PART II

I

So the Young Lovell sat listening to the old Elizabeth in the sun that

grew hottish amongst the flowering bushes. He thought to himself nigh

all the time, and still every second thought was of that lady.

His thoughts went like this--

There could be no doubt that the law would not help him to retake his

Castle; but he longed for her red, crooked, smiling lips. He must

therefore get together a band and besiege that place; and at the thought

of climbing through a breach in great towers whilst the cannon spoke and

the fascines fell into the ditches, arrows clittered on harness, greek

fire rustled down, and the great banners drooped over the tumult, his

blood leapt for a moment. But her hair he remembered in its filaments

and it blotted out the blue sea that lay below his feet and was more

golden than the gold of the broom flowers and the gorse that surrounded

him. He thought that, first, he must have the sanction of the Bishop

Palatine and his absolution from any magic he might in innocence have

witnessed; but, in longing for her queer smile, he could scarcely keep

from springing to his feet. He knew he must be moving over the hills,

but the remembrance of her crossed breasts with her girdle kept him

languishing there in the hot sun as if his limbs had lost their young

strength.

So, when the old woman had finished her story, she sat looking at him

with a queer glance. He spoke no word until she could not but say--

"Master, where did ye bide? Was it with the bonny witch-wives?"

He contemplated her face expressionlessly.

"Tell me truly, old woman," he said, "where will ye say that I did bide,

to save my name?" for he knew that this old woman could tell a very good

tale.

"I will say Gib Elliott took ye up into Chevyside and held ye there in

an old tower, till a scrivener of Embro' could be found to take your

bond for a thousand marks. And ye shall send fifty crowns to Gib by

me--he was my mother's sister's foster son--and he shall say that so it

was."

"Say even that," he answered, without either joy or sorrow in his tone.

"Oh my fair son," she cried out in an unhappy and lamenting voice, "I

knew ye had been among the witch-wives; and shall your face, a young

comely face of a golden lording...."

"What ails my face?" he asked.

"Sirs," she cried out, "his face is like the very still water of old

grey rock-pools, with no dancing before the wind and sun."

"Even let it be so," he answered.

"Ay, ye are in a worse case than your dad," she cried. "All the

Ruthvens had these traffics."

He looked at her hardly.

"My brother Decies was a witch's son?" he said. "That was my father's

sin that sent him roaming?"

"Of a witch that dressed as a nun and stole into a convent," she said,

and rocked herself woefully where she sat beside her washing board at

the edge of the pool. "They found witch marks upon her. They should

have drowned the child, but he took it by force and with great oaths and

sent it into foreign shires. And that made his sin the heavier."

"Ah, well!" the Young Lovell said.

"You Ruffyns," the old woman went on lamenting, "for, call yourselves

never so much Lovells, Ruthvens ye will remain, and ye are never of this

countryside but of the Red Welsh or the Black Welsh or of some heathen

countryside. And always ye have had truck with witches and warlocks.

The first of ye that came into these parts was your grandfather's father

and he had a black stone, like a coal but not like a coal. That was

given him by a witch that loved him, as she went on the way to the

faggots, for they burnt her. And without it, how could he have made his

marvellous booties, riding thro' the land of France, from how 'twas to

how 'twas, and sacking the marvellous rich and walled cities? And I had

thought to have saved you from these hussies, seeing that you might well

be of a better race, your mother being of a German house and the

Almains, as all the world tells, being foul and dirty in their lives,

but almighty pious so that nine crucifixes in ten that we buy come from

there. Therefore as you came first from your mother's womb I put the

fat of good bacon in your mewling mouth, and your sleeves I tied with

green ribbons, and I took you to the low shed in the tennis court and

rolled you down the roof--and the one thing should have saved you from

the fiends and the other from the witches, and the third even from the

fairy people. And these things are older than holy water, though you

had enough of that...."

"May it save me yet!" the Young Lovell said. "But what I now have to

consider is how to take my mother from these people and to get back what

is mine own."

"Aye," the old woman said, "you were ever a good child to your mother;

therefore I had hopes of you. For your sisters, they were all black

Ruffyns, bitter and so curst that they had no need for resort to the

powers of evil to help them."

"Tell me truly now, old woman," her master said, "how long may my mother

live and abide the treatment that she now has and not die?"

"Ah," the old woman lamented, "how altered is now her estate from what

it was, who had the finest bower that was to see in the North Country!

Not a Percy lady nor any Neville nor any mistress of a Canon of Durham

had such a one. Remember the great red curtains there were to the bed,

and the painted windows that showed the story of the man without a coat.

And the great chest carved with curliecues from Flanders, and the other

chest with the figures of holy kings, and the third that was from Almain

and stood as high as my head upon twisted pillars and had angels holding

candles at each corner. And for what was in the chest--the stores of

gowns, the furs of zibelline and of marten, the golden chains joining

diamond to diamond and pearl to pearl! ... And now she lieth upon a

little pallet, and here, upon these bushes, is drying all the linen that

she hath. The one gown of scarlet is all that there is for her back,

except for the great slit coat that they have given her for fear that

she die of the cold. And her little dog Butterfly is all that she hath

for comfort, that sits in her sleeve.... But yet I think she will not

die, and it is certain that none of them wish her death that should

bring against them the mighty house of Dacre to have her heritage. But

day after day they come in, now one, now two, now three and cry out upon

her with great and curious words seeking to gar her give them her lands

and render up her yearly dower. And so she sits still; and sometimes

she gives them back hard words, but most often she says no more than

that they shall give her her due and let her go. And so they rave all

the more. But I do not think that she will die..."

"And has she never sent word to her own mother?" the Young Lovell asked,

"I think that ancient dame could do more than another to save her."

"I think she is too proud," the old woman said. "Of the Duke of Croy she

has spoken often enough, but of her mother never one word, so that, God

forgive me, I had forgotten that she had that mother though it was in

her house I saw the first of God His good light three score and twelve

years was. For you know that these ladies have never spoken together

nor written broad letters since your grandfather Dacre died, and your

father, on the day the funeral was, was sacking the castles and houses

that were your mother's inheritance. And the old lady thought they

should have been hers; so that to this day she is wealthy enough in gold

but hath little or no land and dwells in but a moderate house in the

Bailey at Durham, though when her son, the Dacre, is in London she is

mostly there herself."

The Young Lovell stood up upon his legs.

"Then if there is no great haste to save my mother's life," he said, "it

is the better. I would else very well have hastened to get together

twenty or thirty lusty bachelors and so we might have burst into this

Castle of mine. But if my mother may stay out a fortnight or a month it

is the better. For I will get together money and a host and cannon and

so we may make sure."

"Ay," the old woman said, "but hasten all ye may for the sake of Richard

Bek and Robert Bulmer."

"Now tell me truly what is this?" her master asked.

The old woman burst out into many ejaculations how that with the haste

and her master's strange looks she did not know what she had told him

and what she had missed out.

Certain it was that Richard Bek, Robert Bulmer, and Bertram Bullock held

the White Tower for him, the Young Lovell. The others could not come to

them for the White Tower stood on a rock twenty yards from the Castle

and joined to it by such a narrow stone bridge that it was, as it were,

a citadel. It could stand fast though all the rest of the Castle should

be taken, having been devised for that purpose. Richard Bek and Robert

Bulmer, poor squires, or almost of the degree of yeomen, had always been

captains of the White Tower and in it the dead Lord Lovell had kept his

marvellous store of gold--as much as four score thousand French crowns,

more or less--and all these were theirs still, with such strong cannon

as might well batter down the Castle; only Richard Bek would not do

this. And to him there had resorted from time to time certain strong

fellows that were still faithful to their master, creeping in the night

along the narrow bridge into the tower ... such as Richard Raket, the

Young Lovell's groom that had lost his teeth at the fight of Kenchie's

Burn. There might be a matter of twenty-five of them that held it and

victualled it by boats from the sea at night.

"Old woman," the Young Lovell said, "ye keep the best wine for the last,

but ye have our Lord's warrant for that."

So he got slowly up and put the bit in the mouth of Hamewarts, that had

been grazing, and when he was on that horse's back he looked down on

Elizabeth Campstones and said--

"Old woman, tell me truly, shall I take thee with me upon this great

horse; for I think my kin will very surely hang thee for having talked

and walked with me?"

She looked up at him with a surly, sideways gaze.

"Ah, gentle lording," she said, "if I may not with my tongue save my

neck from thy sisters and their men I may as well go hang, for my

occupation will be gone." He left her straining a twisted and wet clout

over the dark pool.

