"O little feet, that, such long years,
Must wander on through hopes and fears,
Must ache and bleed beneath your load:
I, nearer to the wayside inn
Where toil shall cease and rest begin,
Am weary, thinking of your road."
Longfellow.
Hereby I promise, and I truly mean to execute it, to give my new green
silk cloth of gold piece, bordered with heads of griffins in golden
broidery, to the Abbey of Saint Austin at Canterbury, if any that
liveth, man or woman, will tell me certainly how evil came into this
world. I want to know why Eva plucked that apple. She must have
plucked it herself, for the serpent could not give it her, having no
hands. And if man--or woman--will go a step further, and tell me why
Adam ate another, he shall have my India-coloured silk, broidered with
golden lions and vultures, whereof I had meant to make me a new gown for
this next Michaelmas feast. It doth seem as if none but a very idiot
could have let in evil and sin and sorrow and pain all over this world,
for the sake of a sweet apple. It must have been sweet, I should think,
because it grew in Eden. But was there never another in all the garden
save only on that tree? Or did man not know what would happen? or was
it that man would not think? That is the way sometimes with some folks,
else that heedless Nichola had not broken my favourite comb.
The question has been in my head many a score of times; but it came just
now because my Lady, my lord's mother, was earnest with me to write in a
book what I could remember of mine early days, when my Lady mine own
mother was carried to Skipton and Pomfret. If those were not evil days,
I know not how to spell the word. And I am very sure it was evil men
that made them; and evil women. I believe bad woman is far worse than
bad man. So saith the Lady Julian, my lord's mother; and being herself
woman, and having been thrice wed, she should know somewhat of women and
men too. Ay, and I were ill daughter if I writ not down also that a
good woman is one of God's blessedest gifts to this evil world; for such
is mine own mother, the Lady Joan de Geneville, that was sometime wife
unto the Lord Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, whose name men of this day
know but too well.
Well-a-day! if a thing is to be, it is best over. It is never any good
to sit on the brink shivering before man plunge in. So, if I must needs
write, be it done. Here is a dozen of parchment, and a full inkhorn,
and grey goose-quills: and I need nothing else save brains; whereof, I
thank the saints, I have enough and to spare. And indeed, it is as well
I should, for in this world--I say not, in this house--there be folks
who have none too many. But I reckon, before I begin my tale, I had
best say who and what I am, else shall those who read my book be like
men that walk in a mist, which is not pleasant, as I found this last
summer, when for a time I lost my company--and thereby, myself--on the
top of a Welsh mountain.
I, then, who write, am Agnes de Hastings, Countess of Pembroke and Lady
of Leybourne: and I am wife unto the Lord Lawrence de Hastings, Earl and
Baron of the same. My father and mother I have already named, but I may
say further that my said mother is a Princess born, being of that great
House of Joinville in France--which men call Geneville in England--that
are nobles of the foremost rank in that country. These my parents had
twelve children, of whom I stand right in the midst, being the seventh.
My brother Edmund was the eldest of us; then came Margaret, Joan, Roger,
Geoffrey, Isabel, and Katherine; then stand I Agnes, and after me are
Maud, John, Blanche, and Beatrice [Note 1]. And of them, Edmund and
Margaret have been commanded to God. He died young, my poor brother
Edmund, for he set his heart on being restored to the name and lands
which our father had forfeited, and our Lord the King thought not good
to grant it; so his heart broke, and he died. Poor soul! I would not
say an unkind word over his grave; where the treasure is, there will the
heart be; but I would rather set my heart on worthier treasure, and I
think I should scarce be so weak as to die for the loss. God assoil
him, poor soul!
I was born in the Castle of Ludlow, on the morrow of the Translation of
Saint Thomas, in the year of King Edward of Caernarvon the eleventh
[Note 2], so that I am now thirty years of age. I am somewhat elder
than my lord, who was born at Allesley, by Coventry town, on Saint
Cuthbert's Day, in the fourteenth year of the same [March 20th, 1321].
