatiently, “why does He not turn us away from that which He does not intend us to have?”
“My Lord,” said the Predicant, gravely, “from the day of his fall, man has always been asking God why. He will probably go on doing it to the day of the dissolution of all things. But I do not observe that God has ever yet answered the question.”
“It is wrong to ask it, then, I suppose,” said the Earl, with a weary sigh.
“It is not faith that wants to know why. ‘He that believeth hasteneth not.’ (Isaiah 28, verse 16, Vulgate version.) ‘What I do, thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.’ (John 13 verse 7.) We can afford to wait, my Lord.”
“Easily enough,” replied the Earl, with feeling, “if we knew it would come right in the end.”
“It will come as He would have it who laid down His life that you should live for ever. Is that not enough for my Lord?”
Perhaps the Prince felt it enough. At all events, he gave no answer.
“Well, that is not my notion of going comfortably through life!” observed Miss Elaine Criketot, in a decided tone. “My idea is to pull all the plums out of the cake, and leave the hard crusts for those that like them.”
“Does anybody like them?” laughingly asked Clarice.
“Well, for those who need them, then. Plenty of folks in this world are glad of hard crusts or anything else.”
“Thy metaphor is becoming rather confused,” observed Diana.
“Dost thou not think, Elaine Criketot, that it might be only fair to leave a few plums for those whose usual fare is crusts? A crust now and then would scarcely hurt the dainty damsels who commonly regale themselves on plums.”
It was a fourth voice which said this—a voice which nobody expected, and the sound of which brought all the girls to their feet in an instant.
“Most certainly, Lord Earl,” replied Elaine, courtesying low; “but I hope they would be somebody else’s plums than mine.”
“I see,” said the Earl, with that sparkle of fun in his eyes, which they all knew. “Self-denial is a holy and virtuous quality, to be cultivated by all men—except me. Well, we might all subscribe that creed with little sacrifice. But then where would be the self-denial?”
“Please it the Lord Earl, it might be practised by those who liked it.”
“I should be happy to hear of any one who liked self-denial,” responded the Earl, laughing. “Is that not a contradiction in terms?”
Elaine was about to make a half-saucy answer, mixed sufficiently with reverence to take away any appearance of offence, when a sight met her eyes which struck her into silent horror. In the doorway, looking a shade more acetous than usual, stood Lady Margaret. It was well known to all the bower-maidens of the Countess of Cornwall that there were two crimes on her code which were treated as capital offences. Laughing was the less, and being caught in conversation with a man was the greater. But beneath both these depths was a deeper depth yet, and this was talking to the Earl. Never was a more perfect exemplification of the dog in the manger than the Lady Margaret of Cornwall. She did not want the Earl for herself, but she was absolutely determined that no one else should so much as speak to him. Here was Elaine, caught red-handed in the commission of all three of these stupendous crimes. And if the offence could be made worse, it was so by the Earl saying, as he walked away, “I pray you, my Lady, visit not my sins on this young maid.”
Had one compassionate sensation remained in the mind of the Countess towards Elaine, that unlucky speech would have extinguished it at once. She did not, as usual, condescend to answer her lord; but she turned to Elaine, and in a voice of concentrated anger, demanded the repetition of every word which had passed. Diana gave it, for Elaine seemed almost paralysed with terror. Clarice, on the demand of her mistress, confirmed Diana’s report as exact. The Countess turned back to Elaine. Her words were scarcely to be reported, for she lost alike her temper and her gentlewomanly manners. “And out of my house thou goest this day,” was the conclusion, “thou shameful, giglot hussey! And I will not give thee an husband; thou shalt go back to thy father and thy mother, with the best whipping that ever I gave maid. And she that shall be in thy stead shall be the ugliest maid I can find, and still of tongue, and sober of behaviour. Now, get thee gone!”
And calling for Agatha as she went, the irate lady stalked away.
Of no use was poor Elaine’s flood of tears, nor the united entreaties of her four companions. Clarice and Diana soon found that they were not to come off scatheless. Neither had spoken to the Earl, as Elaine readily confessed; but for the offence of listening to such treachery, both were sent to bed by daylight, with bread and water for supper. The offences of grown-up girls in those days were punished like those of little children now. All took tearful farewells of poor Elaine, who dolefully expressed her fear of another whipping when she reached home; and so she passed out of their life.
It was several weeks before the new bower-maiden appeared. Diana suggested that the Countess found some difficulty in meeting with a girl ugly enough to please her. But, at last, one evening in November, Mistress Underdone introduced the new-comer, in the person of a girl of eighteen, or thereabouts, as Felicia de Fay, daughter of Sir Stephen de Fay and Dame Sabina Watefeud, of the county of Sussex. All the rest looked with much curiosity at her.
Felicia, while not absolutely ugly, was undeniably plain. Diana remarked afterwards to Clarice that there were no ugly girls to be had, as plainly appeared. But the one thing about her which really was ugly was her expression. She looked no one in the face, while she diligently studied every one who was not looking at her. Let any one attempt to meet her eyes, and they dropped in a moment. Some do this from mere bashfulness, but Felicia showed no bashfulness in any other way. Clarice’s feeling towards her was fear.
“I’m not afraid!” said Diana. “I am sure I could be her match in fair fight!”
“It is the fair fight I doubt,” said Clarice. “I am afraid there is treachery in her eyes.”
“She makes me creep all over,” added Olympias.
“Well, she had better not try to measure swords with me,” said Diana. “I tell you, I have a presentiment that girl and I shall fight; but I will come off victor; you see if I don’t!”
Clarice made no answer, but in her heart she thought that Diana was too honest to be any match for Felicia.
