"I love but one, and only one,--
O Damon, thou art he;
Love thou but one, and only one,
And let that one be me."
[Note 1.]
The pedlar, Abraham, declined to remain at the Castle. There were
plenty of places, he said, where an old man could be safe: it was quite
another thing for a young girl. If his gracious Lady would of her
bounty give his bird shelter until the riot and its consequences were
over, and every thing peaceable again, Abraham would come and fetch her
as soon as he deemed it thoroughly prudent. Meanwhile, Belasez could
work for the Lady. The Countess was only too pleased to procure such
incomparable embroidery on such easy terms. She set Belasez to work on
the border of an armilaus, intended as a present for the new Queen: for
the hitherto unmarriageable King had at last found a Princess to accept
him. She was the second daughter of a penniless Provencal Count; but
she was a great beauty, though an extremely young girl; and her eldest
sister was Queen of France. She proved a costly bargain. Free from all
visible vices except two, which, unfortunately, were two cultivated by
Henry himself--unscrupulous acquisition and reckless extravagance--she
nevertheless contrived to do terrible mischief, by giving her husband no
advice in general, and bad advice whenever she gave it in particular.
His ivy-like nature wanted a strong buttress upon which to lean; and
Eleonore of Provence was neither stronger nor more stable than himself.
Her one idea of life was to enjoy herself to the utmost. When she
wanted a new dress, she had not the slightest notion of waiting till she
had money to pay for it. What were the people of England in her eyes,
but machines for making it--things to be taxed--a vast and inexhaustible
treasury, of which you did but turn the handle, and coins came showering
out?
So the tax-gatherers went grinding on, and the land cried to God, and
the Court heard no sound. The man who was to be God's avenger upon them
was an obscure foreigner as yet. And the English noble who above all
others was to aid him in that vengeance, was still only a fair-haired
youth of fifteen, whose thoughts were busy with a very different
subject. But out of the one, the other was to grow, watered by tears
and blood.
He was standing--young Richard de Clare--in one of the recessed windows
of the great hall, with Margaret beside him. They were talking in very
low tones. Richard's manner was pleading and earnest, while Margaret's
eyes were cast down, and she was diligently winding round her finger a
shred of green sewing-silk, as though her most important concern were to
make it go round a certain number of times.
It was the old story, so many times repeated in this world, sometimes to
flow smoothly on like waters to their haven, sometimes to end in stormy
wreckage and bitter disappointment.
They were very young lovers. We should term them mere boy and girl, and
count them unfit to consider the matter at all. But in the thirteenth
century, when circumstances forced men and women early to the front, and
sixty years was considered ripe old age, fifteen was equivalent at least
to twenty now.
In this instance, the course of true love--for it was on both sides very
true--seemed likely to be smooth enough. The King had granted the
marriage of Richard to Earl Hubert; and, as was then well understood,
the person to whom he would most probably marry his ward was his own
daughter. The only irregular item of the matter was that the pair
should fall in love, or should broach the subject at all to each other.
But human hearts are unaccountable articles; and even in those days,
when matrimony was an affair of rule and compasses, those irregular
things did occasionally conduct themselves in a very irregular manner,
leading young people to fall in love (and sometimes to run away) with
the wrong person, but happily and occasionally, as in this instance,
with the right one.
Half an hour later, Margaret was kneeling on a velvet cushion at the
feet of the Countess, who was (with secret delight) receiving auricular
confession concerning the very point on which she had set her heart.
This mother and daughter were great friends,--a state of things too
infrequent at any time, and particularly so in the Middle Ages.
Margaret, the only one of her mother, was an unusually cherished and
petted child. The result was that she had no fear of the Countess, and
looked upon her as her natural confidante. Perhaps, if more daughters
would do so, there might be fewer unhappy marriages. At the same time
it must be admitted, that some mothers by no means invite confidence.
The Countess of Kent, sweet as she was, had one great failing,--a fault
often to be found in very gentle and amiable natures. She was not
sufficiently straightforward. Instead of honestly telling people what
she wanted them to do, she liked to manage them into it; and this
managing involved at most times more or less dissimulation. She dearly
loved to conduct her affairs by a series of little secrets. This is a
temperament which usually rests on a mixture of affection and want of
courage. We cannot bear to grieve those whom we love, and we shrink
from calling down their anger on ourselves, or even from risking their
disapprobation of our conduct, past or proposed. Now, it had been for
some years the dearest wish of the Countess's heart that her Margaret
should marry Richard de Clare. But she never whispered her desire to
any one,--least of all to her husband, with whom, humanly speaking, it
lay mainly to promote or defeat it. And now, when Margaret's blushing
confession was whispered to her, the Countess privately congratulated
herself on her excellent management, and thought how much better it was
to pull unseen strings than to blaze one's wishes abroad.
