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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 42801
   :PG.Title: The Young Lovell
   :PG.Released: 2013-05-24
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Ford Madox Hueffer
   :DC.Title: The Young Lovell
              A Romance
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1913
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE YOUNG LOVELL
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      THE YOUNG LOVELL

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      A ROMANCE

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      BY FORD MADOX HUEFFER

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   |  "When they were come to Hutton Ha'
   |    They ride that proper place about,
   |  But the laird he was the wiser man,
   |    For he had left nae gear about."
   |                            *Border Ballad*.

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      LONDON
      CHATTO & WINDUS
      1913

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      PRINTED BY
      WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED
      LONDON AND BECCLES

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      *All rights reserved*

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   HISTORICAL NOVELS BY
   FORD MADOX HUEFFER

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   THE FIFTH QUEEN
   PRIVY SEAL
   THE FIFTH QUEEN CROWNED

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   THE HALF MOON
   THE PORTRAIT
   LADIES WHOSE BRIGHT EYES

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.. _`1-I`:

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   THE YOUNG LOVELL

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   PART I

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   I

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In the darkness Young Lovell of the Castle rose
from his knees, and so he broke his vow.  Since he
had knelt from midnight, and it was now the sixth
hour of the day, he staggered; innumerable echoes
brushed through the blackness of the chapel; the
blood made flames in his eyes and roared in his ears.
It should have been the dawn, or at least the false
dawn, he thought, long since.  But he knew that, in
that stone place, like a coffer, with the ancient arched
windows set in walls a man's length deep, it would
be infinitely long before the light came to his eyes.
Yet he had vowed to keep his vigil, kneeling till the
dawn ...

When the night had been younger it had been
easier but more terrible.  Visions had come to him;
a perpetual flutter of wings, shuddering through the
cold silence.  He had seen through the thick walls,
Behemoth riding amidst crystal seas, Leviathan who
threw up the smoke and flames of volcanoes.
Mahound had passed that way with his cortège of
pagans and diamonded apes; Helen of Troy had
beckoned to him, standing in the sunlight, and the
Witch of Endor, an exceedingly fair woman, and a
naked one, riding on a shell over a sea with waves
like dove's feathers.  The Soldan's daughter had
stretched out her arms to him, and a courtesan he
had seen in Venice long ago, but her smile had
turned to a skull's grinning beneath a wimple.  He
had known all these for demons.  The hermit of
Liddeside with his long beard and foul garments,
such as they had seen him when they went raiding
up Dunbar way, had swept into that place and had
imperiously bidden him up from his knees to drive
the Scots from Barnside, but he had known that the
anchorite had been dead this three years and, seeing
that the Warden of the Eastern Marches and the
Bishop of Durham, with all his own father's forces and
all theirs, lay in the castle and its sheilings, it was not
likely that the false Scots would be so near.  Young
gallants with staghounds, brachets and Hamboro
dogs had bidden him to the chase; magicians with
crucibles had bidden him come view their alembics
where the philosopher's stone stood revealed; spirits
holding flames in their hands had sought to teach
him the sin against the Holy Ghost, and Syrians in
robes of gold, strange sins.  There had come cooks
with strange and alluring messes whose odours make
you faint with desires, and the buttling friars from
friaries with great wine-skins of sack.  But all of
them, too, he had known for demons, though at each
apparition desire had shaken him.

All these he had taken to be in the nature of the
very old chapel, since it had stood there over the
tiresome and northern sea ever since Christendom
had come to the land, and it was proper to think that,
just as those walls had seen the murdering of blessed
saint Oddry by heathens and Scots whilst he sang
mass, and even as pagans and sorcerers had in the
old times contended for that ground, now, having
done it in the body, in their souls they should still
haunt that spot and contend for the soul of a young
lording that should be made a knight upon the
morrow.  But when the tower-warden had churned
out four o'clock the bird of dawn had crowed twice....

Three times would have been of better omen.
At that moment Satan himself, the master fiend,
with legs of scarlet, a bull's hide sweeping behind and
horns all gold and aquamarine, had been dancing
with mighty leaps above a coal fire, up through which,
livid and in flaming shrouds, there had risen the poor
souls of folk in purgatory.  And with a charter from
which there dangled a seal dripping blood to hiss in
the coals and become each drop a viper—with this
charter held out towards Young Lovell, Satan had
offered him any of these souls to be redeemed from
purgatory at the price of selling his own to Satan.

He had been about to say that he knew too much
of these temptations and that the damnation of one
soul would be infinitely more grievous to Our Lady
than the temporary sojourn in purgatory of an infinite
number.  But at the crowing of the cock Satan and
his firelit leer had vanished as if a candle had been
blown out in a cavern....

There had begun an intolerable period of waiting.
He tried to say his sixty Aves, but the perpetual
whirling of wings that brushed his brow took away
his thoughts.  He knew them now for the wings of
anxious bats that his presence disturbed.  When he
began upon his Paters, a rat that had crept into his
harness of proof overset his helmet and the prayer
went out of his head.  When he would have crossed
himself, suddenly his foster-brother and cousin, Decies
of the South, that should have watched in the chapel
porchway, began to snore and cried out in his sleep
the name "Margaret."  Three times Decies of the
South cried "Margaret."

Then Young Lovell knew that the spirits having
power between cockcrow and dawn, in the period
when men die and life ebbs down the sands—that
these spirits were casting their spells upon him.

These were the old, ancient gods of a time
unknown—the gods to whom the baal fires were lit;
gods of the giants and heroes of whom even his
confessor spoke with bated breath.  Angels, some
said they were, not fallen, but indifferent.  And some
of the poor would have them to be little people that
dwelt in bogs and raths, and others held them for
great and fair.  He could not pray; he could not
cross himself; his tongue clove to his jaws; his limbs
were leaden.  His mind was filled with curiosity, with
desire, with hope.  He had a great thirst and the cramp
in his limbs.  He could see a form and he could not
see a form.  He could see a light and no light at all.

