"Tempt not the Tempter; he is near enough."
Dr Horatius Bonar.
Now can any man tell what it is in folks that causeth other folks to
fancy them? for I have oft-times been sorely pestered to find out.
Truly, if man be very fair, or have full winning ways, and sweet words,
and so forth, then may it be seen without difficulty. I never was
puzzled to know why Sir Roger or any other should have fallen o' love
with Queen Isabel. But what on earth could draw her to him, that
puzzled me sore. He was not young--about ten years elder than she, and
she was now a woman of thirty years. Nor was he over comely, as men
go,--I have seen better-favoured men, and I have seen worser. Nor were
his manners sweet and winning, but the very contrary thereof, for they
were rough and rude even to women, he alway seemed to me the very
incarnation of pride. Men charged Sir Hugh Le Despenser with pride, but
Sir Roger de Mortimer was worse than he tenfold. One of his own sons
called him the King of Folly: and though the charge came ill from his
lips that brought it, yet was it true as truth could be. His pride
showed every where--in his dress, in the way he bore himself, in his
words,--yea, in the very tones of his voice. And his temper was furious
as ever I saw. Verily, he was one of the least lovesome men that I knew
in all my life: yet for him, the fairest lady of that age bewrayed her
own soul, and sold the noblest gentleman to the death. Truly, men and
women be strange gear!
I had written thus far when I laid down my pen, and fell a-meditating,
on the strangeness of such things as folks be and do in this world. And
as I there sat, I was aware of Father Philip in the chamber, that had
come in softly and unheard of me, so lost in thought was I. He smiled
when I looked up on him.
"How goeth the chronicle, my daughter?" saith he.
"Diversely, Father," I made answer. "Some days my pen will run apace,
but on others it laggeth like oxen at plough when the ground is heavy
with rain."
"The ground was full heavy when I entered," saith he, "for the plough
was standing still."
I laughed. "So it was, trow. But I do not think I was idle, Father; I
was but meditating."
"Wise meditations, that be fruitful in good works, be far away from
idlesse," quoth he. "And on what wert thou thinking thus busily, my
daughter?"
"On the strange ways of men and women, Father."
"Did the list include Dame Cicely de Chaucombe?" saith Father Philip,
with one of his quiet smiles.
"No," I made answer. "I had not reached her."
"Or Philip de Edyngdon? Perchance thou hadst not reached him."
"Why, Father, I might never think of sitting in judgment on you. No, I
was thinking of some I had wist long ago: and in especial of Dame Isabel
the Queen, and other that were about her. What is it moveth folks to
love one another, or to hate belike?"
"There be but three things can move thee to aught, my daughter: God,
Satan, and thine own human heart."
"And my conscience?" said I.
"Men do oftentimes set down to conscience," saith he, "that which is
either God or Satan. The enlightened conscience of the righteous man
worketh as God's Holy Spirit move him. The defiled conscience of the
evil man listeneth to the promptings of Satan. And the seared
conscience is as dead, and moveth not at all."
"Father, can a man then kill his conscience?"
"He may lay it asleep for this life, daughter: may so crush it with
weights thereon laid that it is as though it had the sickness of palsy,
and cannot move limb. But I count, when this life is over, it shall
shake off the weight, and wake up, to a life and a torment that shall
never end."
"I marvel if she did," said I, rather to myself than him.
"Daughter," he made answer, "whoso _she_ be, let her be. God saith not
to thee, _He_, and _she_, but _I_, and _thou_. When Christ knocketh at
thy door, if thou open not, shall He take it as tideful answer that thou
wert full busy watching other folks' doors to see if they would open?"
"Yet may we not learn, Father, from other folks' blunders?"
"Hast thou so learned, daughter?"
"Well, not much," said I. "A little, now and then, maybe."
"I never learned much," saith he, "from the blunders of any man save
Philip de Edyngdon. What I learned from other folks' evil deeds was
mostly to despise and be angered with them--not to beware for myself.
And that lore cometh not of God. Thou mayest learn from such things set
down in Holy Writ: but verily it takes God to pen them, so that we may
indeed profit and not scorn,--that we may win and not lose. Be sure
that whenever God puts in thine hand a golden coin of His realm, with
the King's image stamped fair thereon, Satan is near at hand, with a
gold-washed copper counterfeit stamped with his image, and made so like
that thou hast need to look close, to make sure which is the true.
