JEST AND EARNEST.
'That means,' said Ralph de Guader thoughtfully, when Emma had left the
room, '"Let me consult my ghostly counsellor." Who is the Lady Emma's
director, Fitzosbern? Is not Father Theodred of Crowland thine
almoner?--he who was the pet of our East Anglian Bishop AEthelmaer, and
who was recommended to thee by thine English-loving uncle of Exeter?'
'That is so,' assented Hereford; but added impatiently, 'I prithee
truce to thy plans and plottings. I am no moonstruck lover, and cannot
subsist on air, however well such unsubstantial fare may suit thy
humour. Here we have ridden a good thirty miles, and talked a candle to
the sconce, and I vow to thee, I had liefer satisfy my hunger than my
ambition. What boots a fat earldom to a man if he is to die of
starvation before he gets it?'
De Guader glanced rather contemptuously at his companion, but prepared
to follow him.
'Let me have speech with thine almoner this night, nevertheless,' he
said, 'in my chamber when I retire from the hall. It may make or mar
our undertaking.'
'As thou wilt,' answered Roger carelessly; 'but thou canst scarce
expect to find the good man in the best of humours if thou hast so
little grace as to waken him up in the dead of night. I warrant me he
has been snug under his coverlet this two hours.'
'I have that to say which will wake him,' said Ralph grimly. 'But of a
truth the hours have sped. It would be better, perhaps, to pray the
good father to give me audience with him in the morning, before he sees
any other. Wilt thou have such message delivered?'
Earl Roger called a menial and gave the necessary order, and summoned
his armourer, whom he bade to attend his guest, and then wait on
himself; and they retired to their chambers to be unharnessed of their
armour,--a process requiring aid of hammer and tongs,--and to indulge
in the refreshment of the bath, a luxury the Normans loved as dearly as
the Romans.
The hour was not far past nine, and, to our way of thinking, would not
have been late; but the Norman fashion was to begin the day early,
dinner being served at nine in the morning, and a second meal only
being usual. When a third meal was desired, as on this occasion, it was
informal, and consisted usually of cold meats, being called _liverie_.
Accordingly, when the two earls met again, clad in the flowing robes
which replaced their military accoutrements, they had no companions at
the table save a couple of fine bloodhounds, which were pets of the
Earl of Hereford, and had invited themselves when they smelt the good
cheer; the Countess of Hereford remaining in her bower, where her
husband had visited her, and delighted her by his unexpected return.
The table was covered with fine linen; tall candles, in golden
candlesticks handsomely wrought, gave light to the scene; and the
dishes of gold and silver containing the meats were presented on the
knee by pages, whose tunics were embroidered with the Hereford
cognisance, gules, a bend azure and a fesse or.
Before commencing their meal, a silver basin containing scented water
was offered to the earls in which to wash their hands. De Guader called
for a napkin on which to dry the fingers he had daintily dipped into
the scent, whereat the page opened wide eyes, though he obeyed the
order, for the Norman fashion was to wave the hands in the air till
they were dry, so that the scent might not be lost, and to wipe them on
a cloth was considered Saxon and barbaric.
'I am cultivating English ways, thou seest,' observed the Earl of the
East Angles. 'It is well to begin at once.' Whereat Hereford laughed.
The fare was dainty rather than bountiful. A cold venison pasty, and a
young heron, larded, roasted, and eaten with ginger, forming the most
important dishes; with simnel and wastel cakes, and sundry sweetmeats,
and wines rejoicing in the strange names of pigment and moral.
The earls carved for themselves with their daggers, and used neither
forks nor spoons.
Hereford, although he had declared himself in such a famished
condition, showed no great prowess as a trencherman, but seemed more
inclined to help himself from the wine-cup. He was obviously in an
unsettled and irritable mood, while his companion inclined to the
taciturn.
Suddenly Earl Roger exclaimed,--
'By the mass! this meal is not sprightly. Did I not see thy jester
Grillonne amongst thy _meinie_? Send for the rogue and for my Marlette,
and let the twain hold a tourney of wit. Though I wager thy knave will
win.'
