"Oh, how full of briars is this working-day world!"
_Shakspere_.
"It is so cold, Mother!"
The woman addressed languidly roused herself from the half-sheltered
nook of the forest in which she and her child had taken refuge. She was
leaning with her back supported by a giant oak, and the child was in her
arms. The age of the child was about eight. The mother, though still
young in years, was old before her time, with hard work and exposure,
and it might be also with sorrow. She sat up, and looked wearily over
the winter scene before her. There was nothing of the querulous,
complaining tone of the little girl's voice in hers; only the dull,
sullen apathy of hopeless endurance.
"Cold, child!" she said. "'Tis like to be colder yet when the night
cometh."
"O Mother! and all snow now!"
"There be chiller gear than snow, maid," replied the mother bitterly.
"But it had been warmer in London, Mother?--if we had not lost our
road."
"May-be," was the answer, in a tone which seemed to imply that it did
not signify.
The child did not reply; and the woman continued to sit upright, and
look forward, with an absent expression in her face, indicating that the
mind was not where the eyes were.
"Only snow and frost!" she muttered--not speaking to the child. "Nought
beyond, nor here ne there. Nay, snow is better than snowed-up hearts.
Had it been warmer in London? May-be the hearts there had been as
frosty as at Pleshy. Well! it will be warm in the grave, and we shall
soon win yonder."
"Be there fires yonder, Mother?" asked the child innocently.
The woman laughed--a bitter, harsh laugh, in which there was no mirth.
"The devil keepeth," she said. "At least so say the priests. But what
wit they? They never went thither to see. They will, belike, some
day."
The little girl was silent again, and the mother, after a moment's
pause, resumed her interrupted soliloquy.
"If there were nought beyond, only!" she murmured; and her look and tone
of dull misery sharpened into vivid pain. "If a man might die, and have
done with it all! But to meet God! And 'tis no sweven, [dream] ne
fallacy, this dread undeadliness [immortality]--it is real. O all ye
blessed saints and martyrs in Heaven! how shall I meet God?"
"Is that holy Mary's Son, Mother?"
"Ay."
"Holy Mary will plead for us," suggested the child. "She can alway
peace her Son. But methought _He_ was good to folks, Mother. Sister
Christian was wont to say so."
"To saints and good women like Sister Christian, may-be."
"Art thou not good, Mother?"
The question was put in all innocence. But it struck the heart of the
miserable mother like a poisoned arrow.
"Good!" she cried, again in that tone of intense pain. "_I_ good? No,
Maude!--I am bad, bad, bad! From the crown of mine head to the sole of
my foot, there is nothing in me beside evil; such evil as thou, unwemmed
[undefiled, innocent] dove as thou art, canst not even conceive! God is
good to saints--not to sinners. Sister Christian--and thou, yet!--be
amongst the saints. I am of the sinners."
"But why art thou not a saint, Mother?" demanded the child, as
innocently as before.
"I was on the road once," said the woman, with a heavy sigh. "I was to
have been an holy sister of Saint Clare. I knew no more of ill than
thou whiteling in mine arms. If I had died then, when my soul was
fair!"
Suddenly her mood changed. She clasped the child close to her breast,
and showered kisses on the little wan face.
"My babe Maude, my bird Maude!" she said. "My dove that God sped down
from Heaven unto me, thinking me not too ill ne wicked to have thee!
The angels may love thee, my bird in bower! for thou art white and
unwemmed. The robes of thy chrism [see Note 1] are not yet soiled; but,
O sinner that I am! how am I to meet God? And I must meet Him--and
soon."
"Did not God die on the rood, Mother?"
The woman assented, the old listless tone returning to her voice.
"Wherefore, Mother?"
"God wot, child."
"Sister Christian told me He had no need for Himself, but that He loved
us; yet why that should cause Him to die I wis not."
The mother made no answer. Her thoughts had drifted away, back through
her weary past, to a little village church where a fresco painting stood
on the wall, sketched in days long before, of a company of guests at a
feast, clad in Saxon robes; and of One, behind whom knelt a woman
weeping and kissing His feet, while her flowing hair almost hid them
from sight. And back to her memory, along with the scene, came a line
from a popular ballad ["The Ploughman's Complaint"] which referred to
it. She repeated it aloud--
"`Christ suffered a sinful to kisse His fete.'
