CHAPTER TWELVE.
FROST AND SNOW.
"Whan bells were rung, and mass was sung, And every lady went hame, Than ilka lady had her yong sonne, But Lady Helen had nane."
_Old Ballad_.
"I have come home, Mother!"
It was Constance who spoke, standing in the hall at Cardiff, wrapped inthe arms of the Dowager Lady Le Despenser. And in every sense, from thelightest to the deepest, the words were true. The wanderer had comehome. Home to the Castle of Cardiff, which she was never to leave anymore; home to the warm motherly arms of Elizabeth Le Despenser, who castall her worn-out theories to the winds, and took her dead son's haplessdarling to her heart of hearts; home to the great heart of God. And theear of the elder woman was open to a sound unheard by the younger. Thevoice of that dead son echoed in her heart, repeating his dying chargeto her--"Have a care of my Lady!"
"My poor stricken dove!" sobbed the Lady Elizabeth. "Child, men's cruelhandling hath robbed thee of much, yet it hath left thee God and thymother!"
Constance looked up, with tears gleaming in her sapphire eyes, now somuch calmer and sadder than of old.
"Ay," she said, the remembrance thrilling through her of the heavy priceat which she had bought back her children; "and I have paid nought forGod and thee."
"Nay, daughter dear, Christ paid that wyte [forfeit] for thee. We maytrust Him to have a care of the quittance," [receipt].
The children now claimed their share of notice. Richard kissed the oldlady in an energetic devouring style, and proclaimed himself "so glad,Grammer, so glad!" Isabel offered her cheek in her cold unchildlikeway. The baby Alianora at once accepted the new element as a perfectlysatisfactory grandmamma, and submitted to be dandled and talked nonsenseto with pleased equanimity.
"O Bertram!" said Maude that night, "surely our Lady's troubles andtravails be now over!"
"It is well, wife, that God loveth her better than thou," was theanswer. "He will not leave his jewel but half polished, because thesound of the cutting grieveth thine ears."
"But how could she bear aught more?"
"Dear heart! how know we what any man can bear--aye, even our ownselves? Only God knoweth; and we trust Him. The heavenly Goldsmithbreaketh none of His gems in the cutting."
The doors of the prison in Windsor Castle were opened that spring torelease two of the state prisoners. The dangerous prisoner, Edmund Earlof March, remained in durance; and his bright little brother Roger hadbeen set free already, by a higher decree than any of Henry ofBolingbroke. The child died in his dungeon, aged probably about tenyears. Now Anne and Alianora were summoned to Court, and placed underthe care of the Queen. They were described by the King as "deprived ofall their relatives and friends." They were not quite that; but in sofar as they were, he was mainly responsible for having made them so.
The manner in which King Henry provided the purchase-money required bythe Duke of Milan for Lucia is amusing for its ingenuity. The sumagreed upon was seventy thousand florins; and the King paid it out ofthe pockets of five of his nobles. One was his own son, Thomas Duke ofClarence; the second and third were husbands of two of Kent's sisters--Sir John Neville and Thomas Earl of Salisbury--the latter being the sonof the murdered Lollard; the fourth was Lord Scrope, whose characterappears to have been simple to an extreme; and the last was assuredlynever asked to consent to the exaction, for he was the hapless March,still close prisoner in Windsor Castle.
In the summer, Constance received a grant of all her late husband'slands. The Court was very gay that summer with royal weddings. Thefirst bride was Constance's young stepmother, the Duchess Joan of York,who bestowed her hand on Lord Willoughby de Eresby: the second was theKing's younger daughter, the Princess Philippa, who was consigned to theungentle keeping of the far-off King of Denmark. Richard ofConisborough was selected to attend the Princess to Elsinore; but he wasso poor that the King was obliged to make all the provision he requiredfor the journey. It was not his own fault that his purse was light: hisgodfather, King Richard, had left him a sufficient competence; but thegrants of Richard of Bordeaux were not held always to bind Henry ofBolingbroke. But when the Earl of Cambridge returned to Elsinore, hewas rewarded for his labours, not with money nor lands, but by a grantof the only thing for which he cared--the gift of Anne Mortimer. He waspenniless, and so was she. But though poverty was an habitual residentwithin the doors, love did not fly out at the window.