It was the Countess’s custom to spend her afternoon, when the day was fine, in visiting some shrine or abbey. When the day was not fine, she passed the time in embroidering among her maidens, and woe betide the unlucky damsel who selected a wrong shade, or set in a false stitch. The natural result of this was that the pine-cone, kept by Olympias as a private barometer, was anxiously consulted on the least appearance of clouds. Diana asserted that she offered a wax candle to Saint Wulstan every month for fair weather. One of the young ladies always had to accompany her mistress, and the fervent hope of each was to escape this promotion. Felicia alone never expressed this hope, never joined in any tirades against the Countess, never got into disgrace with her, and seemed to stand alone, like a drop of vinegar which would not mingle with the oil around it. She appeared to see everything, and say nothing. It was impossible to get at her likes and dislikes. She took everything exactly alike. Either she had no prejudices, or she was all prejudice, and nobody could tell which it was.
Note 1. Some readers will think such ideas too modern to have occurred to any one in 1290. There is evidence to the contrary.
Chapter Five.
Building a Fresh Castle.
“Oh, had I wist, afore I kissed,
That loue had been sae ill to win,
I’d locked my heart wi’ a key o’ gowd,
And pinned it wi’ a siller pin.”—Old Ballad.
On an afternoon early in December, the Countess sat among her bower-women at work. Roisia was almost in tears, for she had just been sharply chidden for choosing too pale a shade of blue. A little stir at the door made all look up, and they saw Father Bevis. All rose to their feet in an instant, the Countess dropping on her knees, and entreating the priest’s blessing. He gave it, but as if his thoughts were far away.
“Lady, my Lord hath sent me to you with tidings. May God grant they be not the worst tidings for England that we have heard for many a day! A messenger is come from the North, bringing news that the Lady Alianora the Queen lieth dead in the marsh lands of Lincolnshire.”
It was a worse loss to England than any there knew. Yet they knew enough to draw a cry of horror and sorrow from the lips of all those that heard the news. And a fortnight later, on the 17th of December, they all stood at Charing Cross, to see the funeral procession wind down from the north road, and set down the black bier for its last momentary rest on the way to Westminster.
It is rather singular that the two items which alone the general reader usually remembers of this good Queen’s history should be two points distinctly proved by research to be untrue. Leonor did not suck the poison from her husband’s arm—a statement never made until a hundred and fifty years after her death, and virtually disproved by the testimony of an eye-witness who makes no allusion to it, but who tells us instead that she behaved like a very weak woman instead of a very brave one, giving way to hysterical screams, and so distressing the sufferer that he bade four of his knights to carry her out of the room. Again, Edward’s affectionate regret did not cause the erection of the famous Eleanor Crosses wherever the bier rested on its journey. Leonor herself desired their erection, and left money for it in her will.
The domestic peace of the royal house died with her who had stood at its head for nineteen years. To her son, above all others, her loss was simply irreparable. The father and son were men of very different tastes and proclivities; and the former never understood the latter. In fact, Edward the Second was a man who did not belong to his century; and such men always have a hard lot. His love of quiet, and hatred of war, were, in the eyes of his father, spiritless meanness; while his musical tastes and his love of animals went beyond womanish weakness, and were looked upon as absolute vices. But perhaps to the nobles the worst features of his character were two which, in the nineteenth century, would entitle him to respect. He was extremely faithful in friendship, and he had a strong impatience of etiquette. He loved to associate with his people, to mix in their joys and sorrows, to be as one of them. His favourite amusement was to row down the Thames on a summer evening, with music on board, and to chat freely with the lieges who came down in their barges, occasionally, and much to his own amusement, buying cabbages and other wares from them. We should consider such actions indicative of a kindly disposition and of simplicity of taste. But in the eyes of his contemporaries they were inexpressibly low. And be it remembered that it was not a question of associating with persons of more or less education, whose mental standard might be unequal to his own. There was no mental standard whereby to measure any one in the thirteenth century. All (with a very few exceptions, and those chiefly among the clergy) were uneducated alike. The moral standard looked upon war and politics as the only occupations meet for a prince, and upon hunting and falconry as the only amusements sufficiently noble. A man who, like Edward, hated war, and had no fancy for either sport or politics, was hardly a man in the eyes of a mediaeval noble.
The hardest treatment to which Edward was subjected, whether from his father in youth or from his people at a later time, arose out of that touching constancy which was his greatest virtue. Perhaps he did not always choose his friends well; he was inclined to put rather too much trust in his fellow creatures; and Hugh Le Despenser the elder may have been grasping and mean, and Piers Gavestone too extravagant. Yet we must remember that we read their characters only as depicted by the pens of men who hated them—of men who were simply unable to conceive that two persons might be drawn together by mutual taste for some elevated and innocent pursuit. The most wicked motives imaginable were recklessly suggested for the attachment which Edward showed for these chosen friends—who were not of noble origin, and had no handles to their names till he conferred them.
It is only through a thick mist of ignorance and prejudice that we of this day can see the character of Edward the Second. We read it only in the pages of monks who hated their Lollard King—in the angry complaints of nobles who were jealous that he listened to and bestowed gifts on other men than themselves. But we do see some faint glimpses of the Edward that really was, in the letter-book but recently dug out of a mass of State papers; in the pages of De La Moor, (Note 1), the only chronicler of his deeds who did not hate him, and who, as his personal attendant, must have known more of him in a month than the monks could have learned in a century; and last, not least, in that touching Latin poem in which, during the sad captivity which preceded his sadder death, he poured out his soul to God, the only Friend whom he had left in all the universe.
“Oh, who that heard how once they praised my name,
Could think that from those tongues these slanders came?
... I see Thy rod, and, Lord, I am content.