'If thy sleepy almoner might not be summoned from his slumber to hold
converse on a weighty matter, methinks it is somewhat hard that my poor
jester should be called upon to cudgel his wits!' said Ralph. 'But as
thou wilt.'
'I'll waken the varlet up with a cup of moral,' answered Hereford; and
a few moments later the two fools were introduced, in obedience to his
order,--Marlette rubbing his eyes and yawning; Grillonne awake and
eager-eyed.
Marlette was a poor imbecile, with a heavy face and clumsy figure, who
caused laughter more by the incongruity of his short, puzzle-headed
interjections, than by any real humour in his sayings. But the Earl of
East Anglia's jester was a born buffoon, who would have made a
comfortable living, if not a fortune, in the circus in these days.
Little, alert, wiry, his lithe body seemed to be always in motion, and
the bells on his peaked cap rarely ceased to jingle. He was nearly
sixty, and his scant white hair, straggling from under his whimsical
headgear, gave him an elfish look, enhanced by the wizened, wrinkled
countenance beneath it, and his oblique, twinkling eyes. He was a
Breton, who had come over in the train of Ralph the Staller's Breton
bride in good King Eadward's days, and he had loved the gentle lady,
who was always kind to him, and well pleased to hear him troll French
ballads when she grew weary of hearing the strange Saxon tongue, and
felt forlorn and homesick. And he had loved her handsome boy, who
inherited her dark face and eagle nose, though not her bright dark
eyes, and had followed him back to Brittany, when, for some reason the
chroniclers do not report, he had suffered banishment and confiscation
of his estates. And he had returned with him when he helped the
Conqueror to win England. De Guader knew and valued his fidelity, and
took him with him whithersoever he went.
'How now, fool Grillonne!' was the Earl of Hereford's greeting. 'I
promised to pour out a full cup of moral to wake thee up withal, but it
seems thou art by far too much awake already. I had best give two cups
to Marlette here.'
'Nay, good uncle,' cried the jester, 'that would be but sorry sport! I
do but walk in my sleep. Give me the wine, and thou wilt see me in my
waking state.'
The earl signed to a page to pour out a cup of wine, and handed it to
him. He drank it, not hastily, but sipping it, and smacking his lips
with the air of a judge; and when he had drained the cup he turned it
bottom upwards. He then performed a series of somersaults from one end
of the long banqueting-hall to the other, and finished by springing
upon the shoulders of Marlette, standing erect with one foot upon the
table, and the other on his brother fool's neck.
'Ha! Good nuncles, I am like our lord King William astride of two
kingdoms!' he cried, waving his bauble as if it were a sceptre, and
aping an air of majesty, rendered most ridiculous by his effort to keep
his balance on his unequal and, on one side, unsteady footing.
Marlette, astonished and quite at a nonplus, sought only to free
himself from the weight on his shoulder, and with a yell dropped his
half-empty goblet of wine, and dashed away, leaving the saucy Grillonne
sprawling on his back on the table, while the pages sprang forward to
rescue the dishes, and the bloodhounds snarled in fierce surprise.
'Help, help, good nuncles!' cried the jester. 'Mine island gives me the
slip. Ah, well, I'll content myself with the continent! It hath good
cheer upon it.' So saying, he began to help himself to the dainties in
his reach.
The Earl of Hereford burst into a roar of laughter, but the jester's
master, smiling grimly, bade him beware of unseemly subjects. 'Crowned
heads are no fit themes for thy cracks, Sir Fool!' he said.
'Chide me not, my Earl of earls!' replied the jester, who saw that his
lord was not seriously displeased. 'I meant no damage or irreverence. I
have too great a respect for my hide, and would fain save it a
tanning!' Wherewith he descended from the table with an air of the most
sage gravity, calmly filling his pockets the while with simnels.
'Go to! Thou art an impudent knave!' cried De Guader; and Earl Roger,
laughing more heartily than before, pulled out a penny (equal to about
seventeen shillings and sixpence of our money) and tossed it to him.
'Thou art the prince of fools!' he exclaimed. 'Would I had thee in my
following. Thou art of some worth to drive dull care away.'