Yet it was a light.  It was a light of a rosy,
stealing nature.  It fell through one of the little,
rounded windows, the shadows of the crab-apple
branches outside the wall, moving slowly across the
floor.  When he looked again it was gone and not
gone.  Without a doubt some eyes were peering into
the chapel; eyes that could see in the dark were
watching him.  Kind eyes; eyes unmoved.  His
heart beat enormously....

And then he was upon his feet, reeling and
stretching out his arms, with prayers that he had
never prayed before upon his lips.  Then prudence
came into his heart and he argued with himself.  It
was to himself and to no other man or priest that
he had vowed to watch above his harness from
midnight to dawning.  That was a newish fashion and
neither the Border Warden nor the Prince Bishop
would ask him had he done it or no.  They would
knight him without this new French manner of it.
Then he might well go to see if the dawn were
painting the heavens.  He fumbled at the bar and
cast the door open, stepping out.

It was grey; the sea grey and all the rushes of
the sands.  The foam was grey where it beat on the
islands at sea and in the no-light the great cliff of his
father's castle wall was like grey clouts hung from
the mists.  He perceived an old witch toiling up the
dunes to come to him.  She had a red cloak and a
faggot over her shoulder.  She waved her crutch to
make him await her, and suddenly he thought she
sailed, high in the air from the heavy sand to the
stone at his feet.  He thought this, but he could not
be sure, for at that moment he was rubbing the heavy
sleep from his eyes.

"That ye could do this, well I knew," he said,
"but I had not thought to see ye do it over my
ground."

Often he had seen the old witch.  Sometimes she
was in the form of a russet hare, slinking into her bed
when he had been in harness without bow or light
gun or hounds to chase her with.  At other times he
had seen her in her red cloak creeping about her
affairs in the grey woods by Barnside.

Her filthy locks fell across her red eyes and she
laughed so that he repented having spared her life in
the woods.

"Gowd ye sall putten across my hand," she said,
and her voice was like the wither of dried leaves and
the weary creak of bough on bough in a great gale
when the woods are perilous because of falling oaks.
He answered that he had no gold because he had left
his poke in his chest in the castle.

And with great boldness she bade him give her
one of the pearls from the cap that hung at his belt.
He reached to his left side for his sword, but it lay in
the chapel across his armour of damascened steel
and bright gold.

"Ye shall drown in my castle well when I have
this business redded up," he said, but he wished he
had slain her with his sword, for she was a very evil
creature and it was not well in him to let her corrupt
the souls of his poor.  He lifted from his girdle his
tablets to write down that the witch must drown,
but the tablets the pen and the knife were tangled
with their red silken tassels and skeins.  A heavy
snore came from within the chapel porch where
Decies of the South was sleeping against the wall.

"If my bride had not begged your life of me..."
the Young Lovell began.

Decies of the South muttered: "Margaret," just
at his left hand.

"Bride," the old witch tittered.  "Ye shall never
plight your troth.  But that sleeper shall be plighted
to my lording's bride and take his gear.  And
another shall have his lands."

"Get you back to Hell!" the Young Lovell said.

"Look," the witch cried out.

She pointed down the wind, across the miles of
dim dunes underneath where the Cheviots were like
ghosts for the snow.  The dunes rose in little
hummocks amongst grey fields.  A high crag was to
the left.  It was all grey over Holy Island; smoke
rose from its courtyard.  Dunstanburgh was lost in
clouds of white sea spray, and in great clouds the
sea-birds were drifting inland in strings of thousands
each.  Still no sun came over the sea.

The witch pointed with her crutch....

A little thing like a rabbit was digging laboriously
at the foot of the crag; it ran here and there, moving
a heavy stone.

"That man shall be your master," the witch cried.

A white horse moved slowly across the dunes.  It
had about it a swirling cloud of brown and a swirling
cloud of the colour of pearly shells.

"And that shall be your bane," the witch said,
in a little voice.  "Ah me, for the fine young
lording."

Young Lovell coursed to the shed beyond the
chapel yew where his horse whinned at the sound of
his voice.  He haled out the goodly roan that was
called Hamewarts because they had bought him in
Marseilles to ride homewards through France; his
father and he had been to Rome after his father did
the great and nameless sin and expiated it in that
journey.  He had ridden Hamewarts up from the
Castle of Lovell so that, standing in the shed whilst
his master kept his vigil, the horse might share his
benediction.

The roan stallion lifted his head to gaze down the
wind.  He drew in the air through his nostrils that
were as broad as your palm; he sprang on high and
neighed as he had done at the battle of Kenchie's
Burn.

The horse had no need of spurs, and young
Lovell had none.  It ran like the wind in the
direction of the white steed at a distance.
Nevertheless, the rider heard through the muffled sound of
hoofs on the heavy sand the old witch who cried out,
"Eya," to show that she had more to say, and he
drew the reins of his charger.  The sand flew all over
him from beneath the horse's feet, and he heard the
witch's voice cry out:

"To-day your dad shall die, but you's get none of
his lands nor gear.  From the now you shall be a
houseless man."

But when he turned in his saddle he could see no
old beldam in a scarlet cloak.  Only a russet hare
ran beneath the belly of Hamewarts and squealed
like a new-born baby.