When he came to the high uplands where there was some heather, he saw a

man with a grey coat with a hood, and as soon as that man was aware of

him, he went away with great bounds like a hare, but casting his arms on

high as he sprang. The Young Lovell was well accustomed to that stretch

of land. It was full of soft, boggy places and he knew therefore that

that man had some money in his poke and desired to betake himself where

no horse could follow. But because the Young Lovell knew that land so

well, he threaded Hamewarts between bog and soft places, calling the

notes of the chase to hasten him. Thus the great horse breathed deep

and made large bounds. And the Young Lovell thought that times were not

all that they should be when every footman must run from every gentle

upon a horse and upon Lovell ground. For either that man was a felon,

which was not unlike, or he feared that the gentleman should rob him,

which was more likely still. The Young Lovell was resolved that these

things should be brought to better order on his lands, for he would

fine, hang, or cut the ears off every felon of simple origin that was

there. To the gentle robbers too, he would not be very easy, though

this was not so light an enterprise, since most of them would prove to

be his cousins or not much further off. Still, they could go harry the

false Scots.

In five minutes he was come up to that man in grey, and that man cast

himself at first on his knees in the heather and then on his face, for

his sides were nearly burst with running and leaping. The Young Lovell

sat still and looked down upon the hind, for he was never a lord of much

haste. And afterwards, the man, with his face still among the heather,

for he was afraid to look at death that might be ready for him--this man

fumbled for the grey woollen poke that lay under him. He pushed it out

and bleated--

"I have but three shillings;" and when the Young Lovell asked him how he

came by his three shillings, he said that he was bound for Belford

neat's fair to buy him a calf.

"Then I wager two cow's tails," the Young Lovell said, "Hugh Raket, you

owe me those shillings; for such a knave as you, for docking me of my

dues, I have never known. You should pay me twelve pence and five hens

and three days' labour a year--yet when did you pay my sire even the

half of the hens in one year?"

This Hugh Raket turned himself right over upon his back and setting his

arm above his head to shield his eyes from the sun he gazed upwards at

the rider's head. His jaw fell though he lay down.

"If I am no Scot," he said, "ye are the Young Lovell."

"I am Lord Lovell," he got his answer, "get up and kiss my foot, for

that is your duty."

He looked down at the man whilst he did his homage and said with an

aspect of grimness:

"Ay, Hugh Raket, if you were not my horse-boy's brother you would be a

poorer man and I a richer!"

The man looked up at his lord with an impudent shade on his face that

had a thin beard. It was true that he had not many times done either

suit or service since the field of Kenchie's Burn, for so surely did a

Court Baron come round so surely would Hugh Raket be away on the hills

after a strayed sow or goose, and Richard, his brother, would beg him

off from the Young Lovell. Nevertheless, from time to time, the Young

Lovell would take a couple or two of hens from him by force, for this

was a very impudent family, and if they had the land scot-free and

lot-free for a few years they were such fellows as would swear it was

their free-holding--gay fellows they were, both brothers, but they had

always a wet mouth for the main chance:

"Friend Raket," his lord said now, "that you are a very capable cozener

I have known very well ever since your brother aided me upon the field.

But, if you are upon Belfordtrod, catch you hold of my stirrup leather

and you may have its aid as far as that town is. And, if hidden

hereabouts--for you hold this land of me--you have any sword or crossbow

or pike or such arms as naughty knaves like you are forbidden to have,

you may go dig it up and bring it to me and I will look the other way.

For, since I came out of my prison I have no arms at all, and it is not

meet or seemly that I should ride unarmed."

The husbandman looked keenly at his lord; for, since Bosworth Field, the

King had ordered that none of the simple people, unless they bought a

licence at the cost of one pound English, should carry more arms than a

short knife.

"Friend Raket," his lord said, "I think I can find thy arms as well as

thou canst, for well I know this terrain, and they lie in a stone chest

over beside that holed rock. But, if you will fetch them for me, giving

me the sword and carrying for me the crossbow and for thyself the pike,

I will call thee my man-at-arms, and so you shall have licence to keep

all the arms you will in your own steading, which shall much comfort you

when you think of the false Scots in the night-time." And at that,

calling out, "O joy!" and ducking his head between his hands, the fellow

ran over the ling to a great stone with a round hole in it that maidens

were accustomed to pass their hands through up to the elbow to show

their lovers or bridegrooms that they were pure. He knelt down beside

this stone.

The Young Lovell sat on his horse in the summer weather. He gave one

great sigh and gazed upon the blue sea behind and below him and the

green plain before and on a level. The husbandman came back to him.

Upon his head he had a cap of steel; over his back a small target was

slung; in his left hand he held a pike with a steel head three foot long

and armed with a hook such as the common sort use in battles to pull

knights from off their horses. Bundled together in his arms were a

Genoese cross-bow, a great sword and a little dagger, whilst slung

across his back was a leather bag filled with such heavy steel quarrels

and bolts as should fit the cross-bow. These arms Hugh Raket and his

fellows used when they went raiding into the Scots or the Middle or the

Western Marches; for they cared little whom they journeyed upon; even,

when they heard that the Scots marched with a strong body upon Carlisle

or the Debateable Lands they would take a hand with the Scots and bring

back what they could.

And without any manner of doubt these arms--the knight's great sword and

dagger which were a pair, and the Genoese bow--had been taken in a foray

when the Lord Dacre was Warden of the Middle Marches and had some

Genoese and many gentlemen to help him, though he had not made much of

it. The little target had certainly been taken from the Scots, for it

was such a one as the Murrays and the Macleods use, being not much

larger than a cheese-top with many bosses and bubbles. But the pike and

the steel cap this fellow might have made himself, for they were rude

enough.

He stood looking up at his lord with a face of anxious roguery, but the

Young Lovell never heeded him till the husbandman spoke; he was gazing

to northward as if his eyes would start from his head.

The man continued watching his lord and thinking his thoughts as to

where that lord had been until he spoke and asked the Young Lovell

whether he should indeed have leave to bear all these weapons and be a

man-at-arms. The Young Lovell came out of his reverie and said:

"Yes, yes; ye shall be my man-at-arms." And then he said: "Give me the

great sword and the dagger. I will make them serve as arms enough till

we come to Belford."

The bondsman was intent upon his own bargaining.

"Then if I be a man-at-arms," he said, "I shall no longer be a

bondsman."

"If you will give me back your lands, that is so," said his lord. He

was buckling on his sword and he hung the dagger from the belt. He drew

the sword from the scabbard to see that it was not rusted in, and it

came out very easily, for it had been lately greased.

"It is not very long since you used this sword in gentle feats of arms,"

the Young Lovell said.

"For using it," the man said, "I will not say that; cudgels and stones

proved enough."

"Well, you shall tell me," Young Lovell said. "But now take my stirrup

leather and let us go to Belford, for the sun is high."

The man took the stirrup, and whilst he ran lightly beside the great

horse over the ling and the mosshags he called, a little coyly, his

story up to his lord. It was a long tale, or he made it so, for there

was a great deal to tell as to how a Milburn called Barty of the Comb

and Corbit Jock had called the bondsmen of the Castle Lovell together,

and of how they had said that in the absence of the Young Lovell they

would pay no heriots, nor yet hens, nor yet bolls of wheat. So, when

the bailiff of the Castle had come among their steadings and had sought

to take heriots for the death of the Lord Lovell and tythes in hens and

pence, they had greeted him at first civilly and had asked to see the

charters and papers of their lands, saying that that was the custom upon

the death of the lord.

That had occasioned some delay, since the charters and papers had all

been taken to Cullerford, to the tower of Sir Walter Limousin that had

married the Young Lovell's sister, the Lady Isopel. So a strong guard

was sent to Cullerford and brought the charters back for the time. At

beat of drum the charters, customs, the number of the rent-hens and such

things had been read out by the bailiff and the lawyer called Stone,

standing upon a little mound at the head of the village. From here

these things had been read from time immemorial, even to the oldest ages

when it had been called the Wise Men's Talking-place. The lawyer Stone

had told them that the heritage of the old Lovell had fallen to those

three, the Decies, called now Young Lovell and the husbands of the

ladies Isopel and Douce. They had, the lawyer read, fyled a suit

against the late Young Lovell for sorcery, at a Warden's Court held in

the Debateable Land on St. Mark's Day last gone. Since the Young Lovell

had not appeared, that bill had been fouled and those three had taken

his lands and all he had. And the lawyer Slone, standing upon that

mound had bidden them go back to their byres and, peaceably, to do suit

and service and pay their heriots and rent-hens and bolls of corn and

the rest.