The year 1408 brought another sanguinary struggle in favour of March'stitle, headed by the old white-haired sinner Northumberland, who fell inhis attempt, at the battle of Bramham Moor, on the 29th of February. Hehad armed in the cause of Rome, which he hoped to induce March toespouse yet more warmly than Henry the Fourth. He probably did not knowthe boy personally, and imagined him the counterpart of his gallant,fervent father. He was as far from it as possible. Nothing on earthwould have induced March to espouse any cause warmly. He valued far toohighly his own dearly beloved ease.
Matters dragged themselves along that autumn as lazily as even Marchcould have wished. All over England the rain came down, sometimes in adashing shower, but generally in an idle dreary dripping from eaves andramparts. Nothing particular was happening to any body. At Cardiff allwas extremely quiet. Constance had recovered as much brightness as shewould ever recover, but never any more would she be the Constance of oldtime.
"Surely our Lady's troubles be over now!" said Maude sanguinely.
On the evening on which that remark was made,--the fifteenth ofSeptember--two sisters of Saint Clare sat watching, in a small Frenchconvent, by the dying bed of a knight. At the siege of Briac Castle,five days earlier, he had been mortally wounded in the head by a boltfrom a crossbow; and his squires bore him into the little convent to diein peace. The sufferer had never fully recovered his consciousness. Heseemed but dimly aware of any thing--not fully sensible even to pain.His words were few, incoherent, scarcely intelligible. What the nunscould occasionally disentangle from his low mutterings was somethingabout "blue eyes," and "watching from the lattice." The last rites ofthe Church were administered, but there could be no confession; acrucifix was held before his eyes, but they doubted if he recognisedwhat it was. And about sunset of that autumn evening he died.
So closed the few and evil days of the vain, weak, self-loving Kent.His age was only twenty-six; he left no child but the disinheritedAlianora, and his sisters took good care that she should remaindisinherited. They pounced upon the lands of the dead brother with aneagerness which would have been rather more decent had it been a littleless apparent; and to the widowed Lucia, who was the least guilty partyto the conspiracy for which she had been made the decoy, they leftlittle beyond her wardrobe. She was actually reduced to appeal to theKing's mercy for means to live. Henry responded to her piteous petitionby the offer of his brother of Dorset as a second husband. Lucia wasone of those women who are born actresses, and whose nature it is to dothings which seem forced and unnatural to others. She flattered theKing with anticipations that she was on the point of complying with hiswishes, till the last moment; and then she eloped with Sir Henry deMortimer, possibly a distant connection of the Earl of March. It may beadded, since Lucia now disappears from the story, that she survived hersecond marriage for fourteen years, and showed herself at her death amost devout member of the orthodox Church, by a will which was frombeginning to end a string of bequests for masses, to be sung for therepose of her soul, and of the soul of Kent.
Bertram and Maude, to whom the news came first, scarcely knew how totell Constance of Kent's death. At last Maude thought of dressing thelittle Alianora in daughter's mourning, and sending her into hermother's room alone. The gradations of mourning were at that time sodistinct and minute that Constance's practised eye would read theparable in an instant. So they broke in that manner the news they darednot tell her.
For the whole day there was no sign from Constance that she had evennoticed the hint. Her voice and manner showe
d no change. But at night,when the little child of three years old knelt at her mother's knee forher evening prayer, said Lollard-wise in simple English, they found ithad not escaped her. As the child came to the usual "God bless myfather and mother,"--which, fatherless as she had always been, she hadbeen taught to say,--Constance quietly checked her, and made her say,"God bless my mother" only. And at the close, little Alianora wasinstructed to add,--"God pardon my father's soul."
Knowing how passionately Constance had once loved Kent, this calm showof indifference puzzled Maude Lyngern sorely. But to the Dowager Ladyit was no such riddle.
"Her love is dead, child," she said, when Maude timidly expressed hersurprise. "And when that is verily thus, it were lighter to bid a deadcorpse live than a dead love."
All this time the Lollard persecution slowly waxed hotter and hotter.Men began to thank God when any "heretics" among their friends werepermitted to die in their beds, and to whisper in hushed accents thatwhen the Prince of Wales should be King, whose nature was more mercifulthan his father's, matters might perchance mend. They little knew whatthe future was to bring. The worst was not yet over,--was not even tocome during the reign of Henry of Bolingbroke.