I might say I was wiser, and not look forward to much penance for lying;
for I should be more likely to have it set me if I said that all the
wits in this world were in his head. Howbeit, there is many a worse man
than he: a valiant knight, and courteous, and of rarely gentle and
gracious ways; and maybe, if he were wiser, he would give me more
trouble to rule him, which is easy enough to do. Neverthelatter, there
be times when it should do me ease to take him by the shoulders and give
him an hearty shake, if I could thereby shake a bit more sense into him:
and there be times when it comes over me that he might have been better
matched, as our sometime Lord King Edward meant him to have been, with
the Lady Alianora La Despenser, that Queen Isabel packed off to a
nunnery in hot haste when she came in. Poor soul! He certainly is not
matched with me, unless two horses be matched whereof one is black and
of sixteen handfuls, and steppeth like a prince, and the other is white,
and of twelve handfuls, and ambles of a jog-trot. I would he had a bit
more stir in him. Not that he lacks knightly courage--never a whit;
carry him into battle, and he shall quit him like a man; but when all is
said, he is fitter for the cloister, for he loveth better to sit at home
with Joan of his knee, and a great clerkly book afore him wherein he
will read by the hour, which is full well for a priest, but not for a
noble of the King's Court. He never gave me an ill word (veriliest
[truly], I marvel if ever he said `I won't!' in all his life), yet, for
all his hendihood [courtesy, sweetness], will he have his own way by
times, I can never make out how. But he is a good man on the whole, and
doth pretty well as he is bid, and I might change for a worse without
taking a long journey. So, take it all in all, there are many women
have more to trouble them than I, the blessed saints be thanked, and our
sweetest Lady Saint Mary and my patron Saint Agnes in especial. Only I
do hope Jack shall have more wit than his father, and I shall think the
fairies have changed him if he have not. _My_ son should not be short
of brains.
But now, to have back, and begin my story: for I reckon I shall never
make an end if I am thus lone: in coming to the beginning.
We were all brought up in the Castle of Ludlow, going now and then to
sweeten [to have the house thoroughly cleaned] to the Castle of Wigmore.
Of course, while we were little children, we knew scarce any thing of
our parents, as beseemed persons of our rank. The people whom I verily
knew were Dame Hilda our mistress [governess], and Maud and Ellen our
damsels, and Master Terrico our Chamberlain, and Robert atte Wardrobe,
our wardrobe-keeper, and Sir Philip the clerk (I cry him mercy, he
should have had place of Robert), and Stephen the usher of the chamber,
and our four nurses, whose names were Emelina, Thomasia, Joan, and
Margery, and little Blaise the page. They were my world. But into this
world, every now and then, came a sweet, fair presence--a vision of a
gracious lady in velvet robes, whose hand I knelt to kiss, and who used
to lay it on my head and bless me: and at times she would take up one of
us in her arms, and sit down with the babe on her velvet lap, and a look
would come into her eyes which I never saw in Dame Hilda's; and she
would bend her fair head and kiss the babe as if she loved her very
much. But that was mostly while we were babies. I cannot recollect her
doing that to me--it was chiefly to Blanche and Beatrice. Until one
day, and then--
Nay, I have not come to that yet. And then, at times, we should hear a
voice below--a stern, deep voice, or a peal of loud laughter--and in an
instant the light and the joy would die out of the tender eyes of that
gracious vision, and instead would come a frightened look like that of a
hunted hare, and commonly she would rise suddenly, and put down the
babe, and hasten away, as if she had been indulging in some forbidden
pleasure, and was afraid of being caught. I can remember wishing that
the loud laugh and the stern angry voice would go away, and never come
back, but that the gracious vision would stay always with us, and not
only pay us a rare visit. Ay, and I can remember wishing that she would
take _me_ on that velvet lap, and let me nestle into her soft arms, and
dare to lay my little head on her warm bosom. I think she would have
done it, if she had known! I used to feel in those days like a little
chicken hardly feathered, and longed to be under the soft brooding wings
of the hen. The memory of it hath caused me to pet my Jack and Joan a
deal more than I should without it.
Then, sometimes, we had a visit from a very different sort of guest.
That was an old lady--about a hundred and fifty, I used to fancy her--
dressed in velvet full as costly, but how differently she wore it! She
never took us on her lap--not she, indeed! We used to have to kneel and
kiss her hand--and Roger whispered to me once that if he dared, he would
bite it. This horrid old thing (who called herself our grandmother)
used to be like a storm blowing through the house. She never was two
minutes in the room before she began to scold somebody; and if she could
not find reasonable fault with any body, that seemed to vex her more
than anything else. Then she scolded us all in a lump together. "Dame
Hilda, what an untidy chamber!"--she usually began in that way--"why
don't you make these children put their playthings tidy? (Of course
Dame Hilda did, at the end of the day; but how could we have playthings
tidy while we were playing with them?) Meg, your hair is no better than
a mop! Jack, how got you that rent in your sleeve? (I never knew Jack
without a rent in some part of his clothes; I should not have thought it
was Jack if he had come in whole garments.) Joan, how ungainly you sit!
pluck yourself up this minute. Nym, take your elbows off the table.