`Hold not all gold that shineth'--a wise saw, my daughter, whether it be
a thing heavenly or earthly."
"I will endeavour myself to profit by your good counsel, Father," said
I. "But mine husband bade me write this chronicle, though, sooth to
say, I had no list thereto. And if I shall leave to deal with he and
she, how then may my chronicle be writ?"
"Write thy chronicle, my daughter," he answered. "But write it as God
hath writ His Chronicles. Set down that which men did, that which thou
sawest and heardest. Beware only of digging into men's purposes where
thou knewest them not, and sawest but the half thereof. And it is
rarely possible for men to see the whole of that which passeth in their
own day. Beware of setting down a man as all evil for one evil thing
thou mayest see him to do. We see them we live amongst something too
close to judge them truly. And beware, most of all, of imagining that
thou canst get behind God's purposes, and lay bare all His reasons.
Verily, the wisest saint on earth cannot reach to the thousandth part
thereof. God can be fully understood, only of God."
I have set down these wise words of good Father Philip, for though they
be too high and wide for mine understanding, maybe some that shall read
my chronicle may have better brains than she that writ.
So now once again to my chronicling, and let me endeavour to do the same
as Father Philip bade me.
It was on the eve of Saint Michael, 1325, that the Queen and her meynie
(I being of them) reached Paris. We were ferried over the Seine to the
gate of Nully [Note 1], and thence we clattered over the stones to the
Hotel de Saint Pol [Note 2], where the Queen was lodged in the
easternmost tower, next to our Lady Church, and we her meynie above.
Dame Isabel de Lapyoun and I were appointed to lie in the pallet by
turns. The Queen's bedchamber was hung with red sindon, broidered in
the border with golden swans, and her cabinet with blue say, powdered
with lily-flowers in gold, which is the arms of France, as every man
knoweth, seeing they are borne by our King that now is, in right of this
same Queen Isabel his mother. He, that was then my Lord of Chester, was
also of the cortege, having sailed from Dover two days before Holy Cross
[Note 3], and joined the Queen in Guienne; but the Queen went over in
March, and was all that time in Guienne.
Dear heart! but Jack--which loveth to be square and precise in his
matters--should say this were strange fashion wherein to write
chronicles, to date first September and then the March afore it! I had
better go back a bit.
It was, then, the 9th of March the Queen crossed from Dover to Whitsand,
which the French call Guissant. She dwelt first, as I said, in Guienne,
for all that summer; very quiet and peaceful were we, letters going to
and fro betwixt our Queen and her lord, and likewise betwixt her and the
King of France; but no visitors (without there were one that evening
Dame Isabel lay in the pallet in my stead, and was so late up, and
passed by the antechamber door with her shoes in her hands, as little
Meliora the sub-damsel would have it she saw by the keyhole): and we
might nearhand as well have been in nunnery for all the folks we saw
that were not of the house. Verily, I grew sick irked [wearied,
distressed] of the calm, that was like a dead calm at sea, when ships
lie to, and can win neither forward nor backward. Ah, foolish Cicely!
thou hadst better have given thanks for the last peace thou wert to see
for many a year.
Well, my Lord of Chester come, which was the week after Holy Cross, we
set forth with few days' delay, and came to Paris, as I said, the eve of
Michaelmas. Marvellous weary was I with riding, for I rade of an horse
the whole way, and not, as Dame Isabel did, with the Queen in her char.
I was so ill tired that I could but eat a two-three wafers [Note 4], and
drink a cup of wine, and then hied I to my bed, which, I thank the
saints, was not the pallet that night.
The King and Queen of France were then at Compiegne, King Charles having
been wed that same summer to his third wife, Dame Jeanne of Evreux: and
a good woman I do believe was she, for all (as I said aforetime) there
be but few. But I do think, and ever shall, that three wives be more
than any man's share. The next morrow, they came in from Compiegne, to
spend Michaelmas in Paris: and then was enough noise and merriment.
