Long Will
Page 8
CHAPTER IV
A Vow
Calote slipped out at the back door into a weedy lane full ofmoonlight. She set her feet ankle-deep in grass and dew. A muck heapcast a shadow from one side to the other of the lane and filled theair with pungent odour. There was a stair against the wall of WillLangland's cot, and Calote climbed up this to a little gabled chamberthat had a window looking on Cornhill. The street was white and silentunder the moon. There was no light in any house as far as Calote couldsee. Even the tavern was dark: Dame Emma had shut out her roisterersand made her house a house of mourning, for that the Black Prince wasdead. Calote let slip her strait russet gown and stood at the windowin her kirtle, shaking out her hair.
"Such hair had Guenevere," she said thoughtfully; "yet am I Calote.--Akinsman to the Earl of March?--Mayhap to-night he weeps the death ofthe Black Prince. Yet, I know not.--Wat Tyler saith these nobles beaye at one another's throat.--When there be so many kind of love i'the world, wherefore do some folk make choice of hating?--So many kindof love!--Wherefore may not I essay all?--Wherefore be thereCalotes--and Gueneveres?--Yet, there be a many left for me. I willleave thinking o' squires and knights. I will listen to Dame Reason inthe Romaunt,--and Wat, and the ploughman, and my father."
She crossed herself and said her Pater Noster, then dropped her kirtleand lay down upon her pallet. For coverlet she had a frayed oldcassock of her father's. She lay beneath the window, and the moon cameabout to look on her.
"I will love all I may," said Calote; "but I will forget to be loved."
And so she fell asleep.
She did not wake an hour after when Long Will came up to bed, stoopingamong the rafters. He crossed the room to look upon her where she layfull in the light of the moon. Because the night was close she had setfree her arms from the warmth of the old cassock, but the goldenmantle of her hair veiled her white breast that rose and fell ever solightly.
Will Langland beckoned to his wife and she came to stand beside him:--
"'T is now a woman,--and yesterday a child," said he. "Mayhap I amdull-eyed, noting little that's not writ on parchment, yet meseems Ihave never seen woman so fair as this my daughter. Is 't true?"
"Yea, Will; it is true," said Kitte.
Then Calote opened her eyes upon her father and mother, and she wasdreaming.
"O red rose!" said she, and shut her eyes again.
And Will Langland and Kitte his wife went down on their knees to pray.