Weave Thou my life until the web is spun;
Chide me, O Father, till Thy will be done:
Thy child no longer murmurs to obey;
He only sorrows o’er the past delay.
Lost is my realm; yet I shall not repine,
If, after all, I win but that of Thine.”
(See Note 2.)
To a character such as this, the loss of his chief friend and only reliable intercessor, when just emerging from infancy into boyhood, was a loss for which nothing could atone. It proved itself so in those dreary after-years of perpetual misunderstandings and severities on the part of his father, who set him no good example, and yet looked on the son whose tastes were purer than his own as an instance of irredeemable depravity. The easiest thing in the world to do is one against which God has denounced a woe—to put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.
Another item of sorrowful news reached London with the coffin of Queen Leonor. It was the death of the baby Queen of Scotland, by whose betrothal to Prince Edward the King had vainly hoped to fuse the northern and southern kingdoms into one. It left Scotland in a condition of utter distraction, with no less than eleven different claimants for the Crown, setting up claims good, bad, and indifferent; but every one of them persuaded that all the others had not an inch of ground to stand on, and that he was the sole true and rightful inheritor.
The only claimants who really had a shadow of right may be reduced to three. If the old primitive custom of Scotland was to be regarded—a custom dear to all Celtic nations—by which illegitimate children were considered to have an equal right to the succession with the legitimate ones, then there could be no question that the heir was Patrick de Galithlys, son of Henry, the natural son of Alexander the Second. But if not—and in this respect undoubtedly the custom had become obsolete—the struggle rested between John Baliol and Robert Bruce, of whom the first was the son of Dervorgoyl, daughter of Margaret, eldest daughter of David Earl of Huntingdon, brother of King William the Lion; while the latter was the son of Isabel, the second daughter of David. Every reader knows that the question was submitted by consent of the Scottish nobles to Edward the First as arbitrator, and that he gave his decision in favour of Baliol. In other words, he gave it against the existing law both of England and Scotland, which did not recognise representation, and according to which the son of the second sister ought to have been preferred to the grandson of the elder.
The anxiety of our kings to bring in this law of representation is a curious psychological fact. Richard the First tried to do it by will, in leaving the crown to his nephew Arthur; but the law was too strong for him, and the rightful heir succeeded—his brother John. Edward the First contrived to abrogate the law, so far as Scotland was concerned, a hundred years later. And eighty years after him Edward the Third tried again to alter the English law of succession, and this time the experiment succeeded. But its success was due mainly to two reasons—the personal popularity of the dead Prince whose son was thus lifted into the line of succession, while the rightful heir was extremely unpopular; and the fact that the disinherited heir gave full consent and assistance to the change in the law.
The knights and squires of the Earl of Cornwall’s household were gathered together on the balcony which faced the river. One only was absent, Piers Ingham, who was occupied in a more interesting manner, as will presently be seen. His colleague, Sir Lambert Aylmer, was holding forth in a lively manner for the benefit of the four squires, who were listening to him with various degrees of attention. Reginald de Echingham could never spare much of that quality from his admirable self, and De Chaucombe was an original thinker, who did not purchase ready-made ideas from other people. Barkeworth invariably agreed with the last speaker in public, but kept his private views an inscrutable mystery; while all that could be said of Gernet’s notions was that he had “un grand talent pour le silence.”
To this quartette Sir Lambert was explaining his forecast of the political weather. The young knight had a great fancy for airing his politics, and an unwavering conviction of the infallibility of his judgment. If Sir Lambert was to be believed, what King Edward would undoubtedly do was to foment civil war in Scotland, until all the rival male claimants had destroyed each other. He would then marry the daughter of one of them, and annex Scotland as her appanage. All being smooth in that quarter, the King would next undertake a pilgrimage to Palestine, drive the Saracens out, and confer that country on one of his sons-in-law. He would then carry fire and sword through Borussia, Lithuania, and other heathen kingdoms in the north, subdue them all, put a few more sons-in-law in possession as tributary governors, and being by that time an old man, would then return to Westminster to end his days in peace, a new Alexander, and to leave a magnificent empire to his son.
“Easier said than done,” growled De Chaucombe, in his beard.
“Charming!” observed De Echingham, caressing his pet moustache.
“A lovely prospect, indeed,” said De Barkeworth, with a bow, in a tone so impartially suspended between conviction and cynicism that nobody could tell which had dictated it. “I should like to win my spurs in Lithuania.”
“Win thy spurs!” muttered De Chaucombe again. “There are no spurs for carpet-knights (Note 3) in the wardrobe of the Future.”
“I think knights should have golden spurs, not gilt ones—don’t you?” inquired De Echingham.
“Puppy!” sneered De Chaucombe. “If ever either are on thy heels it will be a blunder of somebody’s making.”
“Is it necessary to quarrel?” asked Gernet, speaking for the first time.
“Oh, I trust I have more generosity than to quarrel with him,” rather contemptuously returned De Echingham, who, as every one present knew, had as little physical courage as any girl.
“Make thyself easy,” was the answer of De Chaucombe, as he walked away. “I should not think of running the risk.”
“What risk?” demanded Barkeworth, laughing. De Chaucombe looked back over his shoulder, and discharged a Parthian dart.
“The risk of turning my good Damascus blade on a toad,” said he, to the great amusement of Barkeworth.
De Chaucombe went to the end of the balcony, descended the steps which led to the ground floor, and came on a second terrace, also fronting the river. As he turned a corner of the house he suddenly confronted two people, who were walking slowly along the terrace, and conversing in hushed tones. Sir Piers Ingham was evidently and deeply interested, his head slightly bowed towards Clarice who was as earnestly engaged in the dissection of one of the few leaves which Christmas had left fluttering on the garden bushes. As De Chaucombe approached she looked up with a startled air, and blushed to her eyes.