"And, Lady, will you of your grace plead for us with my Lord and
father?" said Margaret in a coaxing tone at last.
"Oh, leave it all to me," replied her mother. "I will manage him into
it. Never tell a man anything, my dove, if thou wouldst have him do it.
Men are such obstinate, perverse creatures, that as often as not they
will just go the other way out of sheer wilfulness. Thou must always
contrive to manage them into it."
Margaret, who had inherited her father's honesty with her mother's
amiability, was rather puzzled by this counsel.
"But how do you manage them?" said she.
"There is an art in that, my dear. It takes brains. Different men
require very different kinds of management. Now thy father is one who
will generally consent to a thing when it is done, though he would not
if it were suggested to him at first. He rather likes his own way;
still, he is very good when he is well managed,"--for instance after
instance came floating back to the wife's mind, in which he had against
his own judgment given way to her. "So that is the way to manage him.
Now our Lord King Henry requires entirely different handling."
That was true enough. While Earl Hubert always had a will of his own,
and knew what it was (though he did not always get it), King Henry had
no will, and never knew what it was until somebody else told him.
"I am afraid, Lady, I don't understand the management of men," said
Margaret, with a little laugh and blush.
"Thou wilt learn in time, my dear. Thou art rather too fond of saying
all thou meanest. That is not wise--for a woman. Of course a man ought
to tell his wife every thing. But there is no need for a wife always to
be chattering to her husband: she must have her little secrets, and he
ought to respect them. Now, as to Sir Richard, I can see as well as
possible the kind of management he will require; thou must quietly
suggest ideas to him, gently and diffidently, as if thou wert desirous
of his opinion: but whenever he takes them up, mind and always let him
think he is getting his own way. He has a strong will, against which a
foolish woman would just run full tilt, and spoil every thing. A wise
one will quietly get her own way, and let him fancy he has got his.
That is thy work, Magot."
Margaret shook her bright head with a laugh. Such work as that was not
at all in her line.
It took only a day for the girls to discover that the Belasez who had
come back to them in October was not the Belasez who had gone away from
them at Whitsuntide. She seemed almost a different being. Quite as
amiable, as patient, as refined, as before, there was something about
her which they instantly perceived, but to which they found it hard to
give a name. It was not exactly any one thing. It was not sadness, for
at times she seemed more bright and lively than they remembered her of
old: it was not ill-temper, for her patience was proof against any
amount of teasing. But her moods were far more variable than they used
to be. A short time after she had been playing with little Marie, all
smiles and sunshine, they would see tears rush to her eyes, which she
seemed anxious to conceal. And at times there was an expression of
distress and perplexity in her face, evidently not caused by any
intricacy in the pattern she was working.
Indirect questions produced none but evasive answers. Each of the girls
had her own idea as to the solution of the enigma. Margaret, very
naturally, pronounced Belasez in love. Eva, one of whose sisters had
been recently ill, thought she was anxious about her brother. Marie
suggested that too much damson tart might be a satisfactory
explanation,--that having been the state of things with herself a few
days before. Hawise, who governed her life by a pair of moral
compasses, was of opinion that Belasez thought it proper to look
sorrowful in her circumstances, and therefore did so except in an
emergency. Doucebelle alone was silent: but her private thought was
that no one of the four had come near the truth.
When Belasez had been about a week at the Castle, one afternoon she and
Doucebelle were working alone in the wardrobe. The Countess and
Margaret were away for the day, on a visit to the Abbess of Thetford;
Eva and Marie were out on the leads; Hawise was busy in her own
apartments. Belasez had been unusually silent that morning. She worked
on in a hurried, nervous way, never speaking nor looking up, and a
lovely arabesque pattern grew into beauty under her deft fingers.
Suddenly Doucebelle said--
"Belasez, does life never puzzle thee?"
Belasez looked up, with almost a frightened expression in her eyes.
"Can anything puzzle one more?" she said: "unless it were the perplexity
which is hovering over my soul."
"Is that anything in which I could help thee?"
"It is something in which no human being could help me--only He before
whom the inhabitants of the earth are as grasshoppers."
There was silence for a moment. Then, in a low, hushed tone, Belasez
said--
"Doucebelle, didst thou ever do a thing which must be either very right,
or very wrong, and thou hadst no means whereby to know which it was?"
"No," answered Doucebelle slowly. "I can scarcely imagine such a
thing."
"Scarcely imagine the thing, or the uncertainty?"
"The uncertainty. Because I should ask the priest."
