The White Rose of Langley Part 25

She took the letter to Constance, and when she returned, she found Hugh and his old friend Bertram in close conversation.

"Verily, sweet Hugh,"--Bertram was saying--"there is one thing in this world I can in no wise fathom! How thy Lord--"

"There be full many things in this world that I cannot," interposed Hugh.

"How thy Lord ordereth his dealings is beyond me," ended Bertram.

"In good sooth, I have enough ado to look to mine own dealings, though I should let other men's be," answered Hugh.

"Lo' you now, Mistress Maude! Here is my Lord of Aumerle--you wis somewhat of his deeds--high in favour with the King, and prevailing upon his Grace to grant all manner of delicates [good things] unto our Lady.

He hath soothly-stirred [persuaded] him unto the bestowal of every manor that was our late Lord's father's (whom G.o.d a.s.soil!) and of all his jewels, and of the custody of the young Lord. And 'tis not four months gone since he sold our Lord to his death! What signifieth he by this whileness?" [Whirling, turning round.]

Maude shook her head, as if to say that she could not tell. She had resumed her work, the hemming of what she (not very elegantly) called a sudary, and we, euphemistically but tautologically, a pocket-handkerchief.

"Ah! 'tis a blessed thing to have a brother!" observed Bertram with irony. "Well!--and what news, sweet Hugh, of olden friends?"

"None overmuch," responded Hugh, "unless it be of the death of Father Wilfred, of the Priory at Langley."

"Ah me!" exclaimed Bertram regretfully.

"Master Calverley," said Maude, looking up, "do me to wit, of your goodness, if you wot any thing touching the Lady Avice de Narbonne?"

"But so much," answered he, "that she hath taken veil upon herself in the Minoresses' convent at Aldgate, and is, I do hear, accounted of the sisters a right holy and devout woman."

"Marry, I am well fain to hear so good news," said Maude.

"Good news, Mistress Maude! forsooth, were I lover or kinsman of the fair lady, I would account them right evil news," commented Bertram, in a tone of some surprise.

"Methinks I conceive what Mistress Maude signifieth," quietly observed Hugh. "She accounteth that the Lady Avice shall find help and comfort in the Minoresses' house."

"Ay, in very deed," said Maude, "the which methinks she could never have found without."

"G.o.d have it so!" answered Hugh, gently. "Yet I trust, Mistress Maude, that our Lord may be found without convent cell, as lightly [easily] as within it."

"Be these all thy news, sweet Hugh?" inquired Bertram. "Is nought at work in the outer world?"

"Matters be reasonable peaceful at this present. But methinks King Henry sitteth not over delightsomely on his throne, seeing he hath captivated [captured] the four childre of my sometime Lord of March, and shut them close in the Castle of Windsor."

"Hath he so?" asked Bertram, with interest. "Poor hearts!"

"Be they small childre?" said Maude, compa.s.sionately.

"The Lady Anne, that is eldest, hath but nine years, I do hear."

"Ay me, Master Calverley! Have they any mother?"

"Trust me, ay!" broke in Bertram. "Why, have you forgot that my Lady of March is sister unto the d.u.c.h.ess' Grace of York?"

"And is she prisoned with the childre?"

"Holy Mary! the King's Grace lacketh not her," said Bertram.

"She was dancing at the Court a few weeks gone," returned Hugh rather drily, "with her servant [lover], the Baron of Powys, a-waiting upon her; and so was likewise the Lady Elizabeth, my Lord of Exeter his widow, with the Lord Fanhope. Men say there shall be divers weddings at Court this next summer, and these, as I reckon, among them."

"Ah! the Lady Elizabeth's Grace danceth right well!" said Bertram sarcastically. "Marry, Robin Falconer, of my Lord's Grace of York's following, which bare hither certain letters this last month, told me they had dances at Court in Epiphany octave, when we rade for our lives from Oxford; and that very night my Lord's Grace of Exeter was beheaden at Pleshy, his wife, the Lady Elizabeth, was at the cus.h.i.+on dance and singing to her lute in the Lady Blanche [the Princess Royal] her chamber, where all the Court was gathered."

"Aid us, our Lady of Pity!" whispered Maude in a shocked voice.

"There be some women hard as stones!" pursued Bertram disgustedly.

For men knew the Lady Elizabeth well in those days, as fairest and gayest of the Princesses. She was King Henry's favourite sister, though that royal gentleman showed his favour rather oddly, by granting her a quant.i.ty of damaged goods of her late husband, among which were sundry towels, "used and torn." During the terrible struggle which had just occurred, she had sided with her brother, against King Richard, of whom her husband Exeter was a fervent partisan. Perhaps such vacillation as was occasionally to be seen in Exeter's conduct may be traced to her influence. The night that King Richard was taken, she "made good cheer," though the event was almost equivalent to the signing of her husband's death-warrant. I doubt if we must not cla.s.s this accomplished and beautiful Elizabeth among the most heartless women whose names have come down to us on the roll of history. And where a woman is heartless, she is heartless indeed.

