‘Twas sweet to see these holy maids,
Like birds escaped to greenwood shades,
--SCOTT.
The Prioress Agnes Selby of Greystone was a person who would have made
a much fitter lady of a castle than head of a nunnery. She would have
worked for and with her lord, defended his lands for him, governed his
house and managed her sons with untiring zest and energy. But a vow
of her parents had consigned her to a monastic life at York, where she
could only work off her vigour by teasing the more devout and grave
sisters, and when honourably banished to the more remote Greystone,
in field sports, and in fortifying her convent against Scots or
Lancastrians who, somewhat to her disappointment, never did attack her.
No complaint or scandal had ever attached itself to her name, and she
let Mother Scholastica manage the nuns, and regulate the devotions,
while Greystone was known as a place where a thirsty warrior might be
refreshed, where tales and ballads of Border raids were welcome, and
where good hawk or hound was not despised.
It had occurred to the Lord St. John of Bletso that the little daughter
whom he had left at York might be come to a marriageable age, and he had
listened to the proposal of one of the cousins of the house of Nevil
for a contract between her and his son, sending an escort northwards to
fetch her, properly accompanied.
She had been all these years at Greystone, and the Prioress immediately
decided that this would be an excellent opportunity of seeing the
southern world, and going on a round of pilgrimages which would make the
expedition highly decorous. The ever restless spirit within her rose
in delight, and the Sisterhood of York were ready to acquiesce, having
faith in Mother Agnes’ good sense to guide her and her pupil to his
castle in Bedfordshire by the help of Father Martin through any tangles
of the White and Red Roses that might await her, as well to her real
principle for avoiding actual evil, though she might startle monastic
proprieties.
There was no doubt but that conversation, when she could have it, was as
great a joy to her as ever was galloping after a deer; and there she sat
with her beautiful hound by her side, and her hawk on a pole, exchanging
sentiments of speculation as to Warwick’s change of front with Sir Giles
Musgrave, Father Martin, and Master Ralph Lorimer, while discussing
a pasty certainly very superior to anything that had come out of the
Penrith stores.
Young Clifford and Lady Anne sat on the grass near, too shy for the
present to renew their acquaintance, but looking up at one another under
their eyelashes, and the first time their eyes met, the girl breaking
into a laugh, but it was not till towards the end of the refection that
they were startled into intercourse by a general growling and leaping
up of the great hound, and of the two big ungainly dogs chained to the
waggon, as wet, lean, bristling but ecstatic, Watch dashed in among
them, and fell on his master.
For four days (unless he was tied up at first) the good dog must have
been tracking him. ‘Off! off!’ cried the Prioress, holding back her
deer-hound by main strength. ‘Off, Florimond! he sets thee a pattern of
faithfulness! Be quiet and learn thy devoir!’
‘O sir, I cannot send him back!’ entreated Hal, also embracing and
caressing the shaggy neck.
‘Send him back! Nay, indeed. As saith the Reverend Mother, it were well
if some earls and lords minded his example,’ said Sir Giles.
‘Here! Watch, I mind thee well,’ added Anne. ‘Here’s a slice of pasty
to reward thee. Oh! thou art very hungry,’ as the big mouth bolted it
whole.
‘Nearly famished, poor rogue!’ said Hal, administering a bone. ‘How far
hast thou run, mine own lad! Art fain to come with thy master and see
the hermit?’
‘Thou must e’en go,’ growled Simon Bunce, ‘unless the lady’s dog make an
end of thee! ‘Tis ever the worthless that turn up.’
‘I would Florimond would show himself as true,’ said the Prioress.
‘Don’t show thy teeth, sir! I can honour Watch, yet love thee.’
‘’Tis jealousy as upsets faith,’ said the merchant. ‘The hound is a
knightly beast with his proud head, but he brooks not to see a Woodville
creep in.’
‘Nay, or a Beaufort!’ suggested Sir Giles.
‘No treason, Lord Musgrave!’ said the Prioress, laughing.
‘Ah, madam,’ responded Sir Giles, ‘what is treason?’
‘Whatever is against him that has the best of it,’ observed Master
Lorimer. ‘Well that it is not the business of a poor dealer in
horse-gear and leather-work. He asks not which way his bridles are to
turn! How now, Tray and Blackchaps? Never growl and gird. You have no
part in the fray!’
For they were chained, and could only champ, bark and howl, while
Florimond and Watch turned one another over, and had to be pulled
forcibly back, by Hal on the one hand and on the other by the Mother
Agnes, who would let nobody touch Florimond except herself. After
this, the two dogs subsided into armed neutrality, and gradually became
devoted friends.
The curiously composed cavalcade moved on their way southward. The
Prioress was mounted on the fine chestnut horse that Sir Giles had
rescued. She was attended by a nun, Sister Mabel, and a lay Sister,
both as hardy as herself, and riding sturdy mountain ponies; but her
chaplain, a thin delicate-looking man with a bad cough, only ventured
upon a sturdy ass; Anne St. John had a pretty little white palfrey and
two men-at-arms. There were two grooms, countrymen, who had run away on
the onset of the thieves, but came sneaking back again, to be soundly
rated by the Prioress, who threatened to send them home again or have
them well scourged, but finally laughed and forgave them.
The merchant, Master Lorimer--who dealt primarily in all sorts of horse
furniture, but added thereto leather-work for knights and men-at-arms,
and all that did not too closely touch the armourer’s trade--had
three sturdy attendants, having lost one in an attack by the Scottish
Borderers, and he had four huge Flemish horses, who sped along the
better for their loads having been lightened by sales in Edinburgh,
where he had hardly obtained skins enough to make up for the weight.
His headquarters, he said, were at Barnet, since tanning and
leather-dressing, necessary to his work, though a separate guild,
literally stank in the nostrils of the citizens of London.