De Chaucombe muttered something indistinct which might pass for “Good evening,” and resumed his path rather more rapidly than before.
“So the wind blows from that direction!” he said to himself. “Well, it does not matter a straw to me. But what our amiable mistress will say to the fair Clarice, when she comes to know of it, is another question. I do believe that, if she had made up her mind to a match between them, she would undo it again, if she thought they wished it. It would be just like her.”
It had never occurred to Clarice to suppose that she did anything wrong in thus disobeying point blank the known orders of her mistress that the bower-maidens were to hold no intercourse whatever with the gentlemen of the household. She knew perfectly well that if the Countess saw her talking to Sir Piers, she would be exceedingly angry; and she knew that her parents fully intended and expected her to obey her mistress as she would themselves. Poor Clarice’s code of morals looked upon discovery, not disobedience, as the thing to be dreaded; and while she would have recoiled with horror from the thought of unfaithfulness to her beloved, she looked with absolute complacency on the idea of disloyalty to the mistress whom she by no means loved. How could she do otherwise when she had never been taught better?
Clarice’s standard was loyauté d’amour. It is the natural standard of all men, the only difference being in the king whom they set up. A vast number are loyal to themselves only, for it is themselves whom alone they love. Fewer are loyal to some human being; and poor humanity being a very fallible thing, they often make sad shipwreck. Very few indeed—in comparison of the mass—are loyal to the King who claims and has a right to their hearts’ best affections. And Clarice was not one of these.
Inside the house the Countess and Mistress Underdone were very busy indeed. Before them, spread over forms and screens, lay piles of material for clothing—linen, serge, silk, and crape, of many colours. On a leaf-table at the side of the room a number of gold and silver ornaments were displayed. Furs were heaped upon the bed, boots and loose slippers stood in a row in one corner; while Mistress Underdone was turning over for her mistress’s inspection a quantity of embroidered neckerchiefs.
“Now, let me see,” said the Countess, peremptorily. “Measure off linen for four gowns, Agatha—two of brown and two of red. Serge for two—the dark green. One silk will be enough, and one of crape.”
“How many ells the gown does my Lady choose to allow?” asked Mistress Underdone, taking an ell-wand from the table.
“Four,” said the Countess, curtly. This was rather miserly measure, four ells and a third being the usual reckoning; but Mistress Underdone measured and cut in silence.
“Thou mayest allow a third more for the silk and crape,” said the Countess, in a fit of unusual generosity.
Mistress Underdone finished her measuring, laying each piece of material neatly folded on the last, until the table held a tall heap of them.
“Now for hoods,” pursued the Countess. “Black cloth for two, lined with cats’ fur; russet for two more. Capes for outdoor wear—two of the green serge; one of black cloth lined with cats’ fur; one of silk. Four linen wimples; two pairs of cloth boots, two of slippers; two corsets; three of those broidered kerchiefs, one better than the others; four pairs of hosen. Measure off also twenty-four ells of linen cloth.”
“Of what price, if it please my Lady?”
“Fivepence the ell. And the boots of sixpence a pair. What did that green serge cost?”
“Threepence the ell, my Lady.”
“That is monstrous. Have I no cheaper? Twopence would be good enough for her.”
“If it please my Lady, there is only that coarse grey serge at three halfpence the ell, which was bought for the cook-maids.”
“Humph! I suppose that would scarcely do,” said the Countess, in a tone which sounded as if she wished it would. “Well, then—those ornaments. She must have a silver fibula, I suppose; and a copper-gilt one for common. What made thee put out all those other things? That is enough for her. If she wants a silver chain, her husband must give it her; I shall not. As to rings and necklaces, they are all nonsense—not fit for such as she.”
“Would my Lady think proper to allow a dovecote with silver pins?”
The dovecote was a head-dress, a kind of round caul of gold or silver network, secured by gold or silver pins fastened in the hair.
“Not I. Let her husband give her such fooleries.”
“And may I request to know what my Lady allows for making the garments?”
“Three halfpence each.”
“Might I be pardoned if I remind my Lady that the usual price is twopence each?”
“For me, perhaps; not for her.”
Mistress Underdone went on measuring the linen in silence.
“There, that finishes for Clarice,” said the Countess. “Now for Diana. She may have a silver chain in addition, two of the best kerchiefs, and—no, that is enough. Otherwise let her have just the same.”
“If my Lady would graciously indulge her servant with permission to ask it, do the maidens know yet what is to befall them?”
“No. I shall tell them on Sunday. Time enough.”
And the Countess left Mistress Underdone to finish the work by herself.
“On Sunday! Only two days beforehand!” said Agatha Underdone to herself. “Diana will stand it. She is one that would not care much for anything of that kind, and she will rule the house. But Clarice! If she should have given her heart elsewhere!—and I have fancied, lately, that she has given it somewhere. That poor child!”
“But how can we?” queried Clarice. “If I were to speak to the Lady—even if I dared—I doubt—”
“I do not doubt, sweetheart,” replied Sir Piers. “No, the path must be rather mere winding than that, though I confess I hate tortuous paths. Father Miles is the only person who has any influence with the Lady, and Father Bevis is the only one who has any with him.”
“But Father Bevis would have no sympathy with a love-story.”
“I am not sure that he would. But my Lord will, I know; and Father Bevis will listen to him. Leave this business to me, my fair Clarice. If I can obtain my Lord’s ear this evening after vespers, and I think I can, we shall soon have matters in train; and I have a fine hawk for Father Miles, which will put him in a good humour. Now, farewell, for I hear the Lady’s voice within.”