"Forsooth, Master Lyngern, methinks I wis what you mean by women hard as stones," observed Maude with a slight shudder. "They do give me alway the horrors."

"Think you there is naught of the stone in the Lady Custance?" said Hugh in a low voice.

Maude energetically repudiated the imputation.

"She a stone? nay!--she is a b.u.t.terfly," said Bertram.

"And, pray you, which were better--to have a stone or a b.u.t.terfly to your wife?" asked Hugh, laughingly.

"The stone, in good surety," said Bertram. "I were allgates [always]

afeard of hurting the b.u.t.terfly."

"Very well," responded Hugh, rather drily; "but the stone might hurt thee."

The summer pa.s.sed very quietly at Cardiff, except for one incident.

Maude spent it in learning to read, for which she had always had a strong wish, and now coaxed Father Ademar to teach her. The confessor was a Lollard, and was therefore not deterred by any fear of her becoming acquainted with forbidden books. He willingly complied with Maude's wish.

The incident which disturbed the calm was a hostile visit of Owain Glyndwr, who appeared with a large force on the tenth of July, and held the Church of Saint Mary against all comers, until driven out with great slaughter. On the very morning of his appearance, the last baby came to Cardiff Castle--a baby which would never see its father. The Bishop of Llandaff, who was a guest in the Castle, was obliged to reconsecrate the church before the child could be christened. It was not till late in the evening that the little lady was baptised by the name of Isabel, after the dead Infanta. She might have been born to ill.u.s.trate Bertram's observations, for her heart was as hard as a stone, and as cold.

When Maude became able to read well, she was installed in the post of daily reader to the Dowager. Constance had never cared for books; but the old lady, who had been a great reader for her time, missed her usual luxury now that age was dimming her eyes, and was very glad to employ Maude's younger sight. The book was nearly always one of Wycliffe's, and the reading invariably closed with a chapter of his Testament. Now and then, but only now and then, she would ask for a little poetry-- taking by preference that courtly writer whom she knew as a great innovator, but whom we call the father of English poetry. But she was very particular which of his poems was selected. The Knight's, the Squire's, the Man of Law's, the Prioress's, and the Clerk's Tales, were all that she would have of that book by which we know Geoffrey Chaucer best. She liked better the graceful fairy tale of the Flower and the Leaf, written for the deceased Lollard Queen; and best of all that most pathetic lamentation for the d.u.c.h.ess Blanche of Lancaster, whom Elizabeth Le Despenser had known personally in her youth. Maude would never have suspected the Dowager of the least respect for poetry; and she was surprised to watch her sit by the open cas.e.m.e.nt, dreamily looking out on the landscape, while she read to her of the "white ycrowned Queen" of the Daisy, or of the providential interpositions by which "Crist unwemmed kept Custance," or oftener yet--

"But what visage had she thereto?

Alas, my heart is wonder woe That I ne can discriven it Me lacketh both English and wit...

For certes Nature had such lest To make that fair, that truly she Was her chief patron of beaute, And chief ensample of all her work And monstre--for be 't ne'er so derk, Methinketh I see her evermo'!"

[Note: Monstre was then employed in the sense in which we now use _phoenix_.]

But this, as has been said, was only now and then. The words which were far more common were Wycliffe's; and those which were invariable were Christ's.

When Maude began this work, she had not the remotest idea of changing her faith, nor even of inquiring into the grounds on which it rested.

She entertained no personal prejudice against the Lollards, with whom she a.s.sociated her dead mistress the Infanta, and her young murdered master; but she vaguely supposed their doctrines to be somehow unorthodox, and considered herself as good a "Catholic" as any one. She noticed that Father Ademar gave her fewer penances than Father Dominic used to do; that he treated her mistakes as mistakes only, and not as sins; that generally his ideas of sin had to do rather with the root of evil in the heart than with the diligent pruning of particular branches; that he said a great deal about Christ, and not much about the saints.

So Maude's change of opinion came, over her so gradually and noiselessly that she never realised herself to have undergone any change at all until it was unalterable and complete.

The realisation came suddenly at last, with a pa.s.sing word from Dame Audrey, the mistress of the household at Cardiff.

"Nay," she had said, a little contemptuously, in answer to some remark: "Mistress Maude is too good to consort with us poor Catholics. She is a great clerk, quotha! and hath Sir John de Wycliffe his homilies and evangels at her tongue's end. Marry, I count in another twelvemonth every soul in this Castle saving me shall be a Lollard."