PART II

I

During all this time Mr. Sorrell had kept the golden cross attached to
his little finger by the ring that was on top of it. He could not attach
any particular supernatural value to its possession; but he had a very
definite feeling that as long as he kept hold of it he was a personage
of importance, and, since it fitted on to his finger really very well,
he did not intend even to put it in his pocket. For the matter of that,
he could not discover any pocket in the close-fitting garment that he
wore, and he could only suppose that the gentleman who usually went
about in these clothes was attended upon by pages, who carried such
trifles as his pocket-handkerchief, or whatever it was that he carried
instead of these necessaries. It seemed to him besides that this was the
proper thing to do, even if he were merely acting in a pageant.

On the other hand, it was certainly his line if the things that he saw
going on about him were what you might call authentic. For Mr. Sorrell
disliked putting it to himself that he was back in the Middle Ages. It
sounded ridiculous, it sounded laughable, and although he was fully
prepared to take things exactly as he found them, and to accept the idea
that he was back in the fourteenth century if there was no other way out
of it, he was quite determined to leave no stone unturned in the effort
to detect any flaw in the proceedings of these people. On the face of it
they had appeared perfectly convincing, but he thought he might be able
to trip them up in some anachronism. For instance, at dinner they might
be supplied with artificial lemonade sent down by some caterer from
London. Or they might be given New Zealand mutton. He was pretty certain
that he would be able to detect the flavour of either of these things.
Or, on the other hand, he might discover one of the supers smoking a
surreptitious pipe behind a battlement; or, since the castle contained
such a very high tower as the central watch-tower of the keep, it was
possible that there might even be a lift.

For he remembered that at Braby Castle, in Suffolk, where he had once
spent a week-end, the Isaac Goldsteins, when they had been making their
restorations had included one of these modern facilities in their
architect’s design. These reflections occurred to Mr. Sorrell when he
had paused half-way up the interminable, narrow, winding, and very dark
staircase up which the little page Jehan was conducting him, as he
understood, to have an interview with the Lady Blanche d’Enguerrand de
Coucy before the dinner-bell rang. Mr. Sorrell wished indeed that he had
come upon some traces of a lift. He was leaning against a stone beside
the opening of a very narrow window in a very broad wall. He held in his
hand the shoe portions of his leg-gear, for he had found it utterly
impossible, with those obtrusions before him, to climb the exceedingly
narrow triangular steps that wound away up into a very profound
darkness. He could not do it, and upon the whole he was relieved to be
informed by the little Jehan that the great lords and knights of that
day invariably climbed stairs in what Mr. Sorrell would have called
their stockinged feet, if his lower garments had not been all one piece.

The little Jehan indeed informed him that Father Bavo thundered
unceasingly from his pulpit in Salisbury against this monstrous fashion
of nobles, who were daily becoming more idle, more dissolute, and more
extravagant.

The landing upon which Mr. Sorrell stayed to recover his breath was
dimly lit by its window, which was, however no more than a slit in the
wall, and the whole staircase had a damp, musty, and sepulchral odour
which reminded Mr. Sorrell of the Twopenny Tube at the time of its
opening. The diffused and feeble ray of light fell upon the pleasant
form of the little Jehan, who with his candid blue eyes, his golden
curls, and his little ragged, furred doublet, stood seriously at
attention and gazed at him. Mr. Sorrell felt a real liking for this
little lad, and asked him pleasantly where he went to school.

He found that when he talked French very slowly and distinctly the
little boy understood him very well, as long as his sentences were
short. And the little boy had such a fluting and grave voice that he
himself had little difficulty in understanding his answers. Jehan
answered that the Manage fields were about a bowshot to the west of the
castle, and the elder pages did their dismounted exercises with sword
and lance in the great hall after the boards were cleared. Mr. Sorrell
said he did not mean that; he meant the sort of school where you went to
learn the three R’s and geography and things.

“Ah! sir,” the little page said, “we do not have schools for such
things, though, without doubt, they are many and excellent in the land
from which your pilgrimship comes. But I have been taught by Brother
Squerry, so that I can write my name fairly, and can read a passage in
the Book of Hours, if I know beforehand what that passage is. And this
much I have learned, in order to have benefit of clergy in case I should
fall into any crime.”

Mr. Sorrell laughed so loudly that the sounds echoed up and down the
darkness of the stairway.

“You commit a crime!” he said. “Why, I don’t believe you’d whip a cat.”

“Ah! sir,” the page said, “I don’t know why I should desire to whip a
cat, nor do I know that it would be a crime to do it. But this I know,
it is my desire to be a great and gallant knight, such as have been
written of in the Chronicles and in Holy Writ. A great knight, being a
man of hot blood, will come sometimes to commit crimes against the law,
or, by taking arms for one King when another deposes him, he is
discovered to be guilty of treason. And this was seen very clearly in
the case of our late King, that was put away and murdered with a horn in
Berkeley Castle this very year, and many knights and great lords that
were of the late King’s party have been put to death very
cruelly—though without doubt they deserved it—by the Queen Mother of
the present King, who is a little boy not much older than I, but much
more worshipful. And for those poor dead knights and lords, it would
have been very well if they could have pleaded benefit of the clergy.”

Mr. Sorrell laughed again.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose your mother and father know their business
best, but it seems a droll way to bring up a child to have such ideas.”

“These matters,” the little Jehan said gravely, “are above my head. It
is for me to do what my parents command and to make no bones about it.”

“Why, so it is, sonny,” Mr. Sorrell said; “but I should think a year or
two upon the modern side of a good public school without any classical
tomfoolery would be a great deal better for you.”

The little boy was too respectful to offer any further comments, and
they began once more to climb the dark stairs.

In spite of the dampness and the chill, Mr. Sorrell became intolerably
warm. He brushed against the rough stones of the wall, he stumbled and
hurt his feet against the hard stairs. After an immensely long time,
they came into a room which Mr. Sorrell, whilst once more he paused to
take breath, considered must be a servant’s bedroom. There was a large
chest at the bottom of the bed, and across the bed itself a great
covering of the red fur of foxes.

“This,” the little Jehan said, “is my lady’s bower.”

“Now is it?” Mr. Sorrell asked. “I always thought a bower was a
summer-house. I suppose your Lady Blanche is going in for an open-air
cure, because there’s no glass in the windows. The air must be very good
up here.”

“I do not fully understand what you say,” the little Jehan said; “but
this is my lady’s bower.”

“Well, you said that before,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “and I was only
uttering my observations.”

When they came to the tiny little stairway that ascended from the room,
Mr. Sorrell exclaimed:

“I do wish your architect had made some allowance for persons of my
figure.”

But the little page did not hear him.

* * * * *

The Lady Blanche was leaning out of the battlements, watching the
approach of the Lady Dionissia and her train that, very far below, wound
slowly along beside the River Wiley.

“It is natural,” she grumbled to herself with an air of vexation, “that
to-night she comes with more armed men than usual.”

She counted carefully, and could perceive the Lady Dionissia in yellow
and green, two ladies in scarlet that attended upon her, all these three
being upon white horses. And there were two priests and thirteen
men-at-arms, as well as five pages that ran beside the horses. This gave
the Lady Dionissia eighteen armed retainers as against the Lady
Blanche’s thirty; but, on the other hand, the Lady Dionissia had ten
very able-bodied Welsh pikemen amongst her eleven men-at-arms, and these
ten alone, once they were inside, would be sufficient to take the whole
castle from the Lady Blanche’s retainers, so weakened were these by
dysentery and summer coughs. The Lady Dionissia had this good fortune,
because these ten Welshmen had been part of the guard that had come down
with her in her bridal tour from the Welsh Marches. Without doubt, had
her contracted husband Egerton of Tamworth not already set out for the
Scotch wars, he would have taken the Lady Dionissia’s men to fight under
his banner. But as it was, the Lady Dionissia had come a full three
weeks too late, having been impeded by the great floods of the River
Severn. So that she had never even seen her husband to whom she had been
married by proxy already three months. She had in exchange what was at
the moment more valuable, these ten able-bodied fighting-men, who were
reported to be extraordinarily ferocious and devoted to their mistress.

The Lady Blanche had in her mind a problem of how to retain in her own
keeping alike the holy cross of St. Joseph of Arimathea and the holy and
mysterious personage who had brought it to her. Her first impulse had
been to close the castle gates against the Lady Dionissia, and to repel
even with arms any attempt that she and her men might make to enter.

But, on the one hand, she had to consider the ferocity of her Welsh
men-at-arms, who were said to be able to run up precipices, sticking to
them like flies. She had, besides, to consider the probable return from
the war of her husband and of Egerton of Tamworth. Her husband and his
cousin loved each other with the deep love of boon companions, so that
if upon their return they should find their respective castles warring
the one upon the other, she would certainly have to face her husband’s
anger. For that she cared very little, but it had to be further
considered that Egerton of Tamworth would probably desire to espouse the
quarrel of his wife, the Lady Dionissia.

On the other hand, her own husband, who was exceedingly hot-headed,
would probably take up her own quarrel, if only because he too would
desire to retain possession of the golden cross, if not of the holy man.
There would thus arise almost certainly a private war between the two
castles. And this would be a very costly and extravagant affair, lasting
perhaps for a couple of years, during which, since they would not be
able to get any crops in, both combatants would have to have continual
recourse to the Jew Goldenface of Salisbury. Force, therefore, was
almost out of the question, though she would dearly have loved to use
force, which was more in her character than any kind of guile.

That it should ever occur to her not to attempt to obtain possession of
this relic, which was plainly not her own but the property of her cousin
of Tamworth, was out of the question. In the hardier old times of which
she had heard her grandfather and father speak, and to which she felt
herself to belong—in those times she would calmly have killed the
bearer of the cross, and have hidden the cross itself in the stones of
the wall of her bower for two or three years. But nowadays that sort of
thing was growing too troublesome, if not too dangerous, for it would
signify endless lawsuits, the expense of which she dreaded almost more
than anything in the world. But if she could get possession of the
cross, she certainly meant to do it.

In the first place, it was of gold, so that it was desirable; in the
second place, it was miraculous, so that to possess it would make her
very much looked up to throughout the whole of England, or, for the
matter of that, throughout the whole of Christendom: and to render
herself notorious along economical lines was the chief desire of this
lady’s life.

Thus it was with great eagerness that, hearing the sound of voices
behind her, she turned upon Mr. Sorrell. He was putting on his shoes,
and the little page Jehan was explaining to him that although getting
upstairs was impossible in these garments, descending was perfectly
easy, as Mr. Sorrell could reason out for himself. She sent the little
page immediately downstairs to wait for them in her bower, and at once
she tackled Mr. Sorrell.

“It is about this cross,” she said. “It is a very valuable and holy
cross.”

Mr. Sorrell replied that he believed that it was both these things, and
very ancient to boot.

“Has it not occurred to you,” the lady asked, “to think that you might
be very easily killed, and the cross stolen from you by robbers?”

“Why, my lady,” Mr. Sorrell said, “I suppose you have not any robbers
knocking about in the castle, and I am quite determined to send it by
registered post to Mrs. Lee-Egerton as soon as we have done dinner. I
suppose there is a post office somewhere near the castle?”

The Lady Blanche said that she did not know what sort of thing a _bureau
de poste_ was, but she thought that, after having witnessed the way the
nuns had attempted to take the cross, the pilgrim would be an
exceedingly foolish man to let it out of his possession at all.

“Well, there’s something in that,” Mr. Sorrell said; “but how in the
world do you send letters and parcels if you haven’t got a post office?”

“My friend,” the lady said, “we send letters by trusted messengers if
they are of importance, or if they are about trifling matters we send
them by means of the chapmen that travel hither and thither selling
merchandise. So that if you desire to send the cross to any destination
you had better give it to me, and I will send it by a messenger that I
can trust better than myself.”

