PART I

I

In the darkness Young Lovell of the Castle rose from his knees, and so
he broke his vow. Since he had knelt from midnight, and it was now the
sixth hour of the day, he staggered; innumerable echoes brushed through
the blackness of the chapel; the blood made flames in his eyes and
roared in his ears. It should have been the dawn, or at least the false
dawn, he thought, long since. But he knew that, in that stone place,
like a coffer, with the ancient arched windows set in walls a man’s
length deep, it would be infinitely long before the light came to his
eyes. Yet he had vowed to keep his vigil, kneeling till the dawn …

When the night had been younger it had been easier but more terrible.
Visions had come to him; a perpetual flutter of wings, shuddering
through the cold silence. He had seen through the thick walls, Behemoth
riding amidst crystal seas, Leviathan who threw up the smoke and flames
of volcanoes. Mahound had passed that way with his cortège of pagans and
diamonded apes; Helen of Troy had beckoned to him, standing in the
sunlight, and the Witch of Endor, an exceedingly fair woman, and a naked
one, riding on a shell over a sea with waves like dove’s feathers. The
Soldan’s daughter had stretched out her arms to him, and a courtesan he
had seen in Venice long ago, but her smile had turned to a skull’s
grinning beneath a wimple. He had known all these for demons. The
hermit of Liddeside with his long beard and foul garments, such as they
had seen him when they went raiding up Dunbar way, had swept into that
place and had imperiously bidden him up from his knees to drive the
Scots from Barnside, but he had known that the anchorite had been dead
this three years and, seeing that the Warden of the Eastern Marches and
the Bishop of Durham, with all his own father’s forces and all theirs,
lay in the castle and its sheilings, it was not likely that the false
Scots would be so near. Young gallants with staghounds, brachets and
Hamboro dogs had bidden him to the chase; magicians with crucibles had
bidden him come view their alembics where the philosopher’s stone stood
revealed; spirits holding flames in their hands had sought to teach him
the sin against the Holy Ghost, and Syrians in robes of gold, strange
sins. There had come cooks with strange and alluring messes whose
odours make you faint with desires, and the buttling friars from
friaries with great wine-skins of sack. But all of them, too, he had
known for demons, though at each apparition desire had shaken him.

All these he had taken to be in the nature of the very old chapel, since
it had stood there over the tiresome and northern sea ever since
Christendom had come to the land, and it was proper to think that, just
as those walls had seen the murdering of blessed saint Oddry by heathens
and Scots whilst he sang mass, and even as pagans and sorcerers had in
the old times contended for that ground, now, having done it in the
body, in their souls they should still haunt that spot and contend for
the soul of a young lording that should be made a knight upon the
morrow. But when the tower-warden had churned out four o’clock the bird
of dawn had crowed twice….

Three times would have been of better omen. At that moment Satan
himself, the master fiend, with legs of scarlet, a bull’s hide sweeping
behind and horns all gold and aquamarine, had been dancing with mighty
leaps above a coal fire, up through which, livid and in flaming shrouds,
there had risen the poor souls of folk in purgatory. And with a charter
from which there dangled a seal dripping blood to hiss in the coals and
become each drop a viper–with this charter held out towards Young
Lovell, Satan had offered him any of these souls to be redeemed from
purgatory at the price of selling his own to Satan.

He had been about to say that he knew too much of these temptations and
that the damnation of one soul would be infinitely more grievous to Our
Lady than the temporary sojourn in purgatory of an infinite number. But
at the crowing of the cock Satan and his firelit leer had vanished as if
a candle had been blown out in a cavern….

There had begun an intolerable period of waiting. He tried to say his
sixty Aves, but the perpetual whirling of wings that brushed his brow
took away his thoughts. He knew them now for the wings of anxious bats
that his presence disturbed. When he began upon his Paters, a rat that
had crept into his harness of proof overset his helmet and the prayer
went out of his head. When he would have crossed himself, suddenly his
foster-brother and cousin, Decies of the South, that should have watched
in the chapel porchway, began to snore and cried out in his sleep the
name “Margaret.” Three times Decies of the South cried “Margaret.”

Then Young Lovell knew that the spirits having power between cockcrow
and dawn, in the period when men die and life ebbs down the sands–that
these spirits were casting their spells upon him.

These were the old, ancient gods of a time unknown–the gods to whom the
baal fires were lit; gods of the giants and heroes of whom even his
confessor spoke with bated breath. Angels, some said they were, not
fallen, but indifferent. And some of the poor would have them to be
little people that dwelt in bogs and raths, and others held them for
great and fair. He could not pray; he could not cross himself; his
tongue clove to his jaws; his limbs were leaden. His mind was filled
with curiosity, with desire, with hope. He had a great thirst and the
cramp in his limbs. He could see a form and he could not see a form.
He could see a light and no light at all.

Yet it was a light. It was a light of a rosy, stealing nature. It fell
through one of the little, rounded windows, the shadows of the
crab-apple branches outside the wall, moving slowly across the floor.
When he looked again it was gone and not gone. Without a doubt some
eyes were peering into the chapel; eyes that could see in the dark were
watching him. Kind eyes; eyes unmoved. His heart beat enormously….

And then he was upon his feet, reeling and stretching out his arms, with
prayers that he had never prayed before upon his lips. Then prudence
came into his heart and he argued with himself. It was to himself and
to no other man or priest that he had vowed to watch above his harness
from midnight to dawning. That was a newish fashion and neither the
Border Warden nor the Prince Bishop would ask him had he done it or no.
They would knight him without this new French manner of it. Then he
might well go to see if the dawn were painting the heavens. He fumbled
at the bar and cast the door open, stepping out.

It was grey; the sea grey and all the rushes of the sands. The foam was
grey where it beat on the islands at sea and in the no-light the great
cliff of his father’s castle wall was like grey clouts hung from the
mists. He perceived an old witch toiling up the dunes to come to him.
She had a red cloak and a faggot over her shoulder. She waved her
crutch to make him await her, and suddenly he thought she sailed, high
in the air from the heavy sand to the stone at his feet. He thought
this, but he could not be sure, for at that moment he was rubbing the
heavy sleep from his eyes.

“That ye could do this, well I knew,” he said, “but I had not thought to
see ye do it over my ground.”

Often he had seen the old witch. Sometimes she was in the form of a
russet hare, slinking into her bed when he had been in harness without
bow or light gun or hounds to chase her with. At other times he had
seen her in her red cloak creeping about her affairs in the grey woods
by Barnside.

Her filthy locks fell across her red eyes and she laughed so that he
repented having spared her life in the woods.

“Gowd ye sall putten across my hand,” she said, and her voice was like
the wither of dried leaves and the weary creak of bough on bough in a
great gale when the woods are perilous because of falling oaks. He
answered that he had no gold because he had left his poke in his chest
in the castle.

And with great boldness she bade him give her one of the pearls from the
cap that hung at his belt. He reached to his left side for his sword,
but it lay in the chapel across his armour of damascened steel and
bright gold.

“Ye shall drown in my castle well when I have this business redded up,”
he said, but he wished he had slain her with his sword, for she was a
very evil creature and it was not well in him to let her corrupt the
souls of his poor. He lifted from his girdle his tablets to write down
that the witch must drown, but the tablets the pen and the knife were
tangled with their red silken tassels and skeins. A heavy snore came
from within the chapel porch where Decies of the South was sleeping
against the wall.

“If my bride had not begged your life of me…” the Young Lovell began.

Decies of the South muttered: “Margaret,” just at his left hand.

“Bride,” the old witch tittered. “Ye shall never plight your troth.
But that sleeper shall be plighted to my lording’s bride and take his
gear. And another shall have his lands.”

“Get you back to Hell!” the Young Lovell said.

“Look,” the witch cried out.

She pointed down the wind, across the miles of dim dunes underneath
where the Cheviots were like ghosts for the snow. The dunes rose in
little hummocks amongst grey fields. A high crag was to the left. It
was all grey over Holy Island; smoke rose from its courtyard.
Dunstanburgh was lost in clouds of white sea spray, and in great clouds
the sea-birds were drifting inland in strings of thousands each. Still
no sun came over the sea.

The witch pointed with her crutch….

A little thing like a rabbit was digging laboriously at the foot of the
crag; it ran here and there, moving a heavy stone.

“That man shall be your master,” the witch cried.

A white horse moved slowly across the dunes. It had about it a swirling
cloud of brown and a swirling cloud of the colour of pearly shells.

“And that shall be your bane,” the witch said, in a little voice. “Ah
me, for the fine young lording.”

Young Lovell coursed to the shed beyond the chapel yew where his horse
whinned at the sound of his voice. He haled out the goodly roan that
was called Hamewarts because they had bought him in Marseilles to ride
homewards through France; his father and he had been to Rome after his
father did the great and nameless sin and expiated it in that journey.
He had ridden Hamewarts up from the Castle of Lovell so that, standing
in the shed whilst his master kept his vigil, the horse might share his
benediction.

The roan stallion lifted his head to gaze down the wind. He drew in the
air through his nostrils that were as broad as your palm; he sprang on
high and neighed as he had done at the battle of Kenchie’s Burn.

The horse had no need of spurs, and young Lovell had none. It ran like
the wind in the direction of the white steed at a distance.
Nevertheless, the rider heard through the muffled sound of hoofs on the
heavy sand the old witch who cried out, “Eya,” to show that she had more
to say, and he drew the reins of his charger. The sand flew all over
him from beneath the horse’s feet, and he heard the witch’s voice cry
out:

“To-day your dad shall die, but you’s get none of his lands nor gear.
From the now you shall be a houseless man.”

But when he turned in his saddle he could see no old beldam in a scarlet
cloak. Only a russet hare ran beneath the belly of Hamewarts and
squealed like a new-born baby.

Whilst he rode furiously as if he were in chase of the grey wolf Young
Lovell had leisure to reflect, he had ample time in which to inspect the
early digger and the beclouded horse. At eight o’clock he was to be
knighted by the double accolade of the Warden of the Eastern Marches and
of the Prince Bishop, following a custom that was observed in cases of
great eminence or merit in the parties. And not only was Young Lovell
son to Lord Lovell of the Castle, but he had fought very well against
the Scots, in the French wars and in Border tulzies. So at eight, that
he might not fast the longer, he was to be knighted. It was barely six,
for still no sun showed above the long horizon of the northern sea.

It was bitter cold and the little digger, with his back to the rider,
was blowing on his fingers and muttering over a squared stone that had
half of it muddied from burial. At first Young Lovell took the little
man for a brownie, then for an ape. Then he knew him for Master Stone,
the man of law.

He cried out:

“Body of God, Master Furred Cat, where be’s thy gown?”

And the little man span round, spitting and screaming, with his spade
raised on high. But his tone changed to fawning and then to a
complacence that would have done well between two rogues over a booty.

“Worshipful Knight,” he brought out, and his voice was between the creak
of a door and the snarl of a dog fox, though his thin knees knocked
together for fear. “A man must live, I in my garret as thou in thy
castle bower with the pretty, fair dames.”

“Ay, a man mun live,” the Young Lovell answered. “But what sort of
living is this to be seeking treasure trove on my land before the sun be
up?”

“Treasure trove?” the lawyer mumbled. “Well, it is a treasure.”

“It is very like black Magic,” Young Lovell said harshly. “A
mislikeable thing to me. I must have thee burnt. What things a man
sees upon his lands before the sun is up!”

“Magic,” the lawyer screamed in a high and comic panic. “God help me, I
have nothing of Mishego and Mishago. This is plain lawyer’s work and if
your honour will share, one half my fees you shall have from the
improvident peasants.”

At the high sound of his voice Hamewarts, who all the while was
straining after the white horse, bounded three strides; when Young
Lovell took him strongly back, he had the square stone at another angle.
Upon its mossed side he saw a large “S” carved that had two crosses in
its loops, upon the side that was bare was one “S” with the upper loop
struck through.

“Body of God, a boundary stone,” he cried out. “And you, Furred Cat, are
removing it.” He had got the epithet of Furred Cat from talking to the
Sire de Montloisir whilst they played at the dice.

“Indeed it is more profitable than treasure-troving and seeking the
philosopher’s stone,” the lawyer tittered, and he rubbed, from habit,
his hands together, so that little, triturated grains of mud fell from
them into the peasant’s poor, boggy grass. “This is Hal o’ the Mill’s
land, and I have moved the stone a furlong into the feu of Timothy
Wynvate. There shall arise from this a lawsuit that shall last the
King’s reign out. Aye, belike, one of the twain shall slay the other.
His land your honour may take back as forfeit, and the other’s as
deodand. I will so contrive it, for I will foment these suits and have
the handling of them. By these means, in time, your lordingship may
have back all the lands ye ever feu’d. In time. Only give me time….”

The Young Lovell lifted up his fist to the sky. The most violent rage
was in his heart.