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Whilst he rode furiously as if he were in chase of
the grey wolf Young Lovell had leisure to reflect, he
had ample time in which to inspect the early digger
and the beclouded horse.  At eight o'clock he was to
be knighted by the double accolade of the Warden of
the Eastern Marches and of the Prince Bishop,
following a custom that was observed in cases of great
eminence or merit in the parties.  And not only was
Young Lovell son to Lord Lovell of the Castle, but
he had fought very well against the Scots, in the
French wars and in Border tulzies.  So at eight, that
he might not fast the longer, he was to be knighted.
It was barely six, for still no sun showed above the
long horizon of the northern sea.

It was bitter cold and the little digger, with his
back to the rider, was blowing on his fingers and
muttering over a squared stone that had half of it
muddied from burial.  At first Young Lovell took
the little man for a brownie, then for an ape.  Then
he knew him for Master Stone, the man of law.

He cried out:

"Body of God, Master Furred Cat, where be's thy gown?"

And the little man span round, spitting and
screaming, with his spade raised on high.  But his
tone changed to fawning and then to a complacence
that would have done well between two rogues over
a booty.

"Worshipful Knight," he brought out, and his
voice was between the creak of a door and the snarl
of a dog fox, though his thin knees knocked together
for fear.  "A man must live, I in my garret as thou
in thy castle bower with the pretty, fair dames."

"Ay, a man mun live," the Young Lovell
answered.  "But what sort of living is this to be
seeking treasure trove on my land before the sun
be up?"

"Treasure trove?" the lawyer mumbled.  "Well,
it is a treasure."

"It is very like black Magic," Young Lovell said
harshly.  "A mislikeable thing to me.  I must have
thee burnt.  What things a man sees upon his lands
before the sun is up!"

"Magic," the lawyer screamed in a high and
comic panic.  "God help me, I have nothing of
Mishego and Mishago.  This is plain lawyer's work
and if your honour will share, one half my fees you
shall have from the improvident peasants."

At the high sound of his voice Hamewarts, who
all the while was straining after the white horse,
bounded three strides; when Young Lovell took him
strongly back, he had the square stone at another
angle.  Upon its mossed side he saw a large "S"
carved that had two crosses in its loops, upon the
side that was bare was one "S" with the upper loop
struck through.

"Body of God, a boundary stone," he cried out.
"And you, Furred Cat, are removing it."  He
had got the epithet of Furred Cat from talking to
the Sire de Montloisir whilst they played at the
dice.

"Indeed it is more profitable than treasure-troving
and seeking the philosopher's stone," the
lawyer tittered, and he rubbed, from habit, his hands
together, so that little, triturated grains of mud fell
from them into the peasant's poor, boggy grass.
"This is Hal o' the Mill's land, and I have moved the
stone a furlong into the feu of Timothy Wynvate.
There shall arise from this a lawsuit that shall last
the King's reign out.  Aye, belike, one of the twain
shall slay the other.  His land your honour may
take back as forfeit, and the other's as deodand.  I
will so contrive it, for I will foment these suits and
have the handling of them.  By these means, in time,
your lordingship may have back all the lands ye ever
feu'd.  In time.  Only give me time...."

The Young Lovell lifted up his fist to the sky.
The most violent rage was in his heart.

"Now by the paps of Venus and the thunder of
Jove, I have forgotten the penalty of him that
removeth his neighbour's landmark!  But if I do not
die before night, and I think I shall not, that death
you shall die.  Say your foul prayers, filth, your
doom is said...."

Master Stone lifted up both his hands, clasped
together, to beg his life of this hot but charitable
youth.  But Young Lovell had leaped his horse
across a dune faster than the words could follow him.

He came upon a narrow strip of nibbled turf
running down a valley of rushy sand-hills.
Hamewarts guided him.  They went over one ridge and
had sight of the white horse; they sank into another
dale and lost it.

On the summit of the next ridge Hamewarts
became suddenly like a horse of bronze and the
Young Lovell had a great dizziness.  He had a
sense of brown, of pearly blue, of white, of many
colours, of many great flowers as large as millstones.
With a heavy sense of reluctance he looked behind
him.  The mists were rising like curtains from over
Bamborough; since the tide was falling the pall of
spray was not so white on Dunstanburgh.  Upon his
own castle, covering its promontory near at hand, they
were hoisting a flag, so that from there the tower
warden must have already perceived the sun.  From
over the castle on Holy Island the pall of smoke was
drifting slowly to sea.  No doubt in the courtyard
they had been roasting sheep and kine whole against
the visit of the Warden and the Prince Bishop who
would ride on there with all their men by nine of
the clock.

In every bay and reedy promontory the cruel surf
gnawed the sand; the ravens were flying down to
the detritus of the night, on the wet margins of the
tide.  The lawyer was climbing over the shoulder of
a dune, a sack upon his back; a shepherd, for the
first time that spring, was driving a flock of sheep
past the chapel yew.  There was much surf on
Lindisfarne.

Suddenly, from the middle of the bow of the grey
horizon there shot up a single, broadening beam.
Young Lovell waved his arm to the golden disk that
hastened over the grey line.

"If you had come sooner," he said to the sun,
"you might have saved me from this spell.  Now
these fairies have me."

Slowly, with mincing and as if shy footsteps,
Hamewarts went down through the rushes from that
very real world.  Young Lovell perceived that the
brown was a carpeting that fluttered, all of sparrows.
It had a pearly and restless border of blue doves, and
in this carpet the white horse stepped ankle-deep
without crushing one little fowl.  He perceived the
great-petalled flowers, scarlet and white and all
golden.  On a green hill there stood a pink temple,
and the woman on the back of the white horse held a
white falcon.  She smiled at him with the mocking
eyes of the naked woman that stood upon the shell in
the picture he had seen in Italy.