"Suffered her, for that she was a saint?" she asked of herself, in the
dreamy languor which the intense cold had brought over her. "Nay, for
she was `a sinful.' Suffered her, then, for that she sinned? Were not
that to impeach His holiness? Or was He so holy and high that no sin of
hers could soil the feet she touched? What good did it her to touch
them? Made it her holy?--fit to meet God in the Doom [Judgment], when
she had thus met Him here in His lowliness? How wis I? And could it
make me fit to meet Him? But I can never kiss His feet. Nor lack they
the ournment [adornment] of any kiss of mine. Yet methinks it were she,
not He, which lacked it then. And He let her kiss His feet. O Christ
Jesu! if in very deed it were in love for us that Thou barest death on
the bitter rood, hast Thou no love left to welcome the dying sinner?
Thou who didst pity her at yonder feast, hast Thou no mercy for Eleanor
Gerard too?"
The words were spoken only half aloud, but they were heard by the child
cradled in her arms.
"Mother, why christened you me not Eleanor?" she asked dreamily.
"Hush, child, and go to sleep!" answered the mother, startled out of her
reverie.
Maude was silent, and Eleanor wrapped her closer in the old cloak which
enfolded both of them. But before the woman yielded herself up to the
stupor which was benumbing her faculties, she passed her hand into her
bosom, and drew out a little flat parcel, folded in linen, which she
secreted in the breast of the child's dress.
"Keep this, Maude," she said gravely.
"What is it, Mother?" was Maude's sleepy answer.
"It is what thou shalt find it hereafter," was the mysterious rejoinder.
"But let none take it away, neither beguile thee thereof. 'Tis all I
have to give thee."
Maude seemed too nearly asleep for her curiosity to be roused; and
Eleanor, leaning back against the tree, resigned herself to slumber
also.
Not long afterwards, a goatherd passing that way in search of a strayed
kid, came on the unconscious pair, wrapped in each other's arms. He ran
for help to his hut, and had them conveyed to a convent at a little
distance, which the wanderers had failed to find. The rescue was just
in time to bring the life back to the numbed limbs of the child. But
for the mother there was no waking in this world. Eleanor Gerard had
met God.
Four years after that winter evening, in the guest-chamber of the
Convent of Sopwell sat a nun of middle age and cheerful look, in
conversation with a woman in ordinary costume, but to whom the same
description would very nearly apply.
"Then what were the manner of maid you seek, good Ursula?" inquired the
nun.
"By Saint Luke's face, holy Sister, but I would not have her too cunning
[clever]. I count (though I say it that need not) I am none ill one to
learn her her work; and me loveth not to be checked ne taunted of mine
underlings."
The nun, who had known Ursula Drew for some time, was quite aware that
superfluity of meekness did not rank among that worthy woman's failings.
"I would fain have a small maid of some twelve or thirteen years. An'
ye have them elder, they will needs count they know as much as you, and
can return a sharp answer betimes. I love not masterful childre."
"But would you not she were something learned?"
"Nay! So she wit not a pig's head from a crustade Almayne, [A kind of
pie of custard or batter, with currants] 'tis all one to me, an' she
will do my bidding."
"Then methinks I could right well fit you. We have here at this instant
moment a small maid of twelve years, that my Lady the Prioress were well
fain to put with such as you be, and she bade me give heed to the same.
'Tis a waif that Anthony, our goatherd, found in the forest, with her
mother, that was frozen to death in an hard winter; but the child abode,
and was saved. Truly, for cunning there is little in her; but for
meekness and readiness to do your will, the maid is as good as any. But
ye shall see her I think on."
Sister Oliva stepped to the door, and spoke in a low tone to some person
outside. She came back and reseated herself, and a minute afterwards
there was a low, timid tap at the door.
"Come in, child," said the nun.
And Maude came in.
She was small and slight for her twelve years, and preternaturally
grave. A quantity of long dark hair hung round her head in a condition
of seemingly hopeless tanglement, and the dark eyes, proportionately
larger than the rest of the features, wore an expression of mingled
apathy and suspicion, alike strange and painful to see in the eyes of a
child.