“Why, my lady,” Mr. Sorrell said, “I think I won’t send it at all on
second thoughts. I’ll keep it till I get up to town, and give it to Mrs.
Egerton myself.”

“Then you had better,” the Lady Blanche said, “give it into my keeping,
and I will have one of the stones from the wall of my bower taken out,
and I will have a little cavity made behind; and I will lay the cross in
there, and I will have the stone put back again, and it shall all be
done up fair with mortar, so that no one shall know in what place it
is.”

“Oh, I don’t think you need take so much trouble,” Mr. Sorrell said; “I
suppose I shall be moving on this evening.”

“This evening!” the Lady Blanche exclaimed highly; “would you adventure
yourself with that thing of great price into the mists and perils of the
night that is all darkness, and where many robbers abound?”

“Dear lady,” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed humorously, “I have been very well
protected so far, it seems, and I do not know what I have done that this
protection should now cease.”

And this argument struck the lady as having great weight, for she asked:

“And have the angels of God indeed protected you? In what shape do they
appear?”

“Oh, really, I can’t tell you that,” Mr. Sorrell said. “It’s all very
mysterious. No doubt it will come out some day, but it’s a great deal
more that I should care to explain.”

“Oh, holy man,” the Lady Blanche exclaimed, and her voice had in it a
great deal more of reverence, “there must be no talk of your leaving
this place. For here you shall stay for a long time, for many months and
years. And you shall be treated like a prince, or like the Pope himself
if he should come among us.”

“But my dear lady,” Mr. Sorrell argued, “I couldn’t possibly stop here
more than a day. Let alone that I want to give this up to its owner,
hasn’t it occurred to you that I’ve got work to do.”

“But oh, holy man,” the Lady Blanche said, “if you have angelic work to
do, if you desire to spread enlightenment and knowledge, and to do such
things as befit the holy, where could you do it better than here, which
is a very evil place, and one where many stiff-necked and ignorant
people much need teaching how to behave themselves in this world?”

“But really, madam,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “I don’t see how I could be
expected to do a publisher’s work from this part of the earth. It’s
perfectly true that I do, as far as I can, afford people the means of
instruction and so, to the limit of my powers, improve the world, but I
do it in the wholesale way with encyclopædias and serious books. I don’t
believe in novels and nonsense of that sort, unless I can be absolutely
certain they’ll have a huge sale—so that I don’t publish more than four
novels in a year, if so many. But you can see for yourself that I
couldn’t possibly do that sort of thing here.”

The Lady Blanche was not listening to him, but was making in her mind a
rapid calculation as to what was the value of the golden cross, whether
as money or as a social asset.

“Oh, holy man,” she exclaimed, “if you will stay here you shall have a
bower tricked out like the bower of the King of France. And assuredly,
here you shall fare much better than you should with my cousin’s
half-wife, for never at dinner shall there be fewer courses than four,
each course of fourteen dishes; and never at supper less than three
courses, each of nine dishes; and the least of your drinks shall be mead
and nearly always the best wine from Romney and Bordeaux. And you shall
have such garments as my lord wears, and four horses to ride abroad on;
and you shall have hawks from Norway and of everything the best, such as
my cousin’s half-wife could not possibly afford. And has she in her
castle a bath, such as to-day you have tasted the merits of?”

“Of course, it’s a most excellent bath,” Mr. Sorrell said, “and I don’t
in the least doubt your splendid hospitality, but I can’t possibly stay
here. It’s out of the question.”

“Then if you cannot yourself stay,” the Lady Blanche said, “leave at
least your cross here in safe keeping, for it must be obvious to you
that I, who am the Lord of Egerton’s cousin and not his foolish and
frivolous half-wife, am the proper keeper of the sacred emblem.”

“I’m really not going, you know,” Mr. Sorrell said with the most bland
obstinacy in the world, “to give the cross up to anybody but Mrs.
Egerton. I’m perfectly able to take care of it myself, and I’m just
going to keep it hanging from my finger until the proper time comes.”

“Then are you not afraid,” the Lady Blanche said, “that I shall slay you
and keep the cross for myself?”

“Oh, come,” Mr. Sorrell answered amiably, “people don’t do that sort of
thing nowadays. Besides,” and he smiled as at a hidden witticism, “the
protection that I spoke of will operate just as freely now as it has
hitherto.”

And immediately she recognised the appropriateness of this contention.
There seemed to remain nothing for it but an appeal to the
reasonableness of her cousin’s half-wife, and from her she anticipated
very little reasonableness at all. For the Lady Dionissia was young, of
great levity, and of the most headstrong obstinacy, so that hitherto she
had accepted none of the Lady Blanche’s suggestions, though the Lady
Blanche, as the cousin of her husband by proxy, stood surely in the
position of a feudal over-lord to a ward. And neglecting to talk any
longer to Mr. Sorrell, the Lady Blanche remained plunged in a fit of
abstraction.

On his part Mr. Sorrell had new food for reflection. The dark
earnestness of the Lady Blanche seemed to him to remove at once all idea
that she was playing a part; no actress could possibly have kept it up
so well. And although she had submitted him to nothing but a personal
gentleness, he could not help thinking that his cross, if not his
person, was in very exceptional peril.

And suddenly he felt himself rather alone and rather lonely in this
immense place, that spread its great grim walls far below and far around
him, filled with unfamiliar men, speaking an unfamiliar tongue, the
servants of this woman with the ferocious eyes and the hard voice. Mr.
Sorrell was a man so modern that he could not get it into him to feel
any sense of physical danger: he felt rather as he had felt on several
occasions, when in rather questionable company, that he might be about
to become the victim of some exceedingly skilful pocket-picking. But he
did not see how, if he kept the ring carefully all the time upon his
finger, they were going to get the cross out of his possession without
offering him physical violence.

And to his moment of vague fear there succeeded a sort of elated
amusement. After all, if they wanted to get the cross, they could not
possibly get it off his finger without his consent during the day time,
and at night he was quite capable of putting a chest of drawers or
something of the sort in front of his bedroom door.

A great many sounds of trumpets came from the castle below to proclaim
that supper was about to be set on the boards. The sun was just down
below the hills, for at that harvest time of the year, when all men and
women were wont to be in the fields helping to get in the oat crop and
the last of the hay, supper, which was usually at four, was not partaken
of till after sunset.

It was not really dark, but blue shadows had fallen all over the long
valley of the Wiley, mists were arising amongst the heavy foliage of the
trees. The castle of Tamworth farther down the valley, showed enormous
and purple, as if it blocked up all the passage way, and the houses of
the little town of Wishford, which was beyond the bridge, being visible
from that high place, showed their white mud sides all pink in the light
reflected from the sky. From the top of the Portmanmote Hall, the gilded
effigy of the Dragon of Wiley turned slowly in the capricious air of the
evening, sending forth now a stream of light, and again being obscured.
The cavalcade of the Lady Dionissia had reached the foot of the green
knoll, and her trumpeter blew a turn of notes to demand admission to the
castle of Coucy.

“So that you are determined,” the Lady Blanche said at last, “neither to
stay here, nor to leave here the cross that you have brought?”

“My lady,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “this demands a great deal of
attention. If this really is England of the year 1327, it is quite
obvious that I can’t behave exactly as if it were 483 years later. But
upon the whole, the lines of my action must be pretty well the same, and
if I cannot put the cross into the hands of Mrs. Lee-Egerton, I
certainly ought to keep it until I can put into the hands of some
Egerton of Tamworth.”

“But you will not give it to the Lady Dionissia?” the Lady Blanche said
eagerly.

“I think,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “that I probably shall not until all
parties together are agreed as to whom I should confide it to.”

He considered once more, and then he continued:

“Of course, it’s a nuisance to have to carry this thing about with me,
and I shouldn’t in the least object to getting rid of it. For there’s
nothing in the world I hate so much as family quarrels; what we’ve all
got to do is to kiss and make friends, and toss up, heads or tails.”

He paused, and again he spoke quickly:

“Now, there’s the very idea,” he said; “why don’t you toss up about it,
you and the other lady, as to who shall have its custody until the
gentlemen of Tamworth Castle come back?”

The Lady Blanche looked at him with wide and serious eyes.

“I do not very well understand you,” she said. “What is it you would
have me do?”

“Oh, you take a penny,” Mr. Sorrell said, “a 10-centime piece, or a
25-franc one.”

“I don’t know what any of these things are,” the Lady Blanche said.

“Oh, hang it all!” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed; “then play a game of cards.”

“I do not know what that game is,” the Lady Blanche said.

“Well, what _do_ you know?” Mr. Sorrell asked. “You must have a precious
dull time of it in the evenings. Don’t you play bridge, or chess? Oh,
hang it all! what’s an old-fashioned game? Well, now, what is it,
cribbage, my old aunt plays? or draughts. Don’t you know _le jeu de
dames_?”

“Assuredly I know the _jeu de dames_,” the Lady Blanche said; “but what
would you have me do?”

“Oh, why,” Mr. Sorrell said, “play the best out of five games, and the
winner to have the custody of the cross.”

“That I never would do,” the Lady Blanche exclaimed; “for my cousin’s
half-wife is a much better player than I, and assuredly she would win!”

“Well,” Mr. Sorrell said, “you must think of something of the sort for
yourself—something that you are fairly equal in, and let the winner be
the winner in a proper and sportsmanlike manner.”

The Lady Blanche’s eyes became full of a smouldering fire, she broadened
her broad chest, and erected her fierce head.

“Now indeed I see that you are a very holy man,” she said, “and if you
will kiss me, you may kiss me.”

“But, I say,” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed, “is that a proper thing to do? What
about your husband?”

“In the first place,” she answered, “it is a very proper thing to do,
for it is the custom of this country, though I have heard it is not so
in other lands, not even in the country of France. But it is obvious
that a reward for favours should be paid, and this is a reward of a
trifling kind for favours very great. And it is also obvious that upon
making an acquaintance which is likely to become a dear friendship, some
seal should be set upon the bond. But of these things I will let my old
jongleur sing to you of an evening, so that you may become acquainted
with the knightly customs of our country of England. And for my husband,
he is away at the wars. If he were here, I do not think it is he that
would grumble if you courteously saluted his wife; and if he did, you
might very rightly put on your steel cap and take your sword and go at
him, as he at you. For it would be a great discourtesy of him. But since
he is not here, and I have not been kissed by a proper man these three
months—or since the Knight of Steeple Langford rode by on his way to
Barnstaple—I am not minded at all to consider my husband in the
matter.”

And suddenly she cast herself into Mr. Sorrell’s arms, and began to kiss
him hotly on the lips.

“Holy man,” she whispered, “I do this that you may not have a mistaken
view of my character. All day long you have seen me acting in a high,
haughty, and militant fashion, and you will have heard that I have
frequent dissensions with my husband, and that with ferocious
determination I must set my peasants to do their work. But all these
things are necessities forced upon me by the hard nature of my life, and
actually I am such a tender woman and as well fitted for the gentle
sports of love as ever was the Countess Helen, for whom great battles
were fought in past times. Nay, I am as patient as Grisel of the
Balance, who had in truth not more need for patience than myself.”

Mr. Sorrell felt himself in an exceedingly awkward and somewhat
ridiculous situation. He had a feeling that he had his arms round an
exceedingly savage tiger, whom, on the one hand, he might enrage if he
were not warm enough. On the other hand, he might enrage her still
further by going too far, and he wished to heaven he could came across
some man who could give him a hint or two as to how to behave upon such
occasions, which, as far as he could see, appeared likely to crop up
every ten minutes or so.

The Lady Blanche exclaimed:

“Press me close to you, and say that you do not believe I am a
sharp-toothed wolf.”

She was very warm and smelt of musk, and Mr. Sorrell half sighed, and
exclaimed:

“Oh, well——!”

And after a minute he asked, as if the time for tender confidences had
approached:

“Now, tell me really, really the truth. Is this a pageant, or is it the
year of grace 1327?”