Then Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock, his friend, and Robert Raket,

had answered for the other bondsmen that they would think upon it. Then

the three of them had ridden to Lucker, where there was a lawyer called

Shurstanes, and had taken counsel with him. So when, upon the morrow,

the bailiff of that Castle came again, those three cunning ones had met

him courteously, and said that, for a suit of sorcery, a Warden's Court

could not foul or find a bill. It must go before a court of the Bishop

Palatine. They had great respect for the Lord Warden, but so it was and

his court was only for raidings in the Marches. And for the

dispossession of a barony that could only be tried (after the Bishop's

Court in Durham had found a true bill of sorcery) in an assize of the

King's justices travelling, Alnwick or wheresoever it might be. And any

such finding of the assize court must be ratified by the most dreadful

King of England in council before ever the Young Lovell could be

dispossessed of his lands.

And those three cunning men had further answered the bailiff that they

were very willing to pay rent-hens and tythes and heriots and pence and

whatever was rightfully to be had of them. But first they must be

assured of what the King said in his council. Else the Young Lovell,

coming again, might have it all of them a second time, and that, being

poor men, they could not well abide.

Then the bailiff went back to the Castle--he was not the old bailiff of

the Lord Lovell who had been cast out of his dwelling in the King's

Tower and had gone to live at Beal--but it was a new bailiff that Sir

Walter Vesey had brought from Haltwhistle, where he had been a

surveyor's clerk.

But, in three days, the bailiff had issued again from the Castle and had

gone to the byres of the poor widow of Martin Taylor, having about him

ten pikemen for his protection.

Then Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock and Richard Raket considered that

if this thing were done, even upon the poorest of them, it might well

serve as a precedent. They had called together all the bondsmen and

their sons, and the number of sixty-seven men and all the women had

come, being ninety in number, and the more noisy because it was a woman

and a widow that the bailiff sought to oppress. So they had thrown

stones at the pikemen who were bearing off the widow's donkey, and had

broken out the bailiff's teeth, and driven them all back to the Castle.

And, in expectation that the bailiff should come again with a greater

force, they had fetched from their hiding-places all their arms, and had

them ready. But the people from the Castle never came again; without

doubt they thought they were not strong enough; the bondsmen of Castle

Lovell were all very notable reivers and fighting men.

Thus, if Sir Walter and Limousin and the Decies came out with such

forces as they had, it was very likely--nay it was certain--that the men

who were in the White Tower and still faithful to the Young Lovell would

issue behind them into the Castle with their cannons, and so, if they

might not take the Castle they might at least set free the Lady

Rohtraut, and have her away by sea; for they of the Castle had no boats,

and no fisherman would help them.

The Young Lovell listened as attentively as he might to what Hugh Raket

had to say, and, at the end of the story, they were come to the hill top

where the heather and marshy ground ceased. They saw before them great

plains of green grass with people going about everywhere, and there

getting their hay. And a little way away there were going, along a

trodden road, some ten armed men and another amongst them, all on

horseback.

So the Lord Lovell kept himself apart, but sent Hugh Raket to look who

these men were that went abroad upon his lands. Before him, but a

little to the right was the town of Belford, but the monastery, with its

great church and its great tower just in building, was a little to the

South, near the wood called Newlands. Further to the South was the

little hamlet of Lucker. He cast his eyes behind him and he frowned.

For, apart from the sea and the sky, the two Castles and the islands set

in foam, he had seen mostly the square tower of Glororum. A little

company, in the clear weather, were riding out of this tower, and there

the Lady Margaret dwelt. It seemed a weary thought to him since he

remembered the lady with the crooked smile.

Hugh Raket came back to him and said that those ten men rode with a

prisoner that had been convicted of theft in the Courts of the Nevilles.

He had appealed to the Bishop's Courts in Durham, and so they were

taking him there. Hugh Raket thought that it was a folly to make such

matter of a felon. Let them hang him to the first tree and ride back.

For this appeal, before they had the thief strung up, should cost the

Neville lord, for guards and victual and horsemeat and harbouring,

nothing less than ten pounds which was a great sum of money, and a folly

too.

He was of opinion that, if such great lords as the Nevilles and the

Darceys and the Young Lovell suffered none to appeal from their courts,

but hung every man that came before them, it would be much better; for

then there would be none of this monstrous outlay that was for ever

occurring, and the great lords could excuse their poor bondsmen their

rent-hens and their suit and service.

The Lord Lovell made Hugh Raket tell all over again his story of how

they had contended with the bailiff. For, the first time, he had not

been very attentive. But now he bent his brows firmly on the face of

this cunning bondsman and gave him all his mind. And then it speedily

appeared to him that it was this fellow that had really moved in the

resistance to the bailiff, and that Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock

had had little to do with it, for they were simple, slow fellows. So

the Young Lovell frowned upon Hugh Raket and called him a naughty knave,

for the Young Lovell prized good order in his dominions above

everything.

The bondsman began to cry out then, that if they had paid their

tributes, heriots and what not to the bailiff of the false pretenders,

they would have none wherewith to pay the Young Lovell's bailiff when he

came in turn as come he would.

"Now are you a very naughty fellow," the Young Lovell cut into his

outcry, "for well ye knew ye thought I should never come again, but was

away amongst the false Scots and dead, or amongst the false witches and

worse. So ye were minded to escape all your suits and services for

ever. And, for the bailiff of a great lord, proclaimed with drums upon

his hill, he is no person for such scum and vermin as ye are to protest

against, or against whom to cry out to lawyers. It is for you to do

your services to those whom God for the time sees fit to set over you,

and to our Lord the King and the Prince Bishop and the Lord Warden and

others. For, if such fellows as you are to question whom ye shall pay

and whom ye shall not pay, what peace or order should we have in these

my lands? Nay, we shall see ye rise up against mine own bailiffs, so

that, by God His sorrow, I must speedily come against ye with fire and

brands...."

The Lord Lovell set his teeth and the bondsman shrank back.

Nevertheless, he mumbled that they were very poor folk and could never

pay two sets of masters, the one against the law and the other their

rightful lord.

"Sir, you lie," the Lord Lovell said. "For very well ye know that such

a parcel of rich scoundrels are not between Tweed and Tyne. For my

Castle is a very strong Castle, and I have been and shall be to you a

very powerful lord at whose name all the false Scots do tremble. So

that, from the shadow of that my Castle, ye go burning and reiving into

Scotland and the Marches, whereas none dare ever come against ye to take

what ye have by right or what ye have falsely stolen. I have had

complaints against ye, in my father's time, that, in one winter season,

you and Barty of the Comb and the other Milburns and Jock Corbit and his

fellows and others that are upon my lands, with fellows from

Haltwhistle, and God only knows where or under whose leadership (though

I think it was a Wharton that led ye), you cast down or burned

ninety-two towns, towers, stedes, barnekyns, and parish churches; ye

slew one hundred and seven Scots, and prisoners taken were two hundred

and nine, who were ransomed with whitemail and black; 2,700 horned

cattle ye took, and 3,039 sheep, along with nags, geldings, goats, swine

and eight hundred bolls of corn...."

Hugh Raket mumbled that he had had very little of all this.

"Filthy knave," his lord said, "I know not what you had but you had your

share, you and Barty of the Comb and Jock Corbit. And well I know that

I was--God help and save me--surety for you and my other men at the

Warden's Court where complaint was made against ye. And well I know

that when ye should have assoiled yourselves by arms, it was my armourer

that had made the arms ye wore, and so war-like did ye appear that none

came into the field against ye, the complainers being mostly Scots

widows that ye had made. God keep and save me! now I wish I had never

done those things for you, for you came away with no bills fouled

against ye and ye had the Scots horned cattle, and black and white mail,

and their nags and geldings and goats, and so ye have waxed fat, and

would rise up against your betters."

The bondsman was silent, deeming that the better course before the

visible anger of his lord, and the Young Lovell continued:

"If ye would not pay your just dues to me where then should ye be? If

it were not for the fear of my name how should you be safe in the

nights? And how may I make my name feared but by keeping a great store

of knights and men-at-arms and bondsmen and my Castle very strong?

Where should ye be if I had no lead upon my roofs, and the rain and

frost destroyed my towers? Ye would be men undone, for the false Scots

would come burning and slaying, and the Lords Percy should take all ye

had, and the Bishops Palatine would sell ye into slavery. So I rede ye

well, pay me what ye owe me, or I will be in your steads and barnekyns a

very burning torch, and upon your nags and geldings a death rider such

as ye never saw."

The bondsman fell upon his knees before his lord's horse.

"Ah gentle lording," he cried out, "God forbid that we should not pay ye

all that we owe. Then indeed were we all undone, for no men ever had

lord so gentle and so kind."

"Foul knave," his lord said, "I know that if by my murder ye might well

profit, murder me ye would, you and your fellows; but ye dare not for

fear of the Scots."

The bondsman wept and groaned with his hands held up, and his hood

fallen from his face.