"But for you," he heard himself think, "I might
have been the prosperest knight of all this Northland
and the world, for I have never met my match in the
courteous arts, the chase or the practice and exercises
of arms."

And he heard her answering thoughts:

"Save for that I had not called thee from the
twilight."





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.. _`1-II`:

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   II

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The Warden of the Eastern Marches, who was
Henry Percy, fourth Earl of Northumberland, said
that there was too much of this silken flummery.
He desired to get back to the affairs of King
Henry VII and a plain world where there were too
many false Scots.  The Lord Lovell of the Castle
agreed with him, but said that the women would
so have it.  He was an immense, gross man, the
rolls of fat behind his head, growing black curly hair
that ran into his black and curly beard, mantled high
up on his neck.  His eyes were keen, peeble-blue,
sagacious and mocking.  The Lady Rohtraut, his
wife, a fair, thin woman of forty-three, one of the
Dacres of the North, leaned across the Bishop
Palatine to disagree with the Warden.  Thin as
she was she wore an immense gown of red damask
worked with leaves, birds and pomegranates.  Her
sleeves brushed the ground, her hood of black velvet
had a diamond-shaped front, like the gable of a
house, and was framed in yellow gold set with
emeralds that her lord had brought from Venice to
get her back to a good temper, though he never did.
The broad edging of brown fur from her sleeves
caught in a crochet of the gilded steel on the Bishop
Palatine's armour which had been taken from the
Saracens in the year 1482, they having rieved it
from the Venetians.

The Lady Rohtraut said that these things had
been ordered after the leaves of a written book that
had been sent her by her cousin Alice from the
King's court in London.  This book was called
"Faicts of Arms," and the King himself who loved
good chivalry had bade it be printed tho' that would
be long in doing.  There the order of these things
had been set forth, and she had done her best to have
fashion of it right, though with only men to help her,
she imagined that Messire de Montloisir would laugh
if he did not happen to be on his bed of sickness.

But she had them there to the number of eleven
score, gentry, priests and commonalty with many
men-at-arms to hold the herd back with their
pike-staves.  The great stone hall she had had painted
with vermilion, green and gold.  Enormous banners
with swallow-tails fell from the gilded beams of the
roof.  They displayed the snarling heads of red
tigers, portculles, two-hued roses, and a dun cow on
a field of green sarcenet in honour of the Bishop
Palatine.  The table at which they sat, the men
divided from the women, had its silken cloth properly
tabled out in chequers of green and vermilion.  The
pages with their proper badges walked to and fro
before the table as they should do, and, as they
should be, the people of no privilege were penned
in behind the columns of the hall where they made
a great noise.  She would not have anything lacking
at the sacring of her one son.

Sir Walter Limousin, of Cullerford, who had
married her daughter Isopel, sneered at these words
of his mother-in-law.  He sat at the right hand of
his father-in-law.  Sir Symonde Vesey, of
Haltwhistle, who had married the daughter Douce, and
sat beyond Sir Walter, said loudly that too much
gear went to waste over these Frenchifications of the
Young Lovell and his dame.  Their two wives said
that indeed their mother was over-fond.

Their mother, who was a proud Dacre with the
proudest of them, flushed vicious red.  She said that
her daughters were naughty jades, and if their
husbands had not three times each been beggared
by Scots raiders they might have had leave to talk so.
But, being what they were, it would be better if they
closed their mouths over one who had paid all his
ransoms, whether to the Scots or on the bloody field
of Kenchie's Burn, with sword-blows solely.  She
had paid one thousand marks to artificers of Brussels
for stuffs to deck that hall and the street of the
township where it led from the chapel whence her
fair, brave son should come; so that banners and
carpets hung from the windows, the outer galleries,
stairways and the roofs where they were low.  And
she wished she had spent ten thousand on her son
who had won booty enough to pay all she had laid
out on him and her daughters' husbands' ransoms
besides—after the day of Kenchie's Burn.

The Warden said that he wished by the many
wounds of God that the stripling would come.  There
was too much babble of women there.  They had
come into these parts, the Bishop of Durham and he,
to see what levies might be made from castle to
castle and so to broom all false Scots out of the
country from thereaways to Dunbar.  And there
they sate who should have been on the northward
road before sunrise listening to this clavering of
women.  The young Lovell was a springald goodly
enow, and the knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle
were known to blow on their fingers when they
should be occupied with the heavy swords.

Sir Walter Limousin looked down his nose.  He
was a grim and silent craven that did little but sneer.
Sir Symonde, who was brave and barbarous enough,
but unlucky, smote so heavily the silver inkhorn
standing before him that it flattened down its
supports and stained the chequered fairness of the
table.

The Percy cast his old glance aside on Sir Symonde.

"Aye, Haltwhistle," he said drily, "ye will break
more than ye will take."  And he went on to say
that, in his day, he having been dubbed knight on
the field, it had been done with a broken sword
and the wet on it wiped across his chops to blood
him the better.  And he wished that Young Lovell
would come.

The Lady Rohtraut said that without doubt her
son was saying some very long and very precious
prayers.  The Warden said that belike, and more
likely, the young fellow was unable to fasten the
whimsy-marees of his new-fashioned harness and was
stuck up there in the old chapel like a fool amid the
evidences of his folly.  The Lord Lovell said nay
then, that a band of youngsters had gone up to the
chapel, and the little Hal his son's page had reported
that his master would soon be there, the page having
run, whilst the Young Lovell was riding at a foot pace.

"He had better have kept his page to buckle his
harness," the Border Warden harped on.

"Nay then," the Lady Rohtraut said with a
flushed and angry face—no person nor page could
enter into the sacred chapel till her son should be
issued out in his panoply least they should disturb
the angels of God who would invisibly assist her son
at his harnessing.

