_CASTLE REDFYRNE._
It is necessary, for the fuller elucidation of our veracious narrative,
that the reader should here be made acquainted with the earlier history
of the Redfyrne family.
About twenty miles, or a little more, to the south-east of Glastonbury,
over the Dorsetshire border, and not far from Sturminster, stood, three
centuries ago, an old and mouldering castle, built in the days of the
Barons’ wars.
It was surrounded by a wide moat, fed from the river Stour, which
rolled its deep and sluggish flood in mazy windings through the ancient
park, which, rich with hoary oak and mossy beech, surrounded the castle.
A part of the massive buildings had been adapted to the ideas of the
sixteenth century, and fashioned so as to form a convenient dwelling
for the family, while the Keep and other portions were left to decay.
It formed a picturesque group, the modern dwelling, with its airy
windows and open aspect, contrasting the venerable towers, which
suggested dungeons, as deep as the walls were high; wherein the
captives of past generations once wept, and “appealed from tyranny to
God.”
Here, in the early days of “Bluff King Hal,” dwelt the good knight Sir
Geoffrey Redfyrne, with his lady and their four children.
The eldest boy, Geoffrey, was the darling of his father’s heart, frank
and generous, full of chivalrous courage, affectionate, and gifted
with the power of winning affection. The younger boy, John, differed
greatly--he was morose and selfish in disposition, vindictive and
passionate; his only good quality the courage which was hereditary in
his family.
As a natural consequence, the father’s preference for Geoffrey was
almost too manifest, for it increased the secret hatred the younger
brother, younger by a year only, bore to his elder, whom he continually
crossed in a variety of ways--maiming his pet animals, leading him
into scrapes and then betraying him, yet cunningly keeping his hand
concealed when he was able.
They had of course many quarrels, but the elder was always as ready to
forgive, as the younger to resent.
Of the sisters we shall not speak, further than to say that they were
often peace-makers between their brothers, and that John was many a
time forgiven at their intercession.
It was on the whole a happy family, and had the parents lived, the
faults of the younger son might, under their judicious training, have
been corrected. But into this unfortunate household came a deadly
visitor--the plague.
It was conveyed into the village by a bale of cloth, consigned to a
tailor, from abroad--the tailor’s family sickened, and all died; then
those who out of Christian charity had attended them to render good
offices in their last distress, sickened also, and infected their own
households; from house to house the dreadful malady spread; the parish
priest died, the physicians (leeches they called them) died; and, at
last, the awful scourge reached the hall--for Sir Geoffrey could not
keep away from his sick tenantry.
Death knocks with equal foot at the palaces of kings and the huts
of the poor, the plague was no respecter of persons; the good and
charitable knight carried the infection home, and ere three days had
passed both he and his faithful wife were gone; she watched by him and
nursed him till he died, and then falling sick at once, followed him to
a better world.
Geoffrey and the two daughters were taken ill next; the boy recovered,
the sisters died; the only member of the family who escaped
altogether was John, owing perhaps to some physical peculiarity in his
constitution, which enabled him to withstand the infection.
Not far from the castle, down the stream, stood Luckland Mill; a
father, mother, six children, and an aged grandam, all lived there;
but death came, and all died. The water splashed and foamed down the
mill-course, the merry wheel ran on, while there were eight corpses
in that house which none dared to bury. But the difficulty was
solved,--the mill having ground out its corn, ran on, and as there was
no one to stop it, caught fire at last from friction of the machinery,
and was burnt to the ground, so the dead were “cremated” not buried.
We said _eight_ bodies, for one child, the eldest daughter, named
Madge, escaped the fate of her family, being on a visit to some distant
relations, when the plague broke out.[41]
At length the pestilence abated, and the sorrow-stricken survivors,
but a third of the former population, might estimate their losses, and
gaze upon the vacant chairs in their dwellings, wishing often, in the
desolation of their hearts, that they had been taken too.
A distant relation became guardian to the two boys at the castle; both
of whom were sent to Glastonbury for their education, where John was
always in trouble, and Geoffrey in favour.
Richard Whiting was then one of the younger brethren, and one of
the tutors of the boys, and it befel more than once that John fell
under his just correction, and tasted the rod, an infliction he never
forgave. It is needless to say that Geoffrey was a general favourite.
They left school in due time, and arrived at manhood. Geoffrey made one
campaign in the French wars, which had a singular result: he was taken
captive, and captivated the daughter of his captor; so that on the
conclusion of peace, she returned with him to England as Lady Redfyrne.
