The Herd Boy and His Hermit Part 13

'O sir, I cannot send him back!' entreated Hal, also embracing and caressing the s.h.a.ggy neck.

'Send him back! Nay, indeed. As saith the Reverend Mother, it were well if some earls and lords minded his example,' said Sir Giles.

'Here! Watch, I mind thee well,' added Anne. 'Here's a slice of pasty to reward thee. Oh! thou art very hungry,' as the big mouth bolted it whole.

'Nearly famished, poor rogue!' said Hal, administering a bone. 'How far hast thou run, mine own lad! Art fain to come with thy master and see the hermit?'

'Thou must e'en go,' growled Simon Bunce, 'unless the lady's dog make an end of thee! 'Tis ever the worthless that turn up.'

'I would Florimond would show himself as true,' said the Prioress.

'Don't show thy teeth, sir! I can honour Watch, yet love thee.'

''Tis jealousy as upsets faith,' said the merchant. 'The hound is a knightly beast with his proud head, but he brooks not to see a Woodville creep in.'

'Nay, or a Beaufort!' suggested Sir Giles.

'No treason, Lord Musgrave!' said the Prioress, laughing.

'Ah, madam,' responded Sir Giles, 'what is treason?'

'Whatever is against him that has the best of it,' observed Master Lorimer. 'Well that it is not the business of a poor dealer in horse-gear and leather-work. He asks not which way his bridles are to turn! How now, Tray and Blackchaps? Never growl and gird. You have no part in the fray!'

For they were chained, and could only champ, bark and howl, while Florimond and Watch turned one another over, and had to be pulled forcibly back, by Hal on the one hand and on the other by the Mother Agnes, who would let n.o.body touch Florimond except herself. After this, the two dogs subsided into armed neutrality, and gradually became devoted friends.

The curiously composed cavalcade moved on their way southward. The Prioress was mounted on the fine chestnut horse that Sir Giles had rescued. She was attended by a nun, Sister Mabel, and a lay Sister, both as hardy as herself, and riding st.u.r.dy mountain ponies; but her chaplain, a thin delicate-looking man with a bad cough, only ventured upon a st.u.r.dy a.s.s; Anne St. John had a pretty little white palfrey and two men-at-arms. There were two grooms, countrymen, who had run away on the onset of the thieves, but came sneaking back again, to be soundly rated by the Prioress, who threatened to send them home again or have them well scourged, but finally laughed and forgave them.

The merchant, Master Lorimer--who dealt primarily in all sorts of horse furniture, but added thereto leather-work for knights and men-at-arms, and all that did not too closely touch the armourer's trade--had three st.u.r.dy attendants, having lost one in an attack by the Scottish Borderers, and he had four huge Flemish horses, who sped along the better for their loads having been lightened by sales in Edinburgh, where he had hardly obtained skins enough to make up for the weight.

His headquarters, he said, were at Barnet, since tanning and leather-dressing, necessary to his work, though a separate guild, literally stank in the nostrils of the citizens of London.

To these were added Sir Giles Musgrave's twenty archers, making a very fair troop, wherewith to proceed, and the Prioress decided on not going to York. She was not particularly anxious for an interview with the Abbess of her Order, and it would have considerably lengthened the journey, which both Musgrave and Lorimer were anxious to make as short as possible. They preferred likewise to keep to the country, that was still chiefly open and wild, with all its destiny in manufactories yet to come, though there were occasionally such towns, villages and convents on the way where provisions and lodging could be obtained.

Every fresh scene of civilisation was a new wonder to Hal Clifford, and scarcely less so to Anne St. John, though her life in the moorland convent had begun when she was not quite so young as he had been when taken to the hills of Londesborough. He had only been two or three times in the church at Threlkeld, which was simple and bare, and the full display of a monastic church was an absolute amazement, making him kneel almost breathless with awe, recollecting what the royal hermit had told him. He was too illiterate to follow the service, but the music and the majestic flow of the chants overwhelmed him, and he listened with hands clasped over his face, not daring to raise his eyes to the dazzling gold of the altar, lighted by innumerable wax tapers.

The Prioress was amused. 'Art dazed, my friend? This is but a poor country cell; we will show you something much finer when we get to Derby.'

Hal drew a long breath. 'Is that meant to be like the saints in Heaven?'

he said. 'Is that the way they sing there?'

'I should hope they p.r.o.nounce their Latin better,' responded the Prioress, who, it may be feared, was rather a light-minded woman. At any rate there was a chill upon Hal which prevented him from directing any of his remarks or questions to her for the future. The chaplain told him something of what he wanted to know, but he met with the most sympathy from the Lady Anne.

'Which, think you, is the fittest temple and wors.h.i.+p?' he said; as they rode out together, after hearing an early morning service, gone through in haste, and partaking of a hurried meal. The sun was rising over the hills of Derbys.h.i.+re, dyeing them of a red purple, standing out sharply against a flaming sky, flecked here and there with rosy clouds, and fading into blue that deepened as it rose higher. The elms and beeches that bordered the monastic fields had begun to put on their autumn livery, and yellow leaves here and there were like sparks caught from the golden light.

Hal drew off his cap as in homage to the glorious sight.