The Bishop, whose dark head came out of its
steel armour like a cormorant's out of a hole, looked
all down that board to find a sympathetic soul.  He
had a lean, Italianate face, and had pleased the
King Richard the Third—then Duke of Gloucester—rather
because of a complaisance than a burly
strength.  He was very newly come to the Palatine
Country.  For he had been the King's Friend in
Rome many years and, in fear of King Henry the
Seventh—because the Bishop was reputed a friend
of Richard Crookback after Bosworth—he had gone
across the seas until now.

So that what with the clerkly details of his
coming into the bishopric, this was his first tour of
those parts and he did not well know those people.
Therefore he had spoken very little.

This John Bishop Palatine was, in short, a cautious
and well-advised churchman, well-read not only in
the patristic books but in some of the poets, for in
his day he had been long in Rome and later dwelt
in Westminster, where the printing was done, though
the King was even then pulling down Caxton's chapel
to build his own more gorgeous fane.

This bishop then, set first the glory of God, good
doctrine and his see, as his duty was.  And after
that he hoped that he might leave renown as a
great clerk who had added glory, credit, power and
wealth, whether of copes of gold or of lands, to his
most famous bishopric.

That was why, throughout this discussion he had
observed the face of a young woman that sat beyond
the ladies Rohtraut, Isopel and Douce.  She was the
Lady Margaret of the Wear, coming from the
neighbouring tower of Glororem, and that day he
was to bless her betrothal to Young Lovell of the
Castle.  She was a dark girl, rising twenty, and with
brownish features, open nostrils, a flush on her face
and dark eyes of a coaly-sheen, all of one piece of
black, so that you could not tell pupil from iris.

She had never spoken, as became her station, since
she was the youngest woman there.  But the Bishop
Palatine had observed her looks as each uttered his
or her thoughts, and from this he knew that she
regarded the Lady Rohtraut with tender veneration,
and the lower classes behind the pillars with dislike
and contempt, for when their voices became loud she
had lowered her black brows and clenched her hand
that lay along the table.

Upon the Border Warden and upon the gross
Lord Lovell she had gazed with a tolerant
contempt, upon the Knight of Cullerford with a bitter
scorn, upon Haltwhistle with irony, and upon their
two wives that should be her sisters-in-law, with
high dislike.  He perceived that, like the Lady
Rohtraut, she had read the book called "Faicts of
Arms," for, when the lady Rohtraut had been speaking
of it, she had leaned sideways over the table, her
lips parted as if she could hardly contain herself.
He saw also that she was of great piety, since every
time Our Lady was mentioned in that debate she
inclined, and when it was Our Lord, she did the like
and crossed herself.  And this pleased the Bishop
Palatine, for these observances were not so often seen
as could be done with.  Moreover, he knew that,
plainly to the eye she had given all her heart—and
it was a proud and hot one—to the Young
Lovell.  At each mention of his deeds her dusky
cheeks would flush up to her white forehead and she
would pass her gemmed hands before her eyes as if
they saw a mist of gladness.

The Bishop was glad that the will of God and the
bent of his own mind could let his speech, that he was
thinking upon, jump so well with that lady's desires,
and so he addressed himself at first to the Lady
Rohtraut, young Lovell's proud mother.

He had not, he said, spoken before in that high
assembly because he was so newly come among them
that, although he well knew that he was their father
in God and in a sense their temporal protector, yet
he did not wish to show himself to them as a rash
and ardent fool by dictating upon matters that he
might well know little of.

But still, having listened a decent while to their
minds he would say something.  Of facts and the
practice of arms he would not declare himself all
ignorant.  He was a churchman, but he was of that
church militant that should one day be the Church
Triumphant—triumphant there in Heaven, but here in
Northumberland, militant very fully.  It was true
that it would not much become him in those days of
comparative peace to strike blows with the iron
mace.  It was rather his part to stand upon a high
place observant of battles and sieges.  And, if he
wore arms, it was rather as a symbol than as of
use.  He hoped that, as his reverend and sainted
predecessors in the see had done, he might confer on
such arms a grace of holiness, and therefore with much
travel and research, he had arms as golden as might
be found for him by his trusty messengers, that their
fair richness might shine to the greater glory of
God.  For himself he would as lief wear sackcloth
and rusty pots.

In most things he must bow to the wiseness of the
Earl of Northumberland.  Being blooded upon a hot
field with spurs gilded with the tide from the veins of
men had produced very good men.  It had doubtless
produced better men than to-day might see the
doubles and counterparts of.  Those days before
had been simpler and better.  These days were very
evil.  There was in the land a spirit of luxury, sinful
unless it had guidance, bestial unless it had control,
and for want of counsel horrid, lecherous and filthy
by turns.  Theirs, by the will and blessing of God
and by the wise rule of His vice-gerent—for so he
would style their good King, though it was not the
habit—theirs were days of near peace.  The kingdom
was no longer rent by dissensions; famine and
pestilence came more seldom nigh them than in the
days of their fathers of which they had read.  In
consequence, they had great wealth such as had
never before been seen.  Where their fathers had
had woollens they had silks, satins and patterned
damasks beyond compare for lascivious allurements;
where their fathers had eaten off trenchers of bread,
they had plates of silver, of gold, of parcel gilt or at
the very least of latten.

Now all these things were the blessing of God in
the highest, but they might well become the curse of
Satan that dwelleth in the Pit.  God had given them
bread, but they might turn it to bitter stone; He had
given them peace, but it might turn to a sword more
sharp than that of Apollyon or Geryon.  Arma
virumque cano, the profane poet said, but the man he
sang of was blessed and so his arms.