John remained at home to attend to the estate in his brother’s
absence--he did not care for the military life, being too idle; and he
was fast sinking into the bachelor brother, who keeps the accounts,
looks after the hounds, and makes himself useful in a hundred odd ways,
but who feels his own position less comfortable as time moves on and a
young family arises, not his own, superseding him.
But all the time, his darker disposition was only suppressed; it was
his intention to be lord of the manor, if by any means (and he was not
scrupulous as to what means) he might grasp his brother’s inheritance;
a younger brother’s portion he despised or gambled away.
“Sui profusus, alieni appietens,”[42] as Sallust wrote of Catiline.
The occasion came; just before his wife’s confinement, poor Geoffrey,
to the grief of all who knew him, died after a brief illness. He came
home from hunting, wet through, and confiding in the strength of his
constitution, omitted, as he often had before, to change his garments;
he caught a severe cold, pleurisy set in, and, for the want of such
remedies as in the hands of modern science might have saved him, he
died.
We are now coming to that portion of our narrative already revealed by
Madge of Luckland, for that aged crone was indeed the survivor of the
family at the mill.
After his brother’s death, Sir John claimed the estate, as of right,
and imagined himself the lawful lord of the manor, when he was informed
that, as he had already dreaded, there were hopes of a direct heir.
For a brief time he wrestled with the devil; hard as he was he could
not forget the pleading tone of his dying brother,--
“John, dear John, take care of Catharine, and should there be a boy, be
a father to him for my sake; when we meet again in another world, thou
shalt tell me thou hast discharged the trust: God deal with thee, as
thou dealest with her.”
When it became certain that the widow was near her confinement, Sir
John had an interview with Madge of Luckland, over whom he had acquired
an evil influence: the reader is aware how he used it, and what crime
he urged her to commit. But unfortunately for his fell purpose, Madge,
in her capacity of nurse, had conceived a strong affection for the
sweet helpless lady, with her broken English, and pretty ways. In
short, she was true to her better nature, and false to her patron.
After Sir John had gazed for one brief moment at the dead babe,
whose identity he doubted not, he departed from the castle on urgent
business; the deed was done, and he was glad to go, for he trembled
while he repented not.
He was absent a whole month, during which he was busily engaged in
pushing his fortune at court, where he had been previously presented:
it was at this period he made the acquaintance of Thomas Cromwell, then
Secretary to Wolsey.
At length the time arrived for his return for the first time as lord of
the manor, and an avant courier arrived at Castle Redfyrne to announce
his approaching arrival.
It was then that Madge, fearful of the consequences, should she be
unable to conceal the existence of the babe,--who was meanwhile nursed
by a gipsy mother,--advised Catharine Redfyrne to fly to the shrine of
S. Joseph at Glastonbury, assuring her that the good old Abbot would
recollect her husband and protect his child.
It was arranged that she should leave the castle in the darkest hour,
before the dawn of the winter’s day; for the new servants were devoted
to their lord’s interests, and might not allow her to depart. Madge
enquired whether the lady could ride, as she would undertake herself to
procure a steed.
Catharine asserted that she was a good horse-woman, and had no fear
of the journey; also that she knew the country, having been to
Glastonbury with her lord. The weather was frosty, and there was no
sign of any change for the worse; the weather prophets, as upon a later
occasion,[43] gave no intimation of an approaching storm.
Before dawn on Holy Innocents’ Day, Madge awoke the young widow;
together they left the castle while the whole household was asleep.
They crossed the star-lit park to the Luckland Mill, now rebuilt, where
Madge had procured the horse. They found it awaiting them, and the
gipsy was there, by appointment, with the babe. One other person alone
was in the secret, the miller.
They parted with many tears, and never met in this world again. Poor
Madge, her life had been stained by sin; let this act of Christian
charity plead her forgiveness.
On her way back to the castle, Madge was struck by the wondrous but
ominous beauty of the dawn, first a streak of pale blue, which then
seemed upheaved by sheets of crimson fire; the eye was almost dazzled
by the brilliancy of the deepening blaze, as if the eastern heavens
were in conflagration.
“A red sky at night is the shepherds’ delight, but a red sky in the
morning is the shepherds’ warning,” muttered Madge, fearing there would
be bad weather.
