Our Little Lady Part 7

CHAPTER SIX.

SET FREE.

As Bertha came back, carefully carrying her jar of honey, she heard a considerable tumult in a street on her left hand, which led to the Jews'

quarter of the city. In every town, the Jews were shut up in a particular part of it; and after London itself, the towns in which the greatest number of Jews lived were Lincoln, York, Norwich, Oxford, and Northampton. Since the dreadful persecution arising from the (real or supposed) murder of little Hugh, Lincoln had been comparatively quiet from such tumults; and Bertha was too young to know anything about it but from hearsay. Wondering if some fresh commotion was going to arise, and anxious to be safe at home before it should begin, Bertha quickened her steps. There were only three more streets to cross, one of which was a dark, narrow alley leading directly to the Jews' quarter. As Bertha crossed this, she heard a low, frightened call upon her name, and a slight figure crept out and crouched at her feet.

"O Bertha!" said a girl's voice, broken by sobs and terrified catching of the breath, "you are kind-hearted; I know you are. You saved a little dog that the dreadful boys were trying to drown. Will you save me, though I am beneath a dog in your eyes?"

"Who are you?" asked astonished Bertha.

"I am Hester, the daughter of Aaron," said the girl, "and there is a deadly raid on our quarter. They accuse us of poisoning the wells. O Bertha, they lay things to us that we never do! Save me, for my womanhood's sake!"

"Poor soul!" said Bertha, looking down at her. "Come with me to Aunt Avice. Maybe she will let thee tarry in some corner till the tumult is over. I dare say it will not be much."

Bertha spoke in rather contemptuous tones, though they were not wanting in pity. Everybody in England was taught then to rank Jews with vermin, and to look upon it as a weakness to show them any kindness.

The two girls reached the door in safety, and Bertha led Hester in.

"Aunt Avice," she said, "there is a commotion in the Jews' quarter, and here is a Jew maiden that wants to know if we will shelter her. I suppose she won't hurt us much, will she?"

The very breath of a Jew was fancied to be poisonous.

Avice looked at the pale, terrified face and trembling limbs of the girl who had cast herself on her mercy.

"Well, I dare say not," said she; "at any rate, we will risk it.

Perhaps the good Lord may not be very angry; or if He is, we must say more prayers, and beg our Lady Saint Mary to intercede for us. Come in, child."

Poor Avice! she knew no better. She had been taught that the Lord who died for her was a stern, angry Judge, and that all the mercy rested in His human mother. And the Jews had crucified Christ; so, thought Avice, He must hate them! Perhaps, of such Christians as she was, He may have said again, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

Hester came in quietly. "May G.o.d bless you!" she said. "I will try not to breathe on you, for I know what you think." And she sat down meekly on the floor, in a dark corner, not daring to offer any help, lest they should imagine that she would pollute anything she touched. Avice threw her a cake of bread, as she might have done to a dog; and Hester knew that it was a kinder act than she would have received from most of the Christians around.

It was not yet quite bed-time, and Bertha sat down again to her work, begging her aunt to finish the tale. They took no notice of Hester.

"It is almost finished," said Avice; "there is little more to tell. The winter got over, but spring was scarcely begun when our little Lady's health failed again. The Lord King was so anxious about her that when he was away from Windsor, he bade the Lady Queen to send him a special messenger with news of her; and so delighted was he to hear of her recovery, that he commanded a good robe to be given to the messenger, and offered in thanksgiving an image of silver, wrought in the form of a woman, to the shrine of Saint Edward."

"Then she did recover, Aunt?"

"Ay, but it was for the last time. As the summer drew on, the Lady Queen asked Master Thomas if he thought it well that the little Lady should have change again, and be sent into the country till the heat was past. Master Thomas answered that he reckoned it unnecessary; and the Lady Queen departed, well pleased. But as soon as she was gone, Master Thomas said to me and Julian the Rocker, who were tending our little Lady--'She will have a better change than to Swallowfield.' Quoth Julian, 'Say you so, Master? Whither do you purpose sending her?' And he said, looking sadly on the child, '_I_ purpose sending her? Truly, good Julian, no whither. But ere long time be over, the Lord our G.o.d will send for her, by that angel that taketh no bribe to delay execution of His mandate.' And then I knew his meaning: my darling was to die.

But the steps of the angel were very slow. The autumn came and went.

The child seemed languid and dull, and the Lord King offered a chasuble of samite to the blessed Edmund of Pontigny at his altar at Canterbury."

Edmund Rich, afterwards called Saint Edmund of Pontigny, was an Archbishop of Canterbury with whom King Henry the Third was at variance as long as he lived, much in the same way as Henry the Second had been with Becket. Now he was dead, a banished man, the Pope had declared him a saint, and King Henry made humble offerings at his shrine. But it is amusing to find that with respect to this offering at least, his Majesty's instructions were to buy the samite of the lowest price that could be found!

