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 pa** 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 gra** 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 pa**ion 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 gra** beside their course; one fell on the road, one carried off his scarlet cap with its frontal and j**el 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 gra**. The sun shone on such of the windows—about twenty—that had gla** 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 va**als 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 pa**ing 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 pa**ions."
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 co*kcrow, 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 d**h 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 a**ault 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 j**el 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 pa**ion.
"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 a**istance.
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 k**ingworth. 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.