Midsummer Eve
"And no word o' this matter to King or common man till thou 'rt bid,"
admonished Wat Tyler when he bade Calote good-by next day. "If thou
keep faith, haply I 'll believe thou art not all blab."
"Likewise, leave thy father in peace," counselled Jack Straw. "Thou
'lt not be the first maid that slipped out when the door was on the
latch: there be not many go on so honest errand."
"An thou wert my father, I might do so," answered Calote. "But thank
God for that thou 'rt not!"
"Amen!" said Jack Straw with a grin.
Yet was there little need to warn Calote of her tongue at that time,
for a many days were gone by, and months even, before she again saw
Stephen or the King. And meanwhile John Wyclif came up to London, and
his name was in every man's mouth. Some said his doctrine was
heresies, and others believed on what they could understand, which was
much or little according as they had wit. But whether they believed on
Wyclif or no, there were few men at that day in England who spoke a
good word for the Pope. And although the little King Richard was a
pious child, and so continued till his life's end, and a right
faithful violent persecutor of heretics, yet did he not scruple--or
his counsellors did not for him--to require of John Wyclif to prove to
the nobles and commons of England--which they needed no proof, being
convinced afore--that they ought not to send money and tribute to the
Pope, when England was in sore straits for to meet her own taxes, and
charity begins at home. And this was a scandal, because Wyclif was
then under the Pope's ban; so it was sin for any man to crave his
counsel. But of how he played prisoner in Oxford in the midst of his
scholars that loved him; and how he came to Lambeth Palace and stood
before Simon Sudbury the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Courtenay the
Bishop of London, to make his defence; and how the Queen-Mother sent a
message so that they feared to do him any hurt,--this Book needeth not
to tell, save and to say that time passed. And Will Langland copied
his Vision and sang his Masses for the dead, and Calote, his daughter,
spun, and wove, and baked, and watched, and waited. Stephen came no
more to hear Mass in St. Paul's, and the King was kept close.
"He will forget," she said to herself after a long while; "he will
forget, and there will be none to learn him more, for Stephen will
forget likewise. Why should Stephen remember? Why--should
Stephen--remember? He hath forgot already, and 't is all come to
naught."
Ofttimes she would go out of the Aldersgate into Smithfield and stand
beneath the shadow of St. Bartholomew's wall, and wait, and remember
how he had knelt and kissed the hem of her russet gown.
So the winter passed, and the spring, and summer was come. And Calote
lay in her bed on Midsummer Eve and heard the merrymakers singing in
the street, and thought of other Junes: thought of the day the Black
Prince died, and Stephen said he would he were her squire; of the day
when she was sent for to the palace, and she sat on a cushion by
Richard's side and told him of the poor.
"June is a fateful month for me," she said.
Then underneath her window a lute tinkled and a voice sang:--
"The birdies small
Do singen all,
The throstle chirpeth cheerly to his make,
The lark hath leave to carol to the sun:
I would I were that joly gentil one,
Piping thy praise unchid!
I 'd wake,
To climb my heav'n or ever day doth break.
But I 'm forbid.
"The birdies small
Do singen all,
The trilly nightingale doth tell the moon
His love-longing, nor hush him all the night:
I would I were that tuneful manner wight,
Within a rose-tree hid!
So soon
Thou wouldst be wishing every night were June!
But I 'm forbid.
"The birdies small
Do singen all,
No throstle, I, nor nightingale, nor lark,--
Yet fain to twitter, fain to softly peep
Of love; and needs must loathly silence keep:
Ne never no bird did.
'T is dark;
'T is sleepy night,--I 'll whisper only, 'Hark!'
But I 'm forbid."
Calote lay still as a stone: only her hair moved where it veiled her
lips. From the tavern across the way there came sounds of merriment
and a banging of doors. The light from passing torches flickered up
among the shadows in the gabled ceiling of the little room. Then the
footsteps died away. Calote sighed, and made as to rise; and again the
lute tinkled. This second song was in the swinging measure that the
common folk loved, a measure somewhat scorned in Richard's court; but
the squire had good reason for the using of it He twanged his lute
right loud and sang:--
"It fell upon Midsummer's Eve,
When wee folk dance and dead folk wake,
I wreathed me in a gay garland,
All for my true love's sake.