"Come forward, Maude, and speak with Mistress Drew. Mercy on us, child!
how hast moiled thine hair like a fowl his pennes!" [Feathers.]
Maude made no reply. She came a few steps nearer, dropped a rustic
courtesy, and stood to be questioned.
"What is thy name?" inquired Mistress Ursula, as though she were
beginning the catechism.
"Maude," said the child under her breath.
"And what years hast--twelve?"
"Twelve, the last Saint Margaret."
"And where wert born? Dost know?"
Maude knew, though for some reason with which she herself was best
acquainted, she had been much more chary of her information to my Lady
the Prioress than she now chose to be.
"At Pleshy, in Essex."
"And what work did thy father?"
Maude looked up with a troubled air, as if the idea of that relative's
possible existence had never suggested itself to her.
"I never had any father!" she said, in a pained tone. "Cousin Hawise
had a father, and he wrought iron on the anvil. But I had none--never!
I had a mother--that was all."
"And what called men thy mother?"
"Eleanor Gerard."
"Then thy name is Maude Gerard," said Oliva, sharply.
Maude's silence appeared to indicate that she declined to commit herself
either affirmatively or negatively.
"And what canst do, maid?" inquired Ursula, changing the subject to one
of more practical purport.
Perhaps the topic was too large for reply, for Maude's only response was
a nervous twisting of her fingers. Sister Oliva answered for her.
"Marry, she can pluck a chick, and roll pastry, and use a bedstaff, and
scour a floor, and sew, and the like. She hath not been idle, I warrant
you."
"Couldst cleanse out a pan an' thou wert set about it?"
"Ay," said Maude, under her breath.
"And couldst run of a message?"
"Ay."
"And couldst do as folk bid thee?"
"Ay."
But each time the child's voice grew fainter.
"Sister Oliva, I will essay the little maid, by your leave."
"And with my very good will, friend Ursula."
"Me counteth I shall make the best cook of her in all Herts. What
sayest, maid?--wilt of thy good will be a cook?"
Maude looked up, looked down, and said nothing. But nature had not made
her a cook, and the utmost Ursula Drew could do in that direction was to
spoil a good milliner.
So little Maude went with Ursula--into a very different sphere of life
from any which she could hitherto remember. The first home which she
recollected was her grandfather's cottage, with the great elms on one
side of it and the forge on the other, at which the old man had wrought
so long as his strength permitted, and had then handed over, as the
family inheritance, to his son. Since the world began for Maude, that
cottage and the forge had always stood there, and its inhabitants had
always been Grandfather, and Uncle David, and Aunt Elizabeth, and Cousin
Hawise, and Cousin Jack, and Mother.
At some unknown time in the remote past there had been a grandmother,
for Maude had heard of her; but with that exception, there had never
been anybody else, and her father was to her an utterly mythic
individual. She had never heard such a person named until Ursula Drew
inquired his calling. And then, one awful winter night, something
dreadful had happened. What it was Maude never precisely knew. She
only knew that there was a great noise in the night, and strange voices
in the cottage, and cries for mercy; and that when morning broke Uncle
David was gone, and was seen afterwards no more. So then they tried to
keep on the old forge a little longer; but Grandfather was past work,
and Cousin Jack was young and inexperienced, and customers would not
come as they had done to brawny-armed Uncle David, to whose ringing
blows on the anvil Maude had loved to listen. And one day she heard
Aunt Elizabeth say to Grandfather that the forge brought in nothing, and
they must go up to the castle and ask the great Lord there, whose
vassals they were, to find them food until Jack was able to work: but
the old man rose up from the settle and answered, his voice trembling
with passion, that he would starve to death ere he would take food from
the cruel hand which had deprived him of his boy. So then, Cousin Jack
used to go roaming in the forest and bring home roots and wild fruits,
and sometimes the neighbours would give them alms in kind or in money,
and so for a while they tried to live. But Grandfather grew weaker, and
Mother and Aunt Elizabeth very thin and worn, and the bloom faded from
Cousin Hawise's cheeks, and the gloss died away from her shining hair.