In explanation of the fool's dangerous jest, we may relate how William
of Normandy dealt with the Angevins when they dared to remind him that
his mother was the daughter of a tanner, by ornamenting the walls of
Alencon with hides, and shouting '_La Pel! a la Pel!_' in ridicule,
when he came to besiege their town. They had formed a _tete-du-pont_ to
cover the passage of the river, from which William dislodged them by
filling up the moat with wood and firing it, so that the unfortunate
Angevins were surrounded by flames, through which gleamed the swords of
the mocking Normans, barring their passage to the river beyond. The
half-roasted garrison fought with unavailing valour, but twenty
surviving for a still worse fate from their relentless foe. William
ordered their hands and feet to be cut off and their eyes to be put
out, and despatched an Angevin soldier, who had previously been made
prisoner, and who had witnessed the punishment, to tell the garrison
how their comrades had fared, and to promise them a similar fate unless
they surrendered before night. That they might not doubt the veracity
of the messenger, he had the hands and feet which had been struck from
the prisoners put into his mangonels, and shot them on to the walls,
which so impressed the townsmen that they surrendered at once.
When the two earls had finished their repast, they retired to their
sleeping chambers; but as Ralph de Guader reached his apartment, he was
met by the Earl of Hereford's almoner.
'I am come, noble earl, in obedience to thy summons,' he said,
'understanding that thy wish was to have speech of me before any other;
and I venture to intrude on thee to-night, because the Lady Emma has
desired me to attend her at daybreak.'
'Ha! just as I expected,' said the earl to himself. 'I thank thee,
reverend father,' he replied. 'It is courteous and kind, and my wish
was to have speech with thee to-night, but that I feared to break in
upon thy rest. Take me, I pray thee, to thy sanctum, where we may be
together without audience.'
Theodred bowed his assent, and the earl, having dismissed his
attendants, followed the almoner to his private apartment, a small but
snug room in a recess in one of the towers of the castle. In the centre
stood a small table bearing a silver crucifix, covered with parchments
and materials for writing and illuminating, a page of an unfinished
missal lying on the writing-desk, and showing what the occupant's last
business had been.
Father Theodred offered to the earl the carved settle which stood
before his writing-desk, and De Guader sank into it with a sigh, and
for a time was silent. Theodred, meanwhile, acceding with rare delicacy
to his guest's mood, turned to a corner of the room in which was fitted
up a small shrine of the Virgin, and busied himself by trimming the
little lamp of oil which burned before it perpetually.
He was a man of about fifty years of age, strongly built, and of the
very fair complexion characteristic of the Anglo-Danes, the ring of
hair upon his tonsured head being lighter in colour than the shaven
crown, with a ruddy, healthy face, and kind, frank blue eyes.
'Thine occupation, father, reminds me that I am the guest of a holy
man,' said the earl, as the almoner turned to him again. 'I prithee
give me thy blessing.'
'Thou hast it, my son,' answered the priest, extending his hands and
making the sign of the cross over Ralph's bent head, and murmuring a
benediction.
'Thou sayest,' Ralph began, after a time, 'that the Lady Emma has
expressed her desire to consult thee. The matter on which she desires
thy guidance is one of some weight.'
Theodred seated himself on a wooden stool at a short distance from the
earl.
'Doubtless the matter on which the noble Earl of East Anglia would
consult me is one of importance also?' he said.
'The matter on which we twain seek thee, father, is one and the same,'
said Ralph, with a smile, 'as thy shrewd wits have doubtless already
opined.'
'I had some such notion,' answered the almoner gravely.
'Father Theodred,' said Ralph, grave in his turn, 'thou hast the
reputation of an honourable man, and I am about to repose in thee a
trust that will put the fortunes, and even the lives, of more than one
noble personage, including myself, in thy hands.'
Theodred sprang up hastily.
'Stay thy tongue, noble earl!' said he; 'trust neither thy fortune nor
thy life in my hands. Thou knowest my English sympathies, and how thou
hast outraged them. How can I bear goodwill to the only English noble
who fought beside the Norman on the fatal field where Harold
Godwinsson--whom God assoilzie!--lost his precious life?'