“Now by the paps of Venus and the thunder of Jove, I have forgotten the
penalty of him that removeth his neighbour’s landmark! But if I do not
die before night, and I think I shall not, that death you shall die.
Say your foul prayers, filth, your doom is said….”

Master Stone lifted up both his hands, clasped together, to beg his life
of this hot but charitable youth. But Young Lovell had leaped his horse
across a dune faster than the words could follow him.

He came upon a narrow strip of nibbled turf running down a valley of
rushy sand-hills. Hamewarts guided him. They went over one ridge and
had sight of the white horse; they sank into another dale and lost it.

On the summit of the next ridge Hamewarts became suddenly like a horse
of bronze and the Young Lovell had a great dizziness. He had a sense of
brown, of pearly blue, of white, of many colours, of many great flowers
as large as millstones. With a heavy sense of reluctance he looked
behind him. The mists were rising like curtains from over Bamborough;
since the tide was falling the pall of spray was not so white on
Dunstanburgh. Upon his own castle, covering its promontory near at
hand, they were hoisting a flag, so that from there the tower warden
must have already perceived the sun. From over the castle on Holy
Island the pall of smoke was drifting slowly to sea. No doubt in the
courtyard they had been roasting sheep and kine whole against the visit
of the Warden and the Prince Bishop who would ride on there with all
their men by nine of the clock.

In every bay and reedy promontory the cruel surf gnawed the sand; the
ravens were flying down to the detritus of the night, on the wet margins
of the tide. The lawyer was climbing over the shoulder of a dune, a
sack upon his back; a shepherd, for the first time that spring, was
driving a flock of sheep past the chapel yew. There was much surf on
Lindisfarne.

Suddenly, from the middle of the bow of the grey horizon there shot up a
single, broadening beam. Young Lovell waved his arm to the golden disk
that hastened over the grey line.

“If you had come sooner,” he said to the sun, “you might have saved me
from this spell. Now these fairies have me.”

Slowly, with mincing and as if shy footsteps, Hamewarts went down
through the rushes from that very real world. Young Lovell perceived
that the brown was a carpeting that fluttered, all of sparrows. It had a
pearly and restless border of blue doves, and in this carpet the white
horse stepped ankle-deep without crushing one little fowl. He perceived
the great-petalled flowers, scarlet and white and all golden. On a
green hill there stood a pink temple, and the woman on the back of the
white horse held a white falcon. She smiled at him with the mocking
eyes of the naked woman that stood upon the shell in the picture he had
seen in Italy.

“But for you,” he heard himself think, “I might have been the prosperest
knight of all this Northland and the world, for I have never met my
match in the courteous arts, the chase or the practice and exercises of
arms.”

And he heard her answering thoughts:

“Save for that I had not called thee from the twilight.”

II

The Warden of the Eastern Marches, who was Henry Percy, fourth Earl of
Northumberland, said that there was too much of this silken flummery. He
desired to get back to the affairs of King Henry VII and a plain world
where there were too many false Scots. The Lord Lovell of the Castle
agreed with him, but said that the women would so have it. He was an
immense, gross man, the rolls of fat behind his head, growing black
curly hair that ran into his black and curly beard, mantled high up on
his neck. His eyes were keen, peeble-blue, sagacious and mocking. The
Lady Rohtraut, his wife, a fair, thin woman of forty-three, one of the
Dacres of the North, leaned across the Bishop Palatine to disagree with
the Warden. Thin as she was she wore an immense gown of red damask
worked with leaves, birds and pomegranates. Her sleeves brushed the
ground, her hood of black velvet had a diamond-shaped front, like the
gable of a house, and was framed in yellow gold set with emeralds that
her lord had brought from Venice to get her back to a good temper,
though he never did. The broad edging of brown fur from her sleeves
caught in a crochet of the gilded steel on the Bishop Palatine’s armour
which had been taken from the Saracens in the year 1482, they having
rieved it from the Venetians.

The Lady Rohtraut said that these things had been ordered after the
leaves of a written book that had been sent her by her cousin Alice from
the King’s court in London. This book was called “Faicts of Arms,” and
the King himself who loved good chivalry had bade it be printed tho’
that would be long in doing. There the order of these things had been
set forth, and she had done her best to have fashion of it right, though
with only men to help her, she imagined that Messire de Montloisir would
laugh if he did not happen to be on his bed of sickness.

But she had them there to the number of eleven score, gentry, priests
and commonalty with many men-at-arms to hold the herd back with their
pike-staves. The great stone hall she had had painted with vermilion,
green and gold. Enormous banners with swallow-tails fell from the
gilded beams of the roof. They displayed the snarling heads of red
tigers, portculles, two-hued roses, and a dun cow on a field of green
sarcenet in honour of the Bishop Palatine. The table at which they sat,
the men divided from the women, had its silken cloth properly tabled out
in chequers of green and vermilion. The pages with their proper badges
walked to and fro before the table as they should do, and, as they
should be, the people of no privilege were penned in behind the columns
of the hall where they made a great noise. She would not have anything
lacking at the sacring of her one son.

Sir Walter Limousin, of Cullerford, who had married her daughter Isopel,
sneered at these words of his mother-in-law. He sat at the right hand
of his father-in-law. Sir Symonde Vesey, of Haltwhistle, who had
married the daughter Douce, and sat beyond Sir Walter, said loudly that
too much gear went to waste over these Frenchifications of the Young
Lovell and his dame. Their two wives said that indeed their mother was
over-fond.

Their mother, who was a proud Dacre with the proudest of them, flushed
vicious red. She said that her daughters were naughty jades, and if
their husbands had not three times each been beggared by Scots raiders
they might have had leave to talk so. But, being what they were, it
would be better if they closed their mouths over one who had paid all
his ransoms, whether to the Scots or on the bloody field of Kenchie’s
Burn, with sword-blows solely. She had paid one thousand marks to
artificers of Brussels for stuffs to deck that hall and the street of
the township where it led from the chapel whence her fair, brave son
should come; so that banners and carpets hung from the windows, the
outer galleries, stairways and the roofs where they were low. And she
wished she had spent ten thousand on her son who had won booty enough to
pay all she had laid out on him and her daughters’ husbands’ ransoms
besides–after the day of Kenchie’s Burn.

The Warden said that he wished by the many wounds of God that the
stripling would come. There was too much babble of women there. They
had come into these parts, the Bishop of Durham and he, to see what
levies might be made from castle to castle and so to broom all false
Scots out of the country from thereaways to Dunbar. And there they sate
who should have been on the northward road before sunrise listening to
this clavering of women. The young Lovell was a springald goodly enow,
and the knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle were known to blow on
their fingers when they should be occupied with the heavy swords.

Sir Walter Limousin looked down his nose. He was a grim and silent
craven that did little but sneer. Sir Symonde, who was brave and
barbarous enough, but unlucky, smote so heavily the silver inkhorn
standing before him that it flattened down its supports and stained the
chequered fairness of the table.

The Percy cast his old glance aside on Sir Symonde.

“Aye, Haltwhistle,” he said drily, “ye will break more than ye will
take.” And he went on to say that, in his day, he having been dubbed
knight on the field, it had been done with a broken sword and the wet on
it wiped across his chops to blood him the better. And he wished that
Young Lovell would come.

The Lady Rohtraut said that without doubt her son was saying some very
long and very precious prayers. The Warden said that belike, and more
likely, the young fellow was unable to fasten the whimsy-marees of his
new-fashioned harness and was stuck up there in the old chapel like a
fool amid the evidences of his folly. The Lord Lovell said nay then,
that a band of youngsters had gone up to the chapel, and the little Hal
his son’s page had reported that his master would soon be there, the
page having run, whilst the Young Lovell was riding at a foot pace.

“He had better have kept his page to buckle his harness,” the Border
Warden harped on.

“Nay then,” the Lady Rohtraut said with a flushed and angry face–no
person nor page could enter into the sacred chapel till her son should
be issued out in his panoply least they should disturb the angels of God
who would invisibly assist her son at his harnessing.

The Bishop, whose dark head came out of its steel armour like a
cormorant’s out of a hole, looked all down that board to find a
sympathetic soul. He had a lean, Italianate face, and had pleased the
King Richard the Third–then Duke of Gloucester–rather because of a
complaisance than a burly strength. He was very newly come to the
Palatine Country. For he had been the King’s Friend in Rome many years
and, in fear of King Henry the Seventh–because the Bishop was reputed a
friend of Richard Crookback after Bosworth–he had gone across the seas
until now.

So that what with the clerkly details of his coming into the bishopric,
this was his first tour of those parts and he did not well know those
people. Therefore he had spoken very little.

This John Bishop Palatine was, in short, a cautious and well-advised
churchman, well-read not only in the patristic books but in some of the
poets, for in his day he had been long in Rome and later dwelt in
Westminster, where the printing was done, though the King was even then
pulling down Caxton’s chapel to build his own more gorgeous fane.

This bishop then, set first the glory of God, good doctrine and his see,
as his duty was. And after that he hoped that he might leave renown as
a great clerk who had added glory, credit, power and wealth, whether of
copes of gold or of lands, to his most famous bishopric.

That was why, throughout this discussion he had observed the face of a
young woman that sat beyond the ladies Rohtraut, Isopel and Douce. She
was the Lady Margaret of the Wear, coming from the neighbouring tower of
Glororem, and that day he was to bless her betrothal to Young Lovell of
the Castle. She was a dark girl, rising twenty, and with brownish
features, open nostrils, a flush on her face and dark eyes of a
coaly-sheen, all of one piece of black, so that you could not tell pupil
from iris.

She had never spoken, as became her station, since she was the youngest
woman there. But the Bishop Palatine had observed her looks as each
uttered his or her thoughts, and from this he knew that she regarded the
Lady Rohtraut with tender veneration, and the lower classes behind the
pillars with dislike and contempt, for when their voices became loud she
had lowered her black brows and clenched her hand that lay along the
table.

Upon the Border Warden and upon the gross Lord Lovell she had gazed with
a tolerant contempt, upon the Knight of Cullerford with a bitter scorn,
upon Haltwhistle with irony, and upon their two wives that should be her
sisters-in-law, with high dislike. He perceived that, like the Lady
Rohtraut, she had read the book called “Faicts of Arms,” for, when the
lady Rohtraut had been speaking of it, she had leaned sideways over the
table, her lips parted as if she could hardly contain herself. He saw
also that she was of great piety, since every time Our Lady was
mentioned in that debate she inclined, and when it was Our Lord, she did
the like and crossed herself. And this pleased the Bishop Palatine, for
these observances were not so often seen as could be done with.
Moreover, he knew that, plainly to the eye she had given all her
heart–and it was a proud and hot one–to the Young Lovell. At each
mention of his deeds her dusky cheeks would flush up to her white
forehead and she would pass her gemmed hands before her eyes as if they
saw a mist of gladness.

The Bishop was glad that the will of God and the bent of his own mind
could let his speech, that he was thinking upon, jump so well with that
lady’s desires, and so he addressed himself at first to the Lady
Rohtraut, young Lovell’s proud mother.

He had not, he said, spoken before in that high assembly because he was
so newly come among them that, although he well knew that he was their
father in God and in a sense their temporal protector, yet he did not
wish to show himself to them as a rash and ardent fool by dictating upon
matters that he might well know little of.

But still, having listened a decent while to their minds he would say
something. Of facts and the practice of arms he would not declare
himself all ignorant. He was a churchman, but he was of that church
militant that should one day be the Church Triumphant–triumphant there
in Heaven, but here in Northumberland, militant very fully. It was true
that it would not much become him in those days of comparative peace to
strike blows with the iron mace. It was rather his part to stand upon a
high place observant of battles and sieges. And, if he wore arms, it
was rather as a symbol than as of use. He hoped that, as his reverend
and sainted predecessors in the see had done, he might confer on such
arms a grace of holiness, and therefore with much travel and research,
he had arms as golden as might be found for him by his trusty
messengers, that their fair richness might shine to the greater glory of
God. For himself he would as lief wear sackcloth and rusty pots.

In most things he must bow to the wiseness of the Earl of
Northumberland. Being blooded upon a hot field with spurs gilded with
the tide from the veins of men had produced very good men. It had
doubtless produced better men than to-day might see the doubles and
counterparts of. Those days before had been simpler and better. These
days were very evil. There was in the land a spirit of luxury, sinful
unless it had guidance, bestial unless it had control, and for want of
counsel horrid, lecherous and filthy by turns. Theirs, by the will and
blessing of God and by the wise rule of His vice-gerent–for so he would
style their good King, though it was not the habit–theirs were days of
near peace. The kingdom was no longer rent by dissensions; famine and
pestilence came more seldom nigh them than in the days of their fathers
of which they had read. In consequence, they had great wealth such as
had never before been seen. Where their fathers had had woollens they
had silks, satins and patterned damasks beyond compare for lascivious
allurements; where their fathers had eaten off trenchers of bread, they
had plates of silver, of gold, of parcel gilt or at the very least of
latten.