"It was all of no use," pursued Avice sorrowfully. "The angel had received the mandate. Great feasts were held at Easter--there were twenty beeves and fifty muttons, fifteen hundred pullets, and six hundred s.h.i.+llings' worth of bread, beside many other things--but ere one month was over, the feast became a fast. When Saint Philip's day dawned my darling lay in her bed, with her fair eyes turned up to heaven and her hands folded in prayer; and who may know what she said to G.o.d, or yet more what He told to her? She had never been taught to pray; she could not be." Avice's only notion of prayer was repeating a form of words, and keeping time by a string of beads. "But I shall always think that in some way beyond our comprehension, my darling could speak to G.o.d. And on the evening of the Invention of the Cross"--which is May 3rd--"she spoke to Him in Heaven."

"And did the Lady Queen sorrow very much, Aunt? I suppose, though, great ladies like her would not care as much as poor people."

"Wouldst thou, child? Ah, a mother is a mother, let her be a cottager or a queen. And she sorrowed so sorely that for weeks afterwards she lay ill, and all the skill of her physicians could avail nothing. The Lord King, too, fell sick of a tertian fever, which held him many days, and I believe it was out of sheer anguish for his dearest child. He commanded a bra.s.s image of her to be placed on the tomb, but ere it was finished he would have one of silver: and he gave fifty s.h.i.+llings a year to the hermit of Charing, for a priest to pray daily for her in the chapel of the hermitage."

"Do you think she is still in Purgatory, Aunt?"

Avice's religion, as taught not by the Word of G.o.d, but the traditions of men, led her to be doubtful on that point. But her heart broke its way through the bonds.

"What, my white dove? my little unspotted darling, that never wilfully sinned against G.o.d and holy Church? Child, if our holy Father the Pope were to tell me himself that she was there, I would not believe him. Do the angels go to Purgatory? Nay, I do verily believe that, seeing her infirmity, Christ our Lord did all the work of salvation for her, and that she sings now before our Father's face."

Poor Avice! she could get no further. But we, who know G.o.d's Word, know that there is but one Mediator between G.o.d and man, and that He has offered a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. Before Bertha could reply, an answer came unexpectedly from the dark corner.

"Your G.o.d must be hard to propitiate," said the young Jewess. "In old times, after the sacrifice was offered, a man was cleansed from sin. He had not to cleanse himself by his own pain."

"But you are heathens," said Avice, feeling it a condescension to argue with a Jew. "Our religion is better than yours."

"How?" was Hester's rejoinder.

"Because we have been redeemed by our Lord, who died to save us from h.e.l.l."

"It does not sound like it. Then why had the little child to go there?"

"She did not go there! She went to Purgatory."

"She went to pain, if I understood you rightly. Why did your Messiah not finish His work, and keep her from going to pain altogether?"

"I cannot answer such wicked questions," said Avice. "The Church teaches that G.o.d's love purifies His servants in Purgatory, and as soon as their souls are clean they go to Heaven."

"Our G.o.d does better for us than that," was Hester's quiet answer. "I do not know what 'the Church' is. But I suppose G.o.d's love is not for Gentiles."

And she relapsed into silence. Avice sat and span--and thought. Both of them were terribly ignorant; but Avice did honestly desire to know G.o.d's will, and such truth as was in Hester's words troubled her. And as she thought, other words came to her, heard years ago from the pulpit of Lincoln Cathedral, and from the long silent lips of that holy Bishop Grosteste whom she so deeply revered.

"By leaning on Christ," the Bishop had said, "every true Christian rises into true life, peace, and joy; he lives in His life, sees light in His light, is invigorated with His warmth, grows in His strength, and leaning on the Beloved, his soul ascends upwards."

Then for those who loved Christ and leaned on Him, either He must be with them in Purgatory, and then it would be no pain at all: or--Avice shrank from the alternative that perhaps there was no Purgatory at all!

It is hard to break free from trammels in which we have been held all our lives. Bertha did not follow the course of her aunt's thoughts, and wondered why she said, after long silence--

"Methinks G.o.d is enough for His people, wherever they are."

Hester also had been thinking, and to as much purpose.

"It is written, 'In His name shall the Gentiles trust,'" she said. "And I think, if He can love any Gentiles, it must be kindly and merciful hearts like yours. Perhaps the Great Sacrifice--the Messiah Himself--is meant for all men. But I think He will finish His work, and not leave it incomplete, as your priests seem to teach you."

"He will do right by all men, if thou meanest our Lord," replied Avice gently. "And what was right for all, and best for us, we shall know when we come to Him."

"Then the little Lady knows it now, Aunt," said Bertha.

"Yes, my darling knows it now. It may be she knows why her ears were sealed and her tongue bound, now that they are unstopped and loosed.

And I marvel if any voice in the choirs of the angels can be so sweet as hers."

There was silence for a little while. Then Hester rose.

"I thank you very much for your kindness," she said. "I think I might go home. The streets seem quieter now."