The powerful De Guader, famed for his pride and haughtiness, and his
impatience of all rebuke, even from his royal master, bore this bold
speech from the Earl of Hereford's almoner with bent head and dejected
mien.
'What if I repent?' he asked softly, his rich voice quavering as he
spoke.
Theodred gazed at him with astonished and doubtful eyes, and came back
to his stool and sat down again opposite to him.
The earl raised his head and looked the almoner in the face with a
keen, appealing glance.
'What if it is to those very English sympathies that I appeal?' he
asked.
Theodred, considerably affected, answered, 'Nay then, speak out.'
'And if thou canst not support me, what I say shall be as unspoken?'
'Even so.'
'Swear thou that on the bones of St. Guthlac!'
'The son of Ralph the Staller should know that an Englishman's word is
as good as his oath.'
'I will trust thy good faith. A half confidence is but a fool's wisdom.
The point on which the Lady Emma will ask thy guidance is as to whether
she shall yet deign to be my wife.'
'Ah!' said Theodred, almost involuntarily, in a low tone; 'hast thou
ventured so far? Against the king's veto?'
'By St. Eadward, yes!'
Theodred's face darkened. 'Take not the name of that holy saint, who
was world-king and heaven-king also, to witness to thy sin! Thinkest
thou I will aid thee in treachery to thy liege lord?'
'Sin or no sin, there are those high in the Church who will aid me.
Dost thou esteem thyself holier than these?'
The earl leaned forward and whispered in Theodred's ear the names of
several high dignitaries of the English Church, including several
abbots and bishops.
Theodred betrayed great astonishment.
'What meanest thou?' he asked.
'I mean that there is more in this matter than is at present
understanded of thee,' said De Guader. 'Perhaps some insight into my
own standpoint would best help thee to the whole question.'
The almoner assumed an attitude of respectful attention.
'Thou dost me great honour, noble earl,' he said. 'Nevertheless I must
protest that as a simple priest I had rather keep to matters more
within my province.'
'These matters must be within thy province, since thy guidance will be
asked by the noble demoiselle whose part in them is of such import,'
urged De Guader; and the priest sighed deeply, for he had a great love
for the gentle girl whose adviser he must needs be in this the chief
step of her young life. He saw nothing but strife before her, and was
sorely perplexed as to whether he should forward her happiness, or,
still more, her spiritual welfare, by aiding or hindering the suit of
the turbulent man who was thus seeking to win him to his side, and whom
he scarcely knew whether to abhor for his part at Senlac, or to love as
the son of Ralph the Staller. Certes De Guader's show of contrition had
strangely moved him, and the bruised and bleeding patriotism which was
his strongest passion waked into painful life at the sight.
'Thou knowest,' said Earl Ralph, 'how, when my noble father, Ralph the
Staller, died, Earl Godwin, in his hate of the Normans, or any from
across the straits, worked with the blessed King Eadward against my
Breton mother and myself, her stripling son, or rather, I should say,
so wearied him out with complaints against us, made by his daughter
Eadgyth, the king's wife, that at last the good king gave ear to a
trumped-up story of treasonable practices on our innocent parts, and
took my father's lands from his widow and orphan, so that we had to go
beyond the sea to my mother's estates in Bretagne.'
'I have heard a version of the matter,' said Theodred--'somewhat
differing!' he added, under his breath.
'Canst thou wonder, then, that my love for Harold Godwinsson was not
overflowing? the more so as he claimed for himself those dear lands of
Norfolk and Suffolk, where my boyhood had been passed. Canst thou
wonder that, when he broke his oath to William of Normandy, whom he had
sworn not to hinder in his claims to the English throne,--sworn, as
thou knowest, on the most sacred relics'--
Theodred groaned. 'Harold knew not that the relics were there till
after he had sworn,' he murmured.
'An Englishman's word should be as good as his oath, thou hast said
it,' rejoined the earl. 'Canst thou wonder, I ask, that I ranged myself
under the banner of the leader whose accolade had given me knighthood
to win back those lands of my father's?'
'How couldst thou? How couldst thou fight thy father's countrymen, even
to win back thy father's lands?' cried the priest, with irrepressible
emotion.
