“Will you not, Leofric?”
“Hence! You weary me.”
“Dear lord?”
“Dear lady. So you plead like a child, the gold circlet in thy hair,
the gold hem at thy robe, the gold garters about thy knees. Remission
of these dues, quotha! Are gems got with forbearance? Go to! you talk.
Wouldst sacrifice one garnet in thy brooch to ease these churls of
mine?”
“O, yes! and more.”
“More, more! What more? The garnets of thy lips, perchance, thine
eyes’ amethysts, the whole treasury of thy love?”
“Nay, for that is my dear lord’s.”
“What so? You are considerate.”
“Leofric, they come crying at my stirrup: ‘While you lie soft, O lady,
we cannot sleep for cold; while you toy with profusion, our children
moan for bread. We toil to keep, not pay, a tithe of what we earn. We
may not eat the swine we rear, the eels we net. The taxes crush us;
pray you our good lord to lift the heavy burden. Our lives are his.’”
“Do they say so? They shall answer for it for thus importuning you.”
“God forbid! Leofric, hear me! For the love of God, Leofric.”
“Away!”
“Of the sweet Virgin----”
“Will you tempt me too much!”
“For thy love of poor Godiva.”
The Earl turned with a roar.
“_My_ love! What of thine, so to scheme to rob me?”
“O, not rob, but give. I would have them love thee as I love.”
“By robbing me. That is a one-sided compact. I see naught but my own
loss in it.”
“Alas! I would give my all.”
“A vain boast. What is thine to give?”
She sighed.
“_My_ love, perhaps?” he said, mocking.
She shook her head.
“What is thy dearest possession?” he asked, still bantering. “Most
women count their modesty. Wouldst thou give that?”
She said, weeping, “I would trust in Mary.”
He stamped down his foot.
“Trust, then! Strip off thy robe, ride naked through the town--so then
I will believe thee.”
She looked up at him amazed. The colour flushed and waned in her round
cheek, leaving it a lily white.
“_But will you give me leave to do so?_” she whispered.
“Aye,” he said, breathing scorn.
“And, being done, remit the tolls and set thy people free?”
“On my knightly oath,” he swore, and, in a sudden tickle of humour,
chucked her soft chin, and went off between anger and hard laughter.
She was of the stock of Thorold, this young wife, sheriffs of
Lincolnshire and a devout and noble family. It had been like
garlanding of a bull with flowers, this wedding of her sweet
gentleness with the stormy Saxon earl. Yet from the first she had had
influence with him. He bore her humorously, one moment reverencing
her, the next loving to bring the shameful scarlet to her cheek, and
then to crush her about with his arms in mighty protection and
ownership. She had a soft white beauty like a rose, and it was good
thus to hold her full fragrance against his breast.
Now, trembling a little and her eyes cast down, she sought Father
Thomas, the chaplain of the house, and told him all. Was she justified
in the venture? she asked him, her voice scarcely audible.
The man was young and erotic, under his habit a sickly craver of
emotions. He would often in his inmost soul gloat upon a dream, a
thought--wild and scarce conceivable; yet the authority of his cloth
was potent. It was a swooning experience to him to be near her day by
day, to feel the leaning of her soul towards his, to handle the soft
places of her conscience. Accepting what was regard for his office as
regard for the priest, he would whisper to himself: “Even greater
miracles have come to pass.” Wherefore now, moistening his dry lips
and thinking of her loveliness, he answered her with the Greek
proverb: “A little evil is a great good. You are justified, my
daughter.”
She turned and fled from him with a strangled cry. Perhaps she had
hoped against hope to find her venture banned by Mother Church;
perhaps, unrecognised by herself, the pure spirit in her had recoiled
from contact with a thing unclean. Yet he was God’s servant, and he
had spoken.
For days after, awaiting the ordeal, she walked as in a nightmare, a
rose of fever in her cheek. She named the hour of her trial, and sent
her herald forth to cry it, and to pray all human creatures of their
love to spare her shame, since she was consecrating her womanhood to
their salvation, and offering herself for their sakes to be exposed on
this pillory. And a sound like a wind went throughout the town, and
each soul there, from thrall to freedman, kindled like dull fire blown
upon, and dropped upon his knees to call the bitter curse of Heaven on
him that should prove a traitor to such trust. And Godiva heard and
sighed; yet she could not escape that sense of soilure in her, since
to a spotless soul it is defilement enough to be outraged in a
dreamer’s thought. “O, Mother Mary, ward and hide me!” she prayed
perpetually.
Her lord learned the truth amazed. She was resolved, then, after all?