"The priest!--where is he?"
Doucebelle looked up in surprise at the tone, and saw that Belasez was
in tears.
"We had priests," said the young Jewess. "We had sons of Aaron, and a
temple, and an altar, and a holy oracle, whereby the Blessed One made
known His will in all matters of doubt and perplexity to His people.
But where are they now? The mountains of Zion are desolate, and the
foxes walk upon them. The light has died out of the sacred gems, even
if they themselves were to be found. We have walked contrary to Him,--
ah! where is the unerring prophet that shall tell us how we did it?--and
He walks contrary to us, and is punishing us seven times for our sins.
We are in the desert, in the dark. And the pillar of fire has gone back
into Heaven, and the Angel of the Covenant leadeth us no more."
Doucebelle was almost afraid to speak, lest she should say something
which might do more harm than good. She only ventured after a pause to
remark--
"Still there are priests."
"Yours? I know what they would tell me." Belasez's fervent voice had
grown constrained all at once.
"Yes, thou dost not believe them, I suppose," said Doucebelle, with a
baffled feeling.
"I want a prophet, Doucebelle, not a priest. Nay, He knows, the Holy
One, that we want a priest most bitterly; that we have no sacrifice
wherewith to stand before Him,--no blood to make atonement. But we want
the prophet to point us to the priest. Let us know, by revelation from
Heaven, that this man, or that man, is the accepted Priest of the Most
High, and trust us to bring our fairest lambs in sacrifice."
"Belasez, I believe that the Lamb was offered, twelve hundred years ago,
and the sacrifice which alone God will accept for the sins of men is
over for ever, and is of everlasting efficacy."
"I know." Belasez's face was more troubled than before.
"If thou canst not trust His priests, couldst thou not trust Him?"
"Trust whom?" exclaimed Belasez, with her eyes on fire. "O Doucebelle,
Doucebelle, I know not how to bear it! I thought I was so strong to
stand up against all falsehood and error,--and here, one man, with one
word,--Let me hold my peace. But O that Thou wouldst rend the heavens,
that Thou wouldst come down! Hast Thou but one blessing, O Thou that
art a Father unto Israel? Or are we so much worse off than our fathers
in the desert? Nay, are we not in the desert, with no leader to guide
us, no fiery pillar to bid us rest here, or journey thither? Why hast
Thou given the dearly-beloved of Thy soul into the hands of her enemies?
Is it--is it, because we hid our faces--from Him!"
And to Doucebelle's astonishment, Belasez covered her face with her
apron, and sobbed almost as if her heart were breaking.
"Poor Belasez!" said Doucebelle, gently. "It is often better to tell
out what troubles us, than to keep it to ourselves."
"If thou wert a daughter of Israel, I should tell it thee, and ask thy
counsel. I need some one's counsel sorely."
"And canst thou not trust me, Christian though I am?"
"Oh no, it is not that. Thou dost not understand, Doucebelle. Thou
couldst not enter into my difficulty unless thou wert of my faith. That
is the reason. It is not indeed that I mistrust thee."
"Hast thou told thy father?"
"My father? No! He would be as much horrified to hear that such
thoughts had ever entered my head, as the Lady would be if thou wert to
tell her thou didst not believe any longer in thy Christ."
"Then what canst thou do? Could thy mother help thee, or thy brother?"
"My mother would command me to dismiss such ideas from my mind, on pain
of her curse. But I cannot dismiss them. And for Delecresse--I think
he would stab me if he knew."
"What sort of thoughts are they?"
"Wilt thou keep my secret, if I tell thee?"
"Indeed, I will not utter them without thy leave." Belasez cut off her
silk, laid down the armilaus, and clasped both hands round her knee.
"When your great festivals draw nigh," she said, "four times in every
year, we Israelites are driven into your churches, and forced to listen
to a discourse from one of your priests. Until that day, I have never
paid any attention to what I deemed blasphemy. I have listened for a
moment, but at the first word of error, or the first repetition of one
of your sacred names, I have always stopped my ears, and heard no more.
But this last Midsummer, when we were driven into Lincoln Cathedral, the
new Bishop was in the pulpit. And he spake not like the other priests.
I could not stop my ears. Why should I, when he read the words of one
of our own prophets, and in the holy tongue, rendering it into French as
he went on? And Delecresse said it was correctly translated, for I
asked him afterwards. He saw nothing in it different from usual. But
it was terrible to me! He read words that I never knew were in our
Scriptures--concerning One whom it seemed to me must be--_must_ be, He
whom you call Messiah. `As a root out of a dry ground'--`no form nor
comeliness'--`no beauty that we should desire Him,'--`despised and
rejected of men'--and lastly, `we hid our faces from Him.' For we did,
Doucebelle,--we did! I could think of nothing else for a while. For we
did not hide them from others. We welcomed Judas of Galilee, and
Barchocheba, and many another who rose up in our midst, claiming to be
sent of God. But He, who claimed to be The Sent One,--we crucified Him.