The lovers parted hastily, and Clarice went in to attire herself for mass. For any one of her maidens to be absent from that ceremony would have been a terrible offence in the eyes of the Countess; nor would any less excuse than serious illness have availed to avert her displeasure. Dinner followed mass, and a visit to the shrine of Saint Edward, concluded by vespers, occupied the remainder of the afternoon. There was half an hour to spare before supper, and the girls were chatting together in their usual “bower,” or boudoir, when, to their surprise, the Countess entered.
“I have ado but with two of you,” she said, as she seated herself.
Naturally, the girls supposed that some penalty was about to befall those two. How had they offended her? and which of them were the offenders? To displease the Countess, as they all knew, was so extremely easy, that not one of them was prepared for the next sentence.
“Two of you are to be wed on Tuesday.”
This was a bombshell. And it was the more serious because they were aware that from this sentence there was no appeal. Troubled eyes, set in white faces, hurriedly sought each other.
Was it from sheer thoughtlessness, or from absolute malice, or even from a momentary feeling of compassion towards the two who were to be sacrificed, that the Countess made a long pause after each sentence?
“Diana Quappelad,” she said.
Olympias, Roisia, and Clarice drew a sigh of relief. There were just half the chances against each that there had been. Diana stood forward, with a slight flush, but apparently not much concerned.
“Thou art to wed with Master Fulk de Chaucombe, and thy bridegroom will be knighted on the wedding-day. I shall give thee thy gear and thy wedding-feast. Mistress Underdone will show thee the gear.”
The first momentary expression of Diana’s face had been disappointment. It passed in an instant, and one succeeded which was divided between pleasurable excitement and amusement. She courtesied very low, and thanked the Countess, as of course was expected of her.
Roisia stood behind, with blank face and clasped hands. There might be further pain in store, but pleasure for her there could now be none. The Countess quite understood the dumb show, but she made no sign.
“Clarice La Theyn.”
The girl stood out, listening for the next words as though her life hung on them.
“I shall also give thee thy gear, and thy squire will be knighted on the wedding-day.”
The Countess was turning away as though she had said all. Clarice had heard enough to make her feel as if life were not worth having. A squire who still required knighthood was not Piers Ingham. Did it matter who else it was? But she found, the next moment, that it might.
“Would my Lady suffer me to let Clarice know whom she is to wed?” gently suggested Mistress Underdone.
“Oh, did I not mention it?” carelessly responded the Countess, turning back to Clarice. “Vivian Barkeworth.”
She paused an instant for the courtesy and thanks which she expected. But she got a good deal more than she expected. With a passionate sob that came from her very heart, Clarice fell at the feet of the Lady Margaret.
“What is all this fuss about?” exclaimed her displeased mistress. “I never heard such ado about nothing.”
Her displeasure, usually feared above all things, was nothing to Clarice in that terrible instant. She sobbed forth that she loved elsewhere—she was already troth-plight.
“Nonsense!” said the Countess, sharply. “What business hadst thou with such foolery, unknown to me? All maidens are wed by orders from their superiors. Why shouldst thou be an exception?”
“Oh, have you no compassion?” cried poor Clarice, in her agony. “Lady, did you never love?”
All present were intently watching the face of the Countess, in the hope of seeing some sign of relenting. But when this question was asked, the stern lips grew more set and stern than ever, and something like fire flashed out of the usually cold blue-grey eyes.
“Who—I?” she exclaimed. “Thanks be to all the saints right verily, nay. I never had ado with any such disgraceful folly. From mine earliest years I have ever desired to be an holy sister, and never to see a man’s face. Get up, girl; it is of no use to kneel to me. There was no kindness shown to me; my wishes were never considered; why should thine be? I was made to array myself for my bridal, to the very uprooting and destruction of all that I most loved and desired. Ah! if my Lord and father had lived, it would not have been so; he always encouraged my vocation. He said love was unhappy, and I thought it was scandalous. No, Clarice; I have no compassion upon lovers. There never ought to be any such thing. Let it be as I have said.”
And away stalked the Countess, looking more grey, square, and angular than ever.
Note 1. De La Moor is the only chronicler in whose pages it is possible to recognise the Edward of the letter-book, in which all his letters are copied for the thirty-third year of his father’s reign—1304-5.
Note 2. Barnes’s Edward the Third. I must in honesty confess that I have taken the liberty of smoothing Dr Barnes’s somewhat rugged translation.
Note 3. A carpet-knight was one whose heroism lay more in rhetorical visions addressed to his partner in the intervals of dancing than in hard blows given and taken in the field.
Chapter Six.
Destroyed by the Hurricane.
“Our plans may be disjointed,
But we may calmly rest:
What God has once appointed
Is better than our best.”—Frances Ridley Havergal.
The Countess left Clarice prostrate on the ground, sobbing as if her heart would break—Olympias feebly trying to raise and soothe her, Roisia looking half-stunned, and Felicia palpably amused by the scene.
“Thou hadst better get up, child,” said Diana, in a tone divided between constraint and pity. “It will do thee no good to lie there. We shall all have to put up with the same thing in our turn. I haven’t got the man I should have chosen; but I suppose it won’t matter a hundred years hence.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Roisia, in a low voice.
“Oh, thou art disappointed, I know,” said Diana. “I would hand Fulk over to thee with pleasure, if I could. I don’t want him. But I suppose he will do as well as another, and I shall take care to be mistress. It is something to be married—to anybody.”
“It is everything to be married to the right man,” said Roisia; “but it is something very awful to be married to the wrong one.”
“Oh, one soon gets over that,” was Diana’s answer. “So long as you can have your own way, I don’t see that anything signifies much. I shall not admire myself in my wedding-dress any the less because my squire is not exactly the one I hoped it might be.”