Therefore he, the Bishop Palatine, since he would
not see all this splendour of God go down, as again
Vergil saith, sicut flos purpurea aratro succisa, leant
all his weight in the scale for the blessing and the
sacring of arms.  In the books of chivalry they should
read not of vain pomps, but of how arms should be
laid upon altars; not of luxurious feasts, but of how
good knights held vigils and fasts and kept
themselves virgin of heart to go upon quests that the
blessed angels of God did love.  So they might read
of the blessed blood in its censor and of the lily-pure
knights that sought it through forest and brake.  And
these books were very good reading.

The Warden suddenly laughed aloud.

"God keep your washed capons from a border
fray!" he exclaimed, and shook his lean sides.  The
Bishop looked sideways upon him.

"I have not heard that Sir Artus of Bretagne slew
the less pagans because he was of a cleaned heart,
nor Sir Hugon of Bordeaux neither."

"I do not know those knights," the Percy said
grimly.  "Maybe they would have slain less if it
had been Douglases and Murrays and other homely
names."

"Nay, it was fell pagans," the Bishop said
seriously.  "You may read of it in virtuous and
true histories it were a sin to doubt of, so greatly
does the virtue of God and His glory shine through
them."

"Well, if it be matter of doctrine my mouth is
shut," the Warden said good humouredly.  "I did
not know it had been more than a matter of fashion.
Yet I think it is early days to prate of our
peaceful times.  It is but three months since
Kenchie's Burn and not three years since the false
Scots had their smoke flying over the walls of
Durham."

The Bishop bent his head obediently before
the Warden.

"In these matters I will learn of you," he said;
and the Warden answered:

"They are all I have to teach you.  In my high
day there were none of your books and stories."

It was agreed that the Bishop and the Warden
came off with level arms, the Bishop having spoken
the more, but the Warden had sent in heavier stone
shot.  And all people were agreed that the Bishop
was a worthy and proud prince.

At that moment the Almoner whispered in
the Bishop's ear and laid a parchment before him.
He begged the Bishop to sign this appointment.
For the day drew on, they must ride very soon and
might not again be in those parts for a year or more.
It was to make the worthy Magister Stone, of
Barnside, bailiff for the Palatinate in those parts, this
side of Alnwick to the sea.  This lawyer was a very
skilled chicaner and there were suits to come very
soon between the see and the Lords Ogle and
Mitford, touching the Bishop's mills at Witton and
on Wearside.  The Bishop was aware that one of
the Almoner's clerks must have had money of the
lawyer; nevertheless he signed the appointment,
for he knew they would never let him have any
other man.  A Prince Bishop cannot go searching
for scriveners of honesty like Diogenes lacking a
lanthorn.

The dispute as to the rules of chivalry went on in
spite of the Bishop's abstraction from it.  Indeed,
the Lord Lovell of the Castle, who had not much
reason for loving churchmen, spoke the more loudly
because the Bishop was occupied with his papers.
He was a jovial man, not much loved by his wife
whom he delighted to tease.  If he had any grief it
was that his natural son, Decies of the South, had
never shown himself a lad of any great parts.  This
lad was reputed to be his natural son, though he was
called Young Lovell's foster brother.  Nevertheless
who was his mother no man knew.

What was known was this.

Six years before the Lord Lovell did some
grievous sin, but what that too was, no men knew.
He had been called before the former Bishop of
Durham; the Lady Rohtraut had, then and
afterwards, been heard to rate him soundly.  He had
given five farms to the Bishopric and had then gone
on a Romer's journey, by way, it was considered, of
penance.  At any rate, he had gone to Rome in
sackcloth, taking with him his son, the Young Lovell,
who travelled very well appointed and, on the
homeward way, had acted as his page.  They had taken
ship from the New Castle to Bordeaux and from
Bordeaux to Genoa, where, falling in with a party of
English *Condottieri* in the pay of the Holy Father,
they had travelled in safety to the city of the seven
hills.

On the homeward road they had travelled more
like great lords, having enlisted a train of followers,
and staying in the courts of Princes of Italy until
they came again to Marseilles.  The Young Lovell,
who was then sixteen, had been permitted, by way of
fleshing his sword, to fight with the captains of the
Prince of Fosse Ligato against the men of the
Princess of Escia.  He had slept in pavilions of silk
and saw the sack of two very rich walled cities whilst
his easy father, who had seen fighting enough in his
day, dallied over the sweet wines, lemons and the
women with dyed hair of the Prince's Court.

In Venice, whilst his father had toyed with
similar cates, the young Lovell had been present at a
conclave, between the turbaned envoys of the Soldan
and the Venetian council, over the exchange of
prisoners taken in galleys of the one side and the
other.

Therefore as travelling went, the young man had
voyaged with his eyes open, having made friends of
several youths of Italy and learned some pretty tricks
of fence as well as sundry ways of dalliance.

The father regarded his son with not disagreeable
complacency, like a carthorse who had begotten
a slight and swift barb.  The boy's soft ways and
gentle speeches amused him till he laughed tears at
times; his daring and hot, rash passions pleased his
father still more.  He had challenged six Italian
squires on the Lido to combat with the rapier, the
long sword, the axe and the dagger, and only with
the rapier had he been twice worsted—and this quite
well contented his father, who regarded him as a
queer, new-fangled growth, but in no wise a
disgraceful one.  He set the boy, in fact, down to his
mother's account.  And this he did with some
warrant, for the boy was the first blond child that
had been born to the Lovells in a hundred years.