It was one of those lovely winter days when the blue sky and fleecy
clouds and the brilliant atmosphere are more delightful than in summer,
but towards evening the wind set in steadily from the east, the heavens
assumed a dull leaden hue, and just before sunset, down came the first
flakes of snow.
Thicker flakes! thicker! thicker! the night darker; the snow deeper,
each hour.
The reader knows the rest, if he has read the prologue to our tale. The
horse must have refused to proceed, nor was he ever found, he must have
perished in the snow; but the miller did not dare to make enquiries for
fear of exciting suspicion. It was lucky that the same snow procured a
brief respite for Madge, for Sir John could not get home for more than
a week, and when he came was met by the intelligence that the mother
had fled, as it was supposed, in a fit of mental derangement, caused by
grief over the loss of her infant; and that she had perished, as they
thought, in the snow.
But how she had perished, and where, was never known to Sir John; Madge
persuaded him that she had strayed into the river, but no body was ever
found when the thaw, after some weeks of intense frost, permitted a
search; the miller kept his secret, and Sir John was content to leave
the matter in mystery, and to reap the benefit.
But he never afterwards liked the presence of Madge, his supposed
confederate, and he sent her from the neighbourhood, so that he lost
sight of her for twenty years.
How they met at last the reader has learned.
Sir John, hardened as he was, could not for a time shake off the
remembrance of his brother’s last words; often in sleep that brother
seemed to stand by him. “I bade thee guard my poor wife and child, how
hast thou kept thy trust?” He remembered the mournful way in which
Geoffrey, when they were little children, had reproached him for the
death of a pet which he had maliciously caused, and the boy and man
were mingled in his dreams.
Should he ever have to bear the reproach in another world!
He shook the thought off--parried it with the shield of unbelief.
How like the poor ostrich, who hides his head in the sand, and thinks,
because it cannot see its pursuers, it is itself unseen!
But still he frequented Church, went regularly each Sunday to Mass,
and each year to Confession; indeed it would have been dangerous to do
otherwise, or to confess his unbelief, as he avowed to Madge on her
death-bed.
By-and-bye Cromwell began to organize that terrible system of
espionage, which filled the scaffolds with victims. Dorset was
unrepresented in the prying brotherhood; he thought of his old friend,
Sir John, in whom he had discovered a kindred spirit when both served
Wolsey, and offered him the post. Sir John eagerly accepted the
confidence, and began at once to exercise his office, to watch his
neighbours, to entrap them in unguarded conversations, and so to
denounce them if he found the opportunity, and all the time he was
unsuspected, or even Cromwell could hardly have saved him from the just
fury of his countrymen.
And in this capacity he had no small share in the tragedy at
Glastonbury; he hated the Abbot as we have seen, and willingly employed
all his craft in bringing his old tutor to the gibbet and quartering
block, and when the victim suffered he was there, on the Tor Hill, and
revelled in the ghastly butchery of the man who had once striven to
check his opening vices.
When the fall of his patron, Cromwell, took place, Sir John was for the
time in imminent danger, but he extricated himself by a master stroke:
he attended in his place, as knight of the shire, and voted for cutting
off his friend’s head without a trial, by process of Bill of Attainder;
thus by this skilful trimming of his sails he escaped the storm; but
the idea was not original, Archbishop Cranmer did the same.[44]
He had for a near neighbour Squire Grabber, and had often admired the
evil qualities of young Nicholas, from whom, in the exercise of his
vocation, he had gained many valuable pieces of information, which he
had duly conveyed to Cromwell.
When the Martyrdom on the Tor Hill was accomplished, and the Abbey
suppressed, Sir John proposed to his neighbour to let young Nick begin
the business of life (as was then customary even amongst the sons of
gentlefolk) as his page, not, be it understood, in any menial sense of
the word.
The squire consented, and the reader knows the consequences, so far as
we have yet had space to unfold them.
FOOTNOTES
[41] These details were gathered from some melancholy pages in an old
parish register, which the writer once perused, when staying in the
neighbourhood. Under this terrible visitation the proportion of deaths
was sometimes far larger than that given in the text.
[42] Craving another’s, wasteful of his own.
[43] The great snow storm of January, 1881, was entirely
“unforecasted,” if the writer remembers aright.
[44] The process of Bill of Attainder was invented by Cromwell himself,
and he was, by a wondrous nemesis the first to fall by it. Cranmer
voted on the second and third readings for the death of his friend--his
presence is noted in the journal of the house, and the Bill was carried
“nemine discrepante.”