Now all these things were the blessing of God in the highest, but they
might well become the curse of Satan that dwelleth in the Pit. God had
given them bread, but they might turn it to bitter stone; He had given
them peace, but it might turn to a sword more sharp than that of
Apollyon or Geryon. Arma virumque cano, the profane poet said, but the
man he sang of was blessed and so his arms.

Therefore he, the Bishop Palatine, since he would not see all this
splendour of God go down, as again Vergil saith, sicut flos purpurea
aratro succisa, leant all his weight in the scale for the blessing and
the sacring of arms. In the books of chivalry they should read not of
vain pomps, but of how arms should be laid upon altars; not of luxurious
feasts, but of how good knights held vigils and fasts and kept
themselves virgin of heart to go upon quests that the blessed angels of
God did love. So they might read of the blessed blood in its censor and
of the lily-pure knights that sought it through forest and brake. And
these books were very good reading.

The Warden suddenly laughed aloud.

“God keep your washed capons from a border fray!” he exclaimed, and
shook his lean sides. The Bishop looked sideways upon him.

“I have not heard that Sir Artus of Bretagne slew the less pagans
because he was of a cleaned heart, nor Sir Hugon of Bordeaux neither.”

“I do not know those knights,” the Percy said grimly. “Maybe they would
have slain less if it had been Douglases and Murrays and other homely
names.”

“Nay, it was fell pagans,” the Bishop said seriously. “You may read of
it in virtuous and true histories it were a sin to doubt of, so greatly
does the virtue of God and His glory shine through them.”

“Well, if it be matter of doctrine my mouth is shut,” the Warden said
good humouredly. “I did not know it had been more than a matter of
fashion. Yet I think it is early days to prate of our peaceful times.
It is but three months since Kenchie’s Burn and not three years since
the false Scots had their smoke flying over the walls of Durham.”

The Bishop bent his head obediently before the Warden.

“In these matters I will learn of you,” he said; and the Warden
answered:

“They are all I have to teach you. In my high day there were none of
your books and stories.”

It was agreed that the Bishop and the Warden came off with level arms,
the Bishop having spoken the more, but the Warden had sent in heavier
stone shot. And all people were agreed that the Bishop was a worthy and
proud prince.

At that moment the Almoner whispered in the Bishop’s ear and laid a
parchment before him. He begged the Bishop to sign this appointment. For
the day drew on, they must ride very soon and might not again be in
those parts for a year or more. It was to make the worthy Magister
Stone, of Barnside, bailiff for the Palatinate in those parts, this side
of Alnwick to the sea. This lawyer was a very skilled chicaner and
there were suits to come very soon between the see and the Lords Ogle
and Mitford, touching the Bishop’s mills at Witton and on Wearside. The
Bishop was aware that one of the Almoner’s clerks must have had money of
the lawyer; nevertheless he signed the appointment, for he knew they
would never let him have any other man. A Prince Bishop cannot go
searching for scriveners of honesty like Diogenes lacking a lanthorn.

The dispute as to the rules of chivalry went on in spite of the Bishop’s
abstraction from it. Indeed, the Lord Lovell of the Castle, who had not
much reason for loving churchmen, spoke the more loudly because the
Bishop was occupied with his papers. He was a jovial man, not much loved
by his wife whom he delighted to tease. If he had any grief it was that
his natural son, Decies of the South, had never shown himself a lad of
any great parts. This lad was reputed to be his natural son, though he
was called Young Lovell’s foster brother. Nevertheless who was his
mother no man knew.

What was known was this.

Six years before the Lord Lovell did some grievous sin, but what that
too was, no men knew. He had been called before the former Bishop of
Durham; the Lady Rohtraut had, then and afterwards, been heard to rate
him soundly. He had given five farms to the Bishopric and had then gone
on a Romer’s journey, by way, it was considered, of penance. At any
rate, he had gone to Rome in sackcloth, taking with him his son, the
Young Lovell, who travelled very well appointed and, on the homeward
way, had acted as his page. They had taken ship from the New Castle to
Bordeaux and from Bordeaux to Genoa, where, falling in with a party of
English _Condottieri_ in the pay of the Holy Father, they had travelled
in safety to the city of the seven hills.

On the homeward road they had travelled more like great lords, having
enlisted a train of followers, and staying in the courts of Princes of
Italy until they came again to Marseilles. The Young Lovell, who was
then sixteen, had been permitted, by way of fleshing his sword, to fight
with the captains of the Prince of Fosse Ligato against the men of the
Princess of Escia. He had slept in pavilions of silk and saw the sack
of two very rich walled cities whilst his easy father, who had seen
fighting enough in his day, dallied over the sweet wines, lemons and the
women with dyed hair of the Prince’s Court.

In Venice, whilst his father had toyed with similar cates, the young
Lovell had been present at a conclave, between the turbaned envoys of
the Soldan and the Venetian council, over the exchange of prisoners
taken in galleys of the one side and the other.

Therefore as travelling went, the young man had voyaged with his eyes
open, having made friends of several youths of Italy and learned some
pretty tricks of fence as well as sundry ways of dalliance.

The father regarded his son with not disagreeable complacency, like a
carthorse who had begotten a slight and swift barb. The boy’s soft ways
and gentle speeches amused him till he laughed tears at times; his
daring and hot, rash passions pleased his father still more. He had
challenged six Italian squires on the Lido to combat with the rapier,
the long sword, the axe and the dagger, and only with the rapier had he
been twice worsted–and this quite well contented his father, who
regarded him as a queer, new-fangled growth, but in no wise a
disgraceful one. He set the boy, in fact, down to his mother’s account.
And this he did with some warrant, for the boy was the first blond child
that had been born to the Lovells in a hundred years.

Further back than that the Lovells could not go. They were descended
from one Ruthven, a Welsh brigand of whom, a hundred and twenty years
before, it was written that he and his companions kept the country
between the Rivers Seine and Loire so that none dare ride between Paris
and Orleans, nor between Paris and Montargis. These robbers had made
that Ruthven a knight and their captain. There were no towns in that
district that did not suffer pillage and over-running from them, not
Saint Arnold, Gaillardon, Chatillon or even Chartres itself. In that
way Ruthven had amassed a marvellous great booty until, the country of
France having been submitted to the English, he had set sail, with much
of his wealth, for Edinburgh, but liking the Scots little, after he had
married a Scots woman called Lovell, he had come south into the Percies’
country. It had happened that the Percies had at that date five squires
of their house in prison to the Douglas and had little money for their
ransoming. So this Ruthven had bought of them seventy farms and land on
which to build an outer wall round the fortress that, boastfully, he
called the Castle, as if there had been no other castle in that land.
And indeed, it was a marvellously strong place, over the sea on its
crags of basalt.

Thus had arisen, from huge wealth, the great family of the Lovells of
the Castle. For Ruthven had not wished to be known by his name, and
indeed King Henry V swore that none of that name should have Lordship
nor even Knighthood, though the Ruthven of that day fought well at
Agincourt, losing three horses, two of which he had taken from French
lords. So, since that day they had been the Lords Lovell of the Castle
with none to gainsay them, though till latterly they had been held for
rough lords and not over-reverend. The Percies looked down their noses
when they met them, and so did the captains of Bamburgh and Holy Island.
However, in the year 1459 the Lord Lovell had found the Lady Rohtraut of
the Dacres to marry him and, having had three daughters, she bore him
the Young Lovell though one of the daughters died.

At any rate; they had travelled home from Marseilles, father and son,
very peaceably together, going from castle to castle of the French lords
and knights, under a safe-conduct that had been granted them by the
French envoy to the Holy Father in Rome, though there was war between
the countries of France and England, the King Edward the Fourth having
suddenly made a raid into the country of the lilies. And the courteous
way with which the French lords treated them made them much wonder
because they did not think a Scots lord would have so easily travelled
through the Border Country or a Border lord through Scotland.

Therefore, when they came to Calais, they went quietly home to England
without turning back to war in France. That was according to their oath
to Messire Parrolles at Rome, though some of King Edward’s lords and
courtiers mocked at them and it was said to be in the King’s mind to
have fined them, not for having observed, but for having taken such an
oath. However, when they came into the North parts, at Northallerton,
they met with the Duke of Gloucester, the King’s brother, who treated
them very courteously and absolved them of ill intentions because at the
time they had taken the oath peace had been between England and France,
or at least no news of the war had reached Rome. This Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, brother of King Edward, was much loved in the North, of
which region he was then Lord-General. He dealt with all men
courteously, giving simple and smiling answers to simple questions and
never failing to answer favourably any petition that he could grant, or
refusing others with such phrases of regret as made the refusal almost a
boon of itself. He inflicted also no harsh taxes and took off many
others, so that in those parts he was known as the good Duke of
Gloucester.

He treated the Lord Lovell and his son with such smiling courtesy that
they very willingly went with him, before ever their home saw them, on a
journey that he was making towards Dunbar, and it was in the battle that
some Scots lords made against them on the field of Kenchie’s Burn that
the Young Lovel did such great things. He took prisoner with his own
hands a great Scots lord, own cousin to Douglas, in a hot mêlée, where,
before he was taken, the Scots lord, being otherwise disarmed by the
Young Lovell, knocked with his clenched fist, nine teeth down the throat
of Richard Raket, that was the Young Lovell’s horse boy. And this lord
having cried mercy, the Young Lovell pursued so furiously against the
Scots that he slew many of them before nightfall and was lost in a great
valley between moors and slept on the heather. There he heard many
strange sounds, such as a great cry of dogs hunting overhead, which was
said by those who had read in books to be the goddess Diana chasing
still through the night the miserable shade of the foolish Actæon. And
between two passages of sleep, he perceived a fair kind lady looking
down upon him, but before he was fully awake she was no longer there,
and this was thought to be the White Lady of Spindleston, though it was
far from her country. But still that spirit might have loved that
lording and have sought his company in the night for he was very fair of
his body. And it was held to be a sign that he was a good Christian,
that this lady vanished upon his awakening, for in that way spirits have
been known to follow Good Knights from place to place for love of them,
and in the end to work them very great disaster.

So at least that was interpreted by the young monk Francis of the order
of St. Cuthbert who was with the army when, in the morning, Young Lovell
came to it again after he had been held for dead. But the monk Francis
had read in no books, having been an ignorant rustic knight of that
country-side, that had become a monk for a certain sin. The Young
Lovell found, indeed, that, whilst he had been so held for dead this
young monk had much befriended him. For his father, the Lord Lovell,
had shewn a disposition to adopt that Decies of the South and to give
him the fruits of the young Lovell’s deeds, such as the ransoming of the
Scots lord and the knighthood that the Duke should have given him had he
been found on the field at the closing of the day. The young monk had
however protested so strongly that the Young Lovell was not dead, but
had in his face the presage of great and strange deeds, whether of arms
or other things–so hotly had the young monk made a clamour, that the
old lord was shamed and had for the time desisted.

That Decies of the South was a son much more after the old lord’s heart
than ever the Young Lovell, for all his prowess, could be. He loved the
one son whilst he dreaded the other, since he was too like his mother
that was a Dacre and despised the Lovells or the Ruthvens.

This Decies the Lord Lovell had picked up at Nottingham on their
homeward road, and, finding him a true Lovell, had made no bones about
acknowledging him for a son though he never would say who his mother was
or how he should come by the name of Decies. But he was rising
twenty-one, like the Young Lovell, heavy, clumsy, very strong and an
immense feeder. He was dark and red-cheeked and cunning and he fitted
his father as a hand fits a glove. Nevertheless he had done little at
Kenchie’s Burn, he had slept so heavily. It had been no man’s affair to
waken him, he having drunk very deeply of sweet wines the night before.
That battle began at dawn and travelled over many miles of land, so that
when Decies of the South came up the Scots were already fleeing.

The old lord did no more than laugh, but he felt it bitter in his heart.
And, as it had been on that day, so it continued, the one half-brother
being always up in the morning too early for the other. They made very
good companions hunting together, though it was always the Young Lovell
that had his dagger first in the throat of the grey wolf or the red
deer, and the Decies who came second when outlaws, or else when the
false Scots, must be driven off from peel towers that had the byres
alight beneath them and the farmers at death’s door above, for the smoke
and reek. Nor was it because the Decies lacked courage, but because he
was slow in the uptake and, although cunning, not cunning enough.