“As surely as that lark sings in the sky,” the Lady Blanche answered,
“so surely it is that year and no other.”

High in the air above them a lark was sending down high thrills of song,
its little breast illuminated by the light of the upper air.

“Well, _that_ is not an anachronism,” Mr. Sorrell said resignedly; “and
anyhow, I suppose I must believe that you aren’t kidding me. For the
life of me, I don’t know what is an anachronism in these days, and what
isn’t. You may have cannon or you mayn’t, and you may have eau de
Cologne, and you mayn’t. I’d no idea I was so ignorant; but I am, and it
puts me into your hands—I’m entirely in your hands.”

She disengaged herself slowly and regretfully from his arms, and she
gazed at him with a level and devouring glance.

“Oh, pilgrim,” she said, “yes, you are entirely in my hands; and of this
you may be very certain, that I shall never let you go till you or I are
dead. It is all very well to put it to the test of a game. But, if I win
the game, I will keep you and the cross, and no one shall gainsay me;
and, if I lose it, I will keep you and it by force or by fraud. I have
some stores of gold unknown of by my husband or any man, for that is fit
and proper in these idle and extravagant days. Your captivity shall be a
very sweet one, since you shall be more splendid than all the men
around. But by this you shall know that never with your cross shall you
leave this place till you or I be dead.”

“I say,” Mr. Sorrell said, “all that sounds distinctly nasty. I can’t go
in for that sort of game, you know. If this is really the fourteenth
century, I daresay I could put you up to some uses for your money that
could pretty well do anything for you. I believe I could make you
Empress of the World.”

And suddenly at the prospect he became enthusiastic.

“Why, good Lord,” he said, “if it’s the fourteenth century I can do
anything. Just think of the things I can invent! Why, we can begin right
bang off with flying machines; there’s no need to go through any
intermediary stages. How would you like to go flying through the air, my
lady? I’ve done it, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. Why, we can
terrorise every city in the world. We could burn Paris down in a night.
They couldn’t do anything—anything at all.”

The Lady Blanche looked at him, with her broad nostrils quivering and
her eyes alight with the contagion of enthusiasm.

“That is how I would have men speak to me,” she said; “that is how I
would have my lovers speak to me. And if you will make me Empress of the
World, surely you shall be my Emperor.”

“Oh, hang it!” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed, “that won’t do at all. You’ve
really got to remember you’ve got a husband. I’ve always found—and all
history shows it, too—that if you’ve got a big thing on hand you’ve got
to behave respectably. You’ve got to make large masses of men obey you,
and you can’t ensure obedience if you have scandals. It simply can’t be
done.”

“As for my husband,” the Lady Blanche exclaimed, “we will kill him in
the night. I will make him sleep heavily with very much wine, and you
shall stab him while he sleeps. That was done by the Lady of Mormand.
And you will make me an Empress! You will make me an Empress! You are a
very great magician. I knew it the moment I set eyes on you.”

“Oh, I’m a very great magician,” Mr. Sorrell said; “but you aren’t going
to get me into that sort of game. It doesn’t pay, I tell you. It can’t
pay! You’ve got to behave respectably if you go in for a deal with me.
It’s always been my first business principle.”

The trumpet blew three times to show that the meats of the first course
were coming from the kitchen, and the Lady Blanche gave Mr. Sorrell her
hand, that he might lead her down the staircase. In the thick darkness
she kissed him three times, exclaiming:

“My magician! my magician!” and several other things that seriously
discomposed Mr. Sorrell.

It left him in a very angry and discomposed frame of mind. His brain was
commencing to boil with plans for exploiting the fourteenth century.
There were so many things to do that he did not know where to begin to
think about it, and he did not want to have any red herrings drawn
across a trail that, he felt confident, would lead him to an unheard-of
glory. He did not see why he should not have a fleet of airships
hovering over the Channel within three months’ time, and he did not see
who in the world was going to stand against him.

II

The Lady Dionissia de Egerton de Tamworth was the eleventh daughter of
Henry de Mabuse, Earl of Morant. The earls of Morant had been great and
independent noblemen in the days of Henry III, but the accession of the
third Edward found them somewhat impoverished, owing to a succession of
heavy fines which had been incurred by the Lady Dionissia’s father. The
Earl had been of the Queen Isabella’s party before her flight from the
Court of Edward II to France. Thus no sooner had the Queen been gone
than the Earl had been fined no less than a sum of £6000 at the instance
of the De Spensers. This fine had converted him into a strong supporter
of Edward II. So that, upon the return of the Queen with a small handful
of men from Hainault, the Earl, dreading further fines from the King,
and regarding the Queen’s exploit as foolish and foolhardy—the Earl had
hastened with all his men into the south to oppose her coming.

He failed to find the Queen. But when she had succeeded in deposing and
murdering her husband, she fined the Earl another £7,000. These
successive fines, which would have amounted to about £182,000 in the
currency of Mr. Sorrell’s date, were not sufficient entirely to ruin the
Earl, but they made him unreasonably anxious to marry off his daughters,
of whom he had thirteen. He desired to marry them off, not only in order
to avoid the expense of maintaining them, but in order to contract
alliances with noble families so that he might once more become the head
of a powerful faction in the country and get his fingers round the
national purse-strings.

The matches which he made were mostly in the West of England and along
the Welsh border where his own lands lay. And amongst the families of
the West of England few were more powerful than that of the Egertons of
Tamworth, of Creswell, and of Bedington—three castles each of prime
strength. It is true that the marriage which he made for his daughter
Dionissia was with Sir Stanley Egerton, a younger son. But Sir John, the
elder, was away in Palestine, and was reported to be so ill with poisons
and wounds that he could hardly come home. And, indeed, the Lady
Dionissia, attended by her ten savage Welsh men-at-arms, had not been
set out three days upon her journey to Tamworth before the news reached
the Earl that the Crusader had died at Sandwich. In the ordinary course,
the Earl would have been too proud to let his daughter make a marriage
of the sort that was known as de Changellerie, and prevailed much
amongst the knights of the West of England and the Welsh Marches.

But the younger Knight of Tamworth was accounted for his deeds of arms
so very famous throughout chivalry, and appeared so certain in those
modern and degenerate days to become one of the most powerful knights in
England, that the Earl after protracted bargaining had consented to the
proposition. The young knight had done extraordinarily well in
tournaments, having sent his cartels to the Courts, not only of Spain,
but of France and the Roman Emperor. In his conflicts he had been
uniformly successful, and he had gained great renown by fighting in
Spain against the heathens. The Earl of Morant being of the old school,
which included the Lady Blanche, regarded these exploits with a certain
amount of contempt, as being on the one hand modern, and on the other
hand rather unprofitable trickery. They did not pay and they cost a
great deal of money, bringing in very little more than a great deal of
fame and no land worth speaking of. The Earl of Morant’s idea was to get
hold of land by force, to occupy it, and to sit down over many miles of
territory until the King, for the time being, was in sufficiently low
water to ratify the conquest. This, of course, was the frame of mind of
a nobleman whose family had for long been established on the Welsh or
Scotch borders. It was already, as the Earl recognised, a little
antiquated for the Marches of Wales. It had become antiquated as soon as
Edward I had seized all the territory of Wales. There was not any land
within a hundred miles of the Earl that had not been granted, upon the
conferring of the Princedom of Wales on the late king, to English
knights whose land it was altogether too difficult a matter to
appropriate.

Thus, although the Earl was an old-fashioned man, he realised that the
days of forays and raids were over in his part of the country. It was
difficult for him to move with the times, since he had never been able,
try as he would, to master the elementary details of modern tournaments
and single combats, but he was quite determined to choose as his
sons-in-law men who were as entirely up-to-date as it was possible to
find. Pure Norman in his blood, the Earl had a great deal of shrewdness.
Indeed, the first of his family to come to England had been an excellent
lawyer, who had arrived when things were settling down after the
Conquest, and had gained his advancement very much more as an
administrator than by means of his sword. Thus the Earl recognised that
even a marriage de Changellerie with so eminent and modern a personage
as the younger Knight of Egerton would be very well worth having.
According to that Western custom, which prevailed perhaps more in
Scotland than in England, a wife was married for one year, during which
she enjoyed all the privileges of the married state. At the end of that
time, if in her mind and body she satisfied the necessities of her
husband, the marriage became permanent—or if she bore him a child. If
it was not so she returned to her guardians with her honour untouched,
except in so far as it was affected by failure in the undertaking. And
with her there came back from one-half to two-thirds of her dowry, this
being a matter of bargaining. The Earl felt, however, fairly sure that
this transaction would turn out very well. His daughter was perfectly
healthy, and so, he had ascertained, was the Knight of Tamworth. So that
he had very little doubt that a child would result from the union. The
parties’ predilections or aversions to or from one another would have
very little to do with the matter. As to his daughter’s dowry, which was
£1000 in gold and some parcels of land, which the Earl happened to have
in Gloucestershire—in that respect too he felt fairly confident, for he
would find means to delay paying it over until the marriage was finally
ratified.

The Lady Dionissia, who thus set out, was at that time nineteen years of
age. She was tall, large-limbed, and of an exceeding and most unusual
fairness. Her features were oval and aquiline, but she had at the same
time so abstracted and reflective an expression that all the harshness
of their aquilinity seemed to be tempered and done away with. It was
always very difficult to get at what she thought, for she spoke
extremely little, being immersed in frequent and very long day-dreams,
which would fall upon her in the midst of the gayest of companies. Her
ten sisters regarded her as being slightly mad; for, when it came to
action, her actions were of singular abruptness, and of some
inscrutability as to what caused them. And since she was of extreme
physical strength, though she was the youngest but two of them, she was
allowed to go her own way.

Their castle, which was about twenty miles towards Wales from the city
of Chester, was remote and solitary, but it contained so large a number
of squires, retaining knights, men-at-arms, and other dependants, that
they sat down usually 300 to table, with one man or page to wait upon
every three of them. And jongleurs and minstrel knights and
ballad-singers in great numbers travelled that way, for the Earl was
notedly liberal in his rewards, and the daughters were reputed beautiful
and kind, so that the castle had of late years been nicknamed “The
Maidens’ Hold.” It was accounted fashionable to pass that way, and there
spend a night or two.

Thus the Lady Dionissia was as well acquainted with the gossip of the
day and with the high feats of chivalry as was any lady of Salisbury or
the other metropolitan cities where the tournaments were then held. And
her mind had roamed over great expanses of the world. She heard them
described with their strange trees, flywers that devoured wanderers,
apes, dragons, parrots, and porcupines that discharged their quills like
arrows and sands of the desert so heated that their fire melted at
noon-time the armour of men and horses—yet she could not in her mind
picture them as otherwise than resembling the dark blue distances that
she had seen from the tops of her craggy Welsh mountains, with their
deep ravines, their swiftly descending streams, and their endless
rain-clouds. Travelling southwards, she had come by way of Upton over
the Severn and to Worcester, and so by way of Devizes down over the
great Plain.

She had seen walled towns and great abbeys and minsters, and she had
become acquainted with strange tongues. Norman-French was her own
language, for she was of Norman blood on both sides, and of English she
had very little, for upon the Welsh border the poor spoke Red Welsh
alone, and that was a language not easy to learn, and not very much
worth the learning. Still, in English she could make herself understood,
and could understand most things, English being the language of daily
matters, such as the washing of linen or the slaughtering of beasts.