Seeing that Constance was now restored to her lands, and basking in thesunshine of Court favour, it struck Lady Abergavenny, a niece ofArchbishop Arundel, who was a politic woman--as most of his nieceswere--that an alliance between her son and Isabel Le Despenser would bea good speculation. And her Ladyship, being moreover a strong-mindedwoman, whose husband was of very little public and less privateconsequence, carried her point, and the marriage of Isabel with youngRichard Beauchamp took place at Cardiff on the eleventh birthday of thebride.
The ceremony was slightly hastened at the wish of the Dowager Lady LeDespenser. She was anxious not to distress Constance by breaking thenews too suddenly to her, but she felt within herself that the goldenbowl was nearing its breaking at the fountain, and that the silver cordsof her earthly house of this tabernacle were not far from being takendown. She was an old woman,--very old, for a period wherein few livedto old age; she had long outlived her husband, and had seen the funeralsof nearly all her children. The greater part even of her earthlytreasures were already safe where moth and rust corrupt not, and her ownfeeling of earnest longing to rejoin them grew daily stronger. It wasfor the daughter's sake alone that she cared to live now; the daughterto whom men had left only God and that mother. A new lesson was now tobe taught to Constance--to rest wholly upon God.
It was very tranquilly at last that Elizabeth Le Despenser passed awayfrom earth. She took most loving leave of Constance, blessed and saidfarewell to all her children, and charged Bertram and Maude to remainwith her and be faithful to her.
Twenty years' companionship, fellowship in sorrow, and fellowship infaith, had effected a complete revolution in the feelings of Constancetowards her mother-in-law.
"O Mother, Mother!" she sobbed; "what shall I do without you!"
"My child," answered Elizabeth, "had the heavenly Master not seen thatthou shouldst well do without me, He had left me yet here."
"You yourself said, Mother, that He had left me but Him and you!"
"Ay, dear daughter; and yet He hath left thee Himself. Every hour Heshall be with thee; and every hour of thy life moreover shall be an hourthe less betwixt thee and me."
The last thing that they heard her murmur, which had reference to thatland whither she was going, was--"Neither schulen they die more."
They laid her in the family vault at Tewkesbury Abbey; and once morethere was mourning at Cardiff.
It was only just begun when news came of another death, far moreunexpected than hers. Richard of Conisborough and Anne Mortimer werealready the parents of a daughter; and two months after the death of theLady Le Despenser a son was born, who was hereafter to become the fatherof all the future kings of England. And while the young mother laywrapped in her first tender gladness over her new treasure, God calledher to come away to Him. So she left the little children who wouldnever call her "mother," left the husband who was all the world to her;and--fragile White Rose as she was--Anne Mortimer "perished with theflowers." She died "with all the sunshine on her," aged only twenty-oneyears. Perhaps those who stood round her coffin thought it a very sadand strange dispensation of Providence. But we, who know what layhidden in the coming years, can see that God's time for her to die wasthe best and kindest time. And indications are not quite wanting,slight though they may be, that Richard of Conisborough was not apolitical, but a religious Lollard, and that this autumn journey of AnneMortimer to the unknown land may have been a triumphal entry into theCity of God.
The news that Constance had of set purpose cast in her lot with theLollards was not long in travelling to Westminster. And she soon foundthat the lot of a Lollard was no bed of roses. In his anger, Henry ofBolingbroke departed from his usual rule of rigid justice, and revokedthe grant which Constance may be said to have purchased with her heart'sblood. Her favourite Richard, now a fine youth of sixteen, was takenfrom her, and his custody, possessions, and marriage were granted totrustees, of whom the chief persons were Archbishop Arundel and EdwardDuke of York. This meant that the trustees were to sell his hand to thefather of some eligible damsel, and pocket the proceeds; and also toconvert to their own use the rents of young Richard's estates until hewas of age. The Duke of York was just now a most devout and orthodoxperson. It was time, for any one who cared to save his life, as Edwarddid; for a solemn decree against Wycliffe's writings had just beenfulminated at Rome; and while Henry of Bolingbroke sat on the throne,England lay at the feet of the Pope. The trustees took advantage atonce of the favour done them, and sold young Richard (without consultingConstance) to the Earl of Westmoreland, for the benefit of one of hisnumerous daughters, the Lady Alianora Neville. She was a little girl ofabout ten years old, and remained in the charge of her mother, theKing's sister. In the April following it pleased the Duke of York topay a visit to his sister, and to bring her son in his train. Edwardwas particularly silent at first. He appeared to have heard no news, tobe actuated by no motive in coming, and generally to have nothing tosay. Richard, on the contrary, was evidently labouring under suppressedexcitement of some kind. But when they sat down to supper, York calledfor Malvoisie, and threw a bomb into the midst of the company by thewish which he uttered as he carried the goblet to his lips.