"Now, by God's dreadful grace, that is not so," he cried. "For if I

would have murdered ye--and I tremble at that word--might I not have

done so even now, when I had the arms and weapons that I surrendered to

you so that ye might have killed me? Ye are my very dread lord, and well

I know it. For I have sate under the mass priest and heard his sermons,

and well I know how that the lion is the symbol and token of Antichrist,

the dragon of Satan, the basilisk of death, and the aspic of the sinner

that shut his ears to the teachings of life. And have I not seen all

these trampled beneath the feet of the Saviour in stone set upon the

church door? And shall I be like unto the aspic and pass from life to

hell ... the aspic that shutteth his ears? Alas, no! I do know that

there are set over me, God and the Saints and the most dreadful King

Henry, Seventh of that name, and the Bishop Palatine and the Border

Warden and the monks of St. Radigund. But before all these men and next

only to God, comes my most dread Lord Lovell of the Castle, and that if

I do not serve him with all rights and dues, fire and sword will be my

portion in this life or else the barren hillside and hell-flame in after

time...."

The Lord Lovell said:

"Well, ye have learnt your lesson, the mass priest has taught you well."

Then the crafty bondsman, seeing that his lord's face was softened, and

hoping, by means of his brother, still to escape his due payments,

sighed and said:

"I would indeed, and before the saints, that I must give greater

payments to my lord if there were none to other people. For there is no

end to this payment of taxes and tithes. No sooner is my lord's bailiff

gone than there come my Lord Warden's men seeking to take my horse for

the King's wars in France--God curse that Lord Warden! And he gone,

comes the Bishop Palatine's bailiff seeking payment for the milling of

my corn at his mills on the Wear though the grists were all my own.

Then comes the prior of St. Radigund's for a half tithe; then Sir John,

the mass priest, for a whole. Then there are the market dues of

Belford--for God His piteous sake, ah gentle lording, set us up here in

Castle Lovell a market where we may sell toll free--we of the Castle.

Now if I will sell some bolls of wheat and ship them to the Percies at

King's Lynn, I must pay river dues at Sunderland according to the brass

plate that is set in the Castle wall at Dunstanburgh. And if I pay that

due it is claimed of me again a second time by the Admiral of the

Yorkshire coast, saying that I should not have paid it the first, though

God He knows what maketh the Admiral of Yorkshire in our rivers and

seas. So with wood haulage to Glororem, and maltings to the King's

Castle guard at Bamburgh, and a day's work of service here and two days

in harvest there, God knows there is no end to a poor man's payments.

But this I know..." and the peasant scowled deeply, "that my Lord of

Northumberland may rue the day when he taxed us for the French wars. It

is not that Lord Percy that shall live long."

The bondsman allowed himself these words against the Percy partly out of

his great hatred, and partly because he knew his lord did not love this

Earl of Northumberland for his treachery to King Richard upon Bosworth

Field.

They were still halted at the edge of that plain that the lord might the

better hear his bondsman. But the Young Lovell heard only parts of what

the peasant said, for he was nearly lost in thought whilst the great

white horse cropped the grass. At last the Young Lovell spoke.

"For what you say," he exclaimed, "as to the multiplicity of burdens

there is some sense in it. And it might well be that I could buy some of

these rights from the King, or the Prince Bishop, or others, as it

chances. And, for a market, I am well minded to buy the right to hold

one from the King. And so was my father minded before me. But you know

very well that your gossip, Corbit Jock--like the tough rogues that ye

all are--this Corbit Jock stood in the way of it. For the only piece of

land I have that is fitting for a market lies under the wall of that my

Castle on the way running through that my township of Castle Lovell.

And amid most of that, as ye know, Corbit Jock has a mound of his

holding. How his father got it I know not. But there, running into my

Castle wall, is his mound, and on it a filthy barn leaning against my

Castle wall, and before the barnekyn a heap of dung and a shed that

might harbour five goats. The whole is not worth to him ninepence by

the year, and it is far from his house and of no use to him. Yet,

though I would well and willingly buy this of him, and my father would

have bought it of his father that there we might have a market holden,

ye know very well that this Corbit Jock will not sell and I have no

power to take it from him. For, though I might get a broad letter from

the King in his Council to take this mound by force, and to pay him full

value, yet such a letter must cost me much gold, and it is doubtful if

the King's writ, in such matters, runneth in these North parts. In the

country of France, as I heard when I was there of the Sieur Berthin de

Silly, such things are done every day by the King's letters. Nay, he

was about then engaged in such a matter with a peasant, whom he

dispossessed, but paid well and so has a fair market below his Castle of

La Roche Gayon. And so it may well be in the South of this realm for

aught I know. But here it is different, and I am not minded to have a

hornet's nest of lawyers about my ears in order to give a market

place--that should cost me dear enough when I bought the rights of my

lord the King--to such rogues and cozeners as you and Barty of the Comb

and Corbit Jock and the widow of Martin Taylor. But, if ye will talk of

the matter with Corbit Jock that he may sell his mound to me, I will

promise you this, that you shall have your market. For I am your very

good lord. And so no more of talk for this time."

He set his horse towards Belford, going decently by roundabout ways and

paths from landmark to landmark that he might not trample down the long

grass of which his bondsmen were making their hay all about him. Of

late years, since his father had been too heavy to ride, the Young

Lovell had considered much the matters of his lands, and he had done

certain things, such as selling by the year to third parties of the

rights to collect his dues, whether on malt, hens, salt, housing and of

other things. And these new methods, of which mostly he had heard in

the realms of France, Gascony and Provence, had worked well enough, for

his incomings had been settled and the buyers of his rights had neither

the power to steal his moneys nor so much to oppress the bondsmen as his

own bailiffs had. So that, in one way and another, he could talk of

these things to his bondsman whilst he thought of other matters. And

one of these matters came into his head from that talk of the shed of

Corbit Jock that leant against the very rock below his Castle wall.

From below the flags of the men-at-arms' kitchen, in the solid stone of

the rocks, there ran a passage going finally through the earth not ten

feet from the mound of Corbit Jock. The only persons that might know of

this passage had been the dead lord and Young Lovell himself. The

Decies might know of it, for the dead lord had prated of all things to

his bastard. But it was odds that it would never come into the Decies'

head, for he was a very drunken fellow and remembered most things too

late.

Now if, under cover of night, the Young Lovell could introduce a dozen

or twenty lusty fellows with picks and other instruments into Corbit

Jock's barnekyn, in five hours or less they could dig a way into that

tunnel where it went under the ground. Then it was but pushing up the

flagstones of the kitchen and they would be terrifyingly and

surprisingly within the Castle whilst all the men-at-arms could be drawn

off from those parts with a feigned attack on the outer walls. Or, if

by chance there were men in that passage and guarding it, they could put

into it a great cask of gunpowder and so kill them all. It was a task

much easier than my lord of Derby and Sir Walter Manny had, who

tunnelled under the Castle of la Reole for eleven weeks when Agout de

Baux held it and yet could not take that place which is in Languedoc,

though he had with him three Earls, five hundred knights and two

thousand archers. The young Lovell thought he would have his Castle

more easily.

And as he rode through the fields, the thoughts of war driving out those

of the lady with the crooked smile, the siege of that Castle grew clear

to him and like a picture, red and blue and pink, at the edge, or the

head of a missal. At first, hearing that the White Tower was held for

him with its gold and cannons, he had thought that, going by sea into

that place, which was like a citadel over against a walled city, such as

he had seen at Boulogne and Carcassowne and other places, he would set

the cannon to batter down the walls and so enter in with what many he

could get together.

But then it had seemed to him that that was his own Castle and, if he

beat down its walls, he must build it up again at his own pains and

great cost--for the building of castles is no light work to a lord,

however rich. Moreover, his sisters would certainly set his mother in

whatsoever part of the Castle he began to batter--so that he must either

kill his mother or leave off; for that was the nature of his good

sisters.

And then he began to think of stratagems and devices by which he might,

more readily and at less cost, come to his desires. And so he cast

about for a cunning device by the means of which he might get possession

of the great gate of that Castle. But at that time he thought of none.

So he rode an hour through the fields, diverting himself with that

picture in his mind and with his bondsman stepping beside him. Then

they came to a brook which was a bowshot from the frowning and high

tower of Belford monastery. This was so new that the stones were still

white and the scaffold poles and planks all about its crenellations. The

Young Lovell stayed his horse by the streamside and spoke to his

bondsman.