She would take him at his word to browbeat and defy him? Yet he would
not interfere, nor move one step to control her. But ever in his
frowning eyes was a shadow like death, and on his lips a muttered
curse: “Will she do it? Will she do it? A wanton--no wife of mine.”
And, thinking so, he let her have her way, even to the brief command
of all his house and borough.
Now, on that day of sacrifice, by noon all Coventry was like a city of
the dead. The last step had echoed from its streets; the voice of lean
barter was hushed; behind veiled windows a thousand ears were strained
in thrill and ecstasy to hear the tinkle of a palfry’s feet upon the
stones without. Only one sacrilegious hound, doomed to eternal infamy,
could be found to slur the honest record--a small, livid-faced man,
slinking like a fearful thief, his cowl pulled over his eyes, up the
steps of the Byward tower by the castle gate. Father Thomas it was,
who had left Godiva in the chapel prostrate before the figure of the
Virgin, praying for strength to do her part. It was only right, he
told himself, licking his pale lips, that the Church should sanction
this live-offering by its presence.
The Castle had fallen as silent as the town. Its inmates whispered
apart, or wept if they were women. Its great gate was flung open, its
battlements were deserted, its windows stopped and eyeless; only in
the courtyard a single creamy jennet, fastened to a pillar, champed
and fretted for her rider.
The frowning Leofric, his ear bent to a curtain close at hand,
fingered his sword-hilt as he waited listening. His fair Saxon face,
clean-shaved but for the corn-coloured beard which forked from its
chin like a swallow’s tail, was flushed a deep red; the muscles of his
bare arms and thighs, white against his purple gold-hemmed tunic,
twitched spasmodically; the leggings of twisted gold upon his calves
seemed to undulate like snake-skin.
“She shall die first!” he kept muttering to himself. “She shall die
first!”
A soft step whispered on the stones; he heard the mare whinny, her
trappings clinked. “Now!” he muttered, and, drawing his blade, parted
the curtain noiselessly and looked forth. In the very act he staggered
and flung his hand across his face.
His wife--no question of it! But so etherealised, so remote from his
carnal conception of her, that his soul shrank abashed before the
spirit his ruthless challenge had evoked. Her hair was down, veiling
her from crown to pearly thigh. A nimbus, painted by the sunlight in
its gossamer, seemed to hang about her head. Through golden mist
budded a rose of lips, a thought of blue eyes flowered, like little
eyes of heaven seen through a haze of dawn. So glorified in her
sacrifice, seen, but unseeing, she went by him and disappeared, silent
as a figure in a glass. He stood like one turned suddenly to stone.
Full ten minutes must have passed before, coming again to
consciousness, as it were, he bethought himself that she would be
returning in a little, her task accomplished.
“_Introibo ad altare Mariæ!_” he sighed, amazed. “I will pray my
love’s forgiveness. I am not worthy to kiss her little latchet.”
He clanked his sword into its scabbard, and, going like a blind man,
sought the chapel. The lamp before the altar shone like a star; all
the dusk air seemed thick with scent of roses; and before the shrine
of the Virgin lay his wife prostrate on the stones.
He stood a moment as if death-smitten; the blood about his heart
seemed to stagnate and leave him grey as ashes. Then fury was born in
him, and flamed to fire.
“A trick!” he stormed within. “She hath bribed another to take her
place.”
He strode roughly forward, bent, and seized the body to his arms. She
never moved or spoke. Looking in her face, he saw its eyes closed, its
cheek stone-white. No breath came from the parted lips.
“Dead!” he whispered. “My God! have I killed her?”
Raising his eyes in anguish, he saw the shrine empty. The painted
figure of the Virgin proper to it was gone. At that moment a sound of
horse’s hoofs striking upon the stones outside came to his ear. She
was returning! She--who? An awe as of immortality smote into his
veins. The body in his arms stirred, and a deep sigh issued from its
lips.
“Mother so dear, Mother without stain, protect and cover me thy child
with the mantle of thy chastity. I am ready, Mother.”
Her fingers trembled to her belt. Leofric, with a gasp of emotion,
caught and held them. “Mother?” he choked, and, looking up, saw the
figure in its place once more.
* * * * *
There was a distant cry of jubilance, swelling to a roar, and then
near at hand another, on a new and startled note. Something had
befallen in the castle--something as unexpected as it was very fearful
in its revelation. In a chamber of the Byward tower they had come upon
the body of the priest. There was an augur in its crooked clutch, and
in the boarded shutter of the window a hole to correspond. The body
lay decently, and undefiled of blood, but where the eyes should have
been were two burnt and blackened sockets.
A judgment, said the people; but only Leofric and Godiva ever knew of
what tremendous import. Divine is beauty, and those who would view it
unveiled must risk Actæon’s fate.