Maud, your chaucers [slippers] are down at heel. How dirty your hands
are, Roger! go and wash them. Agnes, that wimple of yours is all awry;
who pinned it up?"
So she went on--rattle and scold, scold and rattle--as long as she
stayed in the room. Jack, always the saucy one, asked her one day, when
he was very little--
"Are you really Grandmother?"
"Certes, child," said she, turning to look at him: "why?"
"Because I wish you were somebody else!"
_Ha, chetife_! did Jack forget that afternoon? I trow not.
I had a sound whipping once myself from Dame Hilda, because I said,
right out, that I hated the Lady Margaret: and Joan,--poor delicate
Joan, who was perpetually scolded for stooping--looked at me as if she
wished she dared say it too. Roger had his ears boxed because he
drawled out, "Amen!" I think we all said Amen in our hearts.
Sometimes the Lady Margaret did not come upstairs, but sent for some of
us down to her. That was worse than ever. There were generally a
number of gentlemen there, who seemed to think that children were only
made to be teased: and some of them I disliked, and others I despised.
Only of one I was terribly afraid: and that was--mercy, Jesu!--mine own
father.
I should have found it difficult to say what it was in him that
frightened me. I used to call it fear then; but when I look back on the
feeling from my present state, I think it was rather a kind of
ungovernable antipathy. He did not scold us all round as Lady Margaret
did. The worst thing, I think, that I remember his saying to me was a
sharp--"Get out of the way, girl!" And I wished I only could get out of
his way, for ever and ever. Something made me feel as if I could not
bear to be in the same room with him. I used to shiver all over, if I
only heard his voice. Yet he never ill-used any of us; he scarcely even
looked at us. It was not any thing he did which made me feel so; it was
just himself.
Surely never did man dress more superbly than he. I recollect thinking
that the King was not half so fine; yet King Edward liked velvet and
gold as well as most men. My Lord my father never wore worsted summer
tunics or woollen winter cloaks, like others. Silk, velvet, samite, and
cloth of gold, were his meanest wear; and his furs were budge, ermine,
miniver, and gris. I can remember hearing how once, when the furrier
sent him in a robe of velvet guarded with hare's fur, he flung it on one
side in a fury, and ordered the poor man to be beaten cruelly. He
always wore much golden broidery, and buttons of gems or solid gold; and
he never would wear a suit of any man's livery--not even the King's,--
save once, when he wore the Earl of Chester's at the coronation of the
Queen of France, just to vex King Edward--as it sorely did, for he was
then a proscribed fugitive, who had no right to use it.
It is a hard matter when a child is frightened of its own father. It is
yet harder when he makes it hate him. Ah, it is easy to say, That was
wicked of thee. So it was: and I know it. But doth not sin lead to
sin?--spring out of it, like branches from a stem, like leaves from a
branch? And when one man's act of sin creates sin in another man, and
that again in a third, whose is the sin--the black root, whereof came
the rotten branches and the withered leaves? Are we not all our
brothers' and our sisters' keepers? Well, it will not answer to pursue
that road: for I know well I should trace up the sin too high, to one of
whom it were not meet for me to speak in the same breath with ugly
words. Ay me! what poor weak things we mortal creatures are! Little
marvel, little marvel for the woe that was wrought!--so fair, so fair
she was! She had the soul of a fiend with the face of an angel. Was it
any wonder that men--ay, and some women--were beguiled with that angel
face, and fancied but too rashly that the soul must be as sweet as it?
God have mercy on all Christian souls! Verily, I myself, only this last
spring-time, was ready to yield to the witch's spell--never was woman
such enchantress as she!--and athwart all the past, despite all I knew,
gazing on that face, even yet fairer than the faces of younger women, to
think it possible that all the tales were false, and all the past a
vision of the night, and that the lovely face and the sweet, soft voice
covered a soul white as the saints in Heaven! And men are easier
deluded by such dreams than women--or at least I think it. My poor
father! If only he had never seen her that haled him to his undoing! he
might, perchance, have been a better man. Any way, he paid the bill in
his heart's blood. So here I leave him. God forgive us all!
And now to my story. While I was but a little child, we saw little of
our mother: little more, indeed, than we did of our father. I think, of
the two, we oftener saw our grandmother. And little children, as God
hath wisely ordered it, live in the present moment, and take no note of
things around them which men and women see with half an eye. Now,
looking back, I can recall events which then passed by me as of no
import. It was so, and there was an end of it. But I can see now why
it was so: and I know enough to guess the often sorrowful nature of that
wherefore.
