LOVE OR LOYALTY.
Shortly after Easter, on the day that would have been her wedding-day,
Emma Fitzosbern sat in her bower in Hereford Castle, looking dreamily
at the misty outlines of the distant Welsh hills, behind which the sun
was setting in golden splendour. Her favourite bower-maiden sat on a
low stool at her feet, and the glory of the sunset poured over the
graceful figures of the two girls, and gilded the maundry work of
rushes at their feet and the rich tapestry which covered the walls
around them, while the gorgeous clouds were piled into battlemented
towers, mocking with their vapoury illusion the solid masonry below
them.
Emma's companion was looking up at her face with an expression of
tender love and sympathy. She was a girl of seventeen, some four years
younger than her lady, and wore the Saxon headrail; the little rings of
hair which escaped from its close cover were of Saxon gold, while her
pale blue robe was made in the fashion of that nation, full and
flowing, with large, hanging sleeves. The girdle with which it was
bound was ornamented with jewels, and the hems were edged with fur. Her
face was less animated and striking than that of the noble Norman, but
had a winsome beauty of its own, the blue eyes frank and affectionate,
and the rounded features not wanting in character.
An embroidery frame stood before them; for though Eadgyth of Norwich
had lived in a Norman household since she was ten, she had
perseveringly acquired the special accomplishment of her countrywomen
in spite of difficulties, and Emma fitfully worked at it also under her
guidance.
Eadgyth was a cousin in some sort, second or third, perhaps, to Harold
Godwinsson, and made it a point of honour to keep his memory green,
though she had grown to love dearly the generous Norman maiden, who
treated her more as a sister than a dependent.
Many relatives of Harold had property in Norwich, and when Ralph de
Guader had received his earldom of Norfolk and Suffolk, which Harold's
death on the field of Senlac had rendered vacant, he had taken pity on
the forlorn condition of the little damsel, whose male relatives had
been slain in the contest, and who was thus left without protection
from the insolent conquerors. De Guader had been amused by the
patriotic defiance the bereaved maiden of ten had flung at him, rating
him as a renegade and a murderer, with other terms of equal politeness
which had sounded oddly from her flower-like mouth, and perhaps his
conscience smote him, and told him they were not untrue. Her courage
moved his admiration and generosity, and, having no women-folk of his
own to whom he could confide her, he had induced William Fitzosbern the
Norman Earl of Hereford, to take her into his castle as a playmate and
lady-in-waiting for his daughter Emma. So began a companionship which
was to endure for their lives.
The tide of sad reflection was flooding Emma's heart to the brim. Since
the cruel day on which the king's mandate had been received, the
subject of her interrupted betrothal had been buried in dead silence.
Her brother and guardian, the young Earl of Hereford, had set out on a
journey a day or two later, but had left even his wife in ignorance of
its aim and direction. Emma, on her own part, had shrunk from speech.
Her wounds were too sore to bear the probing even of those who loved
her. But at length, on this bright May evening, she spoke.
'This was to have been my wedding-day, Eadgyth,' she said.
A cloud of scornful anger passed over the face of the Saxon girl, and
her blue eyes flashed.
'So William of Normandy has ruined both our lives!' she said hotly, her
young voice quivering with passion. 'I would that the earth had opened
and swallowed him up when he first set foot on English ground, instead
of only catching him by the ankle, to enable him to make a jest and
find a good omen!'
Emma bent down, laughing, that she might not cry.
'Hush!' she said; 'little rebel, thou art talking treason!'
'Nay,' returned Eadgyth, 'for I have never vowed fealty.'
'Ah, well,' answered Emma, sighing, 'my forbears have fought for
William's forbears for generations! It is bred in my blood to be
obedient to him. He would never have been King of England, had not my
father lavished wealth and activity, and roused the barons and the
burghers by example and ruse.'
'A fine reason, truly, for making thy father's daughter miserable,'
quoth Eadgyth. 'Nevertheless, if thou art bred to obedience, it seemeth
not less irksome to thee! Perhaps it is because he owes the keeping of
the English crown to the valour with which Ralph de Guader beat back
the Danes, that he thwarts _him_! Not that I can spare any pity for
Ralph. If he had not played my cousin Harold false, how different all
things might have been. He, the grand-nephew of the sainted King
Eadward! It seems a just retribution that William should thwart him.'
'On my part, I cannot account it a crime in Ralph to have sided with my
countrymen,' Emma said, with a gentle smile; 'but we cannot look on
those things with the same eyes.'
'No; I think it is perhaps a good thing that thou sittest here, instead
of being Ralph de Guader's bride, though I had lief have gone with thee
to my dear old Norwich,' said Eadgyth. 'My dear old Norwich!' she
repeated, with a sigh. 'I should scarce know it again, with its fine
new castle, and its streets full of Normans and Bretons, and foul,
greedy Jews.'