"God pardon King Henry's soul!"
He was answered by varying exclamations in different tones.
"Ay, Madam, 'tis too true!" broke forth young Richard, addressing hismother; "but mine uncle's Grace willed me not to speak thereof until heso should."
"Harry of Bolingbroke is dead?--Surely no!"
"Dead as a door-nail," said York unfeelingly.
"Was he sick of long-time?"
"Long enough!" responded York in the same manner. "Long enough to wearyevery soul that ministered to his fantasies, and to cause them ring thechurch bells for joy that their toil was over. Leprosy, by my troth!--asweet disorder to die withal!"
"Ned, I pray thee keep some measure in speech."
"By the Holy Coat of Treves! but if thou wouldst love to deal withal,Custance, thy tarrying at Kenilworth hath wrought mighty change in thee.Marry, it pleased the Lady Queen to proffer unto me an even's watch inthe chamber. `Good lack! I thank your Grace,' quoth I, `but 'tis mineuttermost sorrow that I should covenant with one at Hackney to meet withme this even, and I must right woefully deny me the ease that it shoulddo me to abide with his Highness.' An honest preferment, to be his sicknurse, by Saint Lawrence his gridiron! Nay, by Saint Zachary hisshoe-strings, but there were two words to that bargain!"
"Then what did your Grace, Uncle?" said Isabel in her cool, grown-upstyle.
"Did? Marry, little cousin, I rade down to Norwich House, and played agood hour at the cards with my Lord's Grace of Norwich; and then I layme down on the settle and gat me a nap; and after spices served, Iturned back to Westminster, a
nd did her Grace to wit that it were rarecold riding from Hackney."
"Is your Grace yet shriven sithence, Uncle?" inquired young Richardrather comically.
"The very next morrow, lad, my said Lord of Norwich the confessor. Ibare it but a night, nor it did me not no disease in sleeping."
"Maybe it should take a heavy sin to do that, fair Uncle," said Isabelwith a sneer.
"What wist, such a chick as thou?" returned York, holding out his gobletto the dispenser of Malvoisie.
A little lower down the table, Sir Bertram Lyngern and Master HughCalverley were discussing less serious subjects in a more sober andbecoming manner.
"Truly, our new King hath well begun," said Hugh. "My Lord of March isreleased of his prison, and shall be wed this next summer to the LadyAnne of Stafford, and his sister the Lady Alianora unto my Lord of Devonhis son; and all faithful friends and servants of King Richard be set infavour; and 'tis rumoured about the Court that your Lady shall receiveconfirmation of every of his father's grants made unto her."
"I trust it shall so be verily," said Bertram.
"And further yet," pursued Hugh, slightly dropping his voice, "'tis saidthat the King considereth to take unto the Crown great part of themoneys and lands of the Church."
"Surely no!"
"Ay, so far as my judgment serveth, 'tis so soothly."
"But that were sacrilege!"
"Were it?" asked Hugh coolly.
For the extreme Lollards, of whom he was one, looked upon the twopolitical acts which we have learned to call disestablishment anddisendowment, as not only permissible, but desirable. In so saying, Ispeak of the political Lollards. All political Lollards, however, werenot religious ones, nor were all religious Lollards sharers in thesepolitical views. John of Gaunt, a strong political Lollard, was never areligious one in his life; while King Richard, who decidedly leaned tothem in religion, disliked their politics exceedingly. In fact, it wasrather the fervent, energetic, practical reformers who took up with suchaims; while those among them who walked quietly with God let the matteralone. Hugh Calverley had been drawn into these questions rather bycircumstances than choice. While he was emphatically one that "sighedand that cried for all the abominations that were done in the midst of"his Israel, he was sagacious enough to know that even from his own pointof view, the abolition of the hierarchy, or the suppression of themonastic orders, were no more than lopping off branches, while the rootremained.