"Now this I will do," he said, "and you may set it privately about the

countryside. For I know well, Hugh Raket, that it is you that are the

masterful rogue in these affairs. Although in your story you have

sought to make it appear that Barty of the Comb and others had a great

share in devising a mutiny against that bailiff, yet it was you alone

that stirred up the people. So let it be known to my men a fortnight

hence, at nine at night they shall meet me at a certain place of which I

will warn you later. And each man shall be armed as he is when he goes

against the Scots. Then they shall come into my service for four or

five days each, as if it were harvest time and they doing their services

due to me. Then they shall sack a tower and have their sackings. And

of the prisoners that they take in another place they shall have the

ransoming, unless I prefer to hang those prisoners. In that case I will

pay them what the ransoming would have been. And, for the men out of

the sea, they shall be excused all rent-hens and services and heriots

that they owe me. You--that is to say--have called them heriots, but

rather they should be called deodanda. For a heriot is paid, the tenant

being dead, by the tenant's heirs. But in this case it is the lord that

is dead and what is paid is paid by the bondsmen as a fine or a forfeit,

because they did not save the life of their lord."

The bondsman looked upon the face of his lord and marvelled what manner

of man this was that, in the very conception of a martial scheme, could

so hang upon the niceties of words. But the Young Lovell was a very

sober, hardy and cunning lord. In all that he said he had his purpose.

So that, before the peasant could speak and ask him for more particulars

of that bargain, the young lord drew up Hamewarts' mouth from the water

where he had drunk sufficiently and went on, lifting his hand in the

sunlight.

"So that it is in the nature of deodand rather than of heriot. And how

it works is in this wise--that, every tenant having to pay and suffer

upon the death of his lord, so he works very carefully to keep his lord

alive. So mark you well that, Hugh Raket. For, if I succeed in this

enterprise, two out of three of you shall be excused all rent-hens and

deodands due at the death of my father. But if I fail and die--and,

full surely I will not live if I fail--ye must all of you pay double,

rent-hens, deodands and all. For then shall my sisters be my lawful

heiresses and you must pay to them firstly all that you owe upon my

father's death and then all that you owe upon mine who am your rightful

lord. So you will be in a very pitiful case if I die, and it will well

repay you to fight well for me. Mark that very carefully and report it

where you will. But, if you think rather to make favour with my

sisters, you know very well it is not they that will go to the sweat and

cost of getting leave of our lord the King to hold markets. No, but

they will get them to Cullerford and Haltwhistle and strengthen these

places, and the Castle will be thrown down, and the Scots will come in

upon you and you will be in a very lamentable case."

He paused and looked earnestly upon his bondsman. And then he continued:

"So I have spoken what was in my mind very soberly and I think well.

For this business of being a great lord is not merely the riding about

in summer time and the sacking of castles. But I have to think what is

good for me to do for my people. For your good is mine and I study how

to bring it about. And that I learned of the Lord Berthin de Silly when

I was in France. Now think well upon what I have said and give me your

answer, yea or nay. For I know well that the others will be guided by

you."

The bondsman looked upon the stream and upon the monastery whose wall,

like a castle's, lay new and square in the sunlight.

"I take thought," he said, "not that I doubt the upshot, but that I may

find words. For these matters are above my head that you have deigned

to speak of. But of this, gentle lording, you may make sure that, at

eight of the clock a fortnight hence, I will meet you at any place of

which you shall send me the name. And there shall be with me

sixty-eight or seventy stout men and well armed after our fashion."

He went on to try to say that this lording was a soldier so cunning and

so great a knight that all the countryside said they would very gladly

go a-riding or a-foot with bows, into Scotland or Heathenesse or the

South, whatever his enterprise. But, since he was a better hand at

grumbling at taxes than in praising his lord, he got little of it out.

Nevertheless he made it plain that fighting men would be there on the

appointed day, and so they parted--the lord riding across the stream to

the monastery and the hind along it to Belford town.

II

The monk Francis was a small, dark, quiet man and not overlearned. He

was rising thirty and he was always at work. The monastery of Belford

was one given over rather to study and learning so that he, the active

one, had always much upon his hands. But all such time as he could save

from his duties he devoted to praying for the soul of the cousin he had

slain by mischance, taking her for a deer and slaying her with an arrow,

as she came to him amongst thick underwood to tell him that the Scots

were marching southwards through the Debateable Lands.

That had been ten years before; nevertheless he had prayed that morning

very reverently for his cousin's soul, walking up and down between the

rows of haymakers and their cocks, in the sunshine; keeping one finger

between the leaves of his book of prayers and yet marking diligently

that none of the bondsmen slipped away into their own grass to use the

scythe there. For it was marvellously fine weather, and such as had

never in the memory of man been known in those parts for the heat of the

sun and the dry clear nights. So that it was considered that the saints

must be blessing that part. Nevertheless, these naughty bondsmen, owing

some three, some five days' labour of themselves and their wives and

children to the monastery, must needs always be seeking to slip away to

their own lands and doing their scythe work there. This they would do,

if no monk watched them, though by so doing they robbed the monastery

and went in danger of excommunication. But those, as the learned Prior

said, were evil days, so that it might almost be said, as was said

aforetime of the accursed robber who came against the Abbey and Church

of St. Trophime, that he proclaimed that a thousand florins would get

him more soldiers than seven years of plenary absolution from the Pope

at Avignon. As to whom, said the Prior, Froissart, the chronicler

declared that men-at-arms do not live by pardons nor set much store

thereby. And as much might be said of their bondsmen.

For it was to be said for this monastery of Belford that the monks set

more store by a great chronicle that they were assisting the monk Oswald

to write--all of them searching here and there--than by the work done by

their bondsmen, the good estate of the lands of the monastery or even

the saying of the offices. They set more store by learning than by

aught else.

Their lands were administered by laymen, so that they were often robbed,

and when the monk Francis had come amongst them their revenues had been

scarcely an hundred pounds by the year, or very little more. And, even

at the time of his coming, the monks had been against receiving him, for

they said that here was a man, though of piety undoubted, who could not

tell the chronicle of Giraldus Cambrensis from that of the monk

Florence, or Asser from Vergil and Flaccus. But, in those days, the

Prior had over-ridden them, pointing out that this novice was very

wealthy; that their kitchen and dinner tables were in a sad state, that

they had no longer money enough to pursue, upon a princely scale, the

succouring of the poor that sat upon their benches, and that they could

with the greater serenity pursue their studies and sleep after meat, if

they had amongst them a knight who had proven himself diligent upon his

own affairs and had increased his substance in the world. For, though

they had butlers and cellarers amongst their number, yet the butler

thought more of Brute than of his office and the cellarer was more

minded to know where lay the bones of the British Kings than where were

his keys. The ungodly came in and drank their wine in the cellar, yea,

and carried away the mead in black-jacks.

These monks were portly, learned and somnolent, religious with a solid

contempt for the unlearned--though they would upon occasion, being large

men, line the walls and hew down attacking raiders with balks of timber,

bars of iron and other weapons that drew no blood, those being,

according to the canon, the proper arms for churchmen. These haughty

monks accepted this Francis, who was known to the world as Sir Hugh

Ridley, to be of their holy and learned brotherhood. But yet they

regarded him as little more than a lay brother, though he wore the

monk's frock, and they never voted for his advancement to any office

such as sub-prior or the like.

Yet that day he had said two offices for them, had watched in the hay

fields and was now coming in, at noontide to check accounts with the

bailiff of the Priory about the great tower that was then in building.

Seventeen monks there were and twenty lay brothers who were a lazy band.

Thirty men-at-arms they had for their protection under the leadership of

a knight, Sir Nicholas Ewelme, and they afforded shelter and victuals

for 136 poor men, each of the seventeen monks being the patron of eight

of them. These poor men sat in the sun on benches, each before their

patron's room and should be served by him at meals. But this was

nowadays, mostly done by the lay brothers, the learned monk laying one

finger beneath a dish or vessel served to the poor men, so that it would

not be said that the custom had died out.

The monk Francis, in his grey cloak came in by the little postern gate

from the hayfields. He went to his rooms across the quadrangle; and he

perceived how certain peasants in hoods of black cloth with belts of

yellow leather were bringing in sacks and baskets. These sacks and

baskets, as the monk Francis knew from the dress of those peasants,

contained ammunition, small round balls of lead or, in the alternative,

well-rounded stones from the beach. These peasants were workers in the

lead mines upon the lands of the monastery and it was so they paid

tribute with balls to shoot against the false Scots if they came

a-raiding to Belford.

And, as he was going into his room, before his benchful of poor men that

stretched their legs in the sun, it happened that one of the peasant's

bags burst open and all the round, leaden balls ran out under the

archway. Then there was a great bustle, the guards on duty and the

guards that came out of the chambers in the arch starting to pick up the

balls. And the monk Francis smiled to think how universal is the desire

in men to help in picking up small, round objects that fall out of a

sack. So that if the false Scots had been minded to take that place,

they could have done it very well then, all the guards and peasants and

others being on their hands and knees, huddled together and the gate

open. And it seemed to the monk Francis that that would be a very good

stratagem for the taking of a tower or the gateway of a strong place.