“Diana, I don’t understand thee,” responded Roisia. “What does it matter, I should say, having thine own way in little nothings so long as thou art not to have it in the one thing for which thou really carest? Thou dost not mean to say that a velvet gown would console thee for breaking thy heart?”
“But I do,” said Diana. “I must be a countess before I could wear velvet; and I would marry any man in the world who would make me a countess.”
Mistress Underdone, who had lifted up Clarice, and was holding her in her arms, petting her into calmness as she would a baby, now thought fit to interpose.
“My maids,” she said, “there are women who have lost their hearts, and there are women who were born without any. The former case has the more suffering, yet methinks the latter is really the more pitiable.”
“Well, I think those people pitiable enough who let their hearts break their sleep and interfere with their appetites,” replied Diana. “I have got over my disappointment already; and Clarice will be a simpleton if she do not.”
“I expect Clarice and I will be simpletons,” said Roisia, quietly.
“Please yourselves, and I will please myself,” answered Diana. “Now, mistress, Clarice seems to have given over crying for a few seconds; may we see the gear?”
“Oh, I want Father Bevis!” sobbed Clarice, with a fresh gush of tears.
“Ay, my dove, thou wilt be the better of shriving,” said Mistress Underdone, tenderly. “Sit thee down a moment, and I will see to Father Bevis. Wait awhile, Diana.”
It was not many minutes before she came back with Father Bevis, who took Clarice into his oratory; and as it was a long while before she rejoined them, the others—Roisia excepted—had almost time to forget the scene they had witnessed, in the interest of turning over Diana’s trousseau, and watching her try on hoods and mantles.
The interview with Father Bevis was unsatisfactory to Clarice. She wanted comfort, and he gave her none. Advice he was ready with in plenty; but comfort he could not give her, because he could not see why she wanted it. He was simply incapable of understanding her. He was very kind, and very anxious to comfort her, if he could only have told how to do it. But love—spiritual love excepted—was a stranger to his bosom. No one had ever loved him; he could not remember his parents; he had never had brother nor sister; and he had never made a friend. His heart was there, but it had never been warmed to life. Perhaps he came nearest to loving the Earl his master; but even this feeling awakened very faint pulsations. His capacity for loving human beings had been simply starved to death. Such a man as this, however anxious to be kind and helpful, of course could not enter in the least into the position of Clarice. He told her many very true things, if she had been capable of receiving them; he tried his very best to help her; but she felt through it all that they were barbarians to each other, and that Father Bevis regarded her as partially incomprehensible and wholly silly.
Father Bevis told Clarice that the chief end of man was to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever; that no love was worthy in comparison with His; that he who loved father and mother more than Christ was not worthy of Him. All very true, but the stunned brain and lacerated heart could not take it in. The drugs were pure and precious, but they were not the medicine for her complaint. She only felt a sensation of repulsion.
Clarice did not know that the Earl was doing his very best to rescue her. He insisted on Father Miles going to the Countess about it; nay, he even ventured an appeal to her himself, though it always cost him great pain to attempt a conversation with this beloved but irresponsive woman. But he took nothing by his motion. The Countess was as obstinate as she was absolute. If anything, the opposition to her will left her just a shade more determined. In vain her husband pleaded earnestly with her not to spoil two lives. Hers had been spoiled, she replied candidly: these ought not to be better off, nor should they be.
“Life has been spoiled for us both,” said the Earl, sadly; “but I should have thought that a reason why we might have been tenderer to others.”
“You are a fool!” said the Countess with a flash of angry scorn.
They were the first words she had spoken to him for eighteen years.
“Maybe, my Lady,” was the gentle answer. “It would cost me less to be accounted a fool than it would to break a heart.”
And he left her, feeling himself baffled and his endeavours useless, yet with a glow at his heart notwithstanding. His Margaret had spoken to him at last. That her words were angry, even abusive, was a consideration lost in the larger fact. Tears which did not fall welled up from the soft heart to the dove-like eyes, and he went out to the terrace to compose himself. “O Margaret, Margaret! if you could have loved me!” He never thought of blaming her—only of winning her as a dim hope of some happy future, to be realised when it was God’s will. He had never yet dared to look his cross in the face sufficiently to add, if it were God’s will.
When the Monday came, which was to be the last day of Clarice’s maiden life, it proved a busy, bustling day, with no time for thought until the evening. Clarice lived through it as best she might. Diana seemed to have put her disappointment completely behind her, and to be thoroughly consoled by the bustle and her trousseau.
One consideration never occurred to any of the parties concerned, which would be thought rather desirable in the nineteenth century. This was, that the respective bridegrooms should have any interview with their brides elect, or in the slightest degree endeavour to make themselves agreeable. They met at meals in the great hall, but they never exchanged a word. Clarice did not dare to lift her eyes, lest she should meet those either of Vivian or Piers. She kept them diligently fixed upon her trencher, with which she did little else than look at it.
The evening brought a lull in the excitement and busy labour. The Countess, attended by Felicia, had gone to the Palace on royal invitation. Clarice sat on the terrace, her eyes fixed on the river which she did not see, her hands lying listlessly in her lap. Though she had heard nothing, that unaccountable conviction of another presence, which comes to us all at times, seized upon her; and she looked up to see Piers Ingham.
The interview was long, and there is no need to add that it was painful. The end came at last.
“Wilt thou forget me, Clarice?” softly asked Piers.
“I ought,” was the answer, with a gush of tears, “if I can.”
“I cannot,” was the reply. “But one pain I can spare thee, my beloved. The Lady means to retain thee in her service as damsel of the chamber.” (Note 1.)
If Clarice could have felt any lesser grief beside the one great one, she would have been sorry to hear that.