Arriving at Tamworth, she had found herself in command of a castle a
little larger than her father’s, spreading abroad over a fertile
champaign country, with the low hills of the bare Plain all around it.
And this delighted her eye and pleased her sense of command, so that she
had no impatience because her husband by proxy was away at the wars. It
pleased her, indeed, to be able to settle down before he should arrive
there. The Lady Blanche she had found very much inclined to rule within
the domains of Tamworth, but the Lady Dionissia, without contradicting
her cousin when she was present, exactly countermanded each of her
orders as soon as she rode away. For the sake of safety, when they heard
that Hugh of FitzGreville, the outlaw, was anywhere within twenty miles
of them overnight with his band that infested the Plain, they slept in
each other’s castles together for two or three nights on end. This they
did for greater safety, so as to join their bands of ancient armed men.
For, although it was unusual, it was not at all an unheard-of thing that
outlaws should take a kernelled castle in the night-time, sacking the
place, and carrying off to hold for ransom such women as seemed worth
the trouble. Whereas, joined together in one strong place, the two
ladies would be very well able to hold it against Hugh of FitzGreville,
whose band did not number very much more than forty men, roughly
armed—for the most part with clubs.

It was their custom to set forth a little before sundown with all their
men and all the furnishings of the castle, which were no great matter,
and could be carried upon mules. The unoccupied castle would be left
quite empty, except for ploughs and such implements as could be of
little value to the outlaw, whilst the castle itself would be too strong
and too stony for Hugh to do it much damage. Besides, why should he
desire to damage it, which would be a strenuous and very difficult
enterprise, at which he could gain nothing at all?

Thus they passed some agreeable days together, playing draughts and
walking in the gardens after supper, and going a-hawking or shooting
with bows, and listening to stories during the day-time. It could not be
said that the Lady Blanche did anything more than heartily dislike the
Lady Dionissia, or that the Lady Dionissia did anything more than
good-naturedly ignore the Lady Blanche, whom she regarded as a
disagreeable person. But, on the other hand, their attendant ladies met
and mingled and laughed and were good sisters, and their young pages
strove in a very friendly manner with each other at running races,
jousting at the ring, or casting quoits. So that there was generally
laughter to be heard and little tittering over small secrets, and in
that way much pleasure in the air, though it would have been better had
there been also able-bodied men of good birth and gentle courtesy.

The peasants of their respective domains grumbled a little when their
ladies were absent, for thus they lost their natural protectors. But it
had to be remembered that these peasants were so extremely poor that
they had nothing whatever for the outlaws to take away except now and
then a beast or a sheep for food, or a daughter for their recreation, or
a son that they would train up to be an outlaw. And, as all the world
knows, it is the will of God that a peasant should lose an occasional
beast, sheep, daughter, or son, though at such times as the lord of the
domain was at home and had with him a strong force, he would frequently
revenge the wrongs of his subjects. Thus before the Knights of Egerton
and de Coucy had gone away to Scotland, they had made a drive of all the
outlaws that they could catch in the Plain, Egerton hanging eighteen,
and de Coucy twenty-five, whose bodies might still be seen decorating
gallows and oak trees all round the hills of the valley. And this was to
be held as a very high and knightly kindness shown by these lords to
their dependants.

* * * * *

There were at the high table on the daïs at supper six ladies—the Lady
Blanche and her two attendants, and the Lady Dionissia and her two, who
were named Amarylle and Cunigunde. These ladies who had come with the
Lady Dionissia were of very high English families from the neighbourhood
of Chester, the one being called of Rolls, and the other of Birken, both
being descended from great English earls that were before the Conquest.
Of men there were Mr. Sorrell, who sat beside the Lady Blanche; the Dean
of Salisbury, who ate out of the same plate as the Lady Dionissia, and
was a fat man of about perhaps forty. He had come to Tamworth to get
some hawking and for change of air, he having been ill of a surfeit. And
this indeed was his general custom when he found that he was growing
over-bearing to the chapter. For he was normally a man of a good-natured
and chuckling disposition, beloved by such of his inferior clergy as
were submissive in habit; yet at times, fits of anger would visit him,
and there would arise great quarrels of troubles among his officers.

At such seasons it had become his habit to go for diversion rather to
the Castle of Tamworth, where they made him welcome, than to his own
country house which was above Winterbourne Gunner, on the windy plain.
The Dean loved a good hawk and a good hound, and had many of these, of
which he would make presents to kings and to such people as could be of
service to the Deanery of Salisbury. And these hounds and hawks he would
have set in motion before him upon wide expanses of open country, so
that he could see them well. But the Dean himself had never been seen
either to ride hawking or to the chase. For although he did not enjoin
this abstention upon his inferior clergy, he considered that it made his
office more dignified if he were not seen to do these things; though
occasionally when they were alone he would force his chaplain to ride a
race with him.

His chaplain, a very bald, lean old man, had been one of the Regulars, a
Canon of the Order of St. Dominic. But having made a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land in the fiftieth year of his age, and having borne a
double-headed mace and chain mail in a fight against the Saracens, this
Father Giraldus had lost all taste for the confined life of a priory, so
that at the intervention of the Dean, who loved him for the good and
holy stories of travel, miracle, and feats of arms that he could tell,
he had been absolved of his Monastic Vows and had become the chaplain to
the Dean. This Father Giraldus sat between the Ladies Amarylle and
Amoureuse to the right. The Ladies Blanchemain and Cunigunde, who were
upon the left, had no man to them at all, and they grumbled that the
Lady Blanche might just as well have set the holy pilgrim on their side
of her so that they might have some share in the conversation, instead
of between herself and the Lady Dionissia, who had the Dean for her own
comfort. There were thus but three men, two of whom were priests,
against six ladies, all of them young, lively, handsome, and clean. They
were served by the four eldest pages, who stood on the other side of the
table and carved before them. Two of these were the Lady Blanche’s, and
one the Lady Dionissia’s. He was called Gilleblois, and he was very dark
and mischievous. The fourth page was the Dean’s, a red-headed boy of
sixteen, who was soon to be made a squire of the Chapter’s Military
Knights, and would in turn become one of the knights whom the Chapter
kept to do service when the king demanded it. In twenty minutes he had
become exceedingly enamoured of the Lady Amoureuse, she being seven
years his senior, and he carved for her all the best bits of the meats,
so that the Lady Amarylle protested laughingly from time to time.

The little Jehan carved very carefully, kneeling upon one knee and
putting only the first two fingers and the thumb of his left hand upon
the meat that he carved. But his fellow page of the Lady Blanche’s was
too little to kneel, and the other two pages had not been bred in this
custom, so that they could not do it, though the Lady Dionissia and the
Dean chided them majestically from time to time, and held up to their
admiration the little Jehan, who was indeed the perfection of pages.
There was thus a great deal of laughter at the table, for all these
people had different habits, the Churchmen being Churchmen, the pilgrim
being from Constantinople, three of the ladies from Wales, and three
from the south-west of England.

Being upon the Lady Blanche’s right hand, Mr. Sorrell had his own right,
from which the cross dangled, towards the Lady Dionissia. But except
that the Dean and his chaplain both upon their entry lightly kissed this
sacred emblem, no mention was made of it at all, whilst they ate meals
which to Mr. Sorrell appeared truly terrible, and drank wines which were
remarkably good. But he had never conceived such eating.

It was quite true that the first course consisted of fourteen dishes,
the dishes themselves being mostly turned wood, though one was of gold
and two of silver. The golden dish held a gilt structure of pastry,
shaped like a castle, and from this the Dean and Mr. Sorrell and the two
ladies were first plenteously served, having only two plates of silver
between the four of them. But such a taste as distinguished the
fragments of meat, and force-meat balls that came out of this gilt
erection, Mr. Sorrell could never have imagined. Encouraged by the Lady
Blanche—and, indeed, he was so hungry as to need little
encouragement—Mr. Sorrell took with his fingers a piece of dark-looking
meat. It was sweet, it was salt, it tasted overpoweringly of nutmegs and
of cinnamon, and it was of the consistency of soft jelly.

Mr. Sorrell exclaimed: “Oh, my God!” and drank quickly from a cup of
silver. But even the wine was spiced with cloves. He ate a piece of very
coarse bread, and then he hesitated. The Lady Blanche was so occupied
with observing how much meat was served out at the lower tables, and how
much metheglin poured into the leather cups—for she was of opinion that
there was a mighty waste in the cellar, the kitchens, and the
pantries—she was so much occupied with indignantly observing these
things, that she did not perceive that Mr. Sorrell of the first course
ate little or nothing at all. But then she gently chided him. Mr.
Sorrell replied that he was used to something much simpler, something
old-fashioned like a sirloin of beef or a loin chop, something really
old English. The Lady Blanche said that, of course, as an Anchorite or a
holy man, Mr. Sorrell must have fared very simply. But his travels were
at an end, and he might very well pay more attention to the pleasures of
the table. The first dish of the first course was, she said, very
excellent, being compounded of the tongues of rabbits, hedgehogs, deer,
geese, and wild boars, together with the breasts of partridges and the
livers of pheasants. It contained, moreover, force-meat balls made of
honey, cinnamon, and flour boiled in wine, and the sauce was made
likewise of honey, nutmegs, cloves, garlic, and mint, and all these
things had been stewed together so that there could not be found
anywhere a dish more savoury.

But Mr. Sorrell still said, that as a foreigner and a new man he desired
something less costly and more simple. Thus, for the next dish the Lady
Blanche must be content to share with him a panade of herring boiled in
white wine whey and covered with a sweet sauce compounded out of
cherries. This appeared to the Lady Blanche to be unreasonably homely
and tasteless fare, so that she regretted almost having shared her
platter with the holy man. Mr. Sorrell, on the other hand, could not get
his mouth to receive more than one taste of what, since he did not know
its contents, he regarded as a mixture of strawberry jam and oysters.
But since he was very hungry indeed, of the first course he managed to
eat some of the breast of a bird which had been pickled in fermented
honey, and was laid over with a paste of almonds and cheese. And he
regarded with envy the hinds of the lowest part of the low table, who
were gnawing half-cooked flesh from great bones. He indicated this to
the Lady Blanche. She said:

“Holy man, in the days of our great-grandfathers and our
great-grandmothers, when life was very active and forays and strifes
abounded, it was very well for men to eat such dull food. For their
minds were very full of other things. But in these degenerate days, when
all life is dullness, we must have our foods highly spiced and seasoned
according to the precepts and the science of cookery.”

The pages carried away the plates and emptied them into a great tub with
two handles which served for the broken meat of the poor waiting outside
the castle gates. This was done to the sound of trumpets. And whilst the
second course was being brought, a man came in with a bear that danced
in the sort of horseshoe formed by the two tables along the wall and the
small table on the daïs. This man had with him, a girl, who danced upon
her hands with her feet in the air, and shouted answers in this posture
to the exclamations that were shouted to her from the tables. The talk
at the high table was, for a time, mostly of journeying to the Holy
Land, and of the places that one passed on the way, and of the perils
from the pirate ships of the Saracens, whom with difficulty the ships of
the Emperor of Byzantium chased off from galleys bearing pilgrims. This
conversation was mostly monopolised by the chaplain of the Dean. Bald,
lean, and old, and with fiery eyes, this Brother Ording had the voice of
Stentor, so that he could make himself heard above all the din of the
hall, and he told them of many strange things that happened in the
Adriatic, and of what churches in the town had pictures and of which
were kept in a slovenly way, and of the sloth of the Greek monks and of
the miraculous islands of Greece and the strange things that happened
there. Thus near Corfu there was a small island whose inhabitants were
protected by St. Nicocias. So efficient was the miraculous protection of
this saint, who decreed that no stolen thing could be taken from the
island, that once when pirates landed there and slew a sheep and
devoured it, contrary to the habits of pirates, they vomited forth all
that they had eaten. This was known to all men of these parts. And the
Brother Ording appealed to the pilgrim for confirmation of these things,
but in the din of all these people—for with the servers and the
occupants of the lower table there must have been ninety of them, of
whom by far the larger part were below the great pewter
salt-cellars—with all this din of knives, teeth, crying out for more
wine, more ale, and more metheglin, Mr. Sorrell was unable either to
hear or to make himself heard. And because Mr. Sorrell mentioned this to
the Lady Blanche, she spoke at once to a man who stood below the table
armed with a long stick like a hop pole. Immediately he ran down the
tables striking with his stick here and there at hands and heads,
upsetting drinking vessels and sending platters of meat skimming on to
the rushes, where they were devoured by the many and large dogs that lay
beneath all the tables.

