A KNOT
I would mine heart had caught that wound
And slept beside him rather!
I think it were a better thing
Than murdered friend and marriage-ring
Forced on my life together.
E. B. BROWNING, _The Romaunt of the Page_.
LADIES were accustomed to live for weeks, months, nay, years, without
news of those whom they had sent to the wars, and to live their life
without them. The Lady of Whitburn did not expect to see her husband or
son again till the summer campaign was over, and she was not at all
uneasy about them, for the full armour of a gentleman had arrived at such
a pitch of perfection that it was exceedingly difficult to kill him, and
such was the weight, that his danger in being overthrown was of never
being able to get up, but lying there to be smothered, made prisoner, or
killed, by breaking into his armour. The knights could not have moved at
all under the weight if they had not been trained from infancy, and had
nearly reduced themselves to the condition of great tortoises.
It was no small surprise when, very late on a July evening, when, though
twilight still prevailed, all save the warder were in bed, and he was
asleep on his post, a bugle-horn rang out the master’s note, at first in
the usual tones, then more loudly and impatiently. Hastening out of bed
to her loophole window, Grisell saw a party beneath the walls, her
father’s scallop-shells dimly seen above them, and a little in the rear,
one who was evidently a prisoner.
The blasts grew fiercer, the warder and the castle were beginning to be
astir, and when Grisell hurried into the outer room, she found her mother
afoot and hastily dressing.
“My lord! my lord! it is his note,” she cried.
“Father come home!” shouted Bernard, just awake. “Grisly! Grisly! help
me don my clothes.”
Lady Whitburn trembled and shook with haste, and Grisell could not help
her very rapidly in the dark, with Bernard howling rather than calling
for help all the time; and before she, still less Grisell, was fit for
the public, her father’s heavy step was on the stairs, and she heard
fragments of his words.
“All abed! We must have supper—ridden from Ayton since last baiting.
Aye, got a prisoner—young Copeland—old one slain—great
victory—Northampton. King taken—Buckingham and Egremont killed—Rob
well—proud as a pyet. Ho, Grisell,” as she appeared, “bestir thyself.
We be ready to eat a horse behind the saddle. Serve up as fast as may
be.”
Grisell durst not stop to ask whether she had heard the word Copeland
aright, and ran downstairs with a throbbing heart, just crossing the
hall, where she thought she saw a figure bowed down, with hands over his
face and elbows on his knees, but she could not pause, and went on to the
kitchen, where the peat fire was never allowed to expire, and it was easy
to stir it into heat. Whatever was cold she handed over to the servants
to appease the hunger of the arrivals, while she broiled steaks, and
heated the great perennial cauldron of broth with all the expedition in
her power, with the help of Thora and the grumbling cook, when he
appeared, angry at being disturbed.
Morning light was beginning to break before her toils were over for the
dozen hungry men pounced so suddenly in on her, and when she again
crossed the hall, most of them were lying on the straw-bestrewn floor
fast asleep. One she specially noticed, his long limbs stretched out as
he lay on his side, his head on his arm, as if he had fallen asleep from
extreme fatigue in spite of himself.
His light brown hair was short and curly, his cheeks fair and ruddy, and
all reminded her of Leonard Copeland as he had been those long years ago
before her accident. Save for that, she would have been long ago his
wife, she with her marred face the mate of that nobly fair countenance.
How strange to remember. How she would have loved him, frank and often
kind as she remembered him, though rough and impatient of restraint.
What was that which his fingers had held till sleep had unclasped them?
An ivory chessrook! Such was a favourite token of ladies to their true
loves. What did it mean? Might she pause to pray a prayer over him as
once hers—that all might be well with him, for she knew that in this
unhappy war important captives were not treated as Frenchmen would have
been as prisoners of war, but executed as traitors to their King.
She paused over him till a low sound and the bright eyes of one of the
dogs warned her that all might in another moment be awake, and she fled
up the stair to the solar, where her parents were both fast asleep, and
across to her own room, where she threw herself on her bed, dressed as
she was, but could not sleep for the multitude of strange thoughts that
crowded over her in the increasing daylight.
By and by there was a stir, some words passed in the outer room, and then
her mother came in.
“Wake, Grisly. Busk and bonne for thy wedding-morning instantly.
Copeland is to keep his troth to thee at once. The Earl of Warwick hath
granted his life to thy father on that condition only.”
