THE PAGEANT
When I may read of tilts in days of old,
And tourneys graced by chieftains of renown,
Fair dames, grave citoyens, and warriors bold—
If fancy would pourtray some stately town,
Which for such pomp fit theatre would be,
Fair Bruges, I shall then remember thee.
SOUTHEY, _Pilgrimage to Waterloo_.
LEONARD COPELAND was in close attendance on the Duke, and could not give
a moment to visit his friends at the Green Serpent, so that there was no
knowing how the presence of the Lady of Heringham affected him. Duke
Charles rode out to meet his bride at the little town of Damme, and here
the more important portions of the betrothal ceremony took place, after
which he rode back alone to the Cour des Princes, leaving to the bride
all the splendour of the entrance.
The monastic orders were to be represented in the procession. The Grey
Sisters thought they had an especial claim, and devised the presenting a
crown of white roses at the gates, and with great pleasure Grisell
contributed the best of Master Lambert’s lovely white Provence roses to
complete the garland, which was carried by the youngest novice, a fair
white rosebud herself.
Every one all along the line of the tall old houses was hanging from
window to window rich tapestries of many dyes, often with gold and silver
thread. The trades and guilds had renewed their signs, banners and
pennons hung from every abode entitled to their use, garlands of bright
flowers stretched here and there and everywhere. All had been in a
frenzy of preparation for many days past, and the final touches began
with the first hours of light in the long, summer morning. To Grisell’s
great delight, Cuthbert Ridley plodded in at the hospitable door of the
Green Serpent the night before. “Ah! my ladybird,” said he, “in good
health as ever.”
“All the better for seeing you, mine old friend,” she cried. “I thought
you were far away at Compostella.”
“So verily I was. Here’s St. James’s cockle to wit—Santiago as they call
him there, and show the stone coffin he steered across the sea. No small
miracle that! And I’ve crossed France, and looked at many a field of
battle of the good old times, and thought and said a prayer for the brave
knights who broke lances there. But as I was making for St. Martha’s
cave in Provence, I met a friar, who told me of the goodly gathering
there was like to be here; and I would fain see whether I could hap upon
old friends, or at any rate hear a smack of our kindly English tongue, so
I made the best of my way hither.”
“In good time,” said Lambert. “You will take the lady and the housewife
to the stoop at Master Caxton’s house, where he has promised them seats
whence they may view the entrance. I myself am bound to walk with my
fellows of the Apothecaries’ Society, and it will be well for them to
have another guard in the throng, besides old Anton.”
“Nay, but my garb scarce befits the raree show,” said Ridley, looking at
his russet gown.
“We will see to that anon,” said Lambert; and ere supper was over, old
Anton had purveyed a loose blue gown from the neighbouring merchants,
with gold lace seams and girdle, peaked boots, and the hideous brimless
hat which was then highly fashionable. Ridley’s trusty sword he had
always worn under his pilgrim’s gown, and with the dagger always used as
a knife, he made his appearance once more as a squire of degree, still
putting the scallop into his hat, in honour of Dacre as well as of St.
James.
The party had to set forth very early in the morning, slowly gliding
along several streets in a barge, watching the motley crowds thronging
banks and bridges—a far more brilliant crowd than in these later
centuries, since both sexes were alike gay in plumage. From every house,
even those out of the line of the procession, hung tapestry, or coloured
cloths, and the garlands of flowers, of all bright lines, with their
fresh greenery, were still unfaded by the clear morning sun, while joyous
carillons echoed and re-echoed from the belfry and all the steeples.
Ridley owned that he had never seen the like since King Harry rode home
from Agincourt—perhaps hardly even then, for Bruges was at the height of
its splendour, as were the Burgundian Dukes at the very climax of their
magnificence.
After landing from the barge Ridley, with Grisell on his arm, and Anton
with his mistress, had a severe struggle with the crowd before they
gained the ascent of the stoop, where the upper steps had been railed in,
and seats arranged under the shelter of the projecting roof.
Master Caxton was a gray-eyed, thin-cheeked, neatly-made Kentishman, who
had lived long abroad, and was always ready to make an Englishman
welcome. He listened politely to Grisell’s introduction of Master
Ridley, exchanged silent greetings with Vrow Clemence, and insisted on
their coming into the chamber within, where a repast of cold pasty,
marchpane, strawberries, and wine, awaited them—to be eaten while as yet
there was nothing to see save the expectant multitudes.
Moreover, he wanted to show Mistress Grisell, as one of the few who cared
for it, the manuscripts he had collected on the history of Troy town, and
likewise the strange machine on which he was experimenting for
multiplying copies of the translation he had in hand, with blocks for the
woodcuts which Grisell could not in conscience say would be as beautiful
as the gorgeous illuminations of his books.
Acclamations summoned them to the front, of course at first to see only
scattered bodies of the persons on the way to meet the bride at the gate
of St. Croix.
By and by, however, came the “gang,” as Ridley called it, in earnest.
Every body of ecclesiastics was there: monks and friars, black, white,
and gray; nuns, black, white, and blue; the clergy in their richest
robes, with costly crucifixes of gold, silver, and ivory held aloft, and
reliquaries of the most exquisite workmanship, sparkling with precious
jewels, diamond, ruby, emerald, and sapphire flashing in the sun; the
fifty-two guilds in gowns, each headed by their Master and their banner,
gorgeous in tint, but with homely devices, such as stockings, saw and
compasses, weavers’ shuttles, and the like. Master Lambert looked up and
nodded a smile from beneath a banner with Apollo and the Python, which
Ridley might be excused for taking for St. Michael and the Dragon. The
Mayor in scarlet, white fur and with gold collar, surrounded by his
burgomasters in almost equally radiant garments, marched on.
