The White Rose of Langley Part 37

But she wanted to please Kent, and she did not know what name would gratify him. At length she decided on Alianora, a name borne by two of his sisters, of whom the eldest, the Countess of March, she believed to be his favourite sister.

A few weeks after the birth of Alianora, on a close, warm autumn afternoon, Constance was lying on her bed to rest, feeling languid and tired with the heat; and Maude sat by the window near her, singing softly to the baby in her arms. Hearing a gentle call from Bertram outside, Maude laid the child down and opened the door. Bertram was there, in the drawing-room, and with him were two sisters of Saint Clare, robed in the habit of their order.

"These holy sisters would have speech of the Lady," explained Bertram.

"May the same be?"

Certainly it might, so far as Constance was concerned. She was so weary of her isolation that she would have welcomed even the d.u.c.h.ess Joan.

She bade the immediate admission of the nuns, who were evidently provided with permission from the authorities. They were both tall women, but with that item the likeness began and ended. One was a fair-complexioned woman of forty years,--stern-looking, spare, haggard-faced,--in whose cold blue eyes there might be intelligence, but there was no warmth of human kindness. The other was a comfortable-looking girl of eighteen, rosy-cheeked, with dark eyes and hair.

"Christ save you, holy sisters!" said Constance as they approached her.

"Ye be of these parts, trow?"

"Nay," answered the younger nun, "we be of the House of Minoresses beyond Aldgate; and though thine eyes have not told thee so much, Custance, I am Isabel of Pleshy."

"Lady Isabel of Pleshy! Be right welcome, fair cousin mine!"

Isabel was the youngest daughter of that Duke of Gloucester who had been for so many years the evil angel of King and realm. Constance had not seen her since childhood, so that it was no wonder that she failed to recognise her. Meanwhile Maude had turned courteously to the elder nun.

"Pray you, take the pain to sit in the window."

"I never sit," replied the nun in a harsh, rasping voice.

"Truly, that is more than I could say," observed Maude with a smile.

"Shall it like you to drink a draught of small ale?"

"I never drink ale."

This a.s.sertion would not sound strange to us, but it was astounding to Maude.

"Would you ipocras and spice rather?"

"I never eat spice."

"Will you eat a marchpane?"

"I never eat marchpane."

Maude wondered what this impracticable being did condescend to do.

"Then a s.h.i.+ve of bread and tryacle?"

"Bread, an' you will: I am no babe, that I should lack sugar and tryacle."

Maude procured refreshments, and the elder nun, first making the sign of the cross over her dry bread, began to eat; while Lady Isabel, who evidently had not reached an equal height of monastic sanct.i.ty, did not refuse any of the good things offered. But when Maude attempted further conversation, the ascetic and acetic lady, intimating that it was prayer-time, and she could talk no more, pulled forth a huge rosary of wooden beads, from which the paint was nearly worn away, and began muttering Ave Marys in apparently interminable succession. "Now, Isabel," said Constance, "prithee do me to wit of divers matters I would fain know. Mind thou, I have been shut up from all manner of tidings, good or ill, sithence this last March, and I have a sumpter-mule's load of questions to ask at thee. But, first of all, how earnest thou hither?"

"Maybe thou shalt find so much in the answers to thy questions," replied Isabel--a smile parting her lips which had in it more keenness than mirth.

"Well, then, to fall to:--Where is my Lord?"

"In Tewkesbury Abbey, as methought."

"A truce to thy fooling, child! Thou wist well enough that I would say my Lord of Kent."

"How lookest I should wit, Custance? We sisters of Saint Clare be no news-mongers.--Well, so far as I knowledge, my Lord of Kent is with the Court. I saw him at Westminster a month gone."

"Is it well with him?"

"Very well, I would say, from what I saw." Constance's mind was too much engrossed with her own thoughts to put the right interpretation on that cold, mocking smile which kept flitting across her cousin's lips.

"And wist where be my little d.i.c.kon, and Nib?" [Isabel].

"At Langley, in care of Philippa, our fair cousin," [then synonymous with relative].

"Good. And d.i.c.kon my brother?"

"I scantly wis--marry, methinks with the Court, at this present."

"And my brother Ned?"

"In Pevensey Castle."

"What, governor thereof?"

But Constance guessed her cousin's answer.

"Nay,--prisoner."

"For this matter?"

"Ay, for the like gear thyself art hither."

"Truly, I am sorry. And what came of our cousins of March?"

"What had come aforetime."

"They be had back to their durance at Windsor?"

"Ay."

"And what did my Lord when thou sawest him? Arede me all things touching him. What ware he?--and what said he?--and how looked he?

Knew he thou shouldst see me?--and sent he me no word by thee?"

"Six questions in a breath, Custance!"

"Go to--one after other. What ware he?"

"By my mistress Saint Clare! how should I wit? An hundred yards of golden baudekyn, and fifty of pink velvet; and pennes [plumes] of ostriches enough to set up a peltier [furrier] in trade."

"And how looked he?"