And at last Grandfather died. And then Aunt Elizabeth went to a
neighbouring franklin's farm, to serve the franklin's dame; and Cousin
Jack went away to sea; and Maude could not recollect how they lived for
a time. And then came another mournful day, when strange people came to
the cottage and roughly ordered the three who were left to go away.
They took Cousin Hawise with them, for they said she would be comely if
she were well fed, and the Lady had seen her, and she must go and serve
the Lady. And Maude never knew what became of her. But Mother wept
bitterly, and seemed to think that Hawise's lot was a very unhappy one.
So then they set out, Mother and Maude, for London. The reasons for
going to London were very dim and vague to Maude's apprehension. They
were going to look for somebody; so much she knew: and she thought it
was some relation of Grandmother's, who might perchance give them a home
again. London was a very grand place, only a little less than the
world: but it could not fill quite all the world, because there was room
left for Pleshy and one or two other places. The King lived in London,
who never did any thing all day long but sit on a golden throne, with a
crown on his head, and eat bread and marmalade, and drink Gascon wine;
and the Queen, who of course sat on another golden throne, and shared
the good things, and wore minever dresses and velvet robes which trailed
all across the room. Perhaps the houses were not all built of gold;
some of them might be silver; but at any rate the streets were paved
with one or other of the precious metals. And of course, nobody in
London was at all poor, and everybody had as much as he could possibly
eat, and was quite warm and comfortable, and life was all music, and
flowers, and sunshine. Poor little Maude! was her illusion much more
extravagant than some of ours?
But, as we have seen, the hapless travellers never reached their bourne.
And now even Mother was gone, and Maude was left alone in all the
world. The nuns had not been particularly unkind to her; they had
taught her many things, though they had not made her work beyond her
strength; yet not one of them had given her what she missed most--
sympathy. The result was that the child had been unhappy in the
convent, and yet she could not have said why, had she been asked. But
nobody ever asked that of little Maude. She was alone in all the
world--the great, bare, hard, practical world.
For this was the side of the world presented to Maude.
The world is many-sided, and it presents various sides and corners to
various people. The side which Maude saw was hard and bare. Hard bed,
hard fare, hard work, hard words sometimes. Had she any opportunity of
thinking the world a soft, comfortable, cushioned place, as some of her
sisters find it?
This had been the child's life up to the moment when Ursula Drew made
her appearance on the scene. But now a new element was introduced; for
Maude's third home was a stately palace, filled with beautiful carvings,
and delicate tracery, and exquisite colours, all which, lowest of the
low as she was, she enjoyed with an intensity till then unknown to
herself, and certainly not shared by any other in her sphere. That
sense of the beautiful, which, trained in different directions, makes
men poets, painters, and architects, was very strong in little Maude.
She could not have explained in the least _how_ it was that the curves
in the stonework, or the rich colours in the windows of the great hall,
gave her a mysterious sensation of pleasure, which she could not avoid
detecting that they never gave to any of her kitchen associates; and she
obtained many a scolding for her habit of what my Lady the Prioress had
called "idle dreaming," and Mistress Drew was pleased to term "lither
laziness;" when, instead of cleaning pans, Maude was thinking poetry.
Alas for little Maude! her vocation was not to think poetry; and it was
to scour pans.
The Palace of Langley, which had become the scene of Maude's
pan-cleaning, was built in a large irregular pile. The kitchen and its
attendant offices were at one end, and over them reigned Ursula Drew,
who, though supreme in her government of Maude, was in reality only a
vice-queen. Over Ursula ruled a man-cook, by name Warine de la
Misericorde, concerning whom his subordinate's standing joke was that
"Misericorde was rarely [extremely] merciless." But this potentate in
his turn owed submission to the master of the household, a very great
gentleman with gold embroidery on his coat, concerning whom Maude's only
definite notion was that he must be courtesied to very low indeed.