It was perfectly true that Henry the Fifth seriously contemplated thepolicy of disendowment, which Parliament had in vain suggested to hisfather. And it continued to be true for some six months longer. Theclue has not yet been discovered to the mysterious and sudden changewhich at that date came over, not only the policy, but the wholecharacter of Henry of Monmouth. Up to that date he had himself beensomething very like a political Lollard; ever after it he was ferventlyorthodox. The suddenness of the change was not less remarkable than itscompleteness. It took place about the first of October, 1413; and itexactly coincides in date with a visit from Archbishop Arundel, to urgeupon the reluctant King the apprehension of his friend Lord Cobham.Whatever may have been the means of the alteration, there can be butlittle question as to who was the agent.
The King's confirmation of grants to his cousin Constance occurredbefore this ominous date; and, revoking the last penalty inflicted, itrestored her son to her custody. Richard therefore came home in July,where he remained until September. His attendance was then commanded atCourt, and he left Cardiff accordingly.
"Farewell, Madam!" he said brightly, as his mother gave him her farewellkiss and blessing. "God allowing, I trust to be at home again ereChristmas; and from London I will seek to bring your Grace and mysisters some gear of pleasance."
"Farewell, my Dickon!" said Constance, lovingly. "Have a care ofthyself, fair son. Remember, thou art now my dearest treasure."
"No fear, sweet Lady!"
So he sailed off, waving his hand or his cap from the boat, so long ashe could be seen.
A letter came from him three weeks later--a doubtful, uneasy letter,showing that the mind of the writer was by no means at rest concerningthe future. The King had received him most graciously, and every one atCourt was kind to him; but the sky was lowering ominously over thestruggling Church of God--that little section of the Holy CatholicChurch, on which the "mother and mistress of all churches" looked downwith such supreme contempt. The waves of persecution were rising highernow than to the level of poor tailors like John Badby, or even ofpriestly graduates like William Sautre.
"Lady, I do you to wit," wrote young Richard, "that as this day, SirJohn Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was put to his trial, and being convinced[convicted], was cast [sentenced]; the beginning and end of whoseoffence is that he is a Lollard confessed, and hath harboured other menof the like opinions. And the said Lord is now close prisoner in theTower of London, nor any of his kin ne lovers [friends] suffered to comeanigh him. And at the Court it is rumoured that Sir William Hankeford(whom your Ladyship shall well remember) should be sent into our partsof South Wales, there to put down both heresy and sedition: whichsedition, methinks, your Ladyship's favour allowing, shall point at SirOwain Glendordy [the name is usually spelt thus in contemporaryrecords]; and the heresy so called, both your Ladyship and I, yourhumble son and servant, do well know what it doth signify. So no moreat this present writing; but praying our Lord that He would have yourLadyship in His good keeping, and that all we may do His good pleasure,I rest."
Twelve days later came another letter, written in a strange hand. Itwas dated from Merton Abbey, in Surrey, was attested by the Abbot'sofficial cross and seal, and contained only a few lines. But neverthroughout her troubled life had any letter so wrung the heart ofConstance Le Despenser. For those few formal lines brought the newsthat never again would her eyes be gladdened by her heart's dearesttreasure--that the Angel of Death had claimed for his own her bright,loving, fair-haired Richard.
No details have been handed down concerning that early and lamenteddeath of the last Lord Le Despenser. We do not even know how the boydied--whether by the visitation of God in sudden illness, or by the fiatof Thomas de Arundel, making the twelfth murder which lay upon thatblack, seared soul. He was buried where he died, in the Abbey ofMerton--far from his home, far from his mother's tears and his father'sgrave. It was always the lot of the hapless buds of the White Rose tobe scattered in death.
There was only one person at Cardiff who did not mourn bitterly for itsyoung Lord. To his sister Isabel, the inheritance to which she nowbecame sole heiress--the change of her title from "Lady Isabel deBeauchamp" to "The Lady Le Despenser"--were amply sufficientcompensation to outweigh the loss of a brother. But little Alianorawept bitterly.
"Ay me! what a break is this in our Lady's line!" lamented Maude toBertram. "God grant it the last, _if_ His will is!"
It was only one funeral of a long procession.