We did not crucify them. We hid our faces from Him, and from Him
alone. And then I heard more words, for the Bishop kept reading on.
`We all like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own
way'--ah, was that not true of the dispersed of Judah?--`and the Lord
hath made to meet upon Him the iniquities of us all.' Doucebelle, it
was like carrying a lamp into a dark chamber, and beholding every thing
in it suddenly illuminated. Was that what it all meant? Was the Bishop
right, when he said afterwards, that it was not possible that the blood
of bulls and goats could take away sin? Were they all not realities, as
I had always thought them, but shadows, pointing forward through the
ages, to the One who was to come, to the Blood which could take away
sin? Did our own Scripture say so? `The Man that is My Fellow'--he
read it, from one of our very own prophets. And `we hid our faces from
Him!' If He from whom we hid our faces--for there was but one such--if
He were the Sent of God, the Man that is His Fellow, the Lamb whose
blood maketh atonement for the soul,--why then, what could there be for
us but tribulation and wrath and indignation from before the Holy One
for ever? Was it any marvel that we were punished seventy times for our
sins, if we had done that?"
Belasez drew a long breath, and altered her position.
"And, if we had not done that, what had we done? The old perplexity
came back on me, worse than ever. What had we done? We were not
idolaters any more; we were not profane; we kept the rest of the holy
Sabbath. Yet the Blessed One was angry with us,--He hid His face from
us: and the centuries went on, and we were exiles still,--still under
the displeasure of our heavenly King. And what had we done?--if we had
not hidden our faces from Him who was the Man that is His Fellow. And
then--"
Belasez paused again, and a softer, sadder expression came into her
eyes.
"And then the Bishop read some other words,--I suppose they were from
your sacred books: I do not think they came from ours. He read that
`because this Man continueth to eternity, untransferable hath He the
priesthood.' He read that `if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the
Father, and He is the propitiation for our sins.' And again he read
some grand words, said by this Man Himself,--`I am the First and the
Last, and the Living One: and I was dead, and am alive for evermore; and
with Me are the keys of Sheol and of death.' Oh, it was so different,
Doucebelle, from your priests' sermons generally! There was not a word
about that strange thing you call the Church,--not a word about the
maiden whom you worship. It was all about Him who was to be the Sent of
God. And I thought--may I be forgiven of the Holy One, if it were
wicked!--I thought this was the Priest that would suit me: this was the
Prophet that could teach me: this was the Man, who, if only I knew that
to do it was truth and not error, was light and not darkness, was life
and not death, I could be content to follow to the world's end. And how
am I to know it?"
Doucebelle looked up earnestly, and the girls' eyes met. One of them
was groping in the darkness in search of Christ. The other had groped
her way through the darkness, and had caught hold of Him. She did not
see His Face very clearly, but enough so to be sure that it was He.
"Belasez, dear maid, He said one other thing. `Come unto Me, all ye
that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' Trust me,
the surest way to find out who He is, is to come to Him."
"What meanest thou? He is not on earth."
"He is where thy need is," answered Doucebelle gently. "In any
labyrinth out of which we know not the way,--over any grave where our
hearts lie buried,--we can meet Him."
"But how? Thy words are a riddle to me."
"Call Him, and see if He do not come to thee. And if He and thou do but
meet, it does not much matter by which track thou earnest thither."
Belasez was silent, and seemed to be thinking deeply.
"Doucebelle," she said at last, "are there two sorts of Christians?
Because thy language is like the Bishop of Lincoln's. All the priests,
and other Christians, whom I have heard before, spoke in quite another
strain."
"There are live Christians, and dead ones. I know not of any third
sort."
"The dead ones must be fearfully in the majority!" said Belasez: "I
mean, if thou and the Bishop are live ones."
"That may be true, I am afraid," replied Doucebelle.
"It must be the breathing of the Holy One that makes the difference,"
observed Belasez, very thoughtfully. "For it is written, that Adonai
formed man of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the
neshama of life; and man became a living soul. Thus He breathed the
life into man at first, in the day of the creation of Adam. Surely, in
the day when the soul of man becomes alive to the will of the Holy One,
He must breathe into him the second time, that he may live."
"Belasez, what are your sacred books? You seem to have some."
"We gave them to you," was Belasez's reply. "But ye have added to
them."
