In Convent Walls Part 18

My brother Edmund was the eldest of us; then came Margaret, Joan, Roger, Geoffrey, Isabel, and Katherine; then stand I Agnes, and after me are Maud, John, Blanche, and Beatrice [Note 1]. And of them, Edmund and Margaret have been commanded to G.o.d. He died young, my poor brother Edmund, for he set his heart on being restored to the name and lands which our father had forfeited, and our Lord the King thought not good to grant it; so his heart broke, and he died. Poor soul! I would not say an unkind word over his grave; where the treasure is, there will the heart be; but I would rather set my heart on worthier treasure, and I think I should scarce be so weak as to die for the loss. G.o.d a.s.soil him, poor soul!

I was born in the Castle of Ludlow, on the morrow of the Translation of Saint Thomas, in the year of King Edward of Caernarvon the eleventh [Note 2], so that I am now thirty years of age. I am somewhat elder than my lord, who was born at Allesley, by Coventry town, on Saint Cuthbert's Day, in the fourteenth year of the same [March 20th, 1321].

I might say I was wiser, and not look forward to much penance for lying; for I should be more likely to have it set me if I said that all the wits in this world were in his head. Howbeit, there is many a worse man than he: a valiant knight, and courteous, and of rarely gentle and gracious ways; and maybe, if he were wiser, he would give me more trouble to rule him, which is easy enough to do. Neverthelatter, there be times when it should do me ease to take him by the shoulders and give him an hearty shake, if I could thereby shake a bit more sense into him: and there be times when it comes over me that he might have been better matched, as our sometime Lord King Edward meant him to have been, with the Lady Alianora La Despenser, that Queen Isabel packed off to a nunnery in hot haste when she came in. Poor soul! He certainly is not matched with me, unless two horses be matched whereof one is black and of sixteen handfuls, and steppeth like a prince, and the other is white, and of twelve handfuls, and ambles of a jog-trot. I would he had a bit more stir in him. Not that he lacks knightly courage--never a whit; carry him into battle, and he shall quit him like a man; but when all is said, he is fitter for the cloister, for he loveth better to sit at home with Joan of his knee, and a great clerkly book afore him wherein he will read by the hour, which is full well for a priest, but not for a n.o.ble of the King's Court. He never gave me an ill word (veriliest [truly], I marvel if ever he said 'I won't!' in all his life), yet, for all his hendihood [courtesy, sweetness], will he have his own way by times, I can never make out how. But he is a good man on the whole, and doth pretty well as he is bid, and I might change for a worse without taking a long journey. So, take it all in all, there are many women have more to trouble them than I, the blessed saints be thanked, and our sweetest Lady Saint Mary and my patron Saint Agnes in especial. Only I do hope Jack shall have more wit than his father, and I shall think the fairies have changed him if he have not. _My_ son should not be short of brains.

But now, to have back, and begin my story: for I reckon I shall never make an end if I am thus lone: in coming to the beginning.

We were all brought up in the Castle of Ludlow, going now and then to sweeten [to have the house thoroughly cleaned] to the Castle of Wigmore.

Of course, while we were little children, we knew scarce any thing of our parents, as beseemed persons of our rank. The people whom I verily knew were Dame Hilda our mistress [governess], and Maud and Ellen our damsels, and Master Terrico our Chamberlain, and Robert atte Wardrobe, our wardrobe-keeper, and Sir Philip the clerk (I cry him mercy, he should have had place of Robert), and Stephen the usher of the chamber, and our four nurses, whose names were Emelina, Thomasia, Joan, and Margery, and little Blaise the page. They were my world. But into this world, every now and then, came a sweet, fair presence--a vision of a gracious lady in velvet robes, whose hand I knelt to kiss, and who used to lay it on my head and bless me: and at times she would take up one of us in her arms, and sit down with the babe on her velvet lap, and a look would come into her eyes which I never saw in Dame Hilda's; and she would bend her fair head and kiss the babe as if she loved her very much. But that was mostly while we were babies. I cannot recollect her doing that to me--it was chiefly to Blanche and Beatrice. Until one day, and then--

Nay, I have not come to that yet. And then, at times, we should hear a voice below--a stern, deep voice, or a peal of loud laughter--and in an instant the light and the joy would die out of the tender eyes of that gracious vision, and instead would come a frightened look like that of a hunted hare, and commonly she would rise suddenly, and put down the babe, and hasten away, as if she had been indulging in some forbidden pleasure, and was afraid of being caught. I can remember wis.h.i.+ng that the loud laugh and the stern angry voice would go away, and never come back, but that the gracious vision would stay always with us, and not only pay us a rare visit. Ay, and I can remember wis.h.i.+ng that she would take _me_ on that velvet lap, and let me nestle into her soft arms, and dare to lay my little head on her warm bosom. I think she would have done it, if she had known! I used to feel in those days like a little chicken hardly feathered, and longed to be under the soft brooding wings of the hen. The memory of it hath caused me to pet my Jack and Joan a deal more than I should without it.

Then, sometimes, we had a visit from a very different sort of guest.