The Issue Roll for Michaelmas, 1413 to 1414, bears two terriblysignificant entries--the expenses for the custody of Katherine Mortimerand her daughters, who were "in the King's keeping"--and the costs ofthe funerals of the same persons, buried in Saint Swithin's Church,London. This was the hapless daughter of Owain Glyndwr, the wife ofEdmund Mortimer, uncle of the Earl of March. A mother and two or moredaughters do not usually require burial together, unless they die ofcontagious disease. Of course that may have been the case; but theentry looks miserably like a judicial murder.
Stirring events followed in rapid succession. Lord Cobham escapedmysteriously from the Tower, and as mysteriously from an armed band sentto apprehend him by Abbot Heyworth of Saint Albans. Old Judge Hankefordmade his anticipated visit to South Wales, and ceremoniously paid hisrespects to the Lady of Cardiff, whose associations with his name werenot of the most agreeable order. With the new year came the unfortunateinsurrection of the political Lollards, goaded to revolt partly by thefierce persecution, partly by a chivalrous desire to restore the belovedKing Ri
chard, whom many of them believed to be still living in Scotland.Wales and its Marches were their head-quarters. Thomas Earl ofArundel--son of a persecutor--was sent to the Principality at the headof an army, to "subdue the rebels;" Sir Roger Acton and Sir JohnBeverley, two of the foremost Lollards of the new generation, were putto death; and strict watch was set in every quarter for Lord Cobham,once more escaped as if by miracle.
And then suddenly came another death--this time by the distinct andawful sentence of God Almighty. He stooped to disconcert for a momentthe puny plans of men who had set themselves in array against the Lordand His Christ. On the chief of all the persecutors, Sir Thomas deArundel himself, the angel of God's vengeance laid his irresistiblehand. Cut off in the blossom of his sin--struck down in a moment byparalysis of the throat, which deprived him of all power of speech orswallowing--the dreaded Archbishop passed to that awful tribunal wherehis earthly eloquence was changed to silence and shame. He died,probably, not unabsolved; they could still lay the consecrated waferupon the silent tongue, and touch with the chrism the furrowed brow andbrilliant eyes: but he must have died unconfessed--a terrible thing tohim, if he really believed himself the doctrines which he spent his lifein forcing upon others.
Arundel was dead; but the infernal generalissimo of the persecutors, whocould not die, was ready with a worthy successor. Henry Chichelestepped into the vacant seat, and the fierce battle against the saintswent on.
The nephew of the deceased Archbishop, Thomas Earl of Arundel, presentedhimself at Cardiff early in the year. He lost no time in delicateinsinuations, but came at once to his point. Was the Lady of Cardiffready to give all possible aid to himself and his troops, against thosetraitors and heretics called Lollards? The answer was equally distinct.With some semblance of the old fire flashing in her eyes, the Lady ofCardiff refused to give him any aid whatever.
The Earl hinted in answer, with a sarcastic smile, that judging by therumours which had reached the Court, he had scarcely expected any otherconduct from her.
"Look ye for what ye will," returned the dauntless Princess. "Never yetfurled I my colours in peace; and I were double craven if I should do itin war!"
Her words were reported to the relentless hearts at Westminster. Theresult was an order to seize all the manors of the Despenser heritage,and to deliver them to Edward Duke of York, the King's dearly belovedcousin, by way of compensation (said the grant) for the loss which hehad sustained by the death of Richard Le Despenser. But thecompensation was estimated at a high figure.
There were some curious contradictory statutes passed this year. Ahundred and ten monasteries were suppressed by order of Council, and atthe same time another order was issued for the extirpation of heresy.But, as usual, "the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church."Wycliffism increased rapidly among the common people. Meanwhile Henrywas preparing for his French campaign; and at Constance the seventeenthGeneral Council of Christendom was just gathering, and John Huss, withthe Emperor's worthless safe-conduct in his pocket, was hasteningtowards his prison--not much larger than a coffin--in the Monastery ofSaint Maurice. The Council ended their labours by burning Huss. Theywould have liked to burn Wycliffe; but as he had been at rest with Godfor over thirty years, they took refuge in the childish revenge ofdisinterring and burning his senseless bones. And "after that, they hadno more that they could do."