One of the poor men had been a man-at-arms at Castle Lovell, but was put

out now and masterless. He came to the monk Francis as he went in at his

door, and reported that it was said that the young Lord Lovell had been

seen, having come out of captivity of the false Gilbert Elliott. The

monk said he hoped well that that was so, for then all the men-at-arms

from Castle Lovell that were there could go again to his service, and

that he was a very good lording and his good friend in God.

He wished to cut the matter short for that time because he knew that

there awaited him in his outer room John Harbottle an esquire, and the

receiver of many domains of the Earl of Northumberland. This esquire was

come with the accounts for the building of the great new tower that the

Earl had given to the monastery. But the former men of the Lord Lovell

crowded before the monk and after him into his outer room, all bringing

tidings that the Young Lovell had been seen to ride through his

township. And, to the number of thirty or so, they clamoured all at

once, asking for his advice as to how they should find their lord and

what to do when he was found.

The monk Francis was very glad to think that the Young Lovell was come

back, not only because he was his true friend but also because this

rabble of disemployed men-at-arms was a burden to the monastery and he

had it on his conscience that he let them bide there. For that he had

done, so that they might serve his friend if he came back. That

monastery was rather for the relief of poor men ruined by raiders, for

travellers and for criminals seeking sanctuary. He would very gladly

have had news of his friend whom he loved, and have settled the disposal

of these sturdy, idle and hungry men. Yet, being a man of many affairs,

he thought that the day could only be got through by doing all things in

order, and behind all these ragged men in grey, he perceived the

esquire, John Harbottle, a portly, bearded man in a rich cloak of

purple, with a green square cap that had a jewel of gold. This John

Harbottle appeared not greatly pleased at the clamour, for he also was a

man of many affairs, being the Percy's receiver, and a very diligent

one.

So, without many words, but quietly, the monk Francis drove out some of

these fellows, and then, calling to a grizzled and dirty lay brother, he

bade him drive out the rest and bar the door. And so he took John

Harbottle by the sleeve of his purple coat and drew him through the

doorway into his inner room and closed the door. Then there was peace.

This inner cell was a light room with no glass in the windows. Beside

the bed head there was a shelf that had on it the water-bottle of the

monk Francis, his plate, his cup, his napkin and the book of devotions

in which he read during the dinner hour, his needles and bodkins, his

leather book of threads and such things as he needed for the repair of

his clothes. Beneath this shelf was a curtain, and this hid the spare

garments of the monk, as the vestments in which he said the simpler

offices, his spare breeches, stockings, braces, and belt. At the other

side of the bed head was a large crucifix of painted wood, from which

there hung Our Lord who was represented as crying out in a perpetual

agony. Before the crucifix was a fald stool, that had across one

corner, a great rosary of clumsy wooden beads, and upon it a skull whose

top was polished and yellowed by this monk's hands. For he had it there

the better to be reminded of what death is when he prayed for the soul

of the cousin he had slain.

When he had killed that woman he had been possessed rather with the idea

of what he could do for her poor unhanselled soul than with agonies of

ecstasy. And so, with a strong will he prayed, year in, year out, for

her sooner relief from the pains of purgatory, knowing God to be a just

Man and prayer most efficacious.

So, having brought John Harbottle in, he sat himself down on his

three-legged stool of wood before his double pulpit. This had in its

side a round opening, and in the interior such books, papers, or

parchments as the monk Francis had in immediate use. He was of a very

orderly nature, rather like a soldier than a priest.

He reached into the inside of his pulpit for his parchment that he was

to peruse with John Harbottle, and that esquire stood behind him leaning

over his back. Then John Harbottle said:

"Meseems the Master of Lovell has come back?"

"That I hear," the monk Francis answered.

"I think there is heavy trouble in store for him," John Harbottle said.

"I think there is but little," the monk answered. John Harbottle meant

that the Earl Percy, in the Border Warden's Court, had given judgment

against the Young Lovell. The monk meant that the religious of that

countryside were not best pleased with the Earl Percy; they considered

that sorcery was a matter for the courts ecclesiastical. But each was a

man of few words, and without any more, the monk Francis unfolded his

parchment. They went to their accounts, John Harbottle standing behind

the monk and checking each item as he read it:

"And in the like payment of money to the prior of the house of the

Brethren of St. Cuthbert, within the parish of Belford, near the wood

called Newlands, for this year, (as well for that part of the work of

the new tower there as for the carriage of stone and other stuff by the

contract, in gross) 100 shillings...." The Earl was giving the tower to

the monks, they employing two contractors called Richard Chambers and

John Richardson to build it for them and the Earl paying the accounts.

"Just!" John Harbottle said, and the monk read on--

"Carting four loads of lead, 24s. 6d.; bought eight loads of stone,

10d.; iron, with the workmanship of the same, for the doors and windows,

8s.; bought seven locks 4s. 2d., with keys; six latches 12d.; and snecks

and other iron 4s. 2d...." So the monk read on, and the receiver nodded

his head, saying, "Just."

Once he said--

"I wish I could have things so cheap for my lord."

"Then," the monk answered, "you must haggle as I do and in God His high

service."

So they made out between them that all these things, and making the arch

between the great chamber and the tower came to L10 6s. 4d., and since

they owed Robert Chambers and John Richardson already L17 13s. 4d., the

whole payment then to be made was L27 19s. 8d.

The esquire, John Harbottle, pulled his money bag from beneath his

girdle and counted out the money, throwing it on to the bed, for there

was no table in that cell.

Then he drew from his belt two papers and so he said:

"My lord will have you buy from Christiana Paynter the armorial bearings

of my lord to set up upon the tower, and that shall cost you 3s. And

this you shall have carved upon the same stone:

"'In the year of Xt. jhu MCCCCLXXXV

This tower was builded by Sir Henry Percy

The IV. Earl of Northumberland of great honour and worth

That espoused Maud the good lady full of virtue and beauty

... Whose soule's God save.'"

"That shall be set up," the monk said.

"Then," John Harbottle said, "there is this you may do to convenience me

who have been your favourer in all things. That you may the earlier

come to it, read you this paper which I have written out, but in

English, for I have no Latin beyond mass-Latin."

"What we may do to please you," the monk said, gravely, "that we will,

if it be not to the discredit of God."

"It is rather to His greater glory," the esquire said.

So the monk took the paper and read:

"The Prior of Belford, Patent of XX merks by yere. Henry Erle of

Northumberland...." The monk glanced on, and his eye fell upon the

words, "myn armytage builded in a rock of stone against the church of

Castle Lovell," and, later on ... "the gate and pasture of twenty kye

and a bull with their calves sukyng,"--"One draught of fisshe every

Sondaie in the year to be drawen fornenst the said armytage, called the

Trynete draught...."

The monk looked up over his shoulder at the esquire.

"I perceive," he said, "that you would have us to take over the

commandment of my Lord's hermitage at Castle Lovell."

John Harbottle looked down a little nervously at his hands. That was

what he sought.

"I have heard that the holy hermit is dead?" the monk asked.

"It is even that," John Harbottle said. "I am worn with the trouble of

riding over from Alnwick to Castle Lovell. It is a great burden, yet

there is the hermitage that must be kept up for the honour of the

Percies."

"That," the monk said, "was because it was esteemed a privilege to house

a holy anchoret."

"Then," John Harbottle asked, "may not my lord save his soul as well by

making your brotherhood a payment to watch over the holy man?"

"I am not saying that he may not," the monk said.

"Then of your courtesy, do this for me," John Harbottle said, "for it is

a troublesome matter. This last year, once a month, news has been sent

me that this holy man was dead. Then I have ridden over to Castle

Lovell and lost a day, calling into the hole in his cell to see if he

would answer 'Et cum spiritu tuo,' as his manner was. And, after a

whole day lost, he will answer; or maybe not till the next day, and

there are two days lost when I should be getting rents or going upon my

lord's business. And I am not the man to have much dealing with these

holy beings. A plain blunt man! It gives me a grue to be thus calling

in at a little hole. And the stench is very awful. I do my duty by the

blessed sacraments on Sundays and feast days. And if he be dead, I must

find a successor. It will not be very easy for me to find a man to go

into that kennel and be walled up. And never again to come out...."

The monk looked again at the paper with the particulars of the gift.

"Well, I will think of it," he said, "or rather I will commune with the

worshipful Prior and Sub-Prior. But I would have you know that if they

agree to do this thing it is upon me that the pain and labour will fall,

for there is none else in this monastery to do it. So I must go over to

Castle Lovell once by the week at least to see that the holy hermit is

given bread and water. And if he be truly dead it is I that must find

his successor; that will not be easy."

"But twenty marks by the year for doing it," John Harbottle said, "that

is a goodly sum to fall to your brotherhood."