Or it may have been that he was too cunning and just left the honours to
the Young Lovell who was haughty and avid of the first place. For the
Lady Rohtraut took very unkindly to the Decies and made him suffer what
insults she could; only the lower sort of the castle-folk willingly had
his company, and the old lord was growing so monstrous heavy that it was
considered that his skin could not much longer contain him. He had led
a life of violence, sloth, great appetites and negligent shamelessness,
so that the Decies considered that he would soon have need of protectors
in their place. The old lord might leave his lands, but much of his
lands were the dower of his wife and upon his death would go back to her
hands alone. For the lands of the Castle and the gear and gold and
silver that were in the White Tower under the night and day guard of
John Bulloc, the old lord might leave the Decies what he would, but the
Young Lovell could take it all.

The Decies would find neither lord nor lord bishop nor lawyer to espouse
his cause. Moreover, though his father might give him gold and gear
whilst he lived, the Decies had no means whereby to convey it to a
distance and no place in the distance in which to store it, besides it
would surely be taken by moss-troopers and little cry made about it.
For in those days all the North parts were full of good, small gentry
robbing whom they would, like the Selbys of Liddell, the Eures of Witton
or Adam Swinburn.

For the times were very unsettled, and no man could well tell, in
robbing another, whether he were a knight of King Richard’s despoiling
the King’s enemies or a traitor to King Henry robbing that King’s
lieges, and there was little for the livelihood of proper gentry but
harrying whether in the King’s cause or in rebellion. So that if the
Decies’ money on its way to safe quarters should be taken, there would
be little or no outcry since he was nothing to those parts. So he was a
very good brother to the Young Lovell and followed him like his shadow.

III

So there they all sat at the chequered table and the Lord Lovell watched
them with his cunning eyes and speculated upon the dissensions that lay
beneath all their fair shew of courtesy. And he wondered how, from one
or the other, he might gain advantage for his son Decies. It was not
that he hated the Young Lovell, but he wished Decies to have all that he
might and something might come of these people’s misliking of each
other.

For all Bishop Sherwood’s praising of the security of the times under a
beneficent vice-gerent of God, he knew that the Bishop little loved King
Henry the Seventh, and the King trusted him so very little that never
once would that King send to the Bishop the proper letters of array that
should empower him to raise forces along the Borders. Thus the Bishop
could raise men only in his own dominions between Tees and Tyne and
westward into Cumberland.

The Bishop had made his speech and shewed great courtesy only for the
benefit of the Earl of Northumberland, whilst for that Border Warden he
felt really little but contempt and some dislike. For this Henry, Earl
Percy, Warden of the Eastern Marches and Governor of Berwick Town, had
deserted King Richard very treacherously on the field of Bosworth, for
all he spoke and posed as a bluff and bloody soldier who should be a
trusty companion.

Thus the Bishop feared the Percy, regarding him as a spy of the King’s,
for King Richard was much beloved in the North and the Bishop of Durham
had been one of the only two Bishops that had upheld him at the
coronation, which was why his banner of the dun cow upon a field of
green sarcenet had then been carried before that King. And after
Bosworth where King Richard was slain, the Bishop had fled to France,
from which he had only ventured back the August before. There had been
many rebellions in the North and they were not yet done with;
nevertheless the Bishop feared that the cause of the King Usurper would
prevail.

The Earl Percy, on the other hand, distrusted the Bishop, since, unlike
the Duke of Gloucester, he knew himself to be hated by gentle and simple
in those parts, and more by simple than the others. Many poor men–even
all of the countryside–had sworn to murder him, for he was very
arrogant and oppressive, inflicting on those starving and disturbed
parts, many and weary taxes for the benefit of his lord, King Henry the
Seventh, and the wars that he waged in other places. This was a thing
contrary to the law and custom of the North. For those parts considered
that they had enough on their hands if they protected their own lands
and kept the false Scots out of the rest of the realm. Nevertheless,
the Lord Percy continued to impose his unjust taxes, taking even the
horse from the plough and the meat from the salting pots where there was
no money to be had. The Lord Percy knew that he went in great danger of
his life, for when, there, a great lord was widely hated of the
commonalty his life was worth little. Nay, he was almost certain, one
day, to be hewed in pieces by axes or billhooks, since the common
people, assembling in a great number would take him one day, when he
rode back ill-attended from hunting or a raid.

Thus the Percy desired much to gain friendship of the Bishop and his
partisans to save his life. So he shewed him courtesy and spoke in a
pious fashion and had invited him, as if it were his due, to ride on
this numbering of the men-at-arms in Northumberland, although, since the
King had sent the Bishop Palatine no letters of array, it was, strictly
speaking, none of the Bishop’s business.

The Lord Lovell himself had taken no part at Bosworth Field, and glad
enough he was that he had not, for he would have been certain to have
been found on the losing side. But he had been sick of a quinsy–a
malady to which very stout men are much subject–and, not willing that
the Young Lovell should gain new credit at his cost–for he must have
gone with his father’s men-at-arms, horses and artillery–the Lord
Lovell bade his son stay at home and not venture himself against the
presumptuous Richmond.

And, looking upon the people there, the fat man chuckled, for there was
not one person there who had not lately suffered from one side or the
other. The Lord Percy had spent many years in the Tower under Edward
IV; Henry VII had taken from the Bishop many of his lands and had made
him for a time an exile. His haughty wife had suffered great grief at
the death of her best brother whose head came off on Tower Hill to
please the Duke of Gloucester, and Edward IV had had Sir Symonde Vesey
five years in the Tower and had fined Limousin of Cullerford five
hundred pounds after Towton Field. The proud Lady Margaret had lost her
father and all his lands after the same battle, the lands going to the
Palatinate.

The Lady Margaret and her mother–they were Eures of Wearside–had
sheltered in farms and peel towers, lacking often sheets and bed
covering, until the mother died, and then the Lady Rohtraut had taken
the Lady Margaret, to whom she was an aunt. All these Tyne and Wearside
families were sib and rib. The Lady Rohtraut had had the Lady Margaret
there as her own daughter and kinswoman, and the Lord Lovell had had
nothing against it. For the Eures and Ogles and Cra’sters and Percies
and Widdringtons and all those people, even to the haughty Nevilles and
Dacres of the North, were a very close clan. He himself had married a
Dacre to come nearer it, and it made him all the safer to shelter an
Eure woman-child. And then, in his graciousness at coming into the
North, and afterwards, after the battle at Kenchie’s Burn, the Duke of
Gloucester, at first making interest with his brother, King Edward IV.,
and then of his own motion, had pardoned that Lady the sins of her
father, had bidden the Palatinate restore, first the lands on Wearside
and then those near Chester le Street, and also, at the last, those near
Glororem, in their own part, which were the best she had. And, finally,
King Richard had made the Lady Rohtraut her niece’s guardian, which was
a great thing, for since she was very wealthy, the fines she would pay
upon her marriage would make a capital sum.

So they had found the Lady Margaret on their coming back from Rome,
wealthy and proud, sewing or riding, hawking, sometimes residing in
their Castle and sometimes in her tower of Glororem which was in sight.
The young Lovell had lost his heart to her and she hers to him between
the flight of her tassel gentle and its return to her glove, so that it
looked as if the name of Lovell bade fair to be exalted in those parts,
by this marriage too, and if the Lord Lovell had anything against it, it
was only that she had not chosen his other son Decies. But there it
was, and he must content himself with paring what he could from her
gear, and his wife’s and young Lovell’s while he lived, for he intended
to buy Cockley Park Tower of Blubberymires from Lord Ogle of Ogle–and
to set the Decies up in it. And his wife had some outlying land at
Morpeth that he would make shift to convey to his son, so that Decies
would have a goodly small demesne and might hold up his head in that
region of the Merlays, Greystocks and Dacres.

His son should have the lands of Blubberymires and part of Morpeth;
furnishings for his tower to the worth of near a thousand pounds, jewels
worth nine hundred and more, fifty horses and the arms for fifty men,
and for his sustenance firstly his particular and feudal rights, market
fees, tenths, millings, wood-rights, farmings, rents and lastly such
profits of the culture of his lands as it is proper for every gentleman
to draw from them. And, considering what he could draw from his own
Castle, he thought that the Decies should have such beds, linen, vessels
of latten and of silver, chests and carvings in wood, tapestries,
utensils, and all other furnishings as should make him have a very
proper tower. From his wife’s castle at Cramlin, or her houses at
Plessey and Killingworth, he could get very little. Upon his marriage
and since, he had stripped them very thoroughly, and when he last rode
that way, he had seen that at Cramlin, the rafters, ceilings, and even
the very roofs had fallen in, so that it had become very fitting
harbourage for foxes. And this consideration grimly amused him, to think
what his lady wife should find when he was dead and her lands came to
her again. For she had not seen them in ten years, and imagined her
houses to be in very good fettle, but he had turned the money to other
uses. It was upon these things that this lord’s thoughts ran, since he
had nothing else for their consumption. He was too heavy to mount a
horse in those days; he could read no books, and talking troubled him.
Even the lewd stories of his son Decies in his cups sent him latterly to
sleep; he could get no more much enjoyment from teasing his proud wife
by filthy ways and blasphemy, and he hated to be with his daughters or
their two husbands. Thus, nothing amused or comforted him any longer
save watching contests of ants and spiders, and even these were hard to
come by in winter, as it was then in those parts where spring comes ever
late.

There penetrated into the babble of their voices slight sounds from the
open air, and a hush fell in the place. Without doubt they heard
cheering, and quickly the pages of all the company ranged themselves in
a parti-coloured and silken fringe before the steel of the men at arms
that held the commonalty behind the pillars. The great oaken doors
wavered slowly backwards at the end of the hall, and they perceived the
road winding down from them through the grass on the glacis, the
greyness of the sea and sky, and the foam breaking on the rocks of the
Farne Islands. A ship, whose bellying sails appeared to be almost
black, was making between the islands and the shore. At times she stood
high on a roller, at times she was so low amongst the tumble that they
could hardly see more than the barrels at the mastheads and the red
cross of St. Andrew on her white flag. The Border Warden said that this
was the ship of Barton, the Scots pirate, and some held that this was a
great impudence of him, but others said that the weather was so heavy
outside that he was seeking the shelter of the islands, and certainly
none of their boats could come at him in the sea there was. And this
topic held their attentions until the sound of a horn reached them.
This was certainly the Young Lovell’s page seeking admission to the
Castle, so that he was near enough.

The monstrous head of a caparisoned horse, held back by ribands of green
and vermilion silk, came into view by the arch. It rose on high and
disappeared, so that they knew it was rearing. Then it came all down
again and forged slowly into view, the little page Hal and Young
Lovell’s horse boy, Richard Raket, that had lost his teeth at Kenchie’s
Burn, holding the shortened ribands now near the bit on either side.
The common men threw up their bonnets and took the chance of finding
them again; the ladies waved scarves, the Bishop made a benediction.
The man in shining steel was high up in the archway against the sea.
Such bright armour was never seen in those parts before, the light
poured off it in sheathes, like rain. The head was quite round, the
visor fluted and down, at the saddle bow the iron shaft of the partisan
was gilded; the swordbelt and the scabbard were of scarlet velvet set
with emeralds. This was the gift of the Lady Rohtraut, and those were
the Lovell colours. The shield showed a red tiger’s head, snarling and
dimidiated by the black and silver checkers of the Dacres of Morpeth;
the great lance was of scarlet wood tipped with shining steel.

Those of them who had never seen the Young Lovell ride before, said that
this vaunted paragon might have done better. For, when the horse was
just half within the hall, and after the rider had lowered his lance at
once to salute the company, and to get it between the archway, and had
raised it again, the horse, enraged by the shout that went up from that
place like a cavern, sprang back so that its mailed stern struck the
rabble of grey fellows and ragged children that were following close on.
The steel lance-point jarred against the stone of the arch, and the
round and shining helmet bumped not gracefully forward over the shield.
This was held for no very excellent riding, and some miscalled the
horse. But others said that it was no part of a knight’s training to
manage a horse going rearwards, and no part of a horse’s to face
festivals and cheers. A knight should go forward, a horse face
war-cries and hard blows rather than the waving of silken scarves.

But they got the horse forward into the middle of the hall, where it
stood, a mass of steel, as if sullenly, on the great carpet of buff and
rose and greens. This marvel that covered all the clear space hung
usually on the wall to form a dais, and the Young Lovell had bought it
in Venice with one half of the booty that he had made in the little war
against the Duchess of Escia. It weighed as much as four men and four
horses in armour, and had made the whole cargo of a little cogger from
Calais that brought it to Hartlepool harbour, whence, rolled up, it had
been conveyed to the castle upon timber-trugs. Few men there had seen
the whole of it. It had been taken by Venetians from a galley of the
Soldan’s, and was said to be a sacred carpet of Mahound’s. Some men
were very glad to see it, but some of the monks there said that it
favoured idolatry and outlandish ways. But these were the very learned
monks of St. Cuthbert that had a monastery at Belford, near there. They
stood to the number of forty behind the Bishop and had habits of undyed
wool. But the young monk, Francis, who had befriended the Young Lovell
before, maintained now stoutly that it was a very good thing that the
gear of Mahound should first be trampled underfoot and then coerced into
a Christian office such as that of the creation of a good knight. The
Lady Rohtraut heard his words, and looking round at him said that he
should have a crucifix of gold for his inner chamber at Belford, if the
rules allowed it, or if not, five pounds of gold and ambergris to anoint
the feet of his poor and bedesmen at Maundy tide. The young monk
lowered his eyes and thanked her. He was a Ridley that had killed his
cousin by a chance arrow sent after a hare, and so he had gone into this
monastery to pray perpetually for his cousin’s soul.

