A Vow
Calote slipped out at the back door into a weedy lane full of
moonlight. She set her feet ankle-deep in grass and dew. A muck heap
cast a shadow from one side to the other of the lane and filled the
air with pungent odour. There was a stair against the wall of Will
Langland's cot, and Calote climbed up this to a little gabled chamber
that had a window looking on Cornhill. The street was white and silent
under the moon. There was no light in any house as far as Calote could
see. Even the tavern was dark: Dame Emma had shut out her roisterers
and made her house a house of mourning, for that the Black Prince was
dead. Calote let slip her strait russet gown and stood at the window
in her kirtle, shaking out her hair.
"Such hair had Guenevere," she said thoughtfully; "yet am I Calote.--A
kinsman to the Earl of March?--Mayhap to-night he weeps the death of
the Black Prince. Yet, I know not.--Wat Tyler saith these nobles be
aye at one another's throat.--When there be so many kind of love i'
the world, wherefore do some folk make choice of hating?--So many kind
of love!--Wherefore may not I essay all?--Wherefore be there
Calotes--and Gueneveres?--Yet, there be a many left for me. I will
leave thinking o' squires and knights. I will listen to Dame Reason in
the Romaunt,--and Wat, and the ploughman, and my father."
She crossed herself and said her Pater Noster, then dropped her kirtle
and lay down upon her pallet. For coverlet she had a frayed old
cassock of her father's. She lay beneath the window, and the moon came
about to look on her.
"I will love all I may," said Calote; "but I will forget to be loved."
And so she fell asleep.
She did not wake an hour after when Long Will came up to bed, stooping
among the rafters. He crossed the room to look upon her where she lay
full in the light of the moon. Because the night was close she had set
free her arms from the warmth of the old cassock, but the golden
mantle of her hair veiled her white breast that rose and fell ever so
lightly.
Will Langland beckoned to his wife and she came to stand beside him:--
"'T is now a woman,--and yesterday a child," said he. "Mayhap I am
dull-eyed, noting little that's not writ on parchment, yet meseems I
have never seen woman so fair as this my daughter. Is 't true?"
"Yea, Will; it is true," said Kitte.
Then Calote opened her eyes upon her father and mother, and she was
dreaming.
"O red rose!" said she, and shut her eyes again.
And Will Langland and Kitte his wife went down on their knees to pray.