“I shall retire,” said Sir Piers, “from my Lord’s household. I will not give thee the misery of meeting me day by day. Rather I will do what I can to help thee to forget me. It is the easier for me, since I have had to offend my Lady by declining the hand of Felicia de Fay, which she was pleased to offer me.”
“The Lady offered Felicia to thee?”
Sir Piers bent his head in assent. Clarice felt as if she could have poisoned Felicia, and have given what arsenic remained over to the Lady Margaret.
“And are we never to meet again?” she asked, with an intonation of passionate sorrow.
“That must depend on God’s will,” said Sir Piers, gravely.
Clarice covered her face with both hands, and the bitter tears trickled fast through her fingers.
“Oh, why is God’s will so hard?” she cried. “Could He not have left us in peace? We had only each other.”
“Hush, sweet heart! It is wrong to say that. And yet it is hardly possible not to think it.”
“It is not possible!” sobbed Clarice. “Does not God know it is not possible?”
“I suppose He must,” said Sir Piers, gloomily.
There was no comfort in the thought to either. There never is any to those who do not know God. And Piers was only feeling after Him, if haply he might find Him, and barely conscious even of that; while Clarice had not reached even that point. To both of them, in this very anguish, Christ was saying, “Come unto Me;” but their own cry of pain hindered them from hearing Him. It was not likely they should hear, just then, when the sunlight of life was being extinguished, and the music was dying to its close. But afterwards, in the silence and the darkness, when the sounds were hushed and the lights were out, and there was nothing that could be done but to endure, then the still, small voice might make itself heard, and the crushed hearts might sob out their answer.
So they parted. “They took but ane kiss, and tare themselves away,” to meet when it was God’s will, and not knowing on which side of the river of death that would be.
Half an hour had passed since Sir Piers’ step had died away on the terrace, and Clarice still sat where he had left her, in crushed and silent stillness. If this night could only be the end of it! If things had not to go on!
“Clarice,” said a pitying voice; and a hand was laid upon her head as if in fatherly blessing.
Clarice was too stunned with pain to remember her courtly duties. She only looked up at Earl Edmund.
“Clarice, my poor child! I want thee to know that I did my best for thee.”
“I humbly thank your Lordship,” Clarice forced herself to say.
“And it may be, my child, though it seems hard to believe, that God is doing His best for thee too.”
“Then what would His worst be?” came in a gush from Clarice.
“It might be that for which thou wouldst thank Him now.”
The sorrowing girl was arrested in spite of herself, for the Earl spoke in that tone of quiet certainty which has more effect on an undecided mind than any words. She wondered how he knew, not realising that he knows “more than the ancients” who knows God and sorrow.
“My child,” said the Earl again, “man’s best and God’s best are often very different things. In the eyes of Monseigneur Saint Jacob, the best thing would have been to spare his son from being cast into the pit and sold to the Ishmaelites. But God’s best was to sell the boy into slavery, and to send him into a dungeon, and then to lift him up to the steps of the king’s throne. When then comes, Clarice, we shall be satisfied with what happened to us now.”
“When will it come, my Lord?” asked Clarice, in a dreary tone.
“When it is best,” replied the Earl quietly.
“Your Lordship speaks as if you knew!” said Clarice.
“God knows. And he who knows God may be sure of everything else.”
“Is it so much to know God?”
“It is life. ‘Without God’ and ‘Without hope’ are convertible terms.”
“My Lord,” said Clarice, wondering much to hear a layman use language which it seemed to her was only fit for priests, “how may one know God?”
“Go and ask Him. How dost thou know any one? Is it not by converse and companionship?”
There was a silent pause till the Earl spoke again.
“Clarice,” he said, “our Lord has a lesson to teach thee. It rests with thee to learn it well or ill. If thou choose to be idle and obstinate, and refuse to learn, thou mayst sit all day long on the form in disgrace, and only have the task perfect at last when thou art wearied out with thine own perverseness. But if thou take the book willingly, and apply thyself with heart and mind, the task will be soon over, and the teacher may give thee leave to go out into the sunshine.”
“My Lord,” said Clarice, “I do not know how to apply your words here. How can I learn this task quickly?”
“Dost thou know, first, what the task is?”
“Truly, no.”
“Then let a brother tell thee who has had it set to him. It is a hard lesson, Clarice, and one that an inattentive scholar can make yet harder if he will. It is, ‘Not my will, but Thine, be done.’”
“I cannot! I cannot!” cried Clarice passionately.
“Some scholars say that,” replied the Earl gently, “until the evening shadows grow very long. They are the weariest of all when they reach home.”
“My Lord, pardon me, but you cannot understand it!” Clarice stood up. “I am young, and you—”
“I am over forty years,” replied the Earl. “Ah, child, dost thou make that blunder?—dost thou think the child’s sorrows worse than the man’s? I have known both, and I tell thee the one is not to be compared to the other. Young hearts are apt to think it, for grief is a thing new and strange to them. But if ever it become to thee as thy daily bread, thou wilt understand it better. It has been mine, Clarice, for eighteen years.”
That was a year more than Clarice had been in the world. She looked up wonderingly into the saddened, dove-like Plantagenet eyes—those eyes characteristic of the House—so sweet in repose, so fiery in anger. Clarice had but a dim idea what his sorrow was.
“My Lord,” she said, half inquiringly, “methinks you never knew such a grief as mine?”
The smile which parted the Earl’s lips was full of pity.
“Say rather, maiden, that thou never knewest one like mine. But God knows both, Clarice, and He pities both, and when His time comes He will comfort both. At the best time, child! Only let us acquaint ourselves with Him, for so only can we be at peace. And now, farewell. I had better go in and preach my sermon to myself.”
Clarice was left alone again. She did not turn back to exactly the same train of thought. A new idea had been given her, which was to become the germ of a long train of others. She hardly put it into words, even to herself; but it was this—that God meant something. He was not sitting on the throne of the universe in placid indifference to her sorrows; neither was He a malevolent Being who delighted in interfering with the plans of His creatures simply to exhibit His own power. He was doing this—somehow—for her benefit. She saw neither the how nor the why; but He saw them, and He meant good to her. All the world was not limited to the Slough of Despond at her feet. There was blue sky above.
Very vaguely Clarice realised this. But it was sufficient to soften the rocky hardness which had been the worst element of her pain—to take away the blind chance against which her impotent wings had been beaten in vain efforts to escape from the dark cage. It was that contact with “the living will of a living person,” which gives the human element to what would otherwise be hard, blind, pitiless fate.
Clarice rose, and looked up to the stars. No words came. The cry of her heart was, “O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me.” But she was too ignorant to weave it into a prayer. When human hearts look up to God in wordless agony, the Intercessor translates the attitude into the words of Heaven.
Sad or bright, there was no time for thought on the Tuesday morning. The day was bitterly cold, for it was the 16th of January 1291, and a heavy hoar-frost silvered all the trees, and weighed down the bushes in the Palace garden. Diana, wrapped in her white furs, was the picture of health and merriment. Was it because she really had not enough heart to care, or because she was determined not to give herself a moment to consider? Clarice, white as the fur round her throat, pale and heavy-eyed, grave and silent, followed Diana into the Palace chapel. The Countess was there, handsomely attired, and the Earl, in golden armour; but they stood on opposite sides of the chancel, and the former ignored her lord’s existence. Diana’s wedding came first. De Chaucombe behaved a little more amiably than usual, and, contrary to all his habits, actually offered his hand to assist his bride to rise. Then Diana fell back to the side of the Countess, and Fulk to that of the Earl, and Clarice recognised that the moment of her sacrifice was come.
With one passionately pleading look at the Lady Margaret—who met it as if she had been made of stone—Clarice slowly moved forward to the altar. She shuddered inwardly as Vivian Barkeworth took her hand into his clasp, and answered the queries addressed to her in so low a voice that Father Miles took the words for granted. It seemed only a few minutes before she woke to the miserable truth that she was now Vivian’s wife, and that to think any more of Piers Ingham was a sin against God.
Clarice dragged herself through the bridal festivities—how, she never knew. Diana was the life of the party. So bright and gay she was that she might never have heard of such a thing as disappointment. She danced with everybody, entered into all the games with the zest of an eager child, and kept the hall ringing with merry laughter, while Clarice moved through them all as if a weight of lead were upon her, and looked as though she should never smile again. Accident at length threw the two brides close together.
“Art thou going to look thus woe-begone all thy life through, Clarice?” inquired the Lady De Chaucombe.
“I do not know,” answered Clarice, gloomily. “I only hope it will not be long.”
“What will not be long?—thy sorrowful looks?”
“No—my life.”
“Don’t let me hear such nonsense,” exclaimed Diana, with a little of her old sharpness. “Men are all deceivers, child. There is not one of them worth spoiling a woman’s life for. Clarice, don’t be a simpleton!”
“Not more than I can help,” said Clarice, with the shadow of a smile; and then De Echingham came up and besought her hand for the next dance, and she was caught away again into the whirl.
The dancing, which was so much a matter of course at a wedding, that even the Countess did not venture to interfere with it, was followed by the hoydenish romps which were considered equally necessary, and which fell into final desuetude about the period of the accession of the House of Hanover. King Charles the First’s good taste had led him to frown upon them, and utterly to prohibit them at his own wedding; but the people in general were attached to their amusements, rough and even gross as they often were, and the improvement filtered down from palace to cottage only very slowly.
The cutting of the two bride-cakes, as usual, was one of the most interesting incidents. It was then, and long afterwards, customary to insert three articles in a bride-cake, which were considered to foretell the fortunes of the persons in whose possession they were found when the cakes were cut up. The gold ring denoted speedy marriage; the silver penny indicated future wealth; while the thimble infallibly doomed its recipient to be an old maid. The division of Diana’s cake revealed Sir Reginald de Echingham in possession of the ring, evidently to his satisfaction; while Olympias, with the reverse sensation, discovered in her slice both the penny and the thimble. Clarice’s cake proved even more productive of mirth; for the thimble fell to the Countess, while the Earl held up the silver penny, laughingly remarking that he was the last person who ought to have had that, since he had already more of them than he wanted. But the fun came to its apex when the ring was discovered in the hand of Mistress Underdone, who indignantly asserted that if a thousand gold rings were showered upon her from as many cakes they would not induce her to marry again. She thought two husbands were enough for any reasonable woman; and if not, she was too old now for folly of that sort. Sir Lambert sent the company into convulsions of laughter by clasping his hands on this announcement with a look of pretended despair, upon which Mistress Underdone, justly indignant, gave him such a box on the ear that he was occupied in rubbing it for the next ten minutes, thereby increasing the merriment of the rest. Loudest and brightest of all the laughers was Diana. She at least had not broken her heart. Clarice, pale and silent in the corner, where she sat and watched the rest, dimly wondered if Diana had any heart to break.
Note 1. There were two divisions of “damsels” in the household of a mediaeval princess, the domicellae and the domicellae camera. The former, who corresponded to the modern Maids of Honour, were young and unmarried; the latter, the Ladies of the Bedchamber, were always married women. Sufficient notice of this distinction has not been taken by modern writers. Had it so been, the supposition long held of the identity of Philippa Chaucer, domicella camera, with Philippa Pycard, domicella, could scarcely have arisen; nor should we be told that Chaucer’s marriage did not occur until 1369, or later, when we find Philippa in office as Lady of the Bedchamber in 1366.