That was an old lady--about a hundred and fifty, I used to fancy her-- dressed in velvet full as costly, but how differently she wore it! She never took us on her lap--not she, indeed! We used to have to kneel and kiss her hand--and Roger whispered to me once that if he dared, he would bite it. This horrid old thing (who called herself our grandmother) used to be like a storm blowing through the house. She never was two minutes in the room before she began to scold somebody; and if she could not find reasonable fault with any body, that seemed to vex her more than anything else. Then she scolded us all in a lump together. "Dame Hilda, what an untidy chamber!"--she usually began in that way--"why don't you make these children put their playthings tidy? (Of course Dame Hilda did, at the end of the day; but how could we have playthings tidy while we were playing with them?) Meg, your hair is no better than a mop! Jack, how got you that rent in your sleeve? (I never knew Jack without a rent in some part of his clothes; I should not have thought it was Jack if he had come in whole garments.) Joan, how ungainly you sit!

pluck yourself up this minute. Nym, take your elbows off the table.

Maud, your chaucers [slippers] are down at heel. How dirty your hands are, Roger! go and wash them. Agnes, that wimple of yours is all awry; who pinned it up?"

So she went on--rattle and scold, scold and rattle--as long as she stayed in the room. Jack, always the saucy one, asked her one day, when he was very little--

"Are you really Grandmother?"

"Certes, child," said she, turning to look at him: "why?"

"Because I wish you were somebody else!"

_Ha, chetife_! did Jack forget that afternoon? I trow not.

I had a sound whipping once myself from Dame Hilda, because I said, right out, that I hated the Lady Margaret: and Joan,--poor delicate Joan, who was perpetually scolded for stooping--looked at me as if she wished she dared say it too. Roger had his ears boxed because he drawled out, "Amen!" I think we all said Amen in our hearts.

Sometimes the Lady Margaret did not come upstairs, but sent for some of us down to her. That was worse than ever. There were generally a number of gentlemen there, who seemed to think that children were only made to be teased: and some of them I disliked, and others I despised.

Only of one I was terribly afraid: and that was--mercy, Jesu!--mine own father.

I should have found it difficult to say what it was in him that frightened me. I used to call it fear then; but when I look back on the feeling from my present state, I think it was rather a kind of ungovernable antipathy. He did not scold us all round as Lady Margaret did. The worst thing, I think, that I remember his saying to me was a sharp--"Get out of the way, girl!" And I wished I only could get out of his way, for ever and ever. Something made me feel as if I could not bear to be in the same room with him. I used to s.h.i.+ver all over, if I only heard his voice. Yet he never ill-used any of us; he scarcely even looked at us. It was not any thing he did which made me feel so; it was just himself.

Surely never did man dress more superbly than he. I recollect thinking that the King was not half so fine; yet King Edward liked velvet and gold as well as most men. My Lord my father never wore worsted summer tunics or woollen winter cloaks, like others. Silk, velvet, samite, and cloth of gold, were his meanest wear; and his furs were budge, ermine, miniver, and gris. I can remember hearing how once, when the furrier sent him in a robe of velvet guarded with hare's fur, he flung it on one side in a fury, and ordered the poor man to be beaten cruelly. He always wore much golden broidery, and b.u.t.tons of gems or solid gold; and he never would wear a suit of any man's livery--not even the King's,-- save once, when he wore the Earl of Chester's at the coronation of the Queen of France, just to vex King Edward--as it sorely did, for he was then a proscribed fugitive, who had no right to use it.

It is a hard matter when a child is frightened of its own father. It is yet harder when he makes it hate him. Ah, it is easy to say, That was wicked of thee. So it was: and I know it. But doth not sin lead to sin?--spring out of it, like branches from a stem, like leaves from a branch? And when one man's act of sin creates sin in another man, and that again in a third, whose is the sin--the black root, whereof came the rotten branches and the withered leaves? Are we not all our brothers' and our sisters' keepers? Well, it will not answer to pursue that road: for I know well I should trace up the sin too high, to one of whom it were not meet for me to speak in the same breath with ugly words. Ay me! what poor weak things we mortal creatures are! Little marvel, little marvel for the woe that was wrought!--so fair, so fair she was! She had the soul of a fiend with the face of an angel. Was it any wonder that men--ay, and some women--were beguiled with that angel face, and fancied but too rashly that the soul must be as sweet as it?

G.o.d have mercy on all Christian souls! Verily, I myself, only this last spring-time, was ready to yield to the witch's spell--never was woman such enchantress as she!--and athwart all the past, despite all I knew, gazing on that face, even yet fairer than the faces of younger women, to think it possible that all the tales were false, and all the past a vision of the night, and that the lovely face and the sweet, soft voice covered a soul white as the saints in Heaven! And men are easier deluded by such dreams than women--or at least I think it. My poor father! If only he had never seen her that haled him to his undoing! he might, perchance, have been a better man. Any way, he paid the bill in his heart's blood. So here I leave him. G.o.d forgive us all!