Next followed the ducal household, trumpets and all sorts of instruments
before them, making the most festive din, through which came bursts of
the joy bells. Violet and black arrayed the inferiors, setting off the
crimson satin pourpoints of the higher officers, on whose brimless hats
each waved with a single ostrich plume in a shining brooch.
Then came more instruments, and a body of gay green archers; next heralds
and pursuivants, one for each of the Duke’s domains, glittering back and
front in the tabard of his county’s armorial bearings, and with its
banner borne beside him. Then a division of the Duke’s bodyguard, all
like himself in burnished armour with scarves across them. The nobles of
Burgundy, Flanders, Hainault, Holland, and Alsace, the most splendid body
then existing, came in endless numbers, their horses, feather-crested as
well as themselves, with every bridle tinkling with silver bells, and the
animals invisible all but their heads and tails under their magnificent
housings, while the knights seemed to be pillars of radiance. Yet even
more gorgeous were the knights of the Golden Fleece, who left between
them a lane in which moved six white horses, caparisoned in cloth of
gold, drawing an open litter in which sat, as on a throne, herself
dazzling in cloth of silver, the brown-eyed Margaret of old, her dark
hair bride fashion flowing on her shoulders, and around it a
marvellously-glancing diamond coronet, above it, however, the wreath of
white roses, which her own hands had placed there when presented by the
novice. Clemence squeezed Grisell’s hand with delight as she recognised
her own white rose, the finest of the garland.
Immediately after the car came Margaret’s English attendants, the
stately, handsome Antony Wydville riding nearest to her, and then a bevy
of dames and damsels on horseback, but moving so slowly that Grisell had
full time to discover the silver herrings on the caparisons of one of the
palfreys, and then to raise her eyes to the face of the tall stately lady
whose long veil, flowing down from her towered head-gear, by no means
concealed a beautiful complexion and fair perfect features, such as her
own could never have rivalled even if they had never been defaced. Her
heart sank within her, everything swam before her eyes, she scarcely saw
the white doves let loose from the triumphant arch beyond to greet the
royal lady, and was first roused by Ridley’s exclamation as the knights
with their attendants began to pass.
“Ha! the lad kens me! ’Tis Harry Featherstone as I live.”
Much more altered in these seven years than was Cuthbert Ridley, there
rode as a fully-equipped squire in the rear of a splendid knight, Harry
Featherstone, the survivor of the dismal Bridge of Wakefield. He was
lowering his lance in greeting, but there was no knowing whether it was
to Ridley or to Grisell, or whether he recognised her, as she wore her
veil far over her face.
This to Grisell closed the whole. She did not see the figure which was
more to her than all the rest, for he was among the knights and guards
waiting at the Cour des Princes to receive the bride when the final
ceremonies of the marriage were to be performed.
Ridley declared his intention of seeking out young Featherstone, but
Grisell impressed on him that she wished to remain unknown for the
present, above all to Sir Leonard Copeland, and he had been quite
sufficiently alarmed by the accusations of sorcery to believe in the
danger of her becoming known among the English.
“More by token,” said he, “that the house of this Master Caxton as you
call him seems to me no canny haunt. Tell me what you will of making
manifold good books or bad, I’ll never believe but that Dr. Faustus and
the Devil hatched the notion between them for the bewilderment of men’s
brains and the slackening of their hands.”
Thus Ridley made little more attempt to persuade his young lady to come
forth to the spectacles of the next fortnight to which he rushed, through
crowds and jostling, to behold, with the ardour of an old warrior, the
various tilts and tourneys, though he grumbled that they were nothing but
child’s play and vain show, no earnest in them fit for a man.
Clemence, however, was all eyes, and revelled in the sight of the
wonders, the view of the Tree of Gold, and the champion thereof in the
lists of the Hôtel de Ville, and again, some days later, of the banquet,
when the table decorations were mosaic gardens with silver trees, laden
with enamelled fruit, and where, as an interlude, a whale sixty feet long
made its entrance and emitted from its jaws a troop of Moorish youths and
maidens, who danced a saraband to the sound of tambourines and cymbals!
Such scenes were bliss to the deaf housewife, and would enliven the
silent world of her memory all the rest of her life.
The Duchess Isabel had retired to the Grey Sisters, such scenes being
inappropriate to her mourning, and besides her apartments being needed
for the influx of guests. There, in early morning, before the revels
began, Grisell ventured to ask for an audience, and was permitted to
follow the Duchess when she returned from mass to her own apartments.
“Ah! my lace weaver. Have you had your share in the revels and
pageantries?”
“I saw the procession, so please your Grace.”
“And your old playmate in her glory?”
“Yea, madame. It almost forestalled the glories of Heaven!”
“Ah! child, may the aping of such glory beforehand not unfit us for the
veritable everlasting glories, when all these things shall be no more.”
The Duchess clasped her hands, almost as a foreboding of the day when her
son’s corpse should lie, forsaken, gashed, and stripped, beside the
marsh.
But she turned to Grisell asking if she had come with any petition.
“Only, madame, that it would please your Highness to put into the hands
of the new Duchess herself, this offering, without naming me.”
She produced her exquisite fabric, which was tied with ribbons of blue
and silver in an outer case, worked with the White Rose.
The Dowager-Duchess exclaimed, “Nay, but this is more beauteous than all
you have wrought before. Ah! here is your own device! I see there is
purpose in these patterns of your web. And am I not to name you?”
“I pray your Highness to be silent, unless the Duchess should divine the
worker. Nay, it is scarce to be thought that she will.”
“Yet you have put the flower that my English mother called
‘Forget-me-not.’ Ah, maiden, has it a purpose?”
“Madame, madame, ask me no questions. Only remember in your prayers to
ask that I may do the right,” said Grisell, with clasped hands and
weeping eyes.