WORD FROM THE WARS
Above, below, the Rose of Snow,
Twined with her blushing face we spread.
GRAY’S _Bard_.
NEWS did not travel very fast to Whitburn, but one summer’s day a tall,
gallant, fair-faced esquire, in full armour of the cumbrous plate
fashion, rode up to the gate, and blew the family note on his bugle.
“My son! my son Rob,” cried the lady, starting up from the cushions with
which Grisell had furnished her settle.
Robert it was, who came clanking in, met by his father at the gate, by
his mother at the door, and by Bernard on his crutch in the rear, while
Grisell, who had never seen this brother, hung back.
The youth bent his knee, but his outward courtesy did not conceal a good
deal of contempt for the rude northern habits. “How small and dark the
hall is! My lady, how old you have grown! What, Bernard, still fit only
for a shaven friar! Not shorn yet, eh? Ha! is that Grisell? St.
Cuthbert to wit! Copeland has made a hag of her!”
“’Tis a good maid none the less,” replied her father; the first direct
praise that she had ever had from him, and which made her heart glow.
“She will ne’er get a husband, with such a visage as that,” observed
Robert, who did not seem to have learnt courtesy or forbearance yet on
his travels; but he was soon telling his father what concerned them far
more than the maiden’s fate.
“Sir, I have come on the part of the Duke of York to summon you. What,
you have not heard? He needs, as speedily as may be, the arms of every
honest man. How many can you get together?”
“But what is it? How is it? Your Duke ruled the roast last time I heard
of him.”
“You know as little as my horse here in the north!” cried Rob.
“This I did hear last time there was a boat come in, that the Queen, that
mother of mischief, had tried to lay hands on our Lord of Salisbury, and
that he and your Duke of York had soundly beaten her and the men of
Cheshire.”
“Yea, at Blore Heath; and I thought to win my spurs on the Copeland
banner, but even as I was making my way to it and the recreant that bore
it, I was stricken across my steel cap and dazed.”
“I’ll warrant it,” muttered his father.
“When I could look up again all was changed, the banner nowhere in sight,
but I kept my saddle, and cut down half a dozen rascaille after that.”
“Ha!” half incredulously, for it was a mere boy who boasted. “That’s my
brave lad! And what then? More hopes of the spurs, eh?”
“Then what does the Queen do, but seeing that no one would willingly stir
a lance against an old witless saint like King Harry, she gets a host
together, dragging the poor man hither and thither with her, at Ludlow.
Nay, we even heard the King was dead, and a mass was said for the repose
of his soul, but with the morning what should we see on the other side of
the river Teme but the royal standard, and who should be under it but
King Harry himself with his meek face and fair locks, twirling his
fingers after his wont. So the men would have it that they had been
gulled, and they fell away one after another, till there was nothing for
it but for the Duke and his sons, and my Lords of Salisbury and Warwick
and a few score more of us, to ride off as best we might, with Sir Andrew
Trollope and his men after us, as hard as might be, so that we had to
break up, and keep few together. I went with the Duke of York and young
Lord Edmund into Wales, and thence in a bit of a fishing-boat across to
Ireland. Ask me to fight in full field with twice the numbers, but never
ask me to put to sea again! There’s nothing like it for taking heart and
soul out of a man!”
“I have crossed the sea often enow in the good old days, and known
nothing worse than a qualm or two.”
“That was to France,” said his son. “This Irish Sea is far wider and far
more tossing, I know for my own part. I’d have given a knight’s fee to
any one who would have thrown me overboard. I felt like an empty bag!
But once there, they could not make enough of us. The Duke had got their
hearts before, and odd sort of hearts they are. I was deaf with the wild
kernes shouting round about in their gibberish—such figures, too, as they
are, with their blue cloaks, streaming hair, and long glibbes
(moustaches), and the Lords of the Pale, as they call the English sort,
are nigh about as wild and savage as the mere Irish. It was as much as
my Lord Duke could do to hinder two of them from coming to blows in his
presence; and you should have heard them howl at one another. However,
they are all with him, and a mighty force of them mean to go back with
him to England. My Lord of Warwick came from Calais to hold counsel with
him, and they have sworn to one another to meet with all their forces,
and require the removal of the King’s evil councillors; and my Lord Duke,
with his own mouth, bade me go and summon his trusty Will Dacre of
Whitburn—so he spake, sir—to be with him with all the spears and bowmen
you can raise or call for among the neighbours. And it is my belief,
sir, that he means not to stop at the councillors, but to put forth his
rights. Hurrah for King Richard of the White Rose!” ended Robert,
throwing up his cap.
“Nay, now,” said his father. “I’d be loth to put down our gallant King
Harry’s only son.”
“No one breathes a word against King Harry,” returned Robert, “no more
than against a carven saint in a church, and he is about as much of a
king as old stone King Edmund, or King Oswald, or whoever he is, over the
porch. He is welcome to reign as long as he likes or lives, provided he
lets our Duke govern for him, and rids the country of the foreign woman
and her brat, who is no more hers than I am, but a mere babe of
Westminster town carried into the palace when the poor King Harry was
beside himself.”