That man in armour now delivered his lance to his little page, his
shield to the page of a friend of his, a Widdrington; his sword to
Michael Eure, a cousin of the Lady Margaret, to be an honour to her, and
Richard Raket and other grooms came round the horse while the rider
descended and then they led the horse away. But he never raised the
fluted steel of his visor. And when he was kneeling on high cushions of
black velvet, since his steel shoes of tapering and reticulated rings
were near two foot long, as the fashion was, the Bishop asked him if he
would not uncover his face. But he whispered in the ear of the little
page, and presently that boy said without fear in a high voice that the
worshipful esquire had sworn an oath in the chapel that no woman should
look upon his face or hear his voice until he was both knighted and
betrothed. Those who upheld pure knight errants said that this was a
very good vow, but the Percy laughed till his tears came.

Then, in a high voice, but in an Italian accent, for he had been many
years the King’s Advocate and Ambassador at Rome and had there learnt
his latinity and love for the profane poets, Ovid, Vergil the Magician,
and many others–the Bishop recited the words of the oath that this
esquire should take. There was his duty to the Bishop Palatine to find
for him, when he came to be a baron, sixteen knights when letters of
array were sent out, and, by the year, sixty bushels of wheat, one
hundred of oats and peas, ten carts of oat straw and ten of wheat when
the Bishop and his men harboured within ten miles of the Castle, and the
Bishop to have the rights of infangthef throughout his lands. Also he
would observe the privileges of all clerks and of Durham sanctuary
within those lands. The Bishop read also the oath to the King, for the
Lord Percy had little Latin. The Knight, when he came to be a Baron,
should find for the King’s service, north of the Humber when the King’s
letters of array were read, twenty-two knights, or six only if the
Bishop had before sent his letters calling for sixteen. For such lands
as he should get from his mother he should pay the King four horseshoes
of gold whenever the King lay at Morpeth, and for the Lovell lands a
gold cup filled with snow whenever the King lay within the Cheviot
country. The goods of all those convicted of treason within his
territories at Morpeth should go to the Bishopric; those from the other
parts one-tenth to the King, six-tenths to the Bishop, one-tenth to the
monastery of St. Cuthbert at Belford, and the remainder to himself.

These oaths having been recited, a page of the Bishop’s brought a
feretory that had lain on the coffin of St. Cuthbert, and a Percy page a
testament; the esquire laid his right hand first on one and then on the
other, being still on his knees, and then held up his hand whilst the
page recited that that good esquire vowed faithfully all these things.
Then the Bishop drew his sword and touched the steel left shoulder of
the esquire with the hilt that had the form of the cross, this being the
symbol that he would be a good knight and soldier of Christ and Our
Lady. Then all the people cheered and cried out and the Bishop said
loudly–

“Surge et vocabitur in nomine Dei et Regis nostri Sir Paris Lovell
Castelli.”

The Percy laughed and asked what those words were, and when the Prince
Bishop had told him, still laughing, he smote the metal in the same
place with the flat of his sword and mocked the Bishop with the words–

“Stand up in the name of God. And in the King’s name be called
henceforth, Sir Paris Lovell of the Castle.” To name her son Paris had
been a whimsy of the Lady Rohtraut since Paris of Troy was a goodly
knight, and also it stood for a symbol that he might retake Paris Town
if the English had it not at the time when he was a man, and so that
name had pleased the great Talbot which was a good thing at the time of
his birth.

Then the good knight stood up upon his long feet and the Percy cried out
that they should get the business of the betrothal over with speed, and
so they did, the knight and the Lady Margaret who came out, kneeling on
black cushions before the Prince Bishop. She was wearing a great and
long green gown, to the making of which there had gone twenty-six yards
of patterned damask from the city of Bruges. It was worked with leaves
and birds and pomegranates, so that it was very rich in folds. Her
ribbons in her shirt were of scarlet silk and her fur edgings of the red
fox. Her hood was of white and red velvet, the gables at the front
being of silver set with large pearls, and her hair fell in two black
plaits to her heels where she knelt. So when the Bishop had recited
their oaths they stood up and the knight pushed up his visor and looked
at the lady. Those few that could see his face cried out as if they had
seen a ship strike on a rock, so they raised their hands. The others
only marked that haughty lady shrink back upon her feet, with a great
flowing of her garments as she drew them together towards her. She cried
out some words of detestation that no man heard but he, and then with
her fist she struck him in the face.

Then he turned upon the high table, grinning and unashamed, the dark
eyebrows that seemed to have been painted in with tar, the red cheeks
and the lascivious lips of Decies of the South.

All those at the high table stood up on their feet, lifting their hands
above their heads and crying out. The Decies cried towards his father,
lifting also his mailed arm to heaven–

“See justice done to me. My half-brother is gone upon a sorcery. His
lands and gear are forfeit to me that inform against him and his name
and bride have been given me by the Prince Bishop.”

Then the lawyer, Magister Stone of Barnsides by Glororem, ran across the
hall from the little door in the great ones. He began, as it were, a
sort of trafficing between the Knight and the Bishop, not neglecting the
Lord Percy and the Knight’s father, but running backwards and forwards
between the one and the other, raising his hands to their breasts and
squeaking, though there was no hearing what he said. His weazened face,
his brown furred gown, his chattering voice and his long jaw worked
incessantly so that he resembled a monkey that was chewing straws with
voracity and haste. A Widdrington, a Eure and a Selby, desperate young
men and fast friends of the young Lovell, rushed upon the Decies with
their daggers out. But the Bishop pushed them back and cried out for
silence. And because all there saw that the Lady Rohtraut, upon her
feet, was pointing down at the Lord Lovell and calling out to him, they
held their tongues to hear what she was saying. They caught the end of
a sentence calling upon the Lord Lovell to have that filthy and
blaspheming bastard cast from the top of the White Tower. Then all eyes
saw that the Lord Lovell was laughing.

He had begun with a slow grin: by little and little he had understood
that his son at last had made a fine, impudent stroke. He had struck
his thigh with his hand; he had tried to cry out that this was the
finest stroke of all and that his son had got up early enough, at last.
But he could get no words out.

Then he had begun his laughing. He laughed, rolling from side to side:
he laughed, shaking so that his leathern chair cracked beneath him. His
stomach trembled in an agony of laughter, his eyes gazing painfully and
fixed at the scarlet and green chequers of the tablecloth. Between
tornadoes of shaken laughter he gasped for breath, and all the while the
Lady Rohtraut stood gazing down upon him as if he were a loathsome dog
struck with a fit. All men there stood still to watch him laugh.

And suddenly he threw his arms above his head, his face being purple and
his eyes closed like a drunkard’s. With the passion and strength of his
laughter the blood gushed from his mouth and nose like falling scarlet
ribbons. His body came forward on the tablecloth; monks and doctors
craned forwards over him. The Percy moved disdainfully away as if from
a sick and filthy beast, and over the table the body shook and quivered
in the last gusts of laughter.

The Decies, with his sword drawn, moved backwards to the arch at the
door, and first the Lady Isopel of Cullerford, the Lord Lovell’s
daughter, came round to speak to him, and then the Lady Douce of
Haltwhistle, her sister. They stood looking back at their mother, and
then they called to them their husbands, Sir Symonde and Sir Walter
Limousin. They stood at talk, Sir Symonde shrugging his shoulders and
Cullerford grunting whilst the ladies caught them earnestly by the arms,
leaning forwards. Then they called to them the lawyer, Magister Stone,
who was no great distance away, and he brought with him the Prince
Bishop’s Almoner, a dry man with but one eye who had a furred hood up,
to keep away the draughts, since he suffered from the earache. Then
they beckoned to them certain of their armed men and Sir Henry Vesey of
Wall Houses, a knight of little worth in morals but a great reiver. And
so, by little and little, they had a company, mostly ill-favoured but
violent around them. So they perceived that the Lady Rohtraut had
fallen in a swoon, and the knight of Cullerford went forward and begged
the lords and lordings and the company to avoid that hall and go upon
their errands, since there was sorrow enough, and his brothers-in-law
and their wives would take it kindly if they could be left alone with
their mother. And, since he was the husband of the lady’s daughter,
they listened to him and went out, and the Vesey of Haltwhistle saw to
it that they had their horses, and soon there were few left in the hall
but the Lord Lovell, who had a leech, bending over him. The Lady
Rohtraut, having fallen back in her chair, was being tended by the Lady
Margaret and an old woman of seventy called Elizabeth Campstones. Then
the daughters and the Decies went about in the Castle and were very
busy.

IV

The Young Lovell felt as if he had came up out of a deep dream. He knew
that the lady of the white horse thought to him:

“And I have all the time of the sea and the sky and beyond,” but she
spoke not at all–no words and no language that he knew. Only it was as
if he saw her thoughts coursing through her mind as minnows swim in
clear water. And he knew that, before that, he had thought, as if
beseechingly:

“Even let me go in Christ’s name, for I have many businesses.”

She had a crooked and voluptuous mouth, mocking eyes of a shade of
green, a little nose, a figure of waves, a high breast crossed with
scarlet ribbons, and hair the colour of the yellow gold, shining with
the sun, each hair separate and inclining to little curls. In short she
was all white and gold save for her red and alluring lips that smiled
askant, and he thought that he had never seen so bright a lady, no, not
among the courtesans of Venice. His heart at the sight of her hair beat
in great, stealthy pulses; his throat was dry and the flowers grew all
about her. And she sat there smiling, with the side of her face to him,
and he heard her think–

“This mortal man shall be mine.”

It had been then that he had prayed her in Christ’s name to let him go,
and that she had answered that she had all the time of this earth and
beyond it.

He turned Hamewarts slowly down the dune, though his heart lay behind
him, and, like a mortally wounded man upon a dying horse, he rode
towards his Castle where it towered upon the crag. The day was very
bright, in the white sand the wind played with the ribbed rushes, and
very slowly Hamewarts went. To judge by the sun he had not stayed more
than a half-hour in that place, if so long, for it was very little above
the horizon. He had not thought the day would prove so bright. The sea
was very blue: the foam sparkled and was churned to curds, and the
little wind was warm from sunwards. He saw the shepherd coming down a
very green slope below the chapel, and the white sheep, with whiter
lambs, spreading, like a fan below him. Behind him, over that shoulder,
Meggot, their goose girl, was driving her charges, a great company of
grey with but three white ones amongst them.

In a stupid way he thought that this great brightness in an early and
raw spring day must come from having seen so beautiful a lady; so, it
was said in stories, were good knights’ hearts elated after such a
sight. But he was aware that his heart was like the grey lead in his
side, and leaden sighs came heavily from him.

When he came to the gate in the outermost wall he tirled wearily at the
pin. He was aware of a monstrous heaviness and tire in all his limbs.
A man opened the little grating; loud yawns came from him and, very
sleepily, he let down bars and chains and the gate back. From this
gateway a short, white road went slantwise, up a green bank, to the
chief gate of the Castle.

Young Lovell never looked at this man’s face, and slowly he rode up the
steep. He heard the man say:

“What lording be ye?” but he rode on mute. The man came running after
him, his armour rattling like pot-lids. He caught Hamewarts by the
bridle and, looking earnestly at Young Lovell’s face, he said:

“Master, I mauna let ye pass only I ken your name.” And then he cried
out, and his eyes were almost out of his head:

“The Young Lovell!” He ran like a hare up the broad road; his hose were
russet coloured.

Young Lovell grumbled to himself that it was strange to set so new a man
to the gate that he should not know his master’s son, and stranger still
that the man should be of the men of his sister’s husband of Cullerford,
for all their followers had russet beneath their steel facings.

And then he saw old Elizabeth Campstones that had been help-maid to his
mother’s nurse, coming out of the littlest door of the inner castle wall
and down the path across the green grass of the glacis. She was all in
hodden grey, she carried a great basket of tumbled clouts upon her head,
and so the tears poured from her red eyes that at the first she did not
see him though she came into the road at his horse’s forefoot. But when
he said:

“Why greet ye, Elizabeth?” she looked up at him on high as he sat there,
as if the sun dazzled her eyes. And then she screamed, a high long
scream. She caught at her basket and she ran to his bridle.

“Come away,” she cried out. “Cullerford and Haltwistle have ta’en your
bonny Castle. Your father’s dead. Your mother’s jailed. There is no
soul of yours true to you here.”