'Oh, Eadgyth! Eadgyth! I will have no more to say to thee, if thou
takest part against my knight!' said Emma, withdrawing her hands and
folding them on her lap.
'I did not mean to wound thee, Emma!' exclaimed the Saxon, clasping
both hands affectionately round Emma's right arm. 'I must needs be
grateful to the earl, since I owe to him my happy home with thee. Yet,'
she added sadly, 'forgive me if I cannot quite forget that such a
refuge would not have been needful to me, if he had been firm to the
Dragon standard. Disguise it as thou wilt, I am but thy
serving-maiden.'
'When I strive so carefully to disguise it, dost thou think it generous
thus to pull it forth to the light of day?' asked Emma, and the tears,
which she had till then kept back with difficulty, would no longer be
restrained, and rolled rapidly down her cheeks.
'No, it is not generous!' cried Eadgyth, full of ruth. 'And I am not
worthy to lace thy shoe latchet! Forgive me, dear Emma!'
As she spoke, the ring of a mailed footstep sounded in the corridor
without, and the door was unceremoniously opened, and gave entrance to
the young Earl of Hereford, clad in a whole suit of mail, but unhelmed.
'What! sitting in darkness, maidens?' and, turning to a varlet with a
torch, who had accompanied him to the door, he took it from the lad's
hold, and placed it with his own hands in a sconce beside the hearth.
'I love the light,' he said, laughing. 'Leave darkness to the bats and
owls.'
Emma had risen, and ran to him gladly, kissing him on the cheek. 'Oh,
Roger!' she said, 'I am so glad of thy return!'
But the joy that had come into her face at his unexpected appearance
did not dry the tears which she had forgotten to wipe away in her
surprise, and he saw them.
'Tears, Emma, tears? What! is my little sister weeping?' he asked in a
tone that was half banter, half tenderness. 'This is a thing that must
be inquired into. I can have no weeping damsels in castle of mine.'
'Eadgyth and I were quarrelling,' said Emma gaily, 'because we were so
lonely in thine absence, and could find nothing better to do.'
'By the mass! that won't serve thee for an excuse, Emma,' answered the
earl; then, taking her hands and looking searchingly in her face, he
said somewhat sternly, as if to compel an answer, 'Art thou fretting at
the breaking of thy troth with Ralph de Guader?'
Emma turned away blushing from his scrutiny.
'The wound is fresh yet, Roger!' she said. 'It will bleed. Time will
perchance heal it.'
'And by all the saints! a very short time too!' said Hereford
triumphantly. 'Thou shalt plight a new troth to-night.'
Emma started with apprehension. In those days, damsels of rank were
often disposed of in marriage by their male relatives with very little
regard to their prejudices or affections, a girl's whimsies appearing
of small consequence in their eyes beside the importance of a good
political alliance, and Emma feared lest her brother might intend to
demand a summary transference of her affections. Hitherto, it was true
that the young earl had been tender and indulgent, and had regarded her
wishes the more readily perhaps in this matter, that Ralph de Guader,
the powerful Earl of East Anglia, was the very man of all others to
suit his views of a desirable brother-in-law. But Emma knew him to be
both impulsive and obstinate, and visions of a fierce struggle with
him, ending in the cloister, the haven of refuge for women in those
days, passed through her mind.
The earl, however, took no notice of her trepidation. 'Come,' he said,
and led the way down the wide stone staircase. Emma followed trembling,
and wondering what ordeal was before her. They entered a small room set
apart near the great banqueting-hall, which was the earl's special
sanctum.
The next moment she found herself with her two hands clasped in those
of Ralph de Guader, while he was looking down at her with a hunger of
entreaty in his eyes; and in the minds of both was the unspoken
thought, that if all had gone well they would have been husband and
wife that day.
The revulsion from apprehension to joy was so great as to be almost a
pain.
'Is it thou indeed, Ralph?' she faltered; and the young Earl of
Hereford laughed.
'Didst think I had brought home an ogre to be my _beau-frere_,' he
asked, 'that thou wast so sore afraid?'
Emma turned anxiously to De Guader.
'The king, then, has relented?' she said quickly. 'In sooth, I doubted
not his heart would soften. He could not be so cruel as to part us!'
De Guader shot a questioning glance at Hereford.
'Plead thine own cause, valiant knight!' said Roger a little
sarcastically. 'I was never a maker of speeches, and, by the Holy
Virgin! thy eloquence has twisted me round thy little finger. See if
thou canst vie with a woman's sharp wits. To say truth, I care not to
breathe thy plan to the vagrant air, it has such a treasonable savour.'
Emma looked from one to the other for a solution of the mystery, but
she did not see much in De Guader's dark, handsome face to help her to
read riddles.
'Thy brother bids me proffer my own petition, dear lady,' he said. 'If
I hesitate, be merciful to my unreadiness, for it is no easy boon I
come to ask of thee.'