There fell a deep silence which was broken only by the deep grunts of
the bear, the panting of the girl who danced on her hands, the low
shrill sounds of the bearward’s pipe, and the light crackle of the
torches of pinewood that, stuck into iron rings on the stone walls, were
beginning to be lit, for it was growing very dusk. And in the
comparative quiet Mr. Sorrell heard the Dean, who was leaning back in
the chair with his hands clasped across his stomach, amiably
remonstrating with the Lady Dionissia for riding so large, fierce,
young, and half-trained a destrier. He had remonstrated for a long time,
pointing out that this beast might not only be of danger to the valuable
life of the lady herself, but that it might very seriously put in
jeopardy the limbs of those who rode with her, as well as the lives of
the beasts they rode on. For it was true that this destrier was being
trained for the use of the Knight Egerton her husband, so that it would
attack his enemies like a fury with teeth and with hoofs. But it was but
a half-trained thing, and how could they tell that it might not one day
mistake her friends for her enemies and, getting out of hold, worry them
in the terrible manner that stallions have. Such animals, he said, were
fit only for male control, and this beast was as large as an elephant
and as cruel and treacherous as a tiger, having slain in its stall
already two men. And the Dean appealed to Mr. Sorrell as to whether
fierce horses were fit to be ridden by gentle women.

The Lady Dionissia turned her deep and bewildered glance upon Mr.
Sorrell, who for the first time really saw her curiously fair features,
and the run of her limbs beneath her dress, which was of scarlet velvet
with white sleeves laced with silver cord. The forehead cloth of white
lawn, which beneath her steeple hat of red velvet and gold descended
over her forehead, was edged also with silver wire, which, being heavy,
held the forehead cloth down, so that hitherto it had hidden her face
from his sight. She looked at him for a long time, and he could not find
any words in which to reply to the Dean. For the effort to be
comprehensible to these people was a little tiring to him, and he always
felt a difficulty in speaking foreign languages when he was at all
fatigued. Suddenly the Lady Dionissia spoke in a very deep and
abstracted voice, as if she were coming up out of a dream:

“Why, I am as good as any man,” she said, “and I do not know what fear
is.”

“That is very well,” the Dean replied; “but there are things that are
the province of men, and things that are the province of women.”

“Assuredly,” the Lady Blanche exclaimed, “you shall not ride my cousin’s
charger, lest, running away and being impaled upon a post or stave, it
should be imperilled in its life or even killed.”

The Lady Dionissia uttered nothing at all, but continued to gaze into
Mr. Sorrell’s eyes. Mr. Sorrell was trying to think how he should say
that of course there were limits, but for his part he had always thought
that in the hunting-field a woman with a perfect seat was a better rider
than the best of men. He himself was pretty keen over the hurdles, but
in the mid-Shropshire, which was a pretty stiffish country, there had
been a Mrs. Nicolls who could give him a lead all the time. And in his
travels he had ridden pretty well any kind of horse you could find, no
matter how tough a customer it was.

But whilst these thoughts went through his mind, Mr. Sorrell found that
his tongue was tied and he continued gazing back at the Lady Dionissia
as if the sight of her had struck him with a disease of muteness.

The four pages were walking up between the tables with towels, basins,
and ewers, so that the suppers at the high table might wash their hands
between the courses. The servers behind them were marching with their
dishes held on high over their heads; the two trumpeters at the door had
their horns to their lips all ready to blow as soon as the dishes were
set upon the table. And suddenly from amongst the poor who were waiting
for the broken meat outside, there rose a shrill clamour like many
shrieks of surprise and joy. And there ran into the hall a brown-grey
object, filthy and hideous, leaping up in the rushes so that it
resembled the bear itself, and having upon its elbows and its knees two
pairs of clogs such as women wear out of doors in wet weather.

Mr. Sorrell exclaimed:

“Good God, the beggar!” and the beggar, rushing between the bear and the
dancing girl, threw himself under the high table and began to kiss Mr.
Sorrell’s feet. This filled Mr. Sorrell with disgust and repulsion, and
from the lower part of the hall they began to cry out that the beggar
had been miraculously cured, because he had been the first to welcome
the holy cross to that place. The Dean stood up in his place, and so did
the chaplain, who in a stentorian voice ejaculated:

“_Te Deum laudamus!_”

And then, whilst everyone stood still in confusion, the pages in their
places, the servers in theirs, and all men held their breaths or chatted
to their neighbours, a man in a clerk’s dress of black with furred
edges, and with an ink-horn slung from his chest, rushed into the
disordered hall, almost unnoticed, and fell on his knees before the
Dean.

“Hugh of FitzGreville,” the Lady Dionissia exclaimed deeply, “is laying
siege to my Castle of Tamworth.”

III

In a very misty half light, caused by a small moon shining down through
vapours arising from the River Wiley, the black shapes of men to the
number of thirty or forty were moving in front of the black walls of the
Castle of Tamworth. They were carrying bundles of faggot wood and
parcels of thatch, which they had torn from the roof of a hut that was
not very far distant, and they were piling these in front of the great
gate of the castle. Others were hauling up from beside the pale stream
the huge trunk of an elm tree that had been blown down a fortnight
before in the high wind, and now, lopped of its branches at the top, lay
there awaiting a convenient season for carting.

They worked for the most part in silence, for these outlaws were very
barbarous men who had hardly any words to utter at all, and they were
armed with clubs, though two or three had bows, and Hugh of FitzGreville
himself had a double-handed sword, a cap of steel, and two daggers. With
the faggots and thatch they intended to make a fire before the great
gate so as to weaken it, and with the trunk of a tree they were going to
make a battering-ram, supporting it two and two on either side with
ropes of ox-hide. They worked industriously and with haste, and when
they had dragged the tree trunk so that its butt end was within a few
feet of the gate, they set fire to the mass of combustibles that there
lay heaped up. It smouldered and sent out a great deal of smoke. And
then, so that they might have more light to work by, Hugh FitzGreville
commanded them to set light to the hut from which they had already torn
half the thatch.

But whilst all these scoundrels tugged and sweated at the ox-hide ropes
that went beneath the battering-ram, the alarming flames crept towards
the dark heaven, and a sickly flickering light fell upon the
malefactors’ forms and faces. They had little discipline and no unity,
all these fellows, so that at one time twenty-five upon the one side of
the tree trunk would be lifting, whilst the other twenty-five would be
letting go of their ropes.

Having hidden himself for the last ten days, Hugh of FitzGreville had
used the time at once to make himself acquainted with the habits of the
castle people, and to make them think that he was far away and upon
other errands. Indeed, he had sent a treacherous packman down to the
castle that afternoon to say that he lay well away to the east, even as
far as Andover. Thus, as he had hoped, the Lady Dionissia had been
beguiled into security, and she had ridden over to Stapleford with all
her men, leaving the castle almost uninhabited, but with most of its
furniture, which must have been worth nearly £50, and with what was
still more desirable, a certain quantity of arms, including even, it was
said, one of those new and devilish inventions which spits forth stones
and fire and fills the beholders with fear. Thus, lying up during the
evening in the heather, Hugh of FitzGreville, a man of forty, with a
very black beard, gnarled fingers, and a huge sword, who had been
outlawed for many outrages, from the taking of the King’s deer to the
murder of several people, male and female, and religious as well as
laymen, Hugh of FitzGreville perceived with satisfaction the Lady
Dionissia riding towards Stapleford with all her armed men. Near
nightfall he heard from one of his men, the son of a peasant of
Stapleford, that to that castle there was come the holy pilgrim that for
so long all the countryside had awaited, bearing with him a golden cross
that worked astounding miracles. And this all the more determined Hugh
of FitzGreville to make his attack upon Tamworth Castle that very night.
For he expected that the destination of the pilgrim and the cross was
Tamworth itself; and he very much desired to have arms for his men. The
season for violences was passing over. With the end of the summer, the
knights and their retainers would be back in Wiltshire, and he himself
would have to go into his winter quarters in the little town of Imber,
which was inaccessible to mounted knights once the winter rains began to
fall.

He desired arms, for he wished to sack Harnham, the southern suburb of
Salisbury, where all the Jews dwelt, and where there was in consequence
very much money. There were arms in the Castle of Tamworth—not many,
but sufficient, and there were not anywhere else any that he knew of or
could lay hands upon. But if on the morrow the cross came to Tamworth
Castle, his chance would be gone. For it was very well known that this
cross shed a miraculous protection over all such as possessed it. Thus
with the dusk Hugh of FitzGreville slipped with his men down the
hillside towards the stream.

It had chanced that there was walking there the Clerk Nicholas, whom the
Dean of Salisbury had left at Tamworth to watch over such books as he
had brought with him, and more particularly an edition of Ovid’s
_Metamorphoses_, which were the Dean’s favourite reading. And this Clerk
Nicholas, walking in a shady grove, had perceived how Hugh of
FitzGreville and his men had come down to the gates of the castle, and
what they had set about doing. Thus, after watching them for a time,
being himself unseen, and uncertain whether they were friends or foes,
he had set off, running at great speed, as if the devil and all his imps
were after him, towards the Dean in the castle at Stapleford. But not
knowing this, the outlaws set about their work with great determination,
though with much clumsiness.

Hugh FitzGreville was cursing lustily all the while, and thwacking them
over the shoulders with a great stick. At last he called for silence,
and commanded that they should all stand there with the hide-ropes slack
in their hands whilst he counted four, and upon the word four they
should all lift together. They must batter down this great gate. There
was no other way into the castle; the walls were too high and the
windows too narrow. He made three attempts at counting four, each of
them ending in failure. But at the fourth attempt they got the great
tree trunk lifted up and stood trembling at their knees with its great
weight. He commanded them to swing it against the gate, but when they
had swung it they tottered so that it fell again to the ground a little
farther away than before it had been. Cursing, sweating, and screaming,
their leader forced them to another attempt, and again they had it
poised and trembling in the air.

There was already an element of fear abroad amongst all these men. To
begin with, this attack upon a great castle was a larger and more
dangerous enterprise than any to which they had been used. And again,
descending into the valleys was a thing they always dreaded; They were
men who wrought violences upon the open Plain, and here in the darkness
and the mists they felt themselves shut in. Nor, indeed, did they very
well know the ways of escape, for it was unfamiliar country. Thus the
trembling of their hands beneath the great weight of the tree trunk was
a symbol of an awful fear that beset them, and the angry agitation of
their leader made them all the more dogged and cowed. But they swung the
tree trunk back, and with an enormous thud it fell against the great
gate; the lock split, the bolts split, the gate itself, dividing into
two parts, flew right back. Suddenly they felt—and they screamed
aloud—that the devil was amongst them.

The men on the right-hand side only heard the hoofs—the men on the left
saw, enveloped in the clouds of smoke from the burning hovel, an immense
white horse, that fell in amongst them. Upon its back was a terrible man
all in red and white, waving a steel mace above his head and calling out
in an unknown tongue. Those who saw horse and rider let go their ox-hide
ropes so that the released tree trunk fell across the legs of the other
half. Twelve of them were pinned down and lay screaming.

The horse reared on high and seemed itself to scream in continuous
bursts of sound like the high laughter of fiends. The firelight
reflected in its eyes appeared to pour forth streams of flame. The black
wall of the castle came into sight, dun-coloured in the light of the
flames, and vanished when the wind beat the flames low. It rose in front
of them like a great cliff, and the uncharted night surrounded them on
all other sides. The horse reared. It struck out with its right foot and
with its left; its enormous jaws closed with a panic-bearing sound.

His heart full of dread, FitzGreville struck with his two-handed sword a
desperate blow at the man on the horse. The sword fell upon the iron
handle of the mace that the man carried and its blade shivered like
brittle glass. When the fragments fell over its back and crupper, the
horse squealed as if with a wicked rage. And even whilst the outlaw,
with a gesture of despair, dropped his ruined hilt to the ground, the
horse was upon him. The first blow with its right foot smashed his head
like a nut, so that he was at once dead, and then upon the prostrate
body it executed its rage, stamping with its feet, tearing with its
enormous teeth, until there remained only the pulp of the human being.
Then the horse stood still and trembled in all its limbs; it raised its
nostrils towards the open gate and snuffed in the air. All the robbers
had fled, only those who were pinned down by the tree trunk lay still
and groaned. The stallion, with its head erect, trotted in through the
dark gateway, its rider powerless or unwilling to prevent it.

* * * * *

Thus when a short two minutes later there came riding into the circle of
light the Dean, his shouting chaplain who brandished a morgenstern, his
page upon a black horse and four more pages who were the eldest of the
Ladies Blanche and Dionissia, together with the five Welsh men-at-arms
who had clung to their stirrups and ran uttering wild shrieks—it
appeared in the light of the dancing flames that a miracle of God had
been worked. There lay three men dead by huge blows, and one crushed out
of all semblance of a man, and beneath the tree trunk, in an orderly
row, the twelve others pinned to the earth and screaming, as if
Providence had neatly arranged this device that in a seemly manner there
might be several captives of whom to make an example to all evil-doers.
The old men-at-arms, who had followed them on foot, came dropping in by
twos and threes, and many awakened peasants appeared far off, slinking
in the outer ring of the firelight, and asking what all this could be
but a madness of their lords, or a miracle of God, some thinking the one
and some the other.

And suddenly, staggering from under the archway, faltering here and
there, they perceived a knight in a garment of red and white chequers,
who bore in his left hand a mace, and from whose right depended an
ornament all flashing gold.

So many and such great cries went up, there was such a babble and such a
confusion of voices, that no man knew very well what he said or what was
said to him. But there could be no doubt that all were agreed that the
bearer of the Cross of St. Joseph and the cross itself had wrought this
miracle for the protection of the noble House of Egerton of Tamworth.
All men ran about seeking what vestige of fray they might find, and at a
little distance there was discovered a man with his shoulder broken in,
who had been crawling down to the river to drink. The great gates of the
castle they observed to be thrown asunder as if miraculously, to permit
of the entry of the Messenger of God. Nothing else in the castle was
disturbed—nay, not so much as the books of the Dean of Salisbury; and
the great white destrier in its stall with its favourite mare was
quietly munching beans, with the stable cat seated upon its wethers.
Thus upon that memorable night two miracles were wrought by the Cross of
St. Joseph. On the one hand the cripple was made to walk, on the other
the most formidable band of outlaws was broken for ever, its leader
slain and mutilated beyond recognition; so then here indeed the finger
of God had been made visible. Four others of them were killed outright,
ten were taken ready to be hanged; and the rest, leaderless and broken
men, were dispersed all over the Plain, so that most of them never again
met together.

IV

It was thus with the glory of two miracles to his credit that Mr.
Sorrell was borne once more into the lights of the great hall of
Stapleford Castle, seated on high, on a litter supported by the
shoulders of four Welshmen. All the countryside was abroad, torches here
and there gleamed on the black wall of night, as they had come by the
river-side, and a great crowd of people, who by their position or their
rights were deemed fit to have ingress into the great hall, were already
there, whilst huddled round the central doorway was a crowd of peasants
and their wives. Mr. Sorrell was confused out of his mind. He could not
have given you a coherent account of the proceedings.

At the moment, he was sober enough, though he was ready to admit he had
drunk too much wine at supper. He excused himself by the fact that he
had not in the least known how strong the liquor was, and had eaten so
many sweet things and so many salt things, that an unheard-of thirst had
possessed him. No doubt in the ordinary way he would have wanted to ride
with the expedition. He would have done it for the fun of seeing what
happened. But without the wine he would probably not have insisted upon
riding the white stallion, and he probably would not have insisted on
taking with him an iron mace.

As it was, he was conscious of having behaved boastfully and of having
been enormously elated. There had been a great deal of hurry; he had
been hoisted up on to the great horse before the castle door. Other men
had ridden beside him. They had gone down to the river and along it. He
had laughed and cried out with excitement. The pace of the great horse
had seemed to him extraordinarily easy; it had trotted with a level,
heavy action. He had ridden most things, from mules in Spain to camels
in Egypt and some sort of ox on the Thibet frontier. And the pace of the
great horse had seemed to him absurd; he had wanted to go faster. He had
kicked it with his heels; he had hauled upon the bridle; he had called
out.

At last he had struck its sides with the iron mace. Immediately it had
become another creature, bounding with the elasticity of a steel spring,
snorting and screaming. It had taken its own head, and he had found
himself galloping through the night with immense bounds, far in advance
of all the other men, going on farther and farther towards the glare of
a large fire that was all he could see in the darkness. It had grown
larger; it had become a conflagration; he had seen many men; he had
heard their cries; he had noticed that a man with a black beard and a
convulsed face had struck at him with a great sword. He had struck in
return with his mace, meeting nothing. He had had too much to do to keep
on the back of the horse, which swayed like a small boat in a very
choppy sea, pitching now on one end, now on the other. For all he was a
good rider, at last he had to hang on to the mane and the saddle.

Then the horse had stood still; it had neighed; it had trotted in under
the dark arch into the darkness of the castle. It had come to a
standstill by what was obviously a closed stable with a rough thatch
that came down almost to Mr. Sorrell’s knee. And here, breathing hard
and slightly pawing the ground, it had been answered from within by
gentle whinnyings. And it was here for the first time that fear of a
sort had come to Mr. Sorrell. It went quickly through his mind that if
he did not let the horse in it would kick its way into the stable. On
the other hand, if he descended, might not the terrible beast, not
knowing him for his master, tear him, as Mr. Sorrell had seen it tear
the outlaws? But the thing had to be faced. And with fear possessing him
all over, Mr. Sorrell had slipped down from the horse, caught its bridle
near the jaw, and, tremblingly, had found the latch of the stable. It
was part of the odd jumble of fear, elation, and the natural tendency of
his nature to do things in a ship-shape way that he unstrapped the
unfamiliar saddle-belt, and took off the head stall and bit before he
let the horse go into the black darkness of the stable. He could not for
the world have told why he did this. It was hardly the desire for
tidiness, since he dropped the saddle and the bridle immediately on the
ground. But the great horse trotted quietly into its stall; Mr. Sorrell
slammed the door to, and, leaning one hand against the lintel, he became
violently ill.

This certainly sobered him, but it left him very dizzy and faint, and,
like a man in a dream, he stumbled amongst heaps of offal and the
handles of ploughs, which are weary and troublesome things, towards the
light of the castle gate; and here, among torches, glare, and the shouts
of men, he seemed to be seized upon by friendly savages. He was hoisted
shoulder-high on to a litter covered with cushions. And what struck him
most, and most singularly, was the fact that the little Jehan was
immediately busy about his feet. He had, he discovered, been riding in
boots of jointed steel, and almost immediately the little Jehan had
these off, and was putting on the now familiar red and white shoes; he
sat on high supported by the shoulders of four shaggy-haired, black
little devils of mountaineers. He could not make himself heard; he could
not ask any questions. It just seemed odd, and he just supposed that the
gentlemen of those days went about with pages carrying their slippers
behind them, because their iron riding shoes might be calculated to
blister their feet. And then suddenly the mountaineers trotted off with
him, and he was not distinctly conscious of thinking anything at all,
except that it was probably all right, and that they ought to feel
grateful to him, though he really had not done anything in particular.
At any rate, he was thankful enough for the half hour or so of darkness
and quiet.

There was certainly an extraordinary amount of chatter and babble in the
hall of Stapleford Castle when they reached it. There were all sorts of
people there—nuns, priests, old men-at-arms, men in costumes that he
could not account for, a man who might be a mayor in a red garment with
a chain round his neck, though he was treated as if he were of no
account at all. On the daïs there still sat the ladies, as if they had
only just finished their supper, their nefs of silver and gold standing
solitary on the white cloth before them. He was conscious of the Lady
Dionissia gazing at him with a fixed and bemused glance, whilst thLe ady
Blanche, with triumph upon her face, held out her arms towards him, and
the four other ladies rose up and called out. Still bearing him on high,
the mountaineers kicked and shoved their way through the crowd till he
was come right up to the daïs. Everyone else stood upon their feet and
shouted and called out; only the Lady Dionissia sat still and gazed at
him in silence. And he was conscious that he must present a splendid
enough figure, all in red and white velvet, if indeed it had not become
dirtied by what he had done that night.

They began almost immediately some sort of religious service in the body
of the hall. They appeared to be returning thanks, and the ugly but now
cured cripple figured prominently in the middle of a body of kneeling
religious people. But it was all very confused, for not everybody took
part, and pages or servers moved about clearing the boards and removing
the trestles of the lower tables to set them along the wall. Then the
little pages came to take away the nefs from the dais. The Lady Blanche
had one, the Lady Dionissia a second, and the Dean one more. But as for
the chaplain and the ladies-in-waiting, their knives, cups, and napkins
were simply wrapped up in cloths. The nef of the Lady Blanche was formed
of a huge shell, in shape like a snail, that had come undoubtedly from
the East. It had feet of silver, and there were attached to it sails and
rigging, and a crew of tiny men of silver also. It contained as table
furniture the Lady Blanche’s knife of gold, her small golden
drinking-cup, her napkin ring of tortoise-shell, her napkin, and the
beads which she used at table when she was piously inclined. All these
things were carefully wiped before her face by the little page Jehan
upon pieces of soft leather. Then the Lady Blanche fetched from her
bosom the large key of the hutch in her bower, and, giving this to the
page, she bade him very attentively to stow away the nef in her hutch,
and to bring her the key again. This was the first time she had showed
so much trust in the little page. And similarly, the Lady Dionissia and
the Dean had their vessels cleaned by their pages, and stowed away in
their nefs. The Lady Dionissia’s nef was of silver-gilt, in the shape of
a man-at-arms who bore a large chest of booty upon his back. This figure
stood upon a plate of silver-gilt, from which the lady was accustomed to
eat at table. The Dean’s nef was in the shape of a chasse or feretory.
It was of gold, with a peaked roof, and it had small carved saints and
angels at each of its four corners, whilst on the peak of the roof was
an image of St. George trampling upon a dragon, and holding it
transfixed between his pointed shoes with a long spear, round whose
stave the golden beast twisted its neck, sending upwards flames of gold.
And no sooner were the nefs off the table, than all who were on the daïs
rose up and filed out of the hall, completely ignoring, as if with
haughty indifference; the religious ceremonies that were there taking
place. And this a little disconcerted Mr. Sorrell, who would gladly have
taken the opportunity of returning some thanks to some deity for his
having come safely through rather considerable perils.

He followed the white head-dress of the Lady Dionissia through what
appeared to be miles and miles of stone corridors. The little Jehan
walked before them carrying a torch, whose flame smoked redly, and
filled the air with a fat, resinous, and stifling vapour. They went
along narrow passages, up narrow stairs, and round long galleries. Mr.
Sorrell tried to say to the Lady Blanche that he could not understand
how they estimated their expenditure. It seemed to him to be very badly
managed. Thus, on the one hand, the lady had a nef—a mere implement for
containing table things—which must have cost £300 or £400. Would it
not, he asked, have been more reasonable to keep her things in an
ordinary plate-basket, and to have the passages lit by candles, or, at
the very least, by night-lights? Everything that they did seemed to be
unbalanced, so that at the one point they had a most unreasonable
luxury, and, on the other, a great deal of discomfort. There did not
seem to be a pane of glass in the whole castle, and yet he had upon his
head at that moment, on the cap that they had put on him, a chaplet of
large pearls, which must have been worth at least £3000 or £4000. The
lady said that this chaplet had been brought from the Holy Land by her
husband’s grandfather after the Crusade of Richard I, when knights were
more practical and less given to romantic notions. It was a chaplet
nearly as fine that her husband had put upon the head of Sir Guy de
Hardelot after he had taken him prisoner, because, forsooth, he had
fought very well. Whereas it must be obvious to any person of sense that
if an opponent has given you a great deal of trouble you should make him
pay heavily for it. But for the other things Mr. Sorrell said, she did
not at all understand them.