“Oh, mother, is he willing?” cried Grisell trembling.
“What skills that, child? His hand was pledged, and he must fulfil his
promise now that we have him.”
“Was it troth? I cannot remember it,” said Grisell.
“That matters not. Your father’s plight is the same thing. His father
was slain in the battle, so ’tis between him and us. Put on thy best
clothes as fast as may be. Thou shalt have my wedding-veil and miniver
mantle. Speed, I say. My lord has to hasten away to join the Earl on
the way to London. He will see the knot tied beyond loosing at once.”
To dress herself was all poor Grisell could do in her bewilderment.
Remonstrance was vain. The actual marriage without choice was not so
repugnant to all her feelings as to a modern maiden; it was the ordinary
destiny of womanhood, and she had been used in her childhood to look on
Leonard Copeland as her property; but to be forced on the poor youth
instantly on his father’s death, and as an alternative to execution, set
all her maidenly feelings in revolt. Bernard was sitting up in bed,
crying out that he could not lose his Grisly. Her mother was running
backwards and forwards, bringing portions of her own bridal gear, and
directing Thora, who was combing out her young lady’s hair, which was
long, of a beautiful brown, and was to be worn loose and flowing, in the
bridal fashion. Grisell longed to kneel and pray, but her mother hurried
her. “My lord must not be kept waiting, there would be time enough for
prayer in the church.” Then Bernard, clamouring loudly, threw his arms
round the thick old heavy silken gown that had been put on her, and
declared that he would not part with his Grisly, and his mother tore him
away by force, declaring that he need not fear, Copeland would be in no
hurry to take her away, and again when she bent to kiss him he clung
tight round her neck almost strangling her, and rumpling her tresses.
Ridley had come up to say that my lord was calling for the young lady,
and it was he who took the boy off and held him in his arms, as the
mother, who seemed endued with new strength by the excitement, threw a
large white muffling veil over Grisell’s head and shoulders, and led or
rather dragged her down to the hall.
The first sounds she there heard were, “Sir, I have given my faith to the
Lady Eleanor of Audley, whom I love.”
“What is that to me? ’Twas a precontract to my daughter.”
“Not made by me nor her.”
“By your parents, with myself. You went near to being her death
outright, marred her face for life, so that none other will wed her.
What say you? Not hurt by your own will? Who said it was? What matters
that?”
“Sir,” said Leonard, “it is true that by mishap, nay, if you will have it
so, by a child’s inadvertence, I caused this evil chance to befall your
daughter, but I deny, and my father denies likewise, that there was any
troth plight between the maid and me. She will own the same if you ask
her. As I spake before, there was talk of the like kind between you,
sir, and my father, and it was the desire of the good King that thus the
families might be reconciled; but the contract went no farther, as the
holy King himself owned when I gave my faith to the Lord Audley’s
daughter, and with it my heart.”
“Aye, we know that the Frenchwoman can make the poor fool of a King
believe and avouch anything she choose! This is not the point. No more
words, young man. Here stands my daughter; there is the rope.
Choose—wed or hang.”
Leonard stood one moment with a look of agonised perplexity over his
face. Then he said, “If I consent, am I at liberty, free at once to
depart?”
“Aye,” said Whitburn. “So you fulfil your contract, the rest is nought
to me.”
“I am then at liberty? Free to carry my sword to my Queen and King?”
“Free.”
“You swear it, on the holy cross?”
Lord Whitburn held up the cross hilt of his sword before him, and made
oath on it that when once married to his daughter, Leonard Copeland was
no longer his prisoner.
Grisell through her veil read on the youthful face a look of grief and
renunciation; he was sacrificing his love to the needs of King and
country, and his words chimed in with her conviction.
“Sir, I am ready. If it were myself alone, I would die rather than be
false to my love, but my Queen needs good swords and faithful hearts, and
I may not fail her. I am ready!”
“It is well!” said Lord Whitburn. “Ho, you there! Bring the horses to
the door.”
Grisell, in all the strange suspense of that decision, had been thinking
of Sir Gawaine, whose lines rang in her head, but that look of grief
roused other feelings. Sir Gawaine had no other love to sacrifice.
“Sir! sir!” she cried, as her father turned to bid her mount the pillion
behind Ridley. “Can you not let him go free without? I always looked to
a cloister.”