Further back than that the Lovells could not go.
They were descended from one Ruthven, a Welsh
brigand of whom, a hundred and twenty years before,
it was written that he and his companions kept the
country between the Rivers Seine and Loire so that
none dare ride between Paris and Orleans, nor between
Paris and Montargis.  These robbers had made that
Ruthven a knight and their captain.  There were no
towns in that district that did not suffer pillage and
over-running from them, not Saint Arnold, Gaillardon,
Chatillon or even Chartres itself.  In that way
Ruthven had amassed a marvellous great booty until,
the country of France having been submitted to the
English, he had set sail, with much of his wealth, for
Edinburgh, but liking the Scots little, after he had
married a Scots woman called Lovell, he had come
south into the Percies' country.  It had happened
that the Percies had at that date five squires of their
house in prison to the Douglas and had little money
for their ransoming.  So this Ruthven had bought of
them seventy farms and land on which to build an
outer wall round the fortress that, boastfully, he
called the Castle, as if there had been no other castle
in that land.  And indeed, it was a marvellously
strong place, over the sea on its crags of basalt.

Thus had arisen, from huge wealth, the great
family of the Lovells of the Castle.  For Ruthven had
not wished to be known by his name, and indeed King
Henry V swore that none of that name should have
Lordship nor even Knighthood, though the Ruthven
of that day fought well at Agincourt, losing three
horses, two of which he had taken from French lords.
So, since that day they had been the Lords Lovell of
the Castle with none to gainsay them, though till
latterly they had been held for rough lords and not
over-reverend.  The Percies looked down their noses
when they met them, and so did the captains of
Bamburgh and Holy Island.  However, in the year
1459 the Lord Lovell had found the Lady Rohtraut
of the Dacres to marry him and, having had three
daughters, she bore him the Young Lovell though
one of the daughters died.

At any rate; they had travelled home from
Marseilles, father and son, very peaceably together,
going from castle to castle of the French lords and
knights, under a safe-conduct that had been granted
them by the French envoy to the Holy Father in
Rome, though there was war between the countries
of France and England, the King Edward the Fourth
having suddenly made a raid into the country of the
lilies.  And the courteous way with which the French
lords treated them made them much wonder because
they did not think a Scots lord would have so easily
travelled through the Border Country or a Border
lord through Scotland.

Therefore, when they came to Calais, they went
quietly home to England without turning back to
war in France.  That was according to their oath to
Messire Parrolles at Rome, though some of King
Edward's lords and courtiers mocked at them and
it was said to be in the King's mind to have fined
them, not for having observed, but for having taken
such an oath.  However, when they came into the
North parts, at Northallerton, they met with the
Duke of Gloucester, the King's brother, who treated
them very courteously and absolved them of ill
intentions because at the time they had taken the oath
peace had been between England and France, or at
least no news of the war had reached Rome.  This
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, brother of King
Edward, was much loved in the North, of which
region he was then Lord-General.  He dealt with all
men courteously, giving simple and smiling answers to
simple questions and never failing to answer
favourably any petition that he could grant, or refusing
others with such phrases of regret as made the refusal
almost a boon of itself.  He inflicted also no harsh
taxes and took off many others, so that in those
parts he was known as the good Duke of Gloucester.

He treated the Lord Lovell and his son with
such smiling courtesy that they very willingly went
with him, before ever their home saw them, on a
journey that he was making towards Dunbar, and it
was in the battle that some Scots lords made against
them on the field of Kenchie's Burn that the Young
Lovel did such great things.  He took prisoner with
his own hands a great Scots lord, own cousin to
Douglas, in a hot mêlée, where, before he was taken,
the Scots lord, being otherwise disarmed by the
Young Lovell, knocked with his clenched fist, nine
teeth down the throat of Richard Raket, that was
the Young Lovell's horse boy.  And this lord having
cried mercy, the Young Lovell pursued so furiously
against the Scots that he slew many of them before
nightfall and was lost in a great valley between
moors and slept on the heather.  There he heard
many strange sounds, such as a great cry of dogs
hunting overhead, which was said by those who
had read in books to be the goddess Diana chasing
still through the night the miserable shade of the
foolish Actæon.  And between two passages of sleep,
he perceived a fair kind lady looking down upon him,
but before he was fully awake she was no longer
there, and this was thought to be the White Lady of
Spindleston, though it was far from her country.
But still that spirit might have loved that lording
and have sought his company in the night for he was
very fair of his body.  And it was held to be a sign
that he was a good Christian, that this lady vanished
upon his awakening, for in that way spirits have been
known to follow Good Knights from place to place
for love of them, and in the end to work them very
great disaster.

So at least that was interpreted by the young
monk Francis of the order of St. Cuthbert who was
with the army when, in the morning, Young Lovell
came to it again after he had been held for dead.  But
the monk Francis had read in no books, having been
an ignorant rustic knight of that country-side, that
had become a monk for a certain sin.  The Young
Lovell found, indeed, that, whilst he had been so
held for dead this young monk had much befriended
him.  For his father, the Lord Lovell, had shewn a
disposition to adopt that Decies of the South and to
give him the fruits of the young Lovell's deeds, such
as the ransoming of the Scots lord and the knighthood
that the Duke should have given him had he
been found on the field at the closing of the day.
The young monk had however protested so strongly
that the Young Lovell was not dead, but had in his
face the presage of great and strange deeds, whether
of arms or other things—so hotly had the young
monk made a clamour, that the old lord was shamed
and had for the time desisted.

That Decies of the South was a son much more
after the old lord's heart than ever the Young Lovell,
for all his prowess, could be.  He loved the one son
whilst he dreaded the other, since he was too like his
mother that was a Dacre and despised the Lovells
or the Ruthvens.