If there was one thing that distinguished the Young Lovell amongst the
captains of the North–and his name was very well known to the Scots of
the Border–it was that he was quick in thinking. And now, the kindling
passion of war being the one thing that could drive away the thirst of
love, made him see, as if it were a clear table laid out before him, the
minds of his sisters that he knew very well and the dispositions of his
brothers-in-law as well as the reed of the Decies that was not concealed
from him. And, there being very little decency in his age, he knew that
an hour or so in the Castle with his father dead and his mother no doubt
grieved and shut in her bower, the men leaderless, since he, that had
been his father’s lieutenant and ancient was absent–that short hour or
two that had gone by–and it might well have been that his father had
died over his cups at the board whilst he himself, the night before, was
a-watch over his arms–would very well suffice to put Cullerford and
Haltwhistle in possession of his Castle with all his own men butchered
during their sleep. In those days it was grab while you could and get
back at your leisure.

With the pressure of his knee, he moved Hamewarts a yard forward and
aside; he leant over his saddle bow and caught the old woman under the
shoulders. He lifted her, basket and all–for in the midst of grief,
fear and danger, she would cling first to the clouts that were her
feudal duty–and the great horse with the pressure on his mouth, cast up
his head and wheeled round again towards the gate at which they had
entered. There came the bang of a saker, but without doubt it was
rather to rouse the Castle than aimed at them, for they heard no ball go
by them. Then there was a sharp scratch as if a cat had spat, and just
above his head an arrow stuck itself through the basket of clouts.
Hamewarts went back downwards in long bounds.

Three other arrows set themselves in the grass beside their course; one
fell on the road, one carried off his scarlet cap with its frontal and
jewel of pearls. But that arrow too transfixed itself in the basket and
pinned the cap there; so it was not lost, and that was a good thing, for
the pearls were worth two hundred pounds. And as he rode he thought
that that was not very good shooting.

The men-at-arms, wakened from sleep, had gummy and unclear eyes; their
bows, too, must have been strung all night and that had made the strings
slacken and be uncertain. It was an evil and untidy practice, but it
showed him firstly that fear of attack must be in that place, and
secondly that some of his own men might be without the castle and apt to
essay to take it again. Moreover, though he had not time to turn, he
knew that they must have fired from the meurtrières of the guard house;
if they had taken time to open the great doors they must have struck him
like a hare, for he had not been thirty yards from the walls.

Hamewarts clattered in his heavy gallop under the archway of the gate
out into the village street, and the Young Lovell thanked our Saviour
that the porter had been too amazed to go back and close it, but had run
to warn the Castle. Without that he had been caught like a fox in a
well. When he was through and well outside, he caught up his horse, and
turning, gazed in again under the arch. The inner walls of the Castle
rose immense and pinkish, with their pale stone, above the green grass.
The sun shone on such of the windows–about twenty–that had glass in
them. One of these casements opened and he saw the naked shoulders of
his sister Douce, holding a sheet over her breasts as she gazed out to
mark why the tumult was raised. He observed thus that, in one night, as
he thought it, his sister had taken their mother’s bower for herself.
It was no more than he would have awaited of her.

He perceived then the large gate of the Castle on top of the mound
roughly burst open and there came running out thirty men in russet who
ranged themselves in a fan-shape on the slope. Last came a man in his
shirt and shoes–Limousin of Haltwhistle. The men in russet held bows in
their hands and the man in his shirt waved his hands downwards. The
archers began to come down, but not very fast and with caution. The
Young Lovell knew they thought that very belike he had already raised
the country against them and had men posted in ambush behind the outer
walls.

He rode slowly away with the old woman before him. The street was very
broad and empty in the morning sun. The cottages were all thatched with
sea-rushes and kelp, all the doors stood open and the swine moved in and
out. Two cottages had been burnt to the ground and lay, black heaps,
sparkling here and there with the wetness of the dew. He marvelled a
little that they did not still smoke, for they must have been set alight
since last nightfall. He considered the sleeve of his scarlet cloak
that was very brave, being open at the throat to shew his shirt of white
lawn tied with green ribbons. He saw that the scarlet was faded to the
colour of pink roses. He looked before him and, on a green hill-side,
he was aware of a great gathering of men and women bearing scythes whose
blades shone like streaks of flame in the sun. Also, at their head went
priests and little boys with censers and lit candles. The day was so
clear that, though they were already far away, he could see the blue
smoke of the incense.

He rode slowly forward, pensive and observing all that he might. The
old woman sat before him, but she was breathing so fast with the late
galloping of the horse that she could not yet speak. The windows of the
one stone house in that place were still shuttered and barred, so that
without doubt the lawyer still slept. Then he remembered that he would
have that man hanged without delay. Without doubt he left his windows
shuttered to give false news, for certainly, that morning, he had seen
him moving those stones. He looked about him to see if in the open
barns and byres he could not see any horse of the Prince Bishop or the
Percy or any of their men polishing their head-pieces or their pikes.
But, though many of the barns stood open, none could he observe.

He looked over his shoulder and saw that the archers were come to the
gateway and were peering sideways out, with a due caution. Then some of
them came through and stood with their backs to the wall, waving at him
their hands and shouting foul words. They would not come any further
for fear he had an ambush hidden amongst the byres and middens of the
village. So, still slowly, he rode on between heaps of garbage where
the street was narrow and a filthy runnel went down.

At the top the street grew very wide till it was a green swarded place
with many slender, sea-bent trees to make a darkened shade up against
the walls of the small monastery of Saint Edmund. He considered whether
he should go in there, but he remembered that there were only a few
monks and they had no men-at-arms to guard those who sought sanctuary
with them from pursuers not afraid of sacrilege. He determined,
however, to make his way to another monastery–the great and powerful
one of Belford, where they had fifty bowmen and two hundred men-at-arms
to guard them against the Scots. There he would go, unless the old
woman told him other news when her breath came back. Then the old thing
whimpered:

“Set me down, master. I cannot speak on horse-back.” He let her slide
to the ground and, with the basket transfixed by the two arrows, she
fell on her knees. And then she crossed herself and gave thanks to God
for his coming so well off, and afterwards, his long-toed shoes being
just on a level with her lips and she on her knees, she set her mouth to
the shoe that was on the right side where she was, and then placed it
over her head as far as the basket gave her space. He wondered a moment
that this old woman should be so humble that was used to treat him as a
dirty little boy, long after he had fought in great fights, she having
nursed his mother before and him afterwards. But then he considered
that she was doing homage for such small goods as she had and this was
the first of his vassals to do this thing. And again he observed that
the bright scarlet of his shoe and the bright green–it being
particoloured and running all up his leg to his thigh–these were dull
pink and dull brown. They had been the brightest colours that you could
find in the North.

Elizabeth Campstones stood up.

“Where will you go to, my master Paris?” she asked. “Woeful lording,
where will you find shelter?”

“The Belford monks, I think, will give me the best rede and admonition,”
he said. “There I am minded to ride now.”

“Then come you down from the brown horse,” she said, “and walk beside me
on Belford road, for ye could go no better journey, only I cannot speak
up to you with this basket on my poll.”

He came down from the brown horse, and as he did so his stirrup leather
cracked and that was more than passing strange for he had had them new
two days before. So when he was come round Hamewarts’ head and had the
reins through his arm, he said to the old woman:

“Now tell me, truly, what day is this?”

“This day is the last day of June,” she answered. “My master Paris, it
is three months from the day that you gat you gone, and ye are a very
ruined lord and the haymakers have gone to the high hills.”

He answered only, “Ah,” and walked thoughtfully forward. He had known
that that lady was a fairy….

He walked with the old woman beside him, through the little grove of
thin trees, by the bridle gate into the yard of the square, brown church
with the leaden roof, and so out into the field where it mounted towards
the Spindleston Hills.

Halfway up the low hillside there was a spring with blackthorn bushes,
sea-holly and broom in thick tufts about it. The sun fell hot here,
early as it was. A grey goat wandered through the rough and flowery
thicket and many great bees buzzed. He sat himself down upon a
soft-turfed molehill and left Hamewarts to crop the bushes. The old
woman stood looking at him curiously and with a sort of dread, for a
minute. Then she took the basket from her head and began to lament over
it.

The two arrows transfixed it through and through, so that it was
impossible for her to draw out her cloths and linen. Lord Lovell came
out of his trance of thought a moment. He looked upon the woman, and
then, taking the basket from her, he broke off the feathered end of each
arrow and so drew them right through the basket. The old woman pulled
out her clouts and said, “Eyah, eyah.” Through each clout one arrow or
the other had made one, two or many round holes.

“These,” she lamented, “are all that your mother has for her bed or her
body. All her others your sisters have taken.”

“I am considering,” he answered her, “how I best may save my mother.”

She took her linen to the spring which was deep and clear, and began
sedulously to soak piece after piece, rinsing it over and over as she
knelt, and beating it with an oaken staff upon an oaken board that she
had in her basket bottom. And as she hung each piece over the bramble
bushes she looked diligently into the scene below her to see what was
stirring in the Castle or the village. Young Lovell had selected that
high spot so that they might know what was agate by way of a pursuit.
She saw, at intervals, three men on horseback go spurring up the street
from the Castle arch, but she did not disturb her master with the news.
She thought it better to leave him to his thinking, for she considered
that he would hit upon some magic way out of it. She imagined that he
had dwelt that three months amongst wizards and sorcerers that he should
have met during his vigil in the little old chapel that was a very
haunted place.

At last he raised his head and said:

“Old woman, tell me truly now, all your news.”

What she knew first was that, on the morning when the Lord Lovell had
died, all the lords and knights and the Prince Bishop and the others
being gone from the hall, there remained only the dead lord, his wife in
a swound, the Lady Margaret Eure and her. Then Sir Walter Limousin of
Cullerford with his wife Isopel and the other sister had approached with
several men of theirs in arms and had carried the good body of her
senseless lady up to a little chamber in the tower called Wanshot, in
the very top of it. She, Elizabeth Campstones, had carried her lady’s
feet, but all the rest of her bearers had been men-at-arms. The Lady
Margaret had followed them up into that little stone cell and asked them
what they would do with that lady in that place. But no one of them
answered her a word, high and haughty as she was, and at last they went
away and left them, the Lady Rohtraut just coming to herself on a
little, rotting frame bed that had no coverings but the strings that
held it together.

The Lady Margaret had sought to go out with them, calling them all proud
and beastly names and she was determined to set her own men that she had
there, to the number of twenty, all well armed, to make war upon these
and to raise the Castle. But when she came to the doorway that was
little and low Sir Simonde Vesey set his hand upon her chest and thrust
her back so hard into the room that she fell against the wall and lost
her breath. When she had it again the door was locked and it was of
thick oak, studded deep with nails.

Finely she raved, but when she came to, the Lady Rohtraut was in a sort
of stupour, sitting still and shaking her head at all that they said.
She thought this must be a dream that would vanish upon her awakening,
and so it was lost labour to talk.

So they remained until well on into the afternoon, seeing nothing but
the ceaseless run of the clouds and the sky and the gulls upon the Farne
Islands and the restless sea, from their little window. Then there came
three weeping maids of their lady’s, bearing bedding that they set down
on the floor, and a little food and some wine that were placed upon the
window-sill. But these girls spoke no word, for Sir Simonde Vesey stood
outside and looked awfully upon them. The Lady Margaret made to run
from the room, but two men that stood hidden put their pikes to her
breast so that she ran upon them, and would have been sore hurt only
they were somewhat blunted.

The Lady Rohtraut sat for a long while eating a little white bread that
she crumbled in her fingers, and sipping at the wine from the black
leather bottle, but still she said little, which was a great pity.

Towards four of the afternoon, to judge by the shadows, Sir Simonde let
himself in at the door and asked the Lady Margaret if she would
forthwith marry the Decies. She said no, not if Sathanas himself
branded her with hot irons to make her do it. Sir Simonde said she
might as lief do it since she was betrothed to that good knight and that
could never be altered. Then she caught at the little dagger with which
she was wont to mend her pens. It hung in her girdle, and Sir Simonde
went swiftly enough out at the little door.

The Lady Margaret chafed up and down that small place, but those women
said little, for they knew well what this all meant in the way of
robbery and pillage and bending them to their wills. But the Lady
Margaret swore that she would have the Eures of Witton and the
Widdringtons and the Nevilles themselves–aye and the spy Percies–who
were all her good cousins, and they should hang the Decies and do much
worse to the Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle.