First, mass in our Lady Church, whereto both Dame Isabel and I waited on
the Queen; and by the same token, she was donned of one of the fairest
robes that ever she bare, which was of velvet blue of Malyns [Malines],
broidered with apple-blossom and with diapering of gold. It did not
become her, by reason of her dark complexion, so well as it should have
done S--
"Hold! Man spelleth not Cicely with an S."
"Jack, if thou start me like this any more, then will I turn the key in
the lock when I sit down to write," cried I, for verily mine heart was
going pitter-patter to come up in my throat, and out at my mouth, for
aught I know. "Thou irksome man, I went about to write `some folks,'
not `Cicely.'"
"But wherefore?" saith Jack, looking innocent as a year-old babe. "When
it meaneth Cicely, then would I put Cicely."
"But I meant _not_ Cicely, man o' life, bless thee!"
"I thank thee for thy blessing, Sissot; and I will fain hope thou didst
mean that any way. I will go bail thy pen meant not Cicely, good wife;
but if it were not in thine heart that Sissot's fair hair, and rose-red
complexion, and grey eyes, should have gone better with that blue velvet
gown than Queen Isabel's dusky hair and brown eyes, then do I know
little of man or woman. And I dare be bound it would, belike."
And Jack lifteth his hat to me right courteously, and is gone afore I
well know whether to laugh or to be angered. So I ween I had better
laugh.
Where was I, trow? Oh, at mass in our Lady Church of Paris, where that
day was a miracle done on two that were possessed of the Devil, whose
names were Geoffrey Boder and Jeanne La Petite; and the girdle of Saint
Mary being shown on the high altar, they were allowed to touch the same,
whereon they were healed straightway. And the Queen, with her own
hands, gave them alms, a crown; and her oblation to the image of Saint
Mary in the said church, being a festival, was a crown (her daily
oblation being seven-pence the day); and to the said holy girdle a
crown, and to the holy relics, yet another. Then came we home by the
water of Seyne, for which the boatman had twelve pence. [Note 5.]
We dwelt after this full peacefully at Paris for divers weeks, saving
that we made short journeys to towns in the neighbourhood; as, one day
to the house of the Sisters Predicants of Poissy, and another to God's
House of Loure [Note 6], and another to Villers, where tarried the Queen
of France, and so forth. And some days spent we likewise at Reyns and
Sessouns. [Note 7.]
At Paris she had her robes made, of purple and colour of Malbryn, for
the feast of All Saints, and they were furred with miniver and beasts
ermines. And to me Cicely was delivered, to make my robe for the same,
three ells rayed [striped] cloth and a lamb fur, and an hood of budge.
The Queen spent nigh an whole day at Sessouns, and another at Reyns, in
visiting the churches; and the last can I well remember, by reason of
that which came after. First, we went to the church of Saint Nicholas,
where she offered a cloth of Turk, price forty shillings; and to Saint
Remy she gave another, price forty-five shillings; and to the high altar
of the Cathedral one something better. And to the ampulla [Note 7] and
shrine of Saint Remy a crown, and likewise a crown to the holy relics
there kept. Then to the Friars Minors, where at the high altar she
offered a cloth of Lucca bought in the town, price three and an half
marks [Note 8]. And (which I had nearhand forgot) to the head of Saint
Nicasius in the Cathedral, a crown.
The last night ere we left Sessouns, I remember, as I came into the
Queen's lodging from vespers in the Cathedral,--Jack, that went with me,
having tarried at the potter's to see wherefore he sent not home three
dozen glasses for the Queen's table (and by the same token, the knave
asked fifteen pence for the same when they did come, which is a price to
make the hair stand on end)--well, as I said, I was a-coming in, when I
met one coming forth that at first sight I wist not. And yet, when I
meditated, I did know him, but I could not tell his name. He had taken
no note of me, save to hap his mantle somewhat closer about his face, as
though he cared not to be known--or it might be only that he felt the
cold, for it was sharp for the time of year. Up went I into the Queen's
lodging, which was then in the house of one John de Gyse, that was an
honester man than Master Bolard, with whom she lodged at Burgette, for
that last charged her three shillings and seven-pence for a worser
lodging than Master Gyse gave her for two shillings.