Ralph sprang up and paced about the room. 'Nay, I would give my right
hand I had not done it,' he said; 'but,' he added bitterly, 'I am
sufficiently punished! After all my valour and manifold services, the
haughty Bastard deems me not good enough to become his kinsman, and
insults me by forbidding me the hand of his kinswoman.'
His face was dark with scorn, and the peculiar gleam of green was in
his eyes which gave so strange an expression to his anger, while the
level brows met above them. Evidently wounded pride had more to do with
his repentance than patriotic contrition.
But it was not convenient to admit so much even to himself. 'Blood is
stronger than water, in good sooth,' he continued, 'and my father's
blood rebels in my veins when I see the hungry Normans ousting staunch
English families from their holdings, and revelling in the fat of the
land. I had not thought of all that must follow the setting of William
on the throne, for I dreamt not that Harold's following had been so
strong, or that the tussle would be so bitter. And now that William is
away, the curs snuffle and snarl and tear the quarry like hounds
without a huntsman, while Hereford and I, through his silly jealousy,
have our hands tied, and are powerless to keep order in the land. I
tell thee it is galling beyond endurance to see the base churls, whom
never a knight would have spoken to in Normandy but to give them an
order, ruffling it with the best, and strutting as they had been born
nobles, lording it over high-born English dames and damsels, whose
fathers and husbands they have slain, and whose fortunes they are
wasting in riot!'
'Galling beyond endurance!' repeated Theodred, springing up with a
gesture of anguish. 'Christ grant me pardon for the hate that springeth
in my heart for the doers of such wrong, for it bids fair to overflow
the barriers of my control whenever I let my thoughts wander from the
comfort of heavenly things to earthly miseries!'
De Guader's eyes gleamed with triumph as he saw his companion so deeply
moved. Stopping in his tiger walk up and down the room, he laid his
strong hand upon Theodred's arm.
'Then help me to redress the wrong and repair the mistake!' he said.
Theodred turned on him fiercely. 'Repair the mistake! Canst thou bring
then the dead to life, or gather from the soil one drop of the noble
blood that has been poured forth upon it like water, the dark stains of
which still scare the traveller, and call to Heaven for vengeance?'
'Nay, St. Nicholas defend me!' answered the earl, 'I can do neither of
these things. There is that which cannot be undone, and can only be
atoned by bitter penance and humble contrition. But there is that which
may be restored. Ruined men may have their own again. Prisoners can be
set free. Doth not Archbishop Stigand still languish in durance? Is not
thine own beloved bishop and Stigand's brother, AEthelmaer, living in
poverty and shame, since William's tyrannical deprivation of his see on
false and scandalous charges?'
'Alas, yes!' admitted the priest.
Then the earl, bending towards him, and fixing his piercing eyes on the
good-humoured and yielding eyes of Theodred, said in a low, clear
voice, every syllable of every word thrilling the silent night,--
'An English king may yet fill the throne. Waltheof Siwardsson lives!'
Theodred covered his face with his hands, and staggered into his chair.
After a while he murmured, 'And doth the holy Frithic, Abbot of St.
Albans, favour this, and Thurstan, Abbot of Ely?'
'Ay; nor is Fitzosbern, Bishop of Exeter, opposed. He groans for the
woes of the English people, whose ways he has always loved, and whose
manners he has adopted; neither brooks he tamely this insult of
William's to his nephew. When such favour me, wilt not thou?'
Theodred extended his palm without uncovering his face. 'I cannot
answer thee thus at a moment's notice. The issues are too great.'
'Waltheof, Hereford, and I,' the earl continued, his face lighted with
a lofty pride, and his gesture such as might have befitted the
Conqueror himself, 'William absent. Who could withstand our
combination?'
'I pray thee mercy! This matter needeth meditation and prayer. Leave
me. Whether I help or hinder thee, be sure I will not betray thee. The
Holy Virgin have both thee and me in her keeping!'
'Amen,' said the earl, and left the apartment. As he walked down the
passage, stepping softly lest he should disturb those who had slumbered
while he plotted, he heard the strokes of the flagellum with which
Father Theodred was lacerating his shoulders.