And no doubt she had the right of it, for long after it was dark they
saw a glow of light illumining in a dreary way the face of the White
Tower, so that the Lady Margaret thought it was a fire of joy or at
least a baal-blaze, but Elizabeth Campstones said that it was houses
burning in the township. Then a man with a torch came through the
little doorway and lighted in the Magister, or as he now was, the
Bailiff Stone, since the Prince Bishop had signed the appointment for
him that morning. This rendered him safe against any persecution or
processes of laymen in those parts, nevertheless, when the torch-bearer
had stuck his torch in a ring by the door and gone away, the lawyer
would have the little door left open, and they knew afterwards that it
was done so that the men without might rescue him if the Lady Margaret
meant to strike or slay him, for she could have slain five of such lean
cats.

Before the Lady Margaret could bring out a question, for she was
astonished and could not think why such a person should come there, he
broke into a trembling gibber:

“Oh, good kind ladies; oh, gentle sweet and noble dames, for God His
love and sufferings, save all our lives and houses of which two are
burning!”

The Lady Margaret asked highly what all this claver was and what he
wanted.

“These are very violent and high-stomached people,” the lawyer babbled
quaveringly on. “Two houses of the township they have burned, and
hanged the husbandmen for an example. So that if you do not save
us….”

He stretched his hands to the Lady Rohtraut, but she looked before her
and said nothing.

“Well, go you and make common cause with them,” the Lady Margaret said
to him contemptuously. “So you will save your neck.

“Ah, but no,” he answered miserably but with a sort of professional and
cunning air. “I must be on the side of the law.”

“Then what does the law say?” she asked as bitterly. “I will warrant
you will not be far from the top dog.”

He began, however, to whine and wring his hands and said that he had not
long to live if he could not win these ladies to do the wills of the
violent people who had taken that Castle, not but what it might not be
said that they had not some shew of equity on their sides.

“I thought we should come near there,” the Lady Margaret said; “come,
Master, what is the worst on ‘t?”

“Ah, gentle lady,” the lawyer said, “this is at the best a grievous
matter; at the worst it is….” And he waved his hand as if there were
no speaking of it.

“Go on,” the Lady Margaret said grimly.

“I have been so confused,” the lawyer answered, “with much running here
and there and seeing such blood flow and the hearing of such
threats….”

“Come, come,” the lady said, “you are a man of law and such a clever one
that if I threw you out of this window you could tell the law of it or
ever you fell to the ground.”

“I am not saying,” he retorted, with a sort of relish, “that I go in
doubts concerning the law. What perplexes and affrights me is the fall
of great and powerful lords. As to the torts, replevins, fines,
amercements and the other things too numerous to recite, I am clear
enough.”

“Well, it is in the fall of mighty lords that the rats of your trade
find bloody bones to gnaw,” she answered him. “But if you are too
amazed at the contemplation of the wealth that you shall make out of
this to tell me, get you gone. If not, speak shortly, or I warrant you
a few cousins of mine shall burn this Castle and you in a little space.”

The lawyer shrank at these words and she went on:

“I trysted with my cousin Widdrington to meet him at Glororem at six
to-night and bade him fetch me hence with what companions he needed at
twelve if I were not home, so you have but an hour.”

“Ah, gentle lady,” the lawyer said, “it is three hours.”

“Well then, you have kept me twelve hours here,” the lady said; “I shall
pay you in full for your entertainment.”

“Ah, gentle lady,” the lawyer sighed, “not me, not me!”

She answered only: “Out with your tale.”

He hesitated for a moment, and then began with another sigh:

“For your noble cousin Paris, Lord Lovell, I fear it is all done with
him.”

“I think he may be dead that he did not come to his betrothal with me,”
the lady said. “If that is so you have my leave to tell me.”

“It is worse than that,” he groaned. “Woe is me, that noble lordings
should bend to violent passions.”

The Lady Margaret looked at him with disdain.

“If ye would tell me,” she said, “that the Young Lovell is gone upon a
sorcery, ye lie.”

Again the lawyer sighed.

“It is too deeply proven,” he said. “These poor eyes did see him and
two other pairs–both his well-wishers, even as I am.”

“Even whose?” she asked. “And what saw ye?”

“For the eyes,” the lawyer said, “they were those of the Decies and of
an ancient goody called Meg of the Foul Tyke.”

“For well-wishers,” the Lady Margaret answered, “you well-wish whence
your money comes; the Decies would claim my cousin’s land and gear: and
Meg of the Foul Tyke, though the best of the three is a naughty witch in
a red cloak. I have twice begged her life of my lording.”

“The more reason,” Master Stone said, “why you should not doubt she is
your well-wisher, even more than the young lording’s. And that is why
she would see you have a better mate.”

The lady said: “Aha!”

“I will tell you how it was,” the lawyer said. “I could not very well
sleep that night because I had been turning of old parchments, where, to
make a long story short, I had found that if the Lord Lovell should, on
the next day, swear to give the Bishop the rights of ingress and
fire-feu over his lands in Barnside he should do himself a wrong. For,
since the days of that blessed King, Edward the Second, those lands have
been held by _carta directa_…”

“Get on; get on,” the Lady Margaret cried.

“But this is in the essence of the thing,” the lawyer protested, “for a
_carta directa_…”

“I will not hear this whigamaree,” the lady said, “Let us take it,
though no doubt you lie, that you had found certain parcels of
sheepskin. But understand that we have stomachs for other things than
that dry haggis.”

“That is a lamentable frame of mind,” the lawyer said, “for look you, a
carta of that tenure is the best that can be come by.” But, at a
gesture of the lady’s hand, he began again very quickly: “I spent a
night of groaning and sighing, for it was a grievous dilemma. On the one
hand, my beloved young lord might do himself a wrong by swearing away
his chartered rights. On the other hand, if I should tell him that I
had found them, this might be deemed foul play by the Pro-proctor Regis
Rushworth, who is a lawyer for the house of Lovell in the Palatine
districts. Though how it is that Rushworth knoweth not of this charter
I cannot tell.”

“How came you by them?” the lady asked. “Without a doubt you stole them
to make work.”

“They were old papers that were there when I bought the study of my
master that was Magister Greenwell,” the lawyer answered, and again the
lady said: “Get on; get on.”

“So, at the last,” Stone continued, “I made, after prayer, the
resolution and firm intent to tell my lord. And so I arose, remembering
how he would be praying in the chapel, and gat me into the street. And
there, in the grey dawn, I lighted upon Meg of the Foul Tyke, who was
returning from gathering of simples by the light of the moon in the
kirkyard.”

“There was no moon last night,” the Lady Margaret said.

“Then, by the light of the star Arcturus,” the lawyer claimed. “Well,
my first motion was to rate her for a naughty witch. And so I did full
roundly till that woman fell a-weeping and vowed to reform.”

“Well, you were more powerful than the prophets with the Witch of
Endor,” the lady mocked him.

“And, seeing her in that good mind,” Stone went on with his tale, “I
remembered that she was a very old woman–the oldest of all these parts.
So I told her that if she could remember matters of Barnside years
agone, since she was in a holier mind, without doubt the young lording
would be gracious to her and would grant her a halfpenny a day to live
by; so she might live godly, after repenting in a sheet…. So she
remembered very clearly that one Hindhorn of Barnsides, Henrice Quinto
Rege, had been used, once a year, at Shrovetide, to drag with three
bullocks, an oaken log bound with yellow ribbons to the Castle. This was
direct and blinding evidence that the right of fire-feu …”

“Well, you went with the old hag to the chapel,” the Lady Margaret said.
“I can follow the cant of your mind and spring before it.”

“But you may miss many and valuable things,” he retorted. “As thus….
Whilst we went up the hill, this old goody, being repentant and weeping,
cried out when she heard whither we were bound: ‘Alas! Horror! Woe is
me!” and other cries. And, when I pressed for a reason, she said that
the young lording was a damned soul and that was one of her sins. For
she had taught him magic and the meeting-places of warlocks; one of
which was that chapel that was an ill-haunted spot, and that was why the
lording was there at night. And she was afraid to go near the chapel;
for the warlocks would tear her limb from limb. And the familiar and
succubus of the Young Lovell was the toad that was, in afore time, the
step-mother of the Laidly Worm of Spindleston, that to this day spits
upon maidens, so much she hateth the estate of virginity, as often you
will have heard.”

The lawyer paused and looked long at that lady.

“So that old witch repented?” she said at last, but she gave no sign of
her feelings.

“There was never a more beautiful repentance seen,” the lawyer said.
“So she sighed and groaned and the tears poured off her face to think
that she had corrupted that poor lording….” And it had been her
repentance, he went on, that had let them see what they had seen, and so
made it possible for them to save him.

Now when they came to the chapel, said the lawyer, the young lording, as
if he were demented, came rushing out from the door, and the Decies who
had watched all night in the porch came out after him, and asked him
what he would. But he answered nothing to the Decies and nothing to
them, but, with a marvellous fury, like a man rushing in a dream, he ran
into the shed where his horse was tethered, and bringing it out, so he
galloped away that his long curls of gold flapped in the wind. It was
not yet cockcrow, but pretty clear.

Thus those three, standing there and lamenting, saw how, at no great
distance, but just under Budle Crags, there was a fire lit, and round it
danced wonderful fair women and some old hags and witch-masters, but
most fair women.

The lawyer, saying this, gazed hard at the Lady Margaret, but once again
the lady said no more than–

“Aye, my cousin was always one for fair women.”

“So he kissed and fondled them; it was so horrid a sight….” the lawyer
went on.

“Now is it a horrid thing,” the lady asked, “to see a fine lording kiss
a fair woman?”

“I only know,” the lawyer said, “that at once all we three fell to
devising how you, ah, most gentle lady, might be saved from the embrace
of this lost man; and how that poor lording might be saved from his evil
ways, and have his lands and all his heritage preserved to him.”

“And the upshot,” the lady asked, with a dry pleasantness, “was what the
Decies did in the Great Hall.”

When the Young Lovell, sitting amongst the furze and broom, had heard so
far, he sighed with a deep satisfaction. The old Elizabeth had told her
tale of sorcery alleged against himself at an intolerable length,
dwelling on the nature of linen clouts here and there, and upon all that
she had said to the Lady Rohtraut when she lay in the swoon. But he kept
himself quiet and did not interrupt her; he had listened to her tales
since he had been a young boy, and knew that if you hastened her they
took five times as long. Yet he sat all the while on tenterhooks for
fear she should say they had seen his meeting with the lady that sat
upon a white horse amongst doves and sparrows. Had they seen that it
might have gone ill with him in a suit at law. For, if they had seen
it, it was twenty to one that there would be other witnesses; the place
was well frequented by people journeying from Bamburgh to Holy Island.
Nay, he would have been visible to the very fishers upon the sea, and to
stay with such a lady, he well knew–though at the moment he sighed
deeply–would be accounted a felony of the deepest magic kind in any
ecclesiastical court.

But now he knew that this lawyer was simply lying, and that was an
easier thing. He saw, and so he told Elizabeth Campstones, how they had
hit upon that tale. The lawyer coming by the chapel, after the Young
Lovell had threatened him with death for the moving of his neighbour’s
landstones, and the old witch meeting with him, after she had been
threatened with drowning for her wicked ways; both trembling with fear,
since they knew him for a man of his word and a weighty but just lord in
those lands, had come together to the chapel door. No doubt they had
entered in, meaning to steal his armour that was visible lying there,
and hold it for ransom as the price of their miserable lives. But in
the deep porch they would see the Decies snoring like a hog.

Him they wakened, and, the old witch’s mind running on sorcery, the
lawyer’s on suits, and the Decies desiring to have his heritage and his
bride, whilst the other two desired to save their lives; all three
together had hit upon this stratagem that would give them what they
desired. For in those days there was in Northumberland a stern hatred
of the black arts, which had grown the greater since the twelve children
of Hexham, two years before, had been slain, that their blood and
members might stew in a witch’s broth–a thing proven by many competent
witnesses. So that, if the Decies should come in and claim the Young
Lovell’s knighthood, name, and the rest, he might, with the support of
his father, make a pretty good suit of it, and, maybe, take the whole.
And, if the Young Lovell should come back soon for his armour, they
would murder him. Thus, the lawyer, and the witch, the one with a rope
to cast over his neck, and the other with a sharp dagger, hid waiting
behind the thick pillars, whilst the Decies dressed in his
half-brother’s harness.

And it had worked better for them than they had expected, so that now
they held the Castle, and the law might be very hard set, if it ever
made the essay, to get them out of it.

For, as Elizabeth Campstones presently told him, they had taken all the
charters and the deeds of the Castle to Haltwhistle, where the one
knight had them hidden up, and all the deeds and charters of his
mother’s lands and houses to Cullerford, where the other kept them. The
Castle itself they held all three, the Decies and the two knights–or
rather their two ladies–being captains there by turns of three days
each, and dividing the revenues of it very fairly.