'Ah, it is fine!' said Anne, 'it is like the sunrise upon our own moors, when one breathes freely, and the clouds grow white instead of grey.'

'Ah!' said Hal, 'I used to go out to the high ground and say the prayer the hermit taught me--"Jam Lucis," it began. He said it was about the morning light.'

'I know that "Jam Lucis,"' said Anne; 'the Sisters sing it at prime, and Sister Scholastica makes us think how it means about light coming and our being kept from ill,' and she hummed the chant of the first verse.

'I think this blue sky and royal sun, and the moon and stars at night, are G.o.d's great hall of praise,' said Hal, still keeping his cap off, as he had done through Anne's chant of praise.

'Verily it is! It is the temple of G.o.d Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth, as the Credo says,' replied Anne, 'but, maybe, we come nearer still to Him in G.o.d the Son when we are in church.'

'I do not know. The dark vaulted roof and the dimness seem to crush me down,' said the mountain lad, 'though the singing lifts me sometimes, though at others it comes like a wailing gust, all mournful and sad! If I could only understand! My royal hermit would tell me when I can come to him.'

'Do you think, now he is a king again, he will be able to take heed to you?'

'I know he cares for me,' said Hal with confidence.

'Ah yea, but will the folk about him care to let him talk to you? I have heard say that he was but a puppet in their hands. Yea, you are a great lord, that is true, but will that great masterful Earl Warwick let you to him, or say all these thoughts of his and yours are but fancies for babes?'

'Simon Bunce did mutter such things, and that one of us was as great an innocent as the other,' said Hal, 'but I trust my hermit's love.'

'Ay, you know you are going to someone you love, and who loves you,'

sighed Anne, 'but how will it be with me?'

'Your father?' suggested Hal.

'My father! What knows he of me or I of him? I tell thee, Harry Clifford, he left me at York when I was not eight years old, and I have never seen him since. He gave a charge on his lands to a goldsmith at York to pay for my up-bringing, and I verily believe thought no more of me than if I had been a messan dog. He wedded a lady in Flanders and had a son or twain, but I have never seen them nor my stepdame; and now Gilbert there, who brought the letter to the Mother Prioress, says she is dead, and the little heir, whose birth makes me n.o.body, is at a monastery school at Ghent. But my Lord of Redgrave must needs make overtures to my father for me, whether for his son or himself Gilbert cannot say. So my father sends to bring me back for a betrothal. The good Prioress goes with me. She saith that if it be the old Lord, who is a fierce old rogue with as ill a name as Tiptoft himself, the butcher, she will make my Lord St. John know the reason why! But what will he care?'

'It would be hard not to hear my Lady Prioress!' said Hal, looking back at the determined black figure, gesticulating as she talked to Sir Giles.

Anne laughed, half sadly, 'So you think! But you have never seen the grim faces at Bletso! They will say she is but a woman and a nun, and what are her words to alliance with a friend of the Lord of Warwick? Ah!

it is a heartless hope, when I come to that castle!'

'Nay, Anne, if my King gives me my place then&&

'Lady Anne! Lady Anne!' called Sir Giles Musgrave, 'the Mother Prioress thinks it not safe for you to keep so much in the front. There might be ill-doers in the thickets.'

Anne perforce reined in, but Hal fed on the idea that had suddenly flashed on him.

CHAPTER XV. -- BLETSO

Matter of marriage was the charge he gave me.

--SHAKESPEARE,

The cavalcade journeyed on not very quickly, as the riders accommodated themselves to those on foot. They avoided the towns when they came into the more inhabited country, the Prioress preferring the smaller hostels for pilgrims and travellers, and, it may be suspected, monasteries to the nunneries, where she said the ladies had nothing to talk about but wonder at her journey, and advice to stay in shelter till after the winter weather. Meantime it was a fine autumn still, and with bright colours on the woods, where deer, hare, rabbit, or partridge tempted the hounds, not to say their mistress, but she kept them well in leash, and her falcon with hood and jesses, she being too well nurtured not to be well aware of the strict laws of the chase, except when some good-natured monk gave her leave and accompanied her--generally Augustinians, who were more of country squires than ecclesiastics. Watch needed no leash--he kept close to his master, except when occasionally tempted to a little amateur shepherding, from which Hal could easily call him off. The great stag-hounds evidently despised him, and the curs of the waggon hated him, and snarled whenever he came near them, but the Prioress respected him, and could well believe that the hermit King had loved him. 'He had just the virtues to suit the good King Harry,' she said, 'dutifulness and harmlessness.'

The Prioress was the life of the party, with her droll descriptions of the ways of the nuns who received her, while the males of the party had to be content with the hostel outside. Sir Giles and Master Lorimer, riding on each side of her, might often be heard laughing with her. The young people were much graver, especially as there were fewer and fewer days' journeys to Bletso, and Anne's unknown future would begin with separation from all she had ever known, unless the Mother Prioress should be able to remain with her.

And to Harry Clifford the loss of her presence grew more and more to be dreaded as each day's companions.h.i.+p drew them nearer together in sympathy, and he began to build fanciful hopes of the King's influence upon the plans of Lord St. John, unless the contract of betrothal had been actually made, and therewith came a certain zest in looking to his probable dignity such as he had never felt before.