"I do not understand," the monk answered him, "for this patent is not

very clear--whether that twenty marks is in addition to the grassground,

the garden and orchard at Conygarth, the pasturage of kine, bulls,

horses and the draughts of fishes. Or are the draughts of fishes and

the rest to be taken as of the value of twenty marks by the year?"

"It is the last that is meant," John Harbottle answered, a little

dubiously.

"Then it is not enough," the monk said firmly and made to roll up the

paper, "I cannot advise the Prior to accept this gift. For the

monastery must lose so much of my time and prayers, though, God knows,

those are little worth enough; yet I, a not very holy man, am all that

these saintly brothers have to care for their temporalities."

John Harbottle grumbled some retort beneath his breath, and then he

sighed and pushed the paper with his hand.

"Then take and write," he said, and when the monk had mended his pen he

dictated. "'And in addition the said stipend of XX markes by year to be

taken and received of the rent and ferm of my fisshyng of Warkworth, by

thands of my fermour of the same for the tyme beynge, yerly at the times

there used and accustomed to, even portions. In wytnes whereof to these

my letters patentes, I the said erle have set the seale of my names.'

... That," John Harbottle continued, "if you will agree to, you shall

have written out fair on parchment, and so the matter ends."

"I think it will end very well," the monk answered, "and the Earl of

Northumberland shall have honour of it in Heaven. And, since I am about

to do this thing in your service, and to relieve you of travels and the

fear of a holy man, having no advantage myself and seeking none, since I

am a monk, so I will take it as a kindness if you will do, for my sake,

what you can at odd moments to advantage the cause of my friend, this

Young Lovell, who is lately come, as I have heard, from prison amongst

the false thieves of Rokehope and Cheviot."

John Harbottle did not answer this, for he thought there was little love

lost between his lord and that young lording. Within himself he thought

that, if the religious should espouse that lording's cause it would be a

good thing for the Percy to be advised to let him be, and this monk had

great voice with the lower order of people whom the Earl had cause to

fear, since they were sworn to have his blood because of the taxes that,

in the King's name, he laid upon them. But he did not speak upon those

matters, saying aloud:

"It is strange, though I know it to be true, that my lord shall have

honour in heaven by reason that a man be found to be walled up in a

space no larger than the kennel of my hound Diccon and so live out his

life."

"My friend," the monk said, "I may not listen to you further, for that

would come near conversing with a heretic. And the penalty for such

conversation is that at every Easter and high feast I must stand beside

the high altar, in a robe of penitence, having in my hand a rod or

peeled wand ten foot in length and other penances, a many I must do."

"God forbid!" John Harbottle said, "for I am no heretic and no more than

a plain, blunt man. And surely these things are hard to understand."

"My son," that monk said, and by the creasing of his tight lips John

Harbottle knew that he had been pleasant with him before and had not

meant in earnestness to call him a heretic. "Every day you hear of the

ways of God that are hard to understand. You have heard to-day or

yesterday of the miracle that was wrought on Tuesday in the Abbey of our

own town of Alnwick--how that the foot of Sir Simon de Montfort, that

there they have and that is incorruptible, cured a certain very wealthy

burgess of Newcastle called Arnoldus Pickett. For he was not able to

move his foot from his bed or put his hand to his mouth or perform any

bodily function. And so, in a dream he was bidden to go to your Abbey of

the Premonstratensian Brotherhood and the foot of Simon de Montfort

should cure him. Which, when it was known to the canons, there serving

God, in order that this merchant might approach more easily--for as yet

he heavily laboured in his lameness--and lest he should suffer too much,

two of them brought it reverently to him, in its silver shoe. But,

before the patient was able to approach for the purpose of kissing it,

and by the mere sight of the slipper, on account of the merits of Simon

de Montfort, he was restored. And this, to-day, our monks are writing

in their chronicle and praising God. And consider what glory there will

be in this foot of Simon de Montfort when it is reunited to his whole

body after the great judgment, by comparison of its efficacy before

Doomsday, when such healing virtue went out of it as a dead member,

concealing itself in a slipper of silver...."

The monk was determined very thoroughly at once to abash and edify this

minion of the Earl of Northumberland and so to bring that Lord more

thoroughly to the reverence of the Church and more particularly of the

Bishop Palatine with whom these monks had a great friendship. And this

not only in the matter of the Young Lovell, where the Earl had sought to

give judgment in a matter that was full surely ecclesiastical and not

pertaining to the lay Court of the Border Warden. So that monk

continued in a loud voice:

"Shall you seek to understand these miracles that are of daily happening

and occur all round you, God knows, often enough? For in the monastery

or priory of Durham they have not only the most famous bodies of St.

Cuthbert and St. Bede, but the cross of St. Margaret that is well known

to be of avail to women that labour with child. And in the Cella of

Fenkull they have St. Guthric, and in Newminster the zone and mass-book

of St. Robert, and in Blondeland the girdle of St. Mary the Mother of

God. And all these cure, according to their marvellous faculties, the

halt, the blind, those who have the shaking palsy and those with the

falling sickness. And in Hexham they have the Red-book of Hexham, and

at Tynemouth they have not only the body of St. Oswin, King and martyr

in a feretory, but also the spur of St. Cuthbert, the finger of St.

Bartholomew and the girdle of Blessed Margaret.... And all these things

being under your very eyes or at a short day's journey, you will

question the glory and the strangeness of God and you will set yourself

up--oh, stiffnecked generation! ..."

A gentle knocking came at the cell door and the old and dirty

lay-brother who was in the outer room pushed it ajar. They heard

immediately a great outcry from beyond and the lay brother whispered

that, at the outer door stood the Young Lovell asking for admittance

with all his men-at-arms around him.

The monk opened a little door in the wall that gave into a passage

leading to the church of the monastery. Through this he led John

Harbottle, and at the entrance to the church he let him go. For, because

John Harbottle was receiver for the Earl of Northumberland, he was not

much beloved by the Lovell men-at-arms, and the monk Francis feared that

they might offer him some violence now that their spirits were inflamed,

and their stomachs rendered proud and rebellious by the return of their

lord who should take them into his service again. And when the monk had

thrown himself down before the image of the Mother of God that was in

the Lady Chapel near that entrance, and had laid there long enough to

say twelve "Hail Maries," he arose and went back to his cell and bade

the lay brother let in Young Lovell.

III

When the Young Lovell was admitted to the inner cell, a fine smile of

friendship came over the monk's hard face. He loved this young lord for

his open features, his frank voice, his deeds of arms and his great

courage. He stretched forward his hand towards the Young Lovell, but,

in his faded scarlet cloak, and with his pierced cap in his hands the

young lord went down upon his knees and wished to confess himself.

The monk Francis blessed him very lovingly, but said that he did not

wish to hear a confession, and that the Young Lovell should seek a

holier man. But he was ready to hear the Young Lovell's true story, and

to take counsel with him as to how all things might be turned to the

greater glory of the Most High. He observed with concern the saddened

and blank eyes of his friend, his faded clothes, in which he appeared

like a figure in a painted missal that the dampness of a cell had

rendered dim. And he was determined, if he could, to render aid to his

friend, for twice already he had befriended the young man, once after

the battle of Kenchie's Burn, and he had done it since. For indeed,

when he had had time, he had gone to the township of Castle Lovell, and

had talked with the lawyer Stone and with the witch called Meg of the

Foul Tyke. With the Decies he had not talked, but he had heard him on

that day in the Great Hall and knew him for a false knave. He had

observed, too, that the stories of the lawyer Stone and of the old women

did not in all things tally. One talked of the naked witch as having

black hair and six paps; the other said she was most fair and had no

deformity. The lawyer placed the witches' fire to the left of the large

rock called Bondale that was before the chapel, and the old woman said

it was to the right, with the wind from the east, so that if it had been

a real fire there must be the marks of burning upon it.

The monk had asked his questions very cunningly, rather as a religious

anxious for information as to the ways of sinners, in order that he

might the better detect and punish them, than as one desiring to sift

their answers. But he was very certain that they were evil liars, and

he was sure that, were they brought before the Bishop's courts in

Durham, he would be able to bring their perjuries to light. So he was

very certain that the lording had been taken by Gib Elliott and held for

ransom, and well he knew that no one in the Castle would ransom him, so

that it was small wonder if they had heard nothing of it. The Decies and

his confederates would conceal any news they had from Elliott, and

perhaps slay his messenger or keep him jailed that the outlaw might be

angered and slay the Young Lovell. So that it was with a great

cheerfulness that now he offered to have brought to his friend, food and

clean linen and hot, scented water, and a serving man to wash his feet;

for he thought he must be come from far after having fared ill enough.

But the Young Lovell would have none of these things, neither would he

be persuaded to rise from his knees; but, being there, he said a long

prayer to Our Lord that hung from the crucifix and appeared in an agony.