So it was nothing to us children, unless it were a relief, that after I
was about four years old, we missed our father almost entirely. We
never knew why he tarried away for months at a time. We had not a
notion that he was first in the prison of the Tower, and afterwards a
refugee over seas. And we saw without seeing that our mother grew thin
and white, and her sweet eyes were heavy with tears which we never saw
her shed. All we perceived was that she came oftener to the nursery,
and stayed longer with us, and petted the babies more than had been her
wont. And that such matters had a meaning,--a deep, sad, terrible
meaning--never entered our heads. Later on we knew that during those
lonely years her heart was being crucified, and crucifixion is a dying
that lasts long. But she never let us know it. I think she would not
damp our fresh childish glee by even the spray of that roaring cataract
wherein her life was overwhelmed. Mothers--such mothers as she--are
like a reflection of God.
I remember well, though I was but just seven years old, the night when
news came to Ludlow Castle that my father had escaped from the Tower.
It was a very hot night in August--too hot to sleep--and I lay awake,
chattering to Kate and Isabel, who were my bedfellows, about some grand
play we meant to have the next afternoon, in the great gallery--when all
at once we heard a horse come dashing up to the portcullis, past our
chamber wall, and a horn crying out into the night.
Isabel sat up in bed, and listened.
"Is it my Lord coming home?" I said.
"What, all alone, with no company?" answered Isabel, who is four years
elder than I. "Silly child! It is some news for my Lady my mother.
The saints grant it be good!"
Of course we could hear nothing of what passed at the portcullis, as our
window opened on the base court. But in a few minutes we heard the
horse come trotting into our court, and the rider 'lighted down: and
Isabel, who lay with her head next the casement, sat up again and put
her head out of the curtain. It was a beautiful moonlight night, almost
as bright as day.
"What is it, Ibbot?" said Kate.
"It is a man in livery," answered Isabel; "but whose livery I know not.
It is not ours."
Then we heard the man call to the porter, and the door open, and the
sound of muffled voices to and fro for a minute; and then Master Inge's
step, which we knew--he was then castellan--coming in great haste past
our door as if he were going to my Lady's chamber. Then the door of the
large nursery opened, and we heard Dame Hilda within, saying to Tamzine,
"Thou wert better run and see." And Tamzine went quickly along the
gallery, as if she, too, were going to my Lady.
For a long, long time, as it seemed to us--I dare say it was not many
minutes--we lay and listened in vain. At length Tamzine came back.
"Good tidings, or bad?" we heard Dame Hilda ask.
"The saints wot!" whispered Tamzine. "My Lord is 'scaped from the
Tower."
"_Ha, chetife_! will he come here?" said Dame Hilda: and we saw that it
was bad news in her eyes.
"Forsooth, nay!" replied Tamzine. "There be hues and cries all over for
him, but man saith he is fled beyond seas."
"Amen!" ejaculated Dame Hilda. "He may win to Cathay [China] by my good
will; and if he turn not again till mine hair be white, then will I give
my patron saint a measure in wax. But what saith my Lady?"
"Her I saw not," answered Tamzine; "but Mistress Robergia, who told me,
said she went white and red both at once, and her breast heaved as
though her very heart should come forth."
"Gramercy!" said Dame Hilda. "How some folks do set their best pearls
in copper!"
"Eh, our Lady love us!" responded Tamzine. "That's been ever sith world
began to run, Dame, I can tell you."
"I lack no telling, lass," was Dame Hilda's answer. "Never was there
finer pearl set in poorer ore than that thou and I wot of."
I remember that bit of talk because I puzzled myself sorely as to what
Dame Hilda could mean. Kate was puzzled, too, for she said to Isabel--
"What means the Dame? I never saw my Lady wear a pearl set in copper."
"Oh, let be!" said Isabel. "'Tis but one of the Dame's strange sayings.
She is full of fantasies."
But whether Isabel were herself perplexed, or whether she understood,
and thought it better to shut our mouths, that cannot I tell to this
day.
Well, after that things were quiet again for a while: a very long while,
it seemed to me. I believe it was really about six months. During that
time, we saw much more of our mother than we used to do; she would come
often into the nursery, and take one of the little ones on her lap--it
was oftenest Blanche--and sit there with her. Sometimes she would talk
with Dame Hilda; but more frequently she was silent and sad, at times
looking long from the casement as if she saw somewhat that none other
eyes could see. Jack said one day--
"Whither go Mother's eyes when she looks out of the window?"