“That is for you and he to settle, girl. Obey me now, or it will be the
worse for him and you.”
“One word I would say,” added the mother. “How far hath this matter with
the Audley maid gone? There is no troth plight, I trow?”
“No, by all that is holy, no. Would the lad not have pleaded it if there
had been? No more dilly-dallying. Up on the horse, Grisly, and have
done with it. We will show the young recreant how promises are kept in
Durham County.”
He dragged rather than led his daughter to the door, and lifted her
passively to the pillion seat behind Cuthbert Ridley. A fine horse,
Copeland’s own, was waiting for him. He was allowed to ride freely, but
old Whitburn kept close beside him, so that escape would have been
impossible. He was in the armour in which he had fought, dimmed and
dust-stained, but still glancing in the morning sun, which glittered on
the sea, though a heavy western thunder-cloud, purple in the sun, was
rising in front of this strange bridal cavalcade.
It was overhead by the time the church was reached, and the heavy rain
that began to fall caused the priest to bid the whole party come within
for the part of the ceremony usually performed outside the west door.
It was very dark within. The windows were small and old, and filled with
dusky glass, and the arches were low browed. Grisell’s mufflings were
thrown aside, and she stood as became a maiden bride, with all her hair
flowing over her shoulders and long tresses over her face, but even
without this, her features would hardly have been visible, as the dense
cloud rolled overhead; and indeed so tall and straight was her figure
that no one would have supposed her other than a fair young spouse. She
trembled a good deal, but was too much terrified and, as it were, stunned
for tears, and she durst not raise her drooping head even to look at her
bridegroom, though such light as came in shone upon his fair hair and was
reflected on his armour, and on one golden spur that still he wore, the
other no doubt lost in the fight.
All was done regularly. The Lord of Whitburn was determined that no
ceremony that could make the wedlock valid should be omitted. The
priest, a kind old man, but of peasant birth, and entirely subservient to
the Dacres, proceeded to ask each of the pair when they had been
assoiled, namely, absolved. Grisell, as he well knew, had been shriven
only last Friday; Leonard muttered, “Three days since, when I was dubbed
knight, ere the battle.”
“That suffices,” put in the Baron impatiently. “On with you, Sir Lucas.”
The thoroughly personal parts of the service were in English, and Grisell
could not but look up anxiously when the solemn charge was given to
mention whether there was any lawful “letting” to their marriage. Her
heart bounded as it were to her throat when Leonard made no answer.
But then what lay before him if he pleaded his promise!
It went on—those betrothal vows, dictated while the two cold hands were
linked, his with a kind of limp passiveness, hers, quaking, especially
as, in the old use of York, he took her “for laither for fairer”—laith
being equivalent to loathly—“till death us do part.” And with failing
heart, but still resolute heart, she faltered out her vow to cleave to
him “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness or health,
and to be bonner (debonair or cheerful) and boughsome (obedient) till
that final parting.”
The troth was plighted, and the silver mark—poor Leonard’s sole available
property at the moment—laid on the priest’s book, as the words were said,
“with worldly cathel I thee endow,” and the ring, an old one of her
mother’s, was held on Grisell’s finger. It was done, though, alas! the
bridegroom could hardly say with truth, “with my body I thee worship.”
Then followed the procession to the altar, the chilly hands barely
touching one another, and the mass was celebrated, when Latin did not
come home to the pair like English, though both fairly understood it.
Grisell’s feeling was by this time concentrated in the one hope that she
should be dutiful to the poor, unwilling bridegroom, far more to be
pitied than herself, and that she should be guarded by God whatever
befell.
It was over. Signing of registers was not in those days, but there was
some delay, for the darkness was more dense than ever, the rush of
furious hail was heard without, a great blue flash of intense light
filled every corner of the church, the thunder pealed so sharply and
vehemently overhead that the small company looked at one another and at
the church, to ascertain that no stroke had fallen. Then the Lord of
Whitburn, first recovering himself, cried, “Come, sir knight, kiss your
bride. Ha! where is he? Sir Leonard—here. Who hath seen him? Not
vanished in yon flash! Eh?”
No, but the men without, cowering under the wall, deposed that Sir
Leonard Copeland had rushed out, shouted to them that he had fulfilled
the conditions and was a free man, taken his horse, and galloped away
through the storm.