Master and mistress were mere names to Maude. The child was
near-sighted, and though, like every other servant in the Palace, she
ate daily in the great hall, her eyes were not sufficiently clear, from
her low place at the extreme end, to make out anything on the distant
dais beyond a number of grey shapeless shadows. She knew when the
royal, and in her eyes semi-celestial persons in question were, or were
not, at home; she had a dim idea that they bore the titles of Earl and
Countess of Cambridge, and that they were nearly related to majesty
itself; she now and then heard Ursula informed that my Lord was pleased
to command a certain dish, or that my Lady had condescended to approve a
particular sauce. She had noticed, moreover, that two of the grey
shadows at the very top of the hall, and therefore among the most
distinguished persons, were smaller than the rest; she inferred that
these ineffable superiors had at least two children, and she often
longed to inspect them within comfortable seeing distance. But no such
good fortune had as yet befallen her. Their apartments were
inaccessible fairy-land, and themselves beings scarcely to be gazed on
with undazzled eyes.
Very monotonous was Maude's new life:--cleaning pans, washing jars,
sorting herbs, scouring pails, running numberless infinitesimal errands,
doing everything that nobody else liked, hard-worked from morning to
night, and called up from her hard pallet to recommence her toil before
she had realised that she was asleep. Ursula's temper, too, did not
improve with time; and Parnel, the associate and contemporary of Maude,
was by no means to be mistaken for an angel.
Parnel was three years older than Maude, and much better acquainted with
her work. She could accomplish a marvellous quantity within a given
time, when it pleased her; and it generally did please her to rush to
the end of her task, and to spend the remaining time in teasing Maude.
She had no positive unkind feeling towards the child, but she was
extremely mischievous, and Maude being extremely teasable, the
temptation of amusing her leisure by worrying the nervous and
inexperienced child was too strong to be resisted. The occupations of
her present life disgusted Maude beyond measure. The scullery-work, of
which Ursula gave her the most unpleasant parts, was unspeakably
revolting to her quick sense of artistic beauty, and to a certain
delicacy and refinement of nature which she had inherited, not acquired;
and which Ursula, if she could have comprehended it, would have despised
with the intense contempt of the coarse mind for the fine. The child
was one morning engaged in cleaning a very greasy saucepan, close to the
open window, when, to her surprise, she was accosted by a strange voice
in the base court, or back yard of the palace.
"Is that pleasant work--frotting [rubbing] yonder thing?"
Maude looked up into a pair of bright, kindly eyes, which belonged to a
boy attired as a page, some three or four years older than herself.
Something in the lad's good-natured face won her confidence.
"No," she answered honestly, "'tis right displeasant to have ado with
such feune!" [dirt.]
"So me counted," replied the boy. "What name hast thou, little maid?"
"Maude."
"I have not seen thee here aforetime," resumed the page.
"Nor I you," said Maude. "I have bidden hither no long time.
Whereabout sit you in hall?"
"Nigh the high end," said he. "But we are only this day come from
Clarendon with the Lord Edward, whom I and my fellows serve. Fare thee
well, little maid!"
The bright eyes smiled at her, and the head nodded kindly, and passed
on. But insignificant as the remarks were, Maude felt as if she had
found a friend in the great wilderness of Langley Palace.
The next time the page's head paused at her window, Maude summoned
courage to ask him his name.
"Bertram Lyngern," said he smilingly. "I have a longer name than thou."
[See Note 2.]
"And a father and mother?" asked Maude.
"A father," said the boy. "He is one of my Lord's knights; but for my
mother,--the women say she died the day I was born."
"I have ne father ne mother," responded Maude, sorrowfully, "ne none to
care for me in all the wide world."
"Careth Mistress Drew nought for thee?"
Maude's laugh was bitterly negative.
"Ne Parnel, thy fellow?"
"She striveth alway to abash [frighten] and trouble me," sighed Maude.
"Poor Maude!" said Bertram, looking concerned. "Wouldst have me care
for thee? May be I could render thy life somewhat lighter. If I talked
with Parnel--"
"It were to no good," said Maude, brushing away to get her sink clean.
"There is nothing but sharp words and snybbyngs [scoldings] all day
long; and if I give her word back, then will she challenge [accuse] me
to Mistress, and soothly I am aweary of life."
Weary of life at twelve years old! It was a new idea to Bertram, and he
had found no answer, when the sharp voice of Ursula Drew summoned Maude
away.
"Haste, child!" cried Ursula. "Thou art as long of coming as Advent
Sunday at Christmas. Now, by the time I be back, lay thou out for me on
the table four bundles of herbs from the dry herb closet--an handful of
knot-grass, and the like of shepherd's pouch, and of bramble-seeds, and
of plantain. Now, mark thou, the top leaves of the plantain only!
Leave me not find thee idling; but have yonder row of pans as bright as
a new tester when I come, and the herbs ready." [See note 3.]
Ursula bustled off, and Maude set to work at the pans. When they were
sufficiently scrubbed, she pulled off the dirty apron in which she had
been working, and went towards the dry herb closet. But she had not
reached it, when her wrist was caught and held in a grasp like that of a
vice.
"Whither goest, Mistress Maude?" demanded an unwelcome voice.
"Stay me not, I pray thee, Parnel!" said the child entreatingly.
"Mistress Drew hath bidden me lay out divers herbs against she cometh."
"What herbs be they?" inquired Parnel demurely, with an assumption of
gravity and superior knowledge which Maude knew, from sad experience, to
mask some project of mischief. But knowing also that peril lay in
silence, no less than in compliance, she reluctantly gave the
information.
"There is no shepherd's pouch in the closet," responded Parnel.
"Then whither must I seek it?" asked Maude.
"In the fields," said Parnel.
"Ay me!" exclaimed the child.
"And 'tis not in leaf, let be flower," added her tormentor.
"What can I do?" cried Maude in dismay.
Still keeping tight hold of her wrist, Parnel answered the query by the
execution of a war-dance around Maude.
"Parnel, do leave go!" supplicated the prisoner.
"Mistress Maude is bidden lay out herbs!" sang the gaoler in amateur
recitative. "Mistress Maude hath no shepherd's pouch! Mistress Maude
is loth to go and pluck it!"
"Parnel, _do_ leave me go!"
"Mistress Maude doth not her mistress' bidding! Mistr--"
Suddenly breaking off, Parnel, who could be as quick as a lizard when
she chose, quitted her hold, and vanished out of sight in some
incomprehensible manner, as Ursula Drew marched into the kitchen.
"Now, then, where be those herbs?" demanded that authority, in a tone
indicative of a whipping.
"Mistress, I could not help it!" sobbed the worried child.
"By'r Lady, but thou canst help it if thou wilt!" returned Ursula.
"Reach me down the rod; thy laziness shall be well a-paid for once."
Maude sobbed helplessly, but made no effort to obey.
"Where be thine ears? Reach the rod!" reiterated Ursula.
"Whom chastise you, Mistress Drew?" inquired Bertram's voice through the
door; "she that demeriteth the same, or she that no doth?"
"This lazy maid demeriteth fifty rods!" was the pleasing answer.
"I cry you mercy, but I think not so," said Bertram judicially. "An'
you whipped the demeritous party, it should be Parnel. I saw all that
chanced, by the lattice, but the maids saw not me."
Parnel was not whipped, for her quickness made her a favourite; but
neither was Maude, for Bertram's intercession rescued her.
"The saints bless you, Master Bertram!" said Maude, at the next
opportunity. "And the saints help me, for verily I have an hard life.
I am all of a bire [hurry, confusion], and sore strangled [tired], from
morn to night."
"Poor little Maude!" answered Bertram pityingly. "Would I might shape
thy matters better-good. Do the saints help, thinkest? Hugh Calverley
saith no."
"Talk you with such like evil fawtors, [factor, doer], Master Bertram?"
asked Maude in a shocked voice.
"Evil fawtors, forsooth! Hugh is no evil fawtor. How can I help but
rede [attend to] his sayings? He is one of my fellows. And 'tis but
what he hath from his father. Master Calverley is a squire of the
Queen's Grace, and one of Sir John de Wycliffe's following."
"Who is Sir John de Wycliffe?" said Maude.
"One of the Lord Pope his Cardinals," laughed Bertram. "Get thee to
thine herbs and pans, little Maude; and burden not thy head with Sir
John de Wycliffe nor John de Northampton neither. Fare thee well, my
maid. I must after my master for the hawking."