“Nay, now, Rob!” cried his mother.
“So ’tis said!” sturdily persisted Rob. “’Tis well known that the King
never looked at him the first time he was shown the little imp, and next
time, when he was not so distraught, he lifted up his hands and said he
wotted nought of the matter. Hap what hap, King Harry may roam from
Church to shrine, from Abbey to chantry, so long as he lists, but none of
us will brook to be ruled or misruled by the foreign woman and the
Beauforts in his name, nor reigned over by the French dame or the
beggar’s brat, and the traitor coward Beaufort, but be under our own
noble Duke and the White Rose, the only badge that makes the Frenchman
flee.”
The boy was scarcely fifteen, but his political tone, as of one who knew
the world, made his father laugh and say, “Hark to the cockerel crowing
loud. Spurs forsooth!”
“The Lords Edward and Edmund are knighted,” grunted Rob, “and there’s but
few years betwixt us.”
“But a good many earldoms and lands,” said the Baron. “Hadst spoken of
being out of pagedom, ’twere another thing.”
“You are coming, sir,” cried Rob, willing to put by the subject. “You
are coming to see how I can win honours.”
“Aye, aye,” said his father. “When Nevil calls, then must Dacre come,
though his old bones might well be at rest now. Salisbury and Warwick
taking to flight like attainted traitors to please the foreign woman,
saidst thou? Then it is the time men were in the saddle.”
“Well I knew you would say so, and so I told my lord,” exclaimed Robert.
“Thou didst, quotha? Without doubt the Duke was greatly reassured by thy
testimony,” said his father drily, while the mother, full of pride and
exultation in her goodly firstborn son, could not but exclaim, “Daunt him
not, my lord; he has done well thus to be sent home in charge.”
“_I_ daunt him?” returned Lord Whitburn, in his teasing mood. “By his
own showing not a troop of Somerset’s best horsemen could do that!”
Therewith more amicably, father and son fell to calculations of
resources, which they kept up all through supper-time, and all the
evening, till the names of Hobs, Wills, Dicks, and the like rang like a
repeating echo in Grisell’s ears. All through those long days of summer
the father and son were out incessantly, riding from one tenant or
neighbour to another, trying to raise men-at-arms and means to equip them
if raised. All the dues on the herring-boats and the two whalers, on
which Grisell had reckoned for the winter needs, were pledged to
Sunderland merchants for armour and weapons; the colts running wild on
the moors were hastily caught, and reduced to a kind of order by rough
breaking in. The women of the castle and others requisitioned from the
village toiled under the superintendence of the lady and Grisell at
preparing such provision and equipments as were portable, such as dried
fish, salted meat, and barley cakes, as well as linen, and there was a
good deal of tailoring of a rough sort at jerkins, buff coats, and sword
belts, not by any means the gentle work of embroidering pennons or
scarves notable in romance.
“Besides,” scoffed Robert, “who would wear Grisly Grisell’s scarf!”
“I would,” manfully shouted Bernard; “I would cram it down the throat of
that recreant Copeland.”
“Oh! hush, hush, Bernard,” exclaimed Grisell, who was toiling with aching
fingers at the repairs of her father’s greasy old buff coat. “Such
things are, as Robin well says, for noble demoiselles with fair faces and
leisure times like the Lady Margaret. And oh, Robin, you have never told
me of the Lady Margaret, my dear mate at Amesbury.”
“What should I know of your Lady Margarets and such gear,” growled Robin,
whose chivalry had not reached the point of caring for ladies.
“The Lady Margaret Plantagenet, the young Lady Margaret of York,” Grisell
explained.
“Oh! That’s what you mean is it? There’s a whole troop of wenches at
the high table in hall. They came after us with the Duchess as soon as
we were settled in Trim Castle, but they are kept as demure and mim as
may be in my lady’s bower; and there’s a pretty sharp eye kept on them.
Some of the young squires who are fools enough to hanker after a few
maids or look at the fairer ones get their noses wellnigh pinched off by
Proud Cis’s Mother of the Maids.”
“Then it would not avail to send poor Grisell’s greetings by you.”
“I should like to see myself delivering them! Besides, we shall meet my
lord in camp, with no cumbrance of woman gear.”
Lord Whitburn’s own castle was somewhat of a perplexity to him, for
though his lady had once been quite sufficient captain for his scanty
garrison, she was in too uncertain health, and what was worse, too much
broken in spirit and courage, to be fit for the charge. He therefore
decided on leaving Cuthbert Ridley, who, in winter at least, was scarcely
as capable of roughing it as of old, to protect the castle, with a few
old or partly disabled men, who could man the walls to some degree,
therefore it was unlikely that there would be any attack.
So on a May morning the old, weather-beaten Dacre pennon with its three
crusading scallop-shells, was uplifted in the court, and round it
mustered about thirty men, of whom eighteen had been raised by the baron,
some being his own vassals, and others hired at Sunderland. The rest
were volunteers—gentlemen, their younger sons, and their
attendants—placing themselves under his leadership, either from goodwill
to York and Nevil, or from love of enterprise and hope of plunder.