The day that heard Huss's sentence pronounced in the white-walledCathedral of Constance, Edward Duke of York--accompanied by a littlegroup of knights and squires, one of whom was Hugh Calverley--walked hisoppressed horse across the draw-bridge at Cardiff. Life had agreed sowell with York that he had become very fat upon it. He had no children,his wife never contradicted him, and he did not keep that troublesomearticle called a conscience; so his sorrows and perplexities were few.On the whole, he had found treachery an excellent investment--for onelife; and York left the consideration of the other to his death-bed. Itmay be that at times, even to this Dives, the voice from Heavenmercifully whispered, "Thou fool!" But he never stayed hischariot-wheels to listen--until one autumn evening, by SouthamptonWater, when the end loomed full in view, the Angel of Death came verynear, and there rose before him, suddenly and awfully, the dreadpossibility of a life which might not close with a death-bed. But itwas yet bright summer when he reached Cardiff; and not yet had come thatdark, solemn August hour, when Edward Duke of York should dictate histrue character as "of all sinners the most wicked."
On this particular summer day at Cardiff, York was, for him, especiallygay and bright. Yet that night in the Cathedral of Constance stood JohnHuss before his judges; and in the Convent of Coimbra an EnglishPrincess [Philippa Queen of Portugal, eldest daughter of John of Gaunt],long ago forgotten in England, yet gentlest and best daughters ofLancaster, lay waiting for death. Somewhere in this troublesome worldthe bridal is always matched by the burial, the festal song by thefuneral dirge. Men and women are always mourning, somewhere.
York's mind was full of one subject, the forthcoming campaign in France.He was to sail from Southampton with his royal master in August.Bedford was to be left Regent, the King's brother--Bedford, who,whatever else he were, was no Lollard, and was not likely to let aLollard escape his fangs. And on this interesting topic York's tongueran on glibly--how King Henry meant to march at once upon Paris,proclaim himself King of France, be crowned at Saint Denis, marry one ofthe French Princesses--which, it did not much signify--and return home aconquering hero, mighty enough to brave even the Emperor himself on anyEuropean battle-plain.
A little lower down the table, Hugh Calverley's mind was also full ofone subject.
"Nay," he whispered earnestly to Bertram: "he is yet hid some whither,--here, in Wales. Men wit not where; and God forbid too many should!"
"Then men be yet a-searching for him?"
"High and low, leaving no stone unturned. God keep His true servantsafe, unto His honour!"
It needs no far-fetched conjecture to divine that they were speaking ofLord Cobham.
"And goest unto these French wars, sweet Hugh?"
"Needs must; my Lord's Grace hath so bidden me."
"But thou wert wont to hold that no Christian man should of right beararms, neither fight."
"Truth; and yet do," said Hugh quietly. This was the view of theextreme Lollards.
"Then how shall thine opinion serve in the thick of fight?"
"As it hath aforetime. I cannot fight."
"But how then?" asked Bertram, opening his eyes.
"I can die, Bertram Lyngern," answered the calm, resolute voice. "Andit may be that I should die as truly for my Master Christ there, as atthe martyr's stake. For sith God's will hath made yonder noble Lord mymaster, and hath set me under him to do his bidding, in all matters notsinful, his will is God's will for me; and I can follow him to yonderbattle-plain with as easy an heart and light as though I went to liedown on my bed to sleep. Not to fight, good friend; not to resist norcontend with any man; only to do God's will. And is that not worthdying for?"
Bertram made no reply. But his memory ran far back to the olden days atLangley--to a scriptorius who had laid down his pen to speak of twolads, both of whom he looked to see great men, but he deemed him thegreater who was not ashamed of his deed. And Bertram's heart whisperedto him that, knight as he was, while Hugh remained only a simple squire,yet now as ever, Hugh was the greater hero. For he knew that it wouldhave cost him a very bitter struggle to accept an unhonoured grave suchas Hugh anticipated, only because he thought it was God's will.
They parted the next morning. Edward's last words to his sister were"Adieu, Custance, I will send thee a fleur-de-lis banner as trophy fromthe fight. The oriflamme [Note 1], if the saints will have it so!"
But Hugh's were--"Farewell, dear friend Bertram. Remember, both thouand I may do God's will!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. The oriflamme was _the_ banner of France, kept in th
e Cathedralof Saint Denis, and held almost sacred.
The White Rose of Langley Page 12