But before Bertram turned away, Maude seized the opportunity to ask a
question which had been troubling her for many a month.
"If you be not in heavy bire, Master Bertram--"
"Go to! What maketh a minute more nor less?"
"Would it like you of your goodness to tell me, an' you wit, who
dwelleth in the Castle of Pleshy?"
"`An' I wit'! Well wis I. 'Tis my gracious Lord of Buckingham, brother
unto our Lord of Cambridge."
"Were you ever at Pleshy, Master Bertram?"
"Truly, but a year gone, for the christening of the young Lord
Humphrey."
"And liked it you to tell me if you wot at all of one Hawise Gerard
among the Lady's maidens?"
Maude awaited the answer in no little suppressed eagerness. She had
loved Cousin Hawise; and if she yet lived, though apart, she would not
feel herself so utterly alone. Perhaps they might even meet again, some
day. But Bertram shook his head.
"I heard never the name," he said. "The Lady of Buckingham her maidens
be Mistress Polegna and Mistress Sarah [fictitious persons]: their
further names I wis not. But no Mistress Hawise saw I never."
"I thank you much, Master Bertram, and will not stay you longer."
But another shadow fell upon Maude's life. Poor, pretty, gentle, timid
Cousin Hawise! What had become of her? The next opportunity she had,
Maude inquired from Bertram, "What like dame were my Lady of
Buckingham's greathood?"
Bertram shrugged his shoulders, as if the question took him out of his
depth.
"Marry, she is a woman!" said he; "and all women be alike. There is not
one but will screech an' she see a spider."
"Mistress Drew and Mother be not alike," answered Maude, falling back on
her own small experience. "Neither were Hawise and I alike. She would
alway stay at holy Mary her image, to see if the lamp were alight; but
I--the saints forgive me!--I never cared thereabout. So good was Cousin
Hawise."
"Maude," suggested Bertram in a low voice, as if he felt half afraid of
his own idea, "Countest that blessed Mary looketh ever her own self to
wit if the lamp be alight?"
Maude was properly shocked.
"Save you All Hallows, Master Bertram! How come you by such fantasies?"
Bertram laughed and went away, chanting a stave of the "Ploughman's
Complaint"--[See Note 4.]
"Christ hath twelve apostles here;
Now, say they, there may be but one,
That may not erre in no manere--
Who 'leveth [believeth] not this ben lost echone. [each one]
Peter erred--so did not Jhon;
Why is he cleped the principal? [See note 5.]
Christ cleped him Peter, but Himself the Stone--
All false faitours [doers] foule hem fall!" [Evil befall them.]
Late that evening a mounted messenger crossed the drawbridge, and stayed
his weary horse in the snows-prinkled base court. He was quickly
recognised by the household as a royal letter-bearer from London.
"And what news abroad, Master Matthew?"
"Why, the King's Highness keepeth his Christmas at Eltham; and certain
of the Council would fain have the Queen's Bohemians sent forth, but I
misdoubt if it shall be done. And Sir Nicholas Brembre is the new
mayor. There is no news else. Oh, ay! The parson of Lutterworth, Sir
John de Wycliffe--"
"The lither heretic!" muttered Warine, for he was the questioner. "What
misturnment [perversion] would he now?"
"He will never turn ne misturn more," said the messenger. "The morrow
after Holy Innocents a second fit of the palsy took him as he stood at
the altar at mass, and they bare him home to die. And the eve of the
Circumcision [December 31st, 1384], two days thereafter, the good man
was commanded to God."
"Good man, forsooth!" growled Warine.
"Master Warine," said Hugh Calverley's voice behind him, "the day may
come when thou and I would be full fain to creep into Heaven at the
heels of the Lutterworth parson."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. The anointing at baptism, when a white cloth was always placed
on the head.
Note 2. Bertram, Ursula, Parnel, Warine, and Maude and her family, are
all fictitious persons.
Note 3. The herbs were to be boiled and the liquid drunk, for a sprain,
bruise, or broken bone.
Note 4. Wright's _Political Poems_, one 304, _et seq_. The date of the
poem given by Wright is anticipated by about nine years.