"I donned my coat with sleevès wide,
And fetysly forth I stole:--
But first I looked in my steel glass,
And there I saw my soul.
"I blinkèd once, I blinkèd twice,
I turned as white as milk:
My soul he was in russet clad,
And I was clad in silk.
"Now prythee tell me, soul of mine,--
Wherefore so sober cheer?--
To-night is night of love's delight,
And we go to see my Dear.
"Put on, put on thy broidered gown,
Thy feathered cap, thy pointed shoon;
The bells have rung eleven past,
Let us begone right soon.
"O Master, Master, list my word!
Now rede my riddle an ye may:
My ladye she is a poor man's daughter.
And russet is my best array.
"Tilt and tourney needs she not,
Nor idle child that comes to woo:
But an I might harry her half acre,--
O that were service true!
"Now prythee learn me, soul of mine,
Now prythee learn me how;--
And forth I 'll fare to the furrowed field,
And meekly follow the plough.
"And I 'll put off my silken coat,
And all my garments gay.
Lend me thy ragged russet gown,
For that 's my best array,
Ohè!
For that 's my best array."
Calote sat up, a-smiling, with her golden hair falling about her
brightly. So with her hands clasped across her white breast, she
waited. Beneath the window there was a footstep, a faint rustle. She
could smell roses. And now a third time the lute sounded. In the midst
of this last song Calote arose somewhat hastily, a small, slim, fairy
creature, cloaked in her golden hair. She caught up the old cassock
from the pallet, but always noiselessly, and slipped her two arms in
the long sleeves, and after smothered her soft whiteness in the rough
brown folds. Yet was she minded to draw out her hair. So she stood
within the room, at her bed's head, till the song was ended.
"So soon as I have made mine orisoun,
Come night or morn, I 'dress me hastily,
T' endite a ballad or a benisoun
Unto my ladye dear: right busily
I fashion songs and sing them lustily:
Each morn a new one and each night a new,
And Sundays three,--what more may lover do?
"What though I woo her all night long, I guess
I 'll never need to sing ay song twice over;
And every song bespeaketh sothfastnesse,
And every song doth boldèly discover
My heart, and how that I 'm a very lover.
Now, Cupid, hear me, this I swear and say:
I 'll sing my ladye two new songs each day."
He was looking up, and he saw her come to the window and stand there,
very still. He saw her fair face and her shining hair, like a lamp set
in the dark window. And she, by the light of his torch which he had
stuck upright in the ground at his side, saw him. He was twined all
round his head and neck, and across his breast and about his middle,
with a great garland of red roses, and the end of it hung over his
arm.
"O my love!" said he, and went down on his knees in the mud.
But she shook one arm forth from the cassock sleeve, and laid a finger
on her lip.
"Alas, alack!" he sighed, and then: "'T is so many months. And may I
never speak with thee? How shall I do thy bidding, and learn the King
his lesson, if I learn it not first from thee?"
She stayed by the window looking down, but always she was silent, and
she held her finger fixed at her lip.
"I am at Westminster to hear Mass,--I cannot tell when 't shall
be,--but I 'll come as often as I may. Dost never come to Westminster?
Dost never come? Oh, say--wilt thou? Do but move thy lovely head, that
I may know."
So she moved her head, slow, in a way to mean yes; and he rose up off
his knees, and unwound the rose garland very carefully, and hung it
looped thrice across the door, 'twixt the latch and the rough upper
hinge. Then he took up his torch and went his way; and when the watch
came past after a short space,--five hundred men and more, all
wreathed with posies and singing lustily, making the street light as
day,--the squire was one of these. Will Langland awoke with this
hubbub, and his wife also, and they two came to the window, nor
thought it strange that Calote already stood there looking out.