And now to my story. While I was but a little child, we saw little of our mother: little more, indeed, than we did of our father. I think, of the two, we oftener saw our grandmother. And little children, as G.o.d hath wisely ordered it, live in the present moment, and take no note of things around them which men and women see with half an eye. Now, looking back, I can recall events which then pa.s.sed by me as of no import. It was so, and there was an end of it. But I can see now why it was so: and I know enough to guess the often sorrowful nature of that wherefore.

So it was nothing to us children, unless it were a relief, that after I was about four years old, we missed our father almost entirely. We never knew why he tarried away for months at a time. We had not a notion that he was first in the prison of the Tower, and afterwards a refugee over seas. And we saw without seeing that our mother grew thin and white, and her sweet eyes were heavy with tears which we never saw her shed. All we perceived was that she came oftener to the nursery, and stayed longer with us, and petted the babies more than had been her wont. And that such matters had a meaning,--a deep, sad, terrible meaning--never entered our heads. Later on we knew that during those lonely years her heart was being crucified, and crucifixion is a dying that lasts long. But she never let us know it. I think she would not damp our fresh childish glee by even the spray of that roaring cataract wherein her life was overwhelmed. Mothers--such mothers as she--are like a reflection of G.o.d.

I remember well, though I was but just seven years old, the night when news came to Ludlow Castle that my father had escaped from the Tower.

It was a very hot night in August--too hot to sleep--and I lay awake, chattering to Kate and Isabel, who were my bedfellows, about some grand play we meant to have the next afternoon, in the great gallery--when all at once we heard a horse come das.h.i.+ng up to the portcullis, past our chamber wall, and a horn crying out into the night.

Isabel sat up in bed, and listened.

"Is it my Lord coming home?" I said.

"What, all alone, with no company?" answered Isabel, who is four years elder than I. "Silly child! It is some news for my Lady my mother.

The saints grant it be good!"

Of course we could hear nothing of what pa.s.sed at the portcullis, as our window opened on the base court. But in a few minutes we heard the horse come trotting into our court, and the rider 'lighted down: and Isabel, who lay with her head next the cas.e.m.e.nt, sat up again and put her head out of the curtain. It was a beautiful moonlight night, almost as bright as day.

"What is it, Ibbot?" said Kate.

"It is a man in livery," answered Isabel; "but whose livery I know not.

It is not ours."

Then we heard the man call to the porter, and the door open, and the sound of m.u.f.fled voices to and fro for a minute; and then Master Inge's step, which we knew--he was then castellan--coming in great haste past our door as if he were going to my Lady's chamber. Then the door of the large nursery opened, and we heard Dame Hilda within, saying to Tamzine, "Thou wert better run and see." And Tamzine went quickly along the gallery, as if she, too, were going to my Lady.

For a long, long time, as it seemed to us--I dare say it was not many minutes--we lay and listened in vain. At length Tamzine came back.

"Good tidings, or bad?" we heard Dame Hilda ask.

"The saints wot!" whispered Tamzine. "My Lord is 'scaped from the Tower."

"_Ha, chetife_! will he come here?" said Dame Hilda: and we saw that it was bad news in her eyes.

"Forsooth, nay!" replied Tamzine. "There be hues and cries all over for him, but man saith he is fled beyond seas."

"Amen!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Dame Hilda. "He may win to Cathay [China] by my good will; and if he turn not again till mine hair be white, then will I give my patron saint a measure in wax. But what saith my Lady?"

"Her I saw not," answered Tamzine; "but Mistress Robergia, who told me, said she went white and red both at once, and her breast heaved as though her very heart should come forth."

"Gramercy!" said Dame Hilda. "How some folks do set their best pearls in copper!"

"Eh, our Lady love us!" responded Tamzine. "That's been ever sith world began to run, Dame, I can tell you."

"I lack no telling, la.s.s," was Dame Hilda's answer. "Never was there finer pearl set in poorer ore than that thou and I wot of."

I remember that bit of talk because I puzzled myself sorely as to what Dame Hilda could mean. Kate was puzzled, too, for she said to Isabel--

"What means the Dame? I never saw my Lady wear a pearl set in copper."

"Oh, let be!" said Isabel. "'Tis but one of the Dame's strange sayings.

She is full of fantasies."

But whether Isabel were herself perplexed, or whether she understood, and thought it better to shut our mouths, that cannot I tell to this day.

Well, after that things were quiet again for a while: a very long while, it seemed to me. I believe it was really about six months. During that time, we saw much more of our mother than we used to do; she would come often into the nursery, and take one of the little ones on her lap--it was oftenest Blanche--and sit there with her. Sometimes she would talk with Dame Hilda; but more frequently she was silent and sad, at times looking long from the cas.e.m.e.nt as if she saw somewhat that none other eyes could see. Jack said one day--

"Whither go Mother's eyes when she looks out of the window?"

"For shame, Damsel [Note 3] John!" cried Dame Hilda. "'Mother,' indeed!

Only common children use such a word. Say 'my Lady' if you please."

"She is my mother, isn't she?" said Jack stubbornly. "Why shouldn't I call her so, I should like to know? But you haven't answered me, Dame."