They had cast out all the men-at-arms that were any way faithful to the
Young Lovell, taking away their arms too. For they, with their armed
men, had been in possession of the Castle and had taken the keys of the
armoury, whilst the Lovell men were without arms and leaderless. So
that some of the Lovell men had become bedesmen at the monastery at
Belford, and many perished miserably about the country in the great
storm of the second day of April, whilst some had taken to robbery,
which was all that was left them. Those in the Castle had hired men
from the false Scots and other ragged companions of the Vesty that was
Sir Symonde’s brother, and there they all dwelt comfortable, having
between them about three hundred men-at-arms and a numerous army of
bowmen, but no cannon. They deemed that they could well await any
assault of the Young Lovell if he should return. They considered that
he had been slain by the outlaw Elliotts, who had been seen to ride by,
three miles north of the Castle, going up into the Cheviots.

But all these things happened only after they had settled with the Lady
Margaret in that little room. And that had happened in this way,
Elizabeth Campstones said:

After the lawyer told her the tale about the fair witches she had broken
into no cries and oaths as he had expected; not even when he had
particularised one witch with red hair and great breasts that danced and
sprang all naked over a broomstick, with her hair tossing, and how the
Young Lovell had singled this witch out for favours apart. The Lady
Margaret said only–

“And so you two and the Decies….”

“We stood there weeping and lamenting,” the lawyer said.

“I marvel that not one of you had heart to adventure for the caresses of
such fair women as you have told me of. Had ye been men ye would.”

The lawyer answered with an accent of horror:

“But witches and warlocks!”

“Ah, I had forgotten,” the lady said. “So ye wept and turned your heads
away. And afterwards?”

“After they were gone,” Magister Stone answered, “we fell to devising
how we might rescue you, ah gentle lady, from that lost knight and
himself from himself.” That was to be in this way: The Decies should
seek to possess himself of the lands, knighthood and name of the Young
Lovell, and, if he did this with the irrevocable blessing of the Lord
Bishop, the act of the Border Warden, who in those parts stood for the
King, as well as in presence of his father, he might establish a very
good title whether of presumption or possession. And if in the same way
he might be betrothed to the Lady Margaret in the presence of the Lady
Rohtraut to whom she was ward and with the formal rite of the Church,
which like the other is irrevocable, the Young Decies would be in a very
fair way to achieve his pious desires.

“And that should be as how?” the Lady Margaret asked.

He desired, the lawyer said, to hold the Young Lovell’s heritage only as
a faithful steward and brother and, so holding it with a very arguable
title, neither Prince Bishop or King could extort from it any very great
fines or amercements. Meanwhile the Decies should consummate that very
night his wedding with the Lady Margaret whom, after the betrothal, he
alone could marry. And they had a good priest there present and himself
ready to draw up marriage charters enough to fill two bridal chests.
And, the more to incline her to this, it was the mind of the gallant
Decies to allow her such marriage lots, dowers and jointures, out of the
heritage of the Young Lovell as together with her own lands of Glororem
and the other places, and by inducing the Lady Rohtraut to forego the
great fine that they should pay her upon her marriage, would leave them
one of the richest married pairs of that part of the King’s realms.

And when the Lady Margaret asked how that should be brought about, and
the particulars, feudal and direct, of the deeds he would make, he went
off into a great flood of Latin and Norman words of the law. At last
she said:

“I make out nothing of all this talk. But I think I will not marry with
a great toad that hath a weasel gnawing at his vitals.”

“Ah, gentle lady…” the lawyer began, and his voice rose in its tones.

“To put it shortly,” the lady continued, “the great toad is the gallant
Decies, for toads do shelter under other men’s rocks and stones, and
this gallant–for I will not rob him of the title you give him, and I
know no other by which to call him–is minded to shelter under the
stones and rocks of my cousin’s Castle that in God’s good time shall be
my cousin’s and mine. And for who the weasel is that gnaweth at the
vitals of the gallant Decies I will not further particularise, since I
might well go beyond courtesy. So now get you gone, or I will wave one
of the clouts from this little window which, by the light of the burning
houses, my cousins the Eures and the Widdringtons and the Percy shall
perceive from where they wait upon Budle Crags, and very soon you shall
be hanging from the White Tower to affright the morning sun. And that I
promise you….”

The lawyer protested in various tones, rising to a sick squeak, but she
said no more to him. It was not true what she said, that her cousins
were waiting to fall upon the Castle, though they would well have done
it on the next morning or in two days’ time. But the lawyer did not know
that it was not true and so he shivered and went away.

A little later there came Henry Vesey of Wall Houses, the evil knight
that was brother to Sir Symonde. He had a red nose, a roving eye and
staggered a little. He affected a great gravity, but she laughed at
him. His cloak was monstrous and of green, slit all down the great
sleeves to show the little coat of purple damask. His shirt was wrought
up into a frill very low down in his neck, so that it showed much of his
chest, and in his stiff biretta of scarlet he had a jewel of scarlet
that held five white feathers. His hair, which was reddish, fell almost
to his shoulders, for he affected very much to be in the fashions of his
time–more than most lordings and knights of that part. And, indeed,
the Lady Margaret considered him a very proper, impudent gentleman.

“Cousin Meg!” he began, and then he stammered with the liquor that was
in him. But he achieved again an owlish gravity and a sweet reason. His
proposition was that, still, she should marry the Decies and that he
himself would wed the Lady Rohtraut so that he could defend her
interests the better. And so they could all live there comfortably
together, for it was better to live in one great family than scattered
here and there. The Lady Margaret was already laughing, but he
continued with a great gravity, that, as for the Decies, he loved her so
desperately he did not dare to come nigh her, but, now he had no need to
conceal it, was rolling about the carpet in the great hall, bellowing
with the pain of his passion.

“Well, I have been aware of it this many months,” the lady said, “and it
is a very comfortable love that will not let him come nigh me. I pray
it may continue.”

At that Vesey of Wall Houses fell to laughing.

He tried to explain that he had come to her with the idea that she might
be more apt to wed the Decies if she knew that, by his wedding the Lady
Rohtraut, the Castle should have for its head and guidance, such a
sober, answerable, prudent and valorous head as himself.

“So the cage of apes made the parrot their captain when they went
a-sailing to the Indies,” she said, and then he laughed altogether.

“Nay, indeed Meg, sweetmouthed Meg,” he said, “will ye still keep troth
to the monstrous wicked, idolatrous, blaspheming lording called Lovell
that dances with fair naked witches and all the other horrid things that
we would all do if we could? Consider your wretched soul!”

But his liquorish manner showed that he believed nothing of that
witches’ dance, and indeed he was pretty sure that the Young Lovell had
been carried off by the outlaw Elliotts that had been seen near that
place, and that he would return and send them ransom.

“Friend Henry,” the Lady answered, “good Sir Henry, if my love, who is a
gallant gentleman, would not dance and courteously devise with beautiful
women, naked or how they were, I should think the less of him supposing
they entreated it. But I do not believe that he did this thing such as
the calling up of succubi, however fair, since his desire for me only
was so great, and that ye well wis.”

“Ah well,” the Vesey sighed, “sweet mouth that ye are, if it was I that
had the ordering of this Castle I should not let you go so easily.”

“That I well believe and take it kindly,” the lady said.

“But, being as it is,” he continued, “the poltroons, my brother and
Cullerford and their wives and the Decies and the lawyer tremble so at
the thought of your kinsmen camped on Budle Crags that they are minded
to open the gates on this pretty bird. But well I know that it is a
lie, though they will not hear me.”

“In truth there is a monstrous great host awaits the waving of my
kerchief,” she said, “with nine culverins planted there and all; and ye
know what the culverins did to Bamburgh?”

He closed one eye slowly and then he sighed. “Well, I must take you
down,” he said, “I am a reckless devil, woe is me, and if there are no
Widdringtons and the rest there now, I know that Wall Houses would burn
to-morrow and I should hang when they caught me…. But oh, I repent me
to let you go….” And he regarded her with very amorous and melancholy
laughing eyes.

“Friend Henry,” she laughed, “if you will open the doors for me, for me,
for your good behaviour you may kiss me twice, once here and once at the
gate, for I dare say, if the truth be known, though you are too much
drunk to be clear and not drunk enough to speak the truth, you are more
the friend of me and of my love than any here.”

“Well, they are a curst crew,” he said, “and I will not hang with them;
only, where there are pickings I must have my poke, and that is good
Latin.”

So, approaching and lifting his legs, as high as he might in the politer
fashion of the day, though once in his progress he fell against the
wall, he took her by the hand and kissed her on the cheek. She said she
wondered how a man could make himself smell so like a beast with wine,
and so he led her forth from the room, after he had waved away the
guards and after she had taken leave of the Lady Rohtraut who spoke
never a word. And that was as much as Elizabeth Campstones knew of her
at that time, except that she promised not to rest a night in bed until
she had roused all the Dacres of the North to come to her aunt’s
assistance.

But afterwards Elizabeth heard that the Vesey of Wall Houses had
conducted the lady very courteously, not only to the gate, but, having
found her a horse and guards, to her very tower of Glororem. And on the
way he gave her very good counsel as to how she should aid her aunt.
But that had proved a very difficult matter, for the Dacres themselves,
in those disturbed and critical times, lay under such clouds of
suspicion that the best of them were detained in London near the King
and his court; so that, if they were not actually in the Tower or some
other prison, they might as well have been. As for coming to rescue the
Lady Rohtraut by force, they could not do it and, as for aiding her by
any process of law, that was a matter well-nigh impossible for its
slowness and because the Knight of Cullerford had stolen all her deeds
and titles. Moreover, all the middle part of Yorkshire was in a state
of rebellion, so that it was very difficult for messengers to come
through, either the one way or the other. It is true that a lawyer from
Durham came to the Castle and sought an interview with the lady on
behalf of the Prince Palatine, but they pelted him from the archway with
dung at first and then with flint-stones so that they never heard what
his errand was. And although many in that neighbourhood would gladly
have set upon the Castle and sacked it, it was difficult to find a
leader and head. For the Percy was afraid, not knowing how the law was
or how he should best please the King, and the Nevilles were in the
South, so that there was no one left of great eminence.

The Lady Margaret and some young squires of degree raised a force of a
couple of hundred or so and began to march on the Castle. But before
they reached it the men-at-arms repented, saying that they would not be
led by a woman and a parcel of beardless boys; and when the Lady
Margaret beat them with a whip these men shrugged their shoulders and
rode back the faster to their homes. She had two of them led to the
gallows and the ropes round their necks till they fell on their knees
and sued pardons. But that did not mend things much and there the
business sat.

The Lady Rohtraut came to herself one night and knew it was no dream.
And she would have letters written to the Lord of Croy in Germany, that
was her mother’s father, that he might come to her rescue. And no doubt
he would have sent ships, though he was a very ancient man. He was a
mighty prince, and had taken prisoner, in the old time, Edward Dacre,
the Lady Rohtraut’s father, in a battle that his suzerain the Duke of
Burgundy, who was of uncertain mind, fought against the English in
Flanders. So, waiting in the Castle for his ransom to come, Edward
Dacre loved the Duke’s daughter, the Princess Rohtraut, and was beloved
by her. And, at the intercession of the Talbot, for the better
soldering of a new friendship between the English and the Burgundians,
the Duke, though sorely against his will, had given his daughter to
Edward Dacre, he being made a baron of England on the day of the
wedding. Her mother, the Princess Rohtraut, was still alive and lived
with her son, the Lord Dacre, in London. But between mother and
daughter there was a lawsuit about some of these very lands that her
daughters sought to take from her, and in that way there was no commerce
between them.

Thus it was that the Lady Rohtraut was very haughty, and would in no way
submit to the importunities of her daughters and their husbands, for she
had the pride of the Dacres and of a Princess of Low Germany. The
daughters would still have had her marry the Vesey of Wall Houses, so
that they might have the management of her properties, but she answered
that for nothing in the world would she do that thing, and that it would
be to give them both to Satan. She had the right to an annual dower of
3,000 French crowns and to all the furnishings that had been taken by
her husband, upon their marriage, from her Castle at Cramlinton, as well
as her houses at Plessey and Killingworth. And she had the right to
enter again, her husband being dead, into the possession and
administration of those places as well as of her lands by Morpeth.

She was minded to live as a proud and wealthy dowager and she was not
minded to abate one jot of her rights and possessions to buy her
freedom, though her daughters and their husbands came day by day and
clamoured to her to do it.

So there abode, like a prisoner in that little room, the Lady Rohtraut
till that hour. All of her servants were driven away from her, and she
had only Elizabeth Campstones to dress and undress her: and of linen she
had so little that the old woman must come forth and wash it every three
days. And, when she brought it forth, the daughters searched it into
the very seams to see that there was no letter to the Duke of Croy or to
the Dacres concealed within it. And the Lady Rohtraut fell ill, and she
thought her daughters had poisoned her with a fig laid down in honey,
till the doctor cured her with another such fig, the one poison, if it
were a poison, driving out the other.