"But the Scriptures were given to the Church!" remonstrated Doucebelle
with some surprise.
"I know not what ye mean by the Church," answered the Jewess. "They
were ours,--given to our fathers, revealed to them by the Holy One. We
gave them to you,--or ye filched them from us,--I scarcely know which.
And ye have added other books, which we cannot recognise."
The flash of fervent confidence had died away, and Belasez was once more
the reserved, impenetrable Jewish maiden, to whom Gentile Christians
were unclean animals, and their doctrines to be mentioned only with
scorn and abhorrence. And as Marie came dancing in at that moment, the
conversation was not renewed. But it made a great impression upon
Doucebelle, who ever afterwards added to her prayers the
petition,--"Fair Father, Jesu Christ, teach Belasez to know Thee."
["Bel Pere"--then one of the common epithets used in prayer.]
But to every one in general, and to Doucebelle in particular, Belasez
seemed shut up closer than ever.
The January of 1236 came, and with it the royal marriage. The
ceremonial took place at Canterbury, and Earl Hubert was present, as his
office required of him. The Countess excused herself on the ground of
slight illness, which would make it very irksome for her to travel in
winter. Her "intimate enemies" kindly suggested that she was actuated
by pique, since a time had been when she might have been herself Queen
of England. But they did not know Margaret of Scotland. Pique and
spite were not in her. Her real motive was something wholly different.
She was not naturally ambitious, nor did she consider the crown of
England so highly superior to the gemmed coronal of a Scottish Princess;
and she had never held King Henry in such personal regard as to feel any
regret at his loss. Her true object in remaining at Bury was to
"manage" the marriage of Margaret with Richard de Clare. It was to be a
clandestine match, except as concerned a few favoured witnesses; and
Earl Hubert was to be kept carefully in the dark till all was safely
over. The wedding was to be one "_per verba de presenti_" then as
sacred by the canon law as if it had been performed by a priest in full
canonicals; and as a matter of absolute necessity, no witness was
required at all. But the Countess thought it more satisfactory to have
one or two who could be trusted not to chatter till the time came for
revelation. She chose Doucebelle along with herself, as the one in
whose silence she had most confidence. Thus, in that January, in the
dead of the night, the four indicated assembled in the bed-chamber of
the Countess, and the bride and bridegroom, joining hands, said simply--
"In the presence of God and of these persons, I, Richard, take thee,
Margaret, to my wedded wife:" and, "In the same presence I, Margaret,
take thee, Richard, to my wedded husband."
And according to canon and statute law they were legally married, nor
could anything short of a divorce part them again.
"Now then, go to bed," said the Countess, addressing Doucebelle: "and
beware, every soul of you, that not a word comes out till I tell you ye
may speak."
"Belasez, when wilt thou be wed?" inquired Margaret, the next morning.
If the thoughts of the bride ran upon weddings, it was not much to be
wondered.
"Next summer," said Belasez, as coolly as if the question had been when
she would finish her embroidery. There was no shadow of emotion of any
kind to be seen.
"Oh, art thou handfast?" replied Margaret, interested at once.
"I was betrothed in my cradle," was the answer of the Jewish maiden.
"To a Jew, of course?"
"Of course! To Leo the son of Hamon of Norwich, my father's greatest
friend."
"Is he a nice young man?"
"I never saw him."
"Why, Belasez!"
"The maidens of my people are strictly secluded. It is not so with
Christians."
Yet it was less strange to these Christian girls than it would be to the
reader. They lived in times when the hand of an heiress was entirely at
the disposal of her guardian, who might marry her to some one whom she
had never seen. As to widows, they were in the gift of the Crown,
unless they chose (as many did) to make themselves safe by paying a high
price for "liberty to marry whom they would." Even then, such a thing
was known as the Crown disregarding the compact. Let it be added, since
much good cannot be said of King John, that he at least was careful to
fulfil his engagements of this description. His son was less
particular.
Margaret looked at Belasez with a rather curious expression.
"And how dost thou like the idea," she asked, "of being wife to one whom
thou hast never seen?"
"I do not think about it," said Belasez, in the same tone as before.
"What is to be will be."
"But what is to be," said Margaret, "may be very delightful, or it may
be very horrid."
"Yes, no doubt," was the cool answer. "I shall see when the time
comes."
Margaret turned away, with a shrug of her shoulders and a comic look in
her eyes which nearly upset the gravity of the rest.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. These lines are (or were) to be seen, written with a diamond
upon a pane of glass in a window of the Hotel des Pays-Bas, Spa,
Belgium, with the date 1793. I do not know whether they are to be found
in the writings of any poet.