Mr. Sorrell said:

“Oh, but if you’re going into partnership with me, you’ll have to get to
understand this sort of principle. You must have your expenditure level
and sufficient all round. It’s no good being ostentatious in one place
and niggardly in another. That’s the sound business principle.”

“I do not at all understand you,” the Lady Blanche said. “What can I
know of the high principles of magic?”

“Oh, it’s perfectly simple,” Mr. Sorrell said, and he cast about in his
mind for some illustration that would make her understand the absolute
necessity of mastering this elementary business principle.

In the upper part of the castle the corridors were wider, more high and
more gloomy, and the shadows of extravagant and protruding sleeves,
veils and head-dresses jutted and waved over rough walls of stone upon
the one side, and untreated wood upon the other. They walked very
slowly, the little page going ahead with the smoking torch held on high.

“It’s like this,” Mr. Sorrell said. “Supposing you want to publish a
book. You have to consider two things: the get-up of the book, and the
amount you spend in advertisement. Now it’s no good getting up a book
handsomely unless you can spend a good sum on publicity. You might have
the very best etching for illustrations, and you could have it printed
in what’s called golden type with red lettering on the title page, the
half-title, and you might have it printed on the very best hand-made
paper at God knows how much a pound. But if you don’t spend a high sum
on advertising, you won’t sell twenty-five.”

“I do not understand any of those terms of magic,” the Lady Blanche
said, “though I listen with all my ears.”

“I’ll try to talk about your sort of life,” Mr. Sorrell said. “Don’t you
understand that time is the most valuable thing in the world? Well then,
just consider how much time your servants must lose in doing the work of
the castle, just because these passages are not lit. You could do with
half the number of servants if you organised properly.”

“Ah, dear friend,” the lady said, “then the other half would starve and
become bandits and oh, holy man, if these passages and corridors were
lit at night, surely it would be very easy for my servants and serfs to
come to me where I lie in the upper part of the castle, and to cut my
throat and do other outrages. So I should lose my costly gear, and there
would be an end of me. No, very assuredly I will keep all my passages
quite dark, and the law of the castle what it is, that any serf who is
found in them after sundown shall have his ears cut off and his nostrils
slit as a suspected thief.”

These words opened before Mr. Sorrell such an abyss of dark social
considerations, that he really found nothing to add to his arguments. He
had been meaning to say that when they came to build his airships, he
was not going to have the propellers made of silver-gilt set with
carbuncles, or the sails of embroidered silk, whilst the dynamos were
scamped for want of money. And he was not going to have his
gun-carriages carved in fantastic shapes and gilded whilst the barrels
were made of cheap pig-iron.

But before he could recover himself sufficiently to be coherent, they
had entered a room which almost exactly resembled the bower of the Lady
Blanche. Here too there was a bed covered with skins of the grey wolf,
and at the foot of the bed was another large hutch, and this was all the
furniture save that in a corner of the room there lay a large leather
portmanteau. Except that it had no brass lock or fittings, this so
exactly resembled Mr. Sorrell’s own largest piece of travelling gear,
that he had a momentary impulse to say to the Lady Blanche:

“Now I’ve caught you! I bet that thing has got some chap’s ordinary
clothes in it!” But he checked himself in time, for upon racking his
mind he once more discovered that he did not in the least know what
would be an anachronism and what would not. And for the moment this cost
him a bitter mortification.

The Ladies Blanche and Dionissia sat themselves at either end of the
hutch, the four other ladies perched on the sides of the bed. The Dean
sat himself between the Ladies Blanche and Dionissia, the Bishop’s
chaplain pulled out from the wall the leathern portmanteau and sat
himself down upon it. The little Jehan entered the closet, which was
made of planks walling off one end of the room, and fetched from it a
torch, which he lit and stuck in an iron ring in the wall. The ring was
so high that he must stand on tiptoe to get it there. Then he went
outside the door and stuck his own torch in yet another ring.

All their eyes were fixed upon Mr. Sorrell.

“Oh, hang it all,” Mr. Sorrell said, “do you expect me to make a
speech?”

The Dean yawned suddenly.

“It is very late in the night,” he answered, “yet it would be well if
the most weighty matters could be now debated and set to rest.”

“Why,” Mr. Sorrell said, “I’m very tired, and I don’t feel as if I had
anything to say whatever.”

The Lady Dionissia was gazing at him with her lips slightly parted. It
distracted Mr. Sorrell more than he could say, and the dazzling
whiteness of her skin made the Lady Blanche’s weather-beaten and
coloured beauty appear dusky and negligible, so that for a short moment
Mr. Sorrell wished that he had not so precipitately entered into a
business partnership with the Lady Blanche.

The Lady Blanche started suddenly with vexation.

“By the eyes of Christ,” she said, “I had forgotten that I had meant to
have the Abbess here, so that she might hear of her utter downfall, and
be properly chastened.”

And immediately in high tones she bade the little page run to bid the
Mother Abbess, who was in the Great Hall, to hasten before her. The Lady
Dionissia said in deep; and startling tones:

“Lie down upon the Dean’s bed, holy man, and rest your limbs.” And
before Mr. Sorrell could recover from the emotions which her voice
caused in him, with exclamations of delight the four youngest ladies had
seized Mr. Sorrell and had conducted him to the bed. They laid him down
and, screaming with laughter and tittering, they kissed him upon both
cheeks before they left him alone. He could not bring himself to remain
in a recumbent posture, but he was glad enough to sit down on something
soft, so, leaning against the pillows, he crossed his legs as well as he
could beneath him and sat up.

“So! It is even in that way,” the Dean’s chaplain exclaimed in his huge
voice, “that the heathen peoples of the East sit upon their cushions. I
have seen them do it in Bethlehem.”

“I learnt the trick in Syria,” Mr. Sorrell said cheerfully. “It’s quite
comfortable when you’ve got used to it, though these hoops on my legs
are rather in the way.”

And suddenly the Lady Dionissia exclaimed again:

“Let us pull the hutch from the bed and sit round the other way so that
we may all face the holy man.”

This proposal appeared to fill the Lady Blanche with a deep anger. She
had never heard of hutches being sat upon in that fashion. The Dean
smiled with indulgent surprise. He too had never heard of such a thing,
but it appeared to him to be reasonable to act exceptionally in
exceptional circumstances.

“When the stream is full,” he said, “we cannot go by the ford.” And he
chuckled amiably, regarding the Lady Dionissia as a madcap, but
exceedingly attractive child. The Lady Blanche was protesting that such
a thing should never be done in her castle. But with her large hand the
Lady Dionissia beckoned to her two ladies to help her, and bending down
powerfully, she lifted the one end of the hutch without effort, whilst
it took all that the other two girls could do to scrape the feet of the
hutch along the floor.

“Now let us sit down,” the Lady Dionissia said gravely.

And the Dean sat himself beside her, facing Mr. Sorrell with his hands
clasped upon his stomach, and his eyes blinking, whilst he shook gently
with contained laughter.

“Surely,” he said, “with these varieties, I shall be cured of my
jaundices and distempers. And since to-morrow is blood-letting day, I
think on the day after to-morrow I might well get me back to my chapter,
though I have never before been cured under three weeks. Yet so it is as
Ovid says: _Lætet Sanguis_. A constant occupation of the mind makes the
blood limpid and not thick and heavy.”

The Lady Blanche stood behind them, her eyes flashing appeal to Mr.
Sorrell, to strike with lightning both those people who defied her.

“Never shall I sit upon a hutch,” she exclaimed, “with my back where my
face should be, and since this is my castle, I will call immediately
four men to set you all in irons and in dungeons for disobeying my
orders, which is a feudal laches.”

The Lady Dionissia paid no heed at all to her cousin’s speech, but gazed
at Mr. Sorrell, who gazed back at her. The Dean turned his chubby and
comfortable head over his furred shoulder, and blinked at the enraged
lady.

“Ah, dear dame,” he said, “you have so great a knowledge of the law,
that I am astonished in your haste you should so slip up and trip. As
Tatianus has it: ‘in the passion of the head, wise tongues speak folly.’
For I have paid the Lady Dionissia for this my room, and the Lady
Dionissia has done that suit and service of one shilling to you for it.
Thus you have no more right of ingress or command here than has the King
into our Chapter House of Salisbury, once we have done him proper suit
and service.”

“Ah, Dean,” the Lady Blanche said—and the prospect of a legal argument
with a man mollified her very quickly for the moment, “yet custom and
the law have it, that if in a tenant-right, the tenant should do
anything sacrilegeous duty to his Over Lord, the Over Lord has the right
to enter upon the holding, and to take the person of the wrong-doer and
to enact justice upon him.”

“Ah, dear lady,” the Dean said, “and is it sacrilege, outrage or
blasphemy to move a hutch and to sit reversed upon it?”

“Ah, Dean,” the lady said, “is it not wilfully to molest and to despoil
the gear of an Over Lord, thus to drag a hutch over a rough floor, so
that its legs and the feet upon which it stands may be chafed, strained,
and parted from the body of the piece.”

“So it might well be, our dear lady,” the Dean said; “but this hutch is
my hutch which I bear about with me on the back of a mule, and is no
hutch of yours at all, for I believe you have two or at the most three
hutches in all your castle, and yours that was in this room I have lent
to my chaplain that he might store in it certain charters and
cartilleries, that upon this journey we are meditating to devise to
tenants of the Chapter of Salisbury: so it is all well,” he added, “and
come you and sit upon my hutch.” And leaning back he caught her by the
hand.

“Ah, Dean,” the lady said, and she surveyed with kindly friendship his
twinkling eyes, since a man of any sort was a pleasant object for her to
survey. “It is you that have found the solution to our quarrel, not my
cousin’s half-wife, who has the obstinacy and unreasonableness of a
white devil.” And leaning back so that his arm encircled her waist, the
Dean comfortably and courteously set her upon the hutch. Nevertheless,
she sat with her back to Mr. Sorrell, looking at him over her shoulder.
And then the Abbess came in, followed by the little Jehan.

“Ah, Abbess,” the Lady Blanche said, on a high note of ironical
laughter, “we have asked you here that you may listen to the judgment of
the Holy Man in the matter of this cross, that you desire sacrilegiously
to steal and convey away, after the sacrilegious and blasphemous manner
of all the priesthood.”

“Ah, dear lady!” the Dean expostulated.

“Oh you,” the Lady Blanche said, “you do not belong to the monastic
orders, you are no more than a clerk, and clerks are honest people.”

The Abbess made a slight reverence to the Dean, who slewed round upon
the hutch, and nodded to her over his shoulder.

“Father Dean,” the Abbess said, “if you will, I would have you come
to-morrow morning to my little nunnery, to judge in friendly way between
my community and me. For you are a man, very learned in the law,
descended from those first Normans who were always barrators and cunning
men at haggling.”

“Why, Mother,” the Dean said in his husky, pleasant voice, “it is not
for me to judge between you and your community. That is a task for my
Lord the Bishop’s Chancellor.”

“Ah, Dean,” the Abbess said, “that I very well know, and very well I
know that if this should come before Sir Chancellor, then would result
an eternity of lawsuits—so I would have you give judgment on this
matter in a friendly manner, I making you some small presents as my
humble means afford.”

The Dean waggled his comfortable thumbs that were crossed upon his
comfortable stomach.

“Even what is the cause that you would have me consider?” he asked.