"For shame, Damsel [Note 3] John!" cried Dame Hilda. "`Mother,' indeed!
Only common children use such a word. Say `my Lady' if you please."
"She is my mother, isn't she?" said Jack stubbornly. "Why shouldn't I
call her so, I should like to know? But you haven't answered me, Dame."
"I know not what you mean, Damsel."
"Why, when she sits down in that chair, and takes Blanchette on her
knee,--her eyes go running out of the window first thing. Whither wend
they?"
"Children like you cannot understand," replied Dame Hilda, with one of
those superior smiles which used to make me feel so very naughty. It
seemed to say, "My poor, little, despicable insect, how could you dream
of supposing that your intellect was even with Mine?" (There, I have
writ that a capital M in red ink. To have answered to Dame Hilda's tone
when she put that smile on, it should have been in vermilion and gold
leaf.) Howbeit, Jack never cared for all the airs she put on.
"Then why don't you make us understand it?" said he.
I do not remember what Dame Hilda said to that, but I dare say she boxed
Jack's ears.
Deary me, how ill doth my tale get forward! Little things keep a-coming
to my mind, and I turn aside after them, like a second deer crossing the
path of the first. That shall never serve; I must keep to my quarry.
All this time our mother grew thinner and whiter. Poor soul, she loved
him well!--but so sure as the towel of the blessed Nicodemus is in the
sacristy of our Lady at Warwick, cannot I tell for why. Very certain am
I that he never gave her any reason.
We reckoned those six months dreary work. There were no banquets in
hall, nor shows came to the Castle, nor even so much as a pedlar, that
we children saw; only the same every-day round, and tired enough we were
of it. All the music we ever heard was in our lessons from Piers le
Sautreour; and if ever child loved her music lessons, her name was not
Agnes de Mortimer. All the laughter that was amongst us we made
ourselves; and all the shows were when Jack chose to tumble somersaults,
or Maud twisted some cold lace round her head, and said, "Now I am Queen
Isabel." Dreary work, in good sooth! yet was it a very Michaelmas show
and an Easter Day choir to that which lay ahead.
And then, one night,--ah, what a night that was! It was near our
bed-time, and Jack, Kate, and I, were playing on the landing and up and
down the staircase of our tower. I remember, Jack was the stag, and
Kate and I were the hunters; and rarely did Jack throw up his head, to
show off his branching horns--which were divers twigs tied on his head
by a lace of Dame Hilda's, for the use whereof Jack paid a pretty penny
when she knew it. Kate had just made a grab at him, and should have
caught him, had his tunic held, but it gave way, and all she won was an
handful of worsted and a slip of the step that grazed her shins; and she
was rubbing of her leg and crying "Lack-a-day!" and Jack above, well out
of reach, was making mowes [grimaces] at us--when all at once an horn
rang loud through the Castle, and man on little ambling nag came into
the court-yard. Kate forgat her leg, and Jack his mowes, and all we,
stag and hunters alike, ran to the gallery window for to gaze.
I know not how long we should have tarried at the window, had not
Emelina come and swept us afore her into the nursery, with an
impatient--"Deary me! here be these children for ever in the way!"
And Jack cries, "You always say we are in the way; but mustn't we be any
where?"
Whereto she makes answer--"Go and get you tucked into bed; that's the
only safe place for the like of you!"
Jack loudly resented being sent to bed before the proper time, whereupon
he and Emelina had a fight (as they had most nights), and Kate and I ran
into the nursery to get out of the way. Here was Margery, turning down
the beds, but Dame Hilda we saw not till, an half-hour after, as we were
doffing us for bed, she came, with her important face which she was wont
to wear when some eventful thing had befallen her or us.
"Are the damsels abed, Emelina?" saith she.
"The babes be, Dame; and the elders be a-doffing them."
Dame Hilda came forward into the night nursery.
"Hold you there, young ladies!" saith she: "at the least, I would say my
three elder young ladies--Dame Margaret, Dame Joan, and Dame Isabel.
Pray you, don you once more, but of your warmest gear, for a journey by
night."
"Are we not to go to bed?" asked Joan in surprise: but our three sisters
donned themselves anew, as Dame Hilda had said, of their warmest gear.
Dame Hilda spake not word till they were all ready. Then Meg saith--
"Whither be we bound, Dame?--and with whom?"
"With my Lady, Dame Margaret, to Southampton."