To these were added Sir Giles Musgrave’s twenty archers, making a very
fair troop, wherewith to proceed, and the Prioress decided on not going
to York. She was not particularly anxious for an interview with the
Abbess of her Order, and it would have considerably lengthened the
journey, which both Musgrave and Lorimer were anxious to make as short
as possible. They preferred likewise to keep to the country, that was
still chiefly open and wild, with all its destiny in manufactories
yet to come, though there were occasionally such towns, villages and
convents on the way where provisions and lodging could be obtained.
Every fresh scene of civilisation was a new wonder to Hal Clifford,
and scarcely less so to Anne St. John, though her life in the moorland
convent had begun when she was not quite so young as he had been when
taken to the hills of Londesborough. He had only been two or three times
in the church at Threlkeld, which was simple and bare, and the full
display of a monastic church was an absolute amazement, making him kneel
almost breathless with awe, recollecting what the royal hermit had told
him. He was too illiterate to follow the service, but the music and the
majestic flow of the chants overwhelmed him, and he listened with hands
clasped over his face, not daring to raise his eyes to the dazzling gold
of the altar, lighted by innumerable wax tapers.
The Prioress was amused. ‘Art dazed, my friend? This is but a poor
country cell; we will show you something much finer when we get to
Derby.’
Hal drew a long breath. ‘Is that meant to be like the saints in Heaven?’
he said. ‘Is that the way they sing there?’
‘I should hope they pronounce their Latin better,’ responded the
Prioress, who, it may be feared, was rather a light-minded woman. At any
rate there was a chill upon Hal which prevented him from directing any
of his remarks or questions to her for the future. The chaplain told him
something of what he wanted to know, but he met with the most sympathy
from the Lady Anne.
‘Which, think you, is the fittest temple and worship?’ he said; as they
rode out together, after hearing an early morning service, gone through
in haste, and partaking of a hurried meal. The sun was rising over the
hills of Derbyshire, dyeing them of a red purple, standing out sharply
against a flaming sky, flecked here and there with rosy clouds, and
fading into blue that deepened as it rose higher. The elms and beeches
that bordered the monastic fields had begun to put on their autumn
livery, and yellow leaves here and there were like sparks caught from
the golden light.
Hal drew off his cap as in homage to the glorious sight.
‘Ah, it is fine!’ said Anne, ‘it is like the sunrise upon our own moors,
when one breathes freely, and the clouds grow white instead of grey.’
‘Ah!’ said Hal, ‘I used to go out to the high ground and say the prayer
the hermit taught me--“Jam Lucis,” it began. He said it was about the
morning light.’
‘I know that “Jam Lucis,”’ said Anne; ‘the Sisters sing it at prime, and
Sister Scholastica makes us think how it means about light coming and
our being kept from ill,’ and she hummed the chant of the first verse.
‘I think this blue sky and royal sun, and the moon and stars at night,
are God’s great hall of praise,’ said Hal, still keeping his cap off, as
he had done through Anne’s chant of praise.
‘Verily it is! It is the temple of God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and
earth, as the Credo says,’ replied Anne, ‘but, maybe, we come nearer
still to Him in God the Son when we are in church.’
‘I do not know. The dark vaulted roof and the dimness seem to crush me
down,’ said the mountain lad, ‘though the singing lifts me sometimes,
though at others it comes like a wailing gust, all mournful and sad! If
I could only understand! My royal hermit would tell me when I can come
to him.’
‘Do you think, now he is a king again, he will be able to take heed to
you?’
‘I know he cares for me,’ said Hal with confidence.
‘Ah yea, but will the folk about him care to let him talk to you? I have
heard say that he was but a puppet in their hands. Yea, you are a great
lord, that is true, but will that great masterful Earl Warwick let you
to him, or say all these thoughts of his and yours are but fancies for
babes?’
‘Simon Bunce did mutter such things, and that one of us was as great an
innocent as the other,’ said Hal, ‘but I trust my hermit’s love.’
‘Ay, you know you are going to someone you love, and who loves you,’
sighed Anne, ‘but how will it be with me?’
‘Your father?’ suggested Hal.
‘My father! What knows he of me or I of him? I tell thee, Harry
Clifford, he left me at York when I was not eight years old, and I have
never seen him since. He gave a charge on his lands to a goldsmith at
York to pay for my up-bringing, and I verily believe thought no more of
me than if I had been a messan dog. He wedded a lady in Flanders and
had a son or twain, but I have never seen them nor my stepdame; and now
Gilbert there, who brought the letter to the Mother Prioress, says
she is dead, and the little heir, whose birth makes me nobody, is at
a monastery school at Ghent. But my Lord of Redgrave must needs make
overtures to my father for me, whether for his son or himself Gilbert
cannot say. So my father sends to bring me back for a betrothal. The
good Prioress goes with me. She saith that if it be the old Lord, who is
a fierce old rogue with as ill a name as Tiptoft himself, the butcher,
she will make my Lord St. John know the reason why! But what will he
care?’
‘It would be hard not to hear my Lady Prioress!’ said Hal, looking
back at the determined black figure, gesticulating as she talked to Sir
Giles.
Anne laughed, half sadly, ‘So you think! But you have never seen the
grim faces at Bletso! They will say she is but a woman and a nun, and
what are her words to alliance with a friend of the Lord of Warwick? Ah!
it is a heartless hope, when I come to that castle!’
‘Nay, Anne, if my King gives me my place then&&
‘Lady Anne! Lady Anne!’ called Sir Giles Musgrave, ‘the Mother Prioress
thinks it not safe for you to keep so much in the front. There might be
ill-doers in the thickets.’
Anne perforce reined in, but Hal fed on the idea that had suddenly
flashed on him.