“Ah, Dean,” the Abbess said, “I trust it is one that has no precedent in
Christendom, for what will you say to a convent that rushes pellmell
with all the nuns and its prioress at its head and its almoner and its
sacrist and its mass-priest and its little thurifers, all of them
rushing out to do robbery upon a highway, against the will and consent
of their abbess, whose province it is to take order for them?”

“Why, what is all this folly?” said the Lady Blanche.

“I have had put,” the Abbess answered composedly, “the sacrist and the
thurifer and the sub-prioress and the cellaress all in irons, but the
prioress and the higher priests I have deemed fitter to spare, since
their position is of prominence in the community. But if you will give
me your opinion upon it, I will abide by it, as a judgment between them
and me. For myself, I think the community did very wrong in thus acting
against my desires, and I think that they should pay me some heavy fine
to benefit not my private good, or to be left to my heirs, but to go
into the coffers of all the Abbesses that shall ever succeed me.”

The Lady Blanche had been gasping with indignation. “It was not for this
that I sent for you,” she said, “but to hear what the holy pilgrim has
judged and decided concerning the cross of St. Joseph, that he brought
all the way from Bethlehem.”

“I might say,” the Abbess continued in her calm and level tones, “that
what may be decided concerning this cross is in no way an affair of
mine. But since you have called upon me, as being very assuredly moral
supervisor of these parts, and as far as the Priory of St. Stephen’s
bounds, I take it as being very courteous in you, and shall be glad to
hear this history.”

The Lady Blanche was convulsed with rage.

“Abominable Prelatess!” she exclaimed. “Is it you that are set in
command over the morals and orders of this district?”

The Abbess looked at her with straight and twinkling glance.

“Very assuredly it is,” she said, “and so it is according to all the
precedents. For the Bishop of Salisbury is away at the war, and so is
the Chancellor of the diocese, and the knights of Stapleford and of
Tamworth have gone, and the Prior of St. Stephen’s is but a minor prior,
whereas I, though a very poor one, am a full Abbess. So I am above
everyone else in this district, as being like a Baron of Parliament and
able to wield direct authority.”

The Lady Blanche exclaimed, “By the eyes of Christ! . . .” but her
utterance was choked within her.

“And that this is according to all precedent,” the Abbess continued
almost jocularly, “I will prove to you by many instances. Thus, the
Abbot of St. Edmunds, being desirous to go to the aid of King Richard I
in his French wars, it was answered to him that since the Bishop of Ely
and the Bishop of Norwich, and most or nearly all the knights of Suffolk
and Norfolk were away, the Abbot must stay in his monastery of St.
Edmund’s, since there was none other but he to keep order in those two
counties. And, indeed, for what else are convents and monasteries? Do
you think they are for the support of lazy nuns and idle priests? Not
so. They are here to keep order in the world beneath, to pray to heaven
that things may be well above, and by goodly example to win the ungodly,
the lecherous, the blasphemous, and the idle.”

“Mercy of God!” the Lady Blanche said. “These are the very newest
fashions that you bring with you from France.”

“Far be it from me,” the Abbess said, “to cast aspersions on the holy
women who have preceded me. They were so lost in prayers and visions of
heaven and in fasting and vigils, that the things of this earth were
sealed up for them. But being less holy, I deem it my duty to be the
more vigilant.”

The Lady Blanche dug her nails into her palms so that the pain might
cause to die down within her her enormous anger. “We shall see how it
will fare betwixt you and me,” she said. And then she turned upon Mr.
Sorrell. “Holy man!” she exclaimed, “tell us in three words what you
have decided to do with this cross.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Mr. Sorrell said with a start, “tell them
yourself. I’m not up to talking French before such a lot of people.”

The Lady Blanche looked round upon her assembly. “The holy man,” she
exclaimed, “has decided to leave it between me and my cousin’s wife by
proxy, to settle which of us shall have the custody of this cross until
the return of the knights our husbands from the war!”

“Ah, but how will you settle it?” the Dean asked. “That is a very
difficult question, for I think that neither the Lady Dionissia nor
yourself, our dear lady, are of such a kind as to surrender this sacred
and desirable emblem without a struggle.”

A malicious and haughty fire came into the eyes of the Lady Blanche, and
she stared hard at the Lady Dionissia.

“Why, these are the days of chivalry,” she exclaimed, “when all things
are settled by single combat and by spear and shield. Thus now I will
challenge my cousin’s wife to fight this thing out with me, and the
winner of us shall have the cross; or if she will not accept this my
challenge, she shall be accounted what is called, I think, a recreant,
and so the cross and the man who brought it shall remain in my keeping.”

Mr. Sorrell exclaimed, “Oh, I say!” and from all the other people came
many exclamations, whilst from most of the ladies came a shrill sound of
laughter.

The Dean looked at Lady Dionissia, whom he regarded with the fondness of
a guardian for his protégée.

“This is a mere counsel of madness,” he said; “such things have never
been heard of, and the lords of chivalry are the men only. For what a
thing it would be if ladies should go endangering their sweet limbs in
the hard knocks of fearful war.”

The Lady Dionissia said nothing at all, but sat fair and drooping as if
she were in a dream. The Abbess stood with her hands on high, as if she
were turned to a stone in an attitude of horror.

“Oh, you couldn’t come to fighting!” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed, looking at
the Lady Dionissia. “Why can’t you toss for the thing, as I suggested in
the beginning.”

The Lady Blanchemain said gaily to the Ladies Amarylle and Cunigunde,
“Why, if our mistresses fight as knights, we must be squires, and have a
goodly mêlée.”

“Ay, that must we!” the Lady Cunigunde laughed, and these young things
raised their hands on high as if they were striking with swords—and
then they tickled each other under the arm and screamed with laughter so
that they fell off the bed. The Lady Amoureuse was tenderly stroking Mr.
Sorrell’s hand—and the Dean smiled.

“This is all very nice nonsense,” he said, “but the hour is very late. I
am going to bed, for, as the Duke Virgil of Mantua says: ‘_Suadentque
cadentia sidera somnum_.’ The falling stars persuade us to sleep.”

And suddenly the Lady Dionissia spoke in her deep and dreamy voice:

“Why, this is a very good proposal,” she said, “and I am heartily in
accord with it. I have not had until now much love of my cousin Blanche,
but now I love her as if she were my own sister. I have often been
minded to put upon me the harness of knights and to travel into deserts
seeking dragons and adventures. And now this thing is come to my own
door. Very heartily I will be a partaker in this high enterprise.”

The Dean looked at her with outraged perplexity.

“My child——” he was beginning.

But his chaplain, arising from the portmanteau, gaunt and fanatical,
approached them with enormous and hungry eyes. It was his private
conviction that all women were fiends sent for the temptation and
misleading of humanity, and that any two or six of them should be
soundly cuffed, thwacked with swords, or struck black and blue with the
heads of lances, seemed to him very desirable, and a thing for which to
praise God. And his stentorian voice filled the room.

“Let them go at it,” he exclaimed. “Let them fight; why should they not
fight? It is very common among Saracens that women put on caps of steel
and betake themselves to the lists. And shall Christian women be
behindhand with heathens? No, let it not be said that Christian women
are wanting in valour, for is it not recorded of the first Christian
woman that ever was that she lingered last by the cross, thus showing
that she feared not the Roman soldiery, and came first to the grave
where the stone was rolled away?”

“Many ladies have put on armour and fought,” the Lady Dionissia
continued. “Thus was Arabella of the Red Hand, who went to seek her
lover, a good knight that was cast into the prisons of the King of
Bohemia, and there was Eunice of the Lions, who slew seven of these
beasts in the sands of Africa. And there was Thecla of the Blue
Mountain, who fought with Sir Bors of Troy for the life of her husband,
and overcame him.”

She arose from the hutch and went suddenly close up to the Lady Blanche.

“Cousin,” she said, “let us go apart into a private place and discuss at
more length how this shall be done, whether in the lists or in the open
field; whether we two alone, or whether with our ladies as squires.”

The Lady Blanche, on her part, was not ill-pleased, for she very much
desired to do this thing at once, in order to mar her cousin’s beauty
with sword-strokes, and to render her husband ridiculous by the reports
of an excess so outrageous. Nevertheless, in places she was a little
disappointed; she disliked to have pleased the Lady Dionissia by any
means at all, and she had some vain hopes that the Lady Dionissia, by
refusing the combat, would give her a colourable claim to the custody of
the cross. For he who is ready to take a thing by the sword is obviously
a fitter guardian than he who fears. Nevertheless, their way was barred
by the Lady Abbess.

“Impious females!” she exclaimed. “Have my ears lived long enough to
hear such speeches? Ay, they have lived long enough. But never whilst I
myself do live shall such a thing take place in a country where I have
any say. Will you defile the bodies that God has given you by sweating
under heavy armour? Will you harden hands that God has made soft upon
the iron hilts of swords? No, by my faith you shall not, whilst I have a
voice to upraise against these things.”

“By the eyes of Christ!” the Lady Blanche said, “this woman talks!”

“Aye,” the Abbess continued, “are not these things lamentable enough,
and is not this a lamentable house? Into it is come a pilgrim bearing a
holy symbol, and lo! what is fallen upon him? Here was a man that,
simply clad, endured the hot burning sun at noonday, and the dews and
frosts at night. Simple, pious, and bearing those hardships that conduce
to sanctity, he travelled through the wilderness, and by the protection
of the dear angels escaped many and fell perils. Now, being come into
this accursed house, he lies upon a luxurious bed, tricked out with
silks and velvets and pearls and silver and gold. Gorged with food and
heavy with wine, he is hung over by immoral damsels and kissed and
stroked, so that it is an abomination of desolation. How is holiness
fallen, how is piety come down!”

“Say you so?” the Lady Blanche exclaimed indifferently. “Insolent
prelatess that has found a tongue at last!—for I have not heard you
speak so many words in all the year together that you have molested this
soil. Get you gone out of this room, and go yelp to the sheep in the
darkness.”

And setting her hand upon the Abbess’ black shoulder, she pushed her
without more words out of the doorway, and followed with the Lady
Dionissia. Mr. Sorrell had sprung off the bed and approached the Dean.

“I say,” he exclaimed, “have I been behaving in an improper way?”

The Churchman looked at him, at once friendly, astonished, and humorous.

“Man of sanctity,” he exclaimed, “if, as seems true, you have been
nourished with the bread of dear angels, assuredly our finenesses here
are very little things by comparison. Or if, on the other hand, you have
endured perils and hardships, it is very fitting that now you should
rest and take your ease, and I have not observed that you have in any
way transgressed against the rules of decorum that are such and such in
one country, and such and such in another. For my Lady Abbess I would
have you take little notice of her. She is a woman of great piety and
shrewd common sense, as she has given evidence by coming to me rather
than to the Chancellor or my Lord Bishop. Yet she has not been long
enough in harness to learn that in the Church, as in the life of
everyday, first we fare hard and then by hard faring we earn the results
of toil. And so day leads on to day. But before very long she will have
learnt that lesson, and will no longer speak words so fanatical and
foolish.”

And at this point the comfortable Dean yawned very loud, and very long.

“Man of sanctity,” he said, “the hour has approached for sleeping. You
have brought to us a very holy relic, and we have seen pleasant things
of the high spirits of young damsels and great ladies, but, as Holy Writ
says, there is a time to sleep, and to-morrow we shall discourse of
these things with heads much more clear.”

The Ladies Blanchemain, Amarylle, and Cunigunde had drunk in the words
of the comfortable Dean with evidences of the highest satisfaction. They
surrounded him, and made him say that the Abbess of St. Radigund’s was a
horrid old woman, who had shamefully miscalled them. And he bustled them
out of the room, his amiable countenance relaxed into happy smiles. Last
of all went Mr. Sorrell and the Lady Amoureuse, being followed by the
little page Jehan, who took the torch from the ring outside the door and
led them to their respective apartments.