This Decies the Lord Lovell had picked up at
Nottingham on their homeward road, and, finding
him a true Lovell, had made no bones about
acknowledging him for a son though he never would say
who his mother was or how he should come by the
name of Decies.  But he was rising twenty-one, like
the Young Lovell, heavy, clumsy, very strong and an
immense feeder.  He was dark and red-cheeked and
cunning and he fitted his father as a hand fits a glove.
Nevertheless he had done little at Kenchie's Burn, he
had slept so heavily.  It had been no man's affair to
waken him, he having drunk very deeply of sweet
wines the night before.  That battle began at dawn
and travelled over many miles of land, so that when
Decies of the South came up the Scots were already
fleeing.

The old lord did no more than laugh, but he felt
it bitter in his heart.  And, as it had been on
that day, so it continued, the one half-brother being
always up in the morning too early for the other.
They made very good companions hunting together,
though it was always the Young Lovell that had his
dagger first in the throat of the grey wolf or the
red deer, and the Decies who came second when
outlaws, or else when the false Scots, must be driven
off from peel towers that had the byres alight
beneath them and the farmers at death's door above,
for the smoke and reek.  Nor was it because the
Decies lacked courage, but because he was slow in
the uptake and, although cunning, not cunning enough.

Or it may have been that he was too cunning
and just left the honours to the Young Lovell who
was haughty and avid of the first place.  For the
Lady Rohtraut took very unkindly to the Decies and
made him suffer what insults she could; only the
lower sort of the castle-folk willingly had his company,
and the old lord was growing so monstrous heavy
that it was considered that his skin could not much
longer contain him.  He had led a life of violence,
sloth, great appetites and negligent shamelessness, so
that the Decies considered that he would soon have
need of protectors in their place.  The old lord
might leave his lands, but much of his lands were the
dower of his wife and upon his death would go back
to her hands alone.  For the lands of the Castle
and the gear and gold and silver that were in the
White Tower under the night and day guard of
John Bulloc, the old lord might leave the Decies
what he would, but the Young Lovell could take
it all.

The Decies would find neither lord nor lord bishop
nor lawyer to espouse his cause.  Moreover, though
his father might give him gold and gear whilst he
lived, the Decies had no means whereby to convey it
to a distance and no place in the distance in which to
store it, besides it would surely be taken by
moss-troopers and little cry made about it.  For in those
days all the North parts were full of good, small gentry
robbing whom they would, like the Selbys of Liddell,
the Eures of Witton or Adam Swinburn.

For the times were very unsettled, and no man
could well tell, in robbing another, whether he were a
knight of King Richard's despoiling the King's enemies
or a traitor to King Henry robbing that King's lieges,
and there was little for the livelihood of proper gentry
but harrying whether in the King's cause or in
rebellion.  So that if the Decies' money on its way to
safe quarters should be taken, there would be little or
no outcry since he was nothing to those parts.  So he
was a very good brother to the Young Lovell and
followed him like his shadow.





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   III

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So there they all sat at the chequered table and the
Lord Lovell watched them with his cunning eyes and
speculated upon the dissensions that lay beneath all
their fair shew of courtesy.  And he wondered how,
from one or the other, he might gain advantage for
his son Decies.  It was not that he hated the Young
Lovell, but he wished Decies to have all that he
might and something might come of these people's
misliking of each other.

For all Bishop Sherwood's praising of the security
of the times under a beneficent vice-gerent of God, he
knew that the Bishop little loved King Henry the
Seventh, and the King trusted him so very little that
never once would that King send to the Bishop the
proper letters of array that should empower him to
raise forces along the Borders.  Thus the Bishop
could raise men only in his own dominions between
Tees and Tyne and westward into Cumberland.

The Bishop had made his speech and shewed
great courtesy only for the benefit of the Earl of
Northumberland, whilst for that Border Warden he
felt really little but contempt and some dislike.
For this Henry, Earl Percy, Warden of the Eastern
Marches and Governor of Berwick Town, had deserted
King Richard very treacherously on the field of
Bosworth, for all he spoke and posed as a bluff and
bloody soldier who should be a trusty companion.

Thus the Bishop feared the Percy, regarding him as a
spy of the King's, for King Richard was much
beloved in the North and the Bishop of Durham had
been one of the only two Bishops that had upheld
him at the coronation, which was why his banner of
the dun cow upon a field of green sarcenet had then
been carried before that King.  And after Bosworth
where King Richard was slain, the Bishop had fled to
France, from which he had only ventured back the
August before.  There had been many rebellions in
the North and they were not yet done with;
nevertheless the Bishop feared that the cause of the King
Usurper would prevail.

The Earl Percy, on the other hand, distrusted the
Bishop, since, unlike the Duke of Gloucester, he knew
himself to be hated by gentle and simple in those
parts, and more by simple than the others.  Many
poor men—even all of the countryside—had sworn to
murder him, for he was very arrogant and oppressive,
inflicting on those starving and disturbed parts, many
and weary taxes for the benefit of his lord, King
Henry the Seventh, and the wars that he waged in
other places.  This was a thing contrary to the law
and custom of the North.  For those parts considered
that they had enough on their hands if they protected
their own lands and kept the false Scots out of the
rest of the realm.  Nevertheless, the Lord Percy
continued to impose his unjust taxes, taking even the
horse from the plough and the meat from the salting
pots where there was no money to be had.  The
Lord Percy knew that he went in great danger of his
life, for when, there, a great lord was widely hated of
the commonalty his life was worth little.  Nay, he
was almost certain, one day, to be hewed in pieces by
axes or billhooks, since the common people, assembling
in a great number would take him one day, when he
rode back ill-attended from hunting or a raid.

Thus the Percy desired much to gain friendship
of the Bishop and his partisans to save his life.  So
he shewed him courtesy and spoke in a pious fashion
and had invited him, as if it were his due, to ride on
this numbering of the men-at-arms in Northumberland,
although, since the King had sent the Bishop Palatