Grisly Grisell Or The Laidly Lady of Whitburn Part 11

I think it were a better thing Than murdered friend and marriage-ring Forced on my life together.

E. B. BROWNING, The Romaunt of the Page.

Ladies were accustomed to live for weeks, months, nay, years, without news of those whom they had sent to the wars, and to live their life without them. The Lady of Whitburn did not expect to see her husband or son again till the summer campaign was over, and she was not at all uneasy about them, for the full armour of a gentleman had arrived at such a pitch of perfection that it was exceedingly difficult to kill him, and such was the weight, that his danger in being overthrown was of never being able to get up, but lying there to be smothered, made prisoner, or killed, by breaking into his armour. The knights could not have moved at all under the weight if they had not been trained from infancy, and had nearly reduced themselves to the condition of great tortoises.

It was no small surprise when, very late on a July evening, when, though twilight still prevailed, all save the warder were in bed, and he was asleep on his post, a bugle-horn rang out the master's note, at first in the usual tones, then more loudly and impatiently. Hastening out of bed to her loophole window, Grisell saw a party beneath the walls, her father's scallop-sh.e.l.ls dimly seen above them, and a little in the rear, one who was evidently a prisoner.

The blasts grew fiercer, the warder and the castle were beginning to be astir, and when Grisell hurried into the outer room, she found her mother afoot and hastily dressing.

"My lord! my lord! it is his note," she cried.

"Father come home!" shouted Bernard, just awake. "Grisly! Grisly! help me don my clothes."

Lady Whitburn trembled and shook with haste, and Grisell could not help her very rapidly in the dark, with Bernard howling rather than calling for help all the time; and before she, still less Grisell, was fit for the public, her father's heavy step was on the stairs, and she heard fragments of his words.

"All abed! We must have supper - ridden from Ayton since last baiting. Aye, got a prisoner - young Copeland - old one slain - great victory - Northampton. King taken - Buckingham and Egremont killed - Rob well - proud as a pyet. Ho, Grisell," as she appeared, "bestir thyself. We be ready to eat a horse behind the saddle. Serve up as fast as may be."

Grisell durst not stop to ask whether she had heard the word Copeland aright, and ran downstairs with a throbbing heart, just crossing the hall, where she thought she saw a figure bowed down, with hands over his face and elbows on his knees, but she could not pause, and went on to the kitchen, where the peat fire was never allowed to expire, and it was easy to stir it into heat. Whatever was cold she handed over to the servants to appease the hunger of the arrivals, while she broiled steaks, and heated the great perennial cauldron of broth with all the expedition in her power, with the help of Thora and the grumbling cook, when he appeared, angry at being disturbed.

Morning light was beginning to break before her toils were over for the dozen hungry men pounced so suddenly in on her, and when she again crossed the hall, most of them were lying on the straw-bestrewn floor fast asleep. One she specially noticed, his long limbs stretched out as he lay on his side, his head on his arm, as if he had fallen asleep from extreme fatigue in spite of himself.

His light brown hair was short and curly, his cheeks fair and ruddy, and all reminded her of Leonard Copeland as he had been those long years ago before her accident. Save for that, she would have been long ago his wife, she with her marred face the mate of that n.o.bly fair countenance. How strange to remember. How she would have loved him, frank and often kind as she remembered him, though rough and impatient of restraint. What was that which his fingers had held till sleep had unclasped them? An ivory chessrook! Such was a favourite token of ladies to their true loves. What did it mean? Might she pause to pray a prayer over him as once hers - that all might be well with him, for she knew that in this unhappy war important captives were not treated as Frenchmen would have been as prisoners of war, but executed as traitors to their King.

She paused over him till a low sound and the bright eyes of one of the dogs warned her that all might in another moment be awake, and she fled up the stair to the solar, where her parents were both fast asleep, and across to her own room, where she threw herself on her bed, dressed as she was, but could not sleep for the mult.i.tude of strange thoughts that crowded over her in the increasing daylight.

By and by there was a stir, some words pa.s.sed in the outer room, and then her mother came in.

"Wake, Grisly. Busk and bonne for thy wedding-morning instantly. Copeland is to keep his troth to thee at once. The Earl of Warwick hath granted his life to thy father on that condition only."

"Oh, mother, is he willing?" cried Grisell trembling.

"What skills that, child? His hand was pledged, and he must fulfil his promise now that we have him."

"Was it troth? I cannot remember it," said Grisell.

"That matters not. Your father's plight is the same thing. His father was slain in the battle, so 'tis between him and us. Put on thy best clothes as fast as may be. Thou shalt have my wedding-veil and miniver mantle. Speed, I say. My lord has to hasten away to join the Earl on the way to London. He will see the knot tied beyond loosing at once."

To dress herself was all poor Grisell could do in her bewilderment. Remonstrance was vain. The actual marriage without choice was not so repugnant to all her feelings as to a modern maiden; it was the ordinary destiny of womanhood, and she had been used in her childhood to look on Leonard Copeland as her property; but to be forced on the poor youth instantly on his father's death, and as an alternative to execution, set all her maidenly feelings in revolt. Bernard was sitting up in bed, crying out that he could not lose his Grisly. Her mother was running backwards and forwards, bringing portions of her own bridal gear, and directing Thora, who was combing out her young lady's hair, which was long, of a beautiful brown, and was to be worn loose and flowing, in the bridal fas.h.i.+on. Grisell longed to kneel and pray, but her mother hurried her. "My lord must not be kept waiting, there would be time enough for prayer in the church." Then Bernard, clamouring loudly, threw his arms round the thick old heavy silken gown that had been put on her, and declared that he would not part with his Grisly, and his mother tore him away by force, declaring that he need not fear, Copeland would be in no hurry to take her away, and again when she bent to kiss him he clung tight round her neck almost strangling her, and rumpling her tresses.

Ridley had come up to say that my lord was calling for the young lady, and it was he who took the boy off and held him in his arms, as the mother, who seemed endued with new strength by the excitement, threw a large white m.u.f.fling veil over Grisell's head and shoulders, and led or rather dragged her down to the hall.

The first sounds she there heard were, "Sir, I have given my faith to the Lady Eleanor of Audley, whom I love."

"What is that to me? 'Twas a precontract to my daughter."

"Not made by me nor her."

"By your parents, with myself. You went near to being her death outright, marred her face for life, so that none other will wed her. What say you? Not hurt by your own will? Who said it was? What matters that?"

"Sir," said Leonard, "it is true that by mishap, nay, if you will have it so, by a child's inadvertence, I caused this evil chance to befall your daughter, but I deny, and my father denies likewise, that there was any troth plight between the maid and me. She will own the same if you ask her. As I spake before, there was talk of the like kind between you, sir, and my father, and it was the desire of the good King that thus the families might be reconciled; but the contract went no farther, as the holy King himself owned when I gave my faith to the Lord Audley's daughter, and with it my heart."

"Aye, we know that the Frenchwoman can make the poor fool of a King believe and avouch anything she choose! This is not the point. No more words, young man. Here stands my daughter; there is the rope. Choose - wed or hang."

Leonard stood one moment with a look of agonised perplexity over his face. Then he said, "If I consent, am I at liberty, free at once to depart?"

"Aye," said Whitburn. "So you fulfil your contract, the rest is nought to me."

"I am then at liberty? Free to carry my sword to my Queen and King?"

"Free."

"You swear it, on the holy cross?"

Lord Whitburn held up the cross hilt of his sword before him, and made oath on it that when once married to his daughter, Leonard Copeland was no longer his prisoner.

Grisell through her veil read on the youthful face a look of grief and renunciation; he was sacrificing his love to the needs of King and country, and his words chimed in with her conviction.

"Sir, I am ready. If it were myself alone, I would die rather than be false to my love, but my Queen needs good swords and faithful hearts, and I may not fail her. I am ready!"

"It is well!" said Lord Whitburn. "Ho, you there! Bring the horses to the door."

Grisell, in all the strange suspense of that decision, had been thinking of Sir Gawaine, whose lines rang in her head, but that look of grief roused other feelings. Sir Gawaine had no other love to sacrifice.

"Sir! sir!" she cried, as her father turned to bid her mount the pillion behind Ridley. "Can you not let him go free without? I always looked to a cloister."

"That is for you and he to settle, girl. Obey me now, or it will be the worse for him and you."

"One word I would say," added the mother. "How far hath this matter with the Audley maid gone? There is no troth plight, I trow?"

"No, by all that is holy, no. Would the lad not have pleaded it if there had been? No more dilly-dallying. Up on the horse, Grisly, and have done with it. We will show the young recreant how promises are kept in Durham County."

He dragged rather than led his daughter to the door, and lifted her pa.s.sively to the pillion seat behind Cuthbert Ridley. A fine horse, Copeland's own, was waiting for him. He was allowed to ride freely, but old Whitburn kept close beside him, so that escape would have been impossible. He was in the armour in which he had fought, dimmed and dust-stained, but still glancing in the morning sun, which glittered on the sea, though a heavy western thunder-cloud, purple in the sun, was rising in front of this strange bridal cavalcade.

It was overhead by the time the church was reached, and the heavy rain that began to fall caused the priest to bid the whole party come within for the part of the ceremony usually performed outside the west door.

It was very dark within. The windows were small and old, and filled with dusky gla.s.s, and the arches were low browed. Grisell's m.u.f.flings were thrown aside, and she stood as became a maiden bride, with all her hair flowing over her shoulders and long tresses over her face, but even without this, her features would hardly have been visible, as the dense cloud rolled overhead; and indeed so tall and straight was her figure that no one would have supposed her other than a fair young spouse. She trembled a good deal, but was too much terrified and, as it were, stunned for tears, and she durst not raise her drooping head even to look at her bridegroom, though such light as came in shone upon his fair hair and was reflected on his armour, and on one golden spur that still he wore, the other no doubt lost in the fight.

All was done regularly. The Lord of Whitburn was determined that no ceremony that could make the wedlock valid should be omitted. The priest, a kind old man, but of peasant birth, and entirely subservient to the Dacres, proceeded to ask each of the pair when they had been a.s.soiled, namely, absolved. Grisell, as he well knew, had been shriven only last Friday; Leonard muttered, "Three days since, when I was dubbed knight, ere the battle."

"That suffices," put in the Baron impatiently. "On with you, Sir Lucas."

The thoroughly personal parts of the service were in English, and Grisell could not but look up anxiously when the solemn charge was given to mention whether there was any lawful "letting" to their marriage. Her heart bounded as it were to her throat when Leonard made no answer.

But then what lay before him if he pleaded his promise!

It went on - those betrothal vows, dictated while the two cold hands were linked, his with a kind of limp pa.s.siveness, hers, quaking, especially as, in the old use of York, he took her "for laither for fairer" - laith being equivalent to loathly - "till death us do part." And with failing heart, but still resolute heart, she faltered out her vow to cleave to him "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness or health, and to be bonner (debonair or cheerful) and boughsome (obedient) till that final parting."

The troth was plighted, and the silver mark - poor Leonard's sole available property at the moment - laid on the priest's book, as the words were said, "with worldly cathel I thee endow," and the ring, an old one of her mother's, was held on Grisell's finger. It was done, though, alas! the bridegroom could hardly say with truth, "with my body I thee wors.h.i.+p."