And the monk sat himself at the foot of the box of straw covered with a

rug that was his bed and again marvelled at the face of his friend. For

the long, brown hair was blanched by the sun, the closed eyes were

sunken, the lids gone bluish, the lips parched as if with desire. And

so, whilst the lording prayed, the monk sat on the bed foot. Then he

heard a rustle of wings and, on the sill of the glassless window, he saw

a blue dove and, in the sunlight without, a fair woman that peered in at

that window and smiled--all white and with the sunlight upon her.

The monk got down from the bed foot, to reprove her courteously, for no

woman should be seen there between the church and the monk's cells. But

then he considered that it might be a penitent of one of the other

monks, and when he looked towards the window again, the woman and the

dove alike had vanished from the view of that window, and he judged he

had better let the matter be. And so he sat down upon the bed foot.

The Young Lovell groaned several times in his praying, and most he had

groaned when that fair woman had looked in at the cell. His breathing

made a heavy sound in the silent room. And then he cried out in a

great, lamentable voice:

"I have been with a fairy woman! Three months long I have looked upon

the whiteness of a fairy woman! Who shall absolve me?"

The monk slipped down from the bed.

"Ah misericordia!" he cried out and: "Jesu pity us!"

His face went pale even to the edges of his lips and, involuntarily, he

moved backwards away from that sinner until he crouched against the

wall. Then they were silent a longtime and the large flies buzzed in at

the window and out.

Then the monk took his courage to himself again.

"But if you truly repent," he said quickly, "lording, and my friend, and

sinner, you may be pardoned."

And since the young lord still kept silence he asked many swift

questions: What sort of woman was this? Where was her bower? How had

she entertained him and he her? Had he eaten of fruits from her dishes?

Had he done deeds of dishonesty with a willing heart? How did he know

her for a fairy woman? Had he partaken of magic rites; sprinkled the

blood of newborn babies; taken gifts of gold; witnessed a black mass;

gathered fernseed?

The monk asked all these questions with a breathless speed that they

might the more quickly be affirmed or denied. And at last the young

lord cried out as if in an agony:

"All that is a child's tale! All that is a weary folly! It was not

like that...."

And then he cried again:

"I say I looked upon this woman, clothed in the white of foam and the

gold of sun.... I looked but spoke no word.... Three months went by

and I knew not of the wheeling of the stars, or the moon in her course,

nor the changes of the weather.... I had seen Sathanas and Leviathan and

Herod's daughter in the chapel...."

The monk now came more near him and with a calmer eye regarded him. He

had known of knights and poor men, too, that had had visions born of

fastings, vigils, hot suns and the despair of heaven. For himself he had

desired none of these visions, for to each, as he saw it, God gives his

vocation. But some that had seen such visions had been accounted holy

and had taken religious habits; others, truly had been deemed accursed

and burned or set in chains; and yet again others had proved later true

knights of God, had fought with Saracens and the heathen, and at their

deaths had been accounted saints. And he looked upon his friend whom he

had loved, and he considered how tarnished and stained he was with the

air and with fasting. And he remembered how, in the tents before and

after Kenchie's Burn, they had talked together. Then it had seemed to

him, from the way Young Lovell spoke, that it was as if it were more

fitting that he, the monk, should be a rough soldier, and that the

esquire and lord's son a churchman.

For the Young Lovell had talked always of high, fine and stainless

chivalry, of the Mother of God as the Mystic Rose, of the Tower of

Ivory, and of the dish that had the most holy blood of God. Of none of

these things had Sir Hugh Ridley that was afterwards the monk Francis,

heard tell, when he had been a knight of the world. He had considered

rather his forbear Widdrington that fought upon his stumps at Chevy

Chase as the very perfect Knight; and, rather than of the death of King

Arthur of Bretagne, he was accustomed to sing:

"Then they were come to Hutton Ha'!

They ride that proper place about,

But the Laird he was the wiser man

For he had left na' geir without."

But this young Master of Lovell, who had lain in those tents, had

travelled far and seen our father of Rome and the courts of France and

the envoys of Mahound. Therefore, he might well have other knowledges.

And certain it was that the monk Francis had never heard him speak

otherwise than decorously of the lords set over him, charitably of the

poor, firmly of his vassals and bondsmen and with yearning and love for

Our Lady, St. Katharine, Archangel Michael, St. Margaret and of our

blessed Lord and Saviour and St. Cuthbert.

And, remembering all these things, the monk Francis considered that too

much fasting and too much learning might have made this lording mad. And

he deemed it his duty rather to bring his mind back to regaining of his

lands so that he might prove a valiant soldier in the cause of the

Bishop Palatine and Almighty God.

Therefore he said now:

"Tell me truly, ah gentle lording and my son, what it was that befell

you. So I may the better judge."

And when the monk heard first how the young man had watched his harness

within the chapel, that alone seemed to him a proof of a midsummer

madness such as a reasonable confessor should have persuaded him

against. And he gained in this conviction the more when he heard how

Behemoth, Leviathan, Mahound, Helen of Troy, the Witch of Endor and

Syrians in strange robes had visited the young man and had tempted him

there in the darkness. All these things were strange to the good and

simple monk whose knowledge of sorceries ended at crooked old women and

the White Lady of Spindleston. He knew not more than half the names of

the Young Lovell's hobgoblins.

Then he marked how the young man spoke of a woman's face that looked in

on him in the chapel and seemed to tempt him, and the monk considered

that that might happen to any man, for had he not, a minute gone, seen a

woman, fair enough to tempt any man to follow her, looking into his

cell. For he remembered her as the fairest woman he had ever seen, with

dark and serious eyes; though she smiled mockingly too, which was what,

in the life of this world, this monk had asked of women. And he had yet

to learn that the desire to follow after a fair woman was, in a gallant

lording, any mortal sin, else Hell must be fuller than the kind Lord

Jesus would have it Who died to save us therefrom.

Thus all things hardened this monk in the conceit that the Young Lovell

suffered more from over fasting than from any cardinal sin, and when it

came to the story of the very fair woman sitting upon a white horse

amidmost of doves and sparrows and great bright flowers, though it gave

him some pause to think that this had lasted for ninety days, yet it

abashed him very little.

Then the Young Lovell was done with his tale. The monk asked him first

of all:

"Now tell me truly, my gentle son; how can you tell this lady from one

of the kind saints or from the angelic host?"

"In truth I could not tell you that," the young lording said, "it is

only that I know it."

"And if you spake no word with her," the monk asked further, "how may

you know that her thoughts were wicked? Had you not fasted long? Had

you dwelt especially upon lewd thoughts before that time? Should you

not have been, if any poor mortal may be, in a degree of as much grace

as we may attain to?"

"It is true," the Young Lovell said, "that I had done my best, but we

are all so black with sin as against any true and perfect knights...."

The monk would not let him finish this speech.

"Hear now me, Young Lovell," he said, "and what my reading of these

matters is. I am not thy confessor, but until a better shall come I

order you to believe what I say and that is your duty as a Christian

man. And I bid you believe that this lady was from heaven itself, and

if not one of the saints then one of the blessed angels of God. And how

I read that is this: Firstly, is it not written that the hosts of heaven

shall be clad in white raiment, with the glory of the sun about them and

the light of the dawnstar upon their faces? And as for the doves, is it

not written that those fowls of the air are the symbol of innocence, it

being said: 'Be ye wise as the serpent and free of guile as the dove'?

For the sparrows we have the words of our Lord God His well-loved Son,

that the Almighty had them in His especial keeping, and many such may

well flutter about the fair courts of heaven. So that if you had seen

serpents that are horrible monsters you need not have been abashed, yet

you saw only doves and sparrows. And for the white horse, it was upon

such a beast that the blessed Katharine, the spouse of Our Lord, rode to

the confrontation of the forty thousand doctors. It may well have been

that most happy and gracious Lady; though if you did not mark that she

had a wheel, which as I think is the symbol of that saint, perhaps it

was not she. Or again it may have been. For without doubt the blessed

saints in heaven are relieved of the labours of bearing what were their

symbols here on earth. And indeed that is most likely. And for the

great flowers, what should they be but the blessed flowers of paradise

itself. And that they should be in that place is in nowise wonderful.

Are we to think that, having been once set around by those blossoms like

the jewels of Our Lady's diadem, any one of the hosts of heaven would

willingly go without them? Not so, but assuredly our Lord God will let

them have the company and stay of such flowers, Who hath promised to

those bright beings an eternity of such bliss as shall surpass mortal

imaginations....'

The monk had spoken these words with a tone nearly minatory and full of

exhortation. But now he approached the Young Lovell and set his arms

around his shoulder and spoke soft and in a loving fashion.