He led her to a carved settle which stood beside the fireplace, and
when she was seated, he stood before her silently a moment or two, the
firelight scintillating on the rings of the mail in which he was
sheathed from head to foot, and sparkling on the jewels of his baldric
and the golden hilt of his great two-handed sword, for, like her
brother, he was still in his harness.
'Noble Emma, I have come to ask thee to share with me danger and
difficulty,' he said. 'The king has not relented. But his mandate is
unjust, and I beg thee to disregard it, and to give me once more the
sweet promise that thou wilt be my bride.'
'Dost thou mean that thou wouldst ask me to defy the king?' faltered
Emma, a great terror chasing away the short-lived joy which had flooded
her heart. She turned wide, anxious eyes upon her brother.
'Dost thou not see, Emma, we are sick of spending our lives for
William, and getting nothing but kicks and curses from him?' explained
the prosaic Roger. 'By the mass! it is hard on Ralph and on me, after
so much faithful service, and so maint hard blows given and taken in
William's business, that he should mar all our plans and spoil all our
pleasure by putting his veto on your marriage. A curse on loyalty! If
this is all it brings, we may as well be a little disloyal.'
Roger had better have allowed his friend to plead his own cause as he
had bidden him to do. Ralph's appeal to Emma to share danger with him
had touched her generous spirit. Her brother's outburst against his
sovereign roused all her loyalty.
'I know not what to reply to such converse,' said Emma indignantly;
then added, between jest and earnest, the tears trembling on her lashes
as she looked at her brother, 'I would fain let it pass as a bad joke,
or to think that perchance ye twain have been drinking a little
copiously at the wine-cup.'
'Nay, Emma, that is an injustice!' cried Hereford, bursting into
laughter, and clapping his hand down upon De Guader's mailed shoulder;
'when this poor love-lorn galliard would not break fast till he had
seen thee, albeit he had been in selle all day, so fire-hot was he to
mend his broken troth.'
'It may well seem strange converse to the gentle damsel,' said Ralph
gravely. 'The earl your father almost worshipped William of Normandy,
who, in good sooth, would never have been King of England but for his
stalwart aid, and she has never heard whisper of aught against the
king. We who have writhed under his imperious tyranny, and groaned in
spirit so fiercely,'--here the level brows were knitted and the
entreating face grew stern, while the green light shone in the deep-set
eyes,--'can scarce conceive the shock she feels at our sudden speech.'
'She will have to get used to it,' said Earl Roger dryly, 'for my
patience is at an end. Beshrew me! she will hear a good deal of such
talk. William has ever popped upon me like a cat on a mouse whenever
any scheme which promised me well was in hand. And what has he given me
but ravaged land that the Welsh run over and harry at will? I say he
only gives away what he must needs pay a garrison to defend if he kept
it himself. What is your earldom of Norwich, Ralph, but sea-washed
dunes or waste corn lands? He is ever nibbling at our power. Earls,
indeed! Poor earls are we beside Godwin, Leofric, and Siward! But I
tell thee he has gone too far this time. I'll not be thwarted in my
plan to be thy brother-in-law; no, neither by king-lord or foolish
damsel!' He turned to Emma somewhat fiercely. 'Hark ye, sister of mine,
by the little finger of St. Nicholas, to whom De Guader has dedicated
his castle of Blauncheflour, thou hadst better make no mincing about
accepting a man thou hast already pleaded guilty to loving, or I shall
have a crow to pluck with thee!'
'Nay, nay!' exclaimed the courteous De Guader, smiling affectionately
at the bewildered and somewhat frightened Emma, and not a little
pleased by this crude revelation of his lady's favour. 'Thy noble
sister must take me of her own free will or not at all. Holy Virgin!
her will is my law.'
Emma raised her head with a proud and splendid gesture.
'Ay,' she cried, 'Sir Earl of Norwich! I will have neither thee nor any
man else but of my own free will! Did they stretch me on the rack, or
persuade me ever so by such-like loving persuasions, I would have none
I did not choose!'
The two earls laughed.
'Well crowed, fair hen!' cried her brother, and Ralph regarded her with
admiring eyes.
'There spoke the true daughter of William Fitzosbern, eh, Roger?' he
exclaimed. 'Methinks if the Lady Emma had felt the Conqueror's heel as
heavy as we, her blood would boil as easily. But in sooth, dear lady,
the minstrels and romaunt writers fill damsels' heads with fine notions
which we poor knights find it hard to carry out in the vulgar battle of
everyday life. Thy hero William, our lord-king himself, rebelled when
he was ordered to give up the chosen of his heart, the beautiful
Matilda of Flanders; and--saints defend us!--it was the Holy Father
himself that he disobeyed!' Here the earl crossed himself.
'Thou hast a noble example, Emma; make haste to follow it,' said her
brother jestingly.
'Oh,' said Emma, 'your converse brings me to perplexity. Give me till
the morning, and let me ponder on your words. They are sudden.'
Ralph raised her hand respectfully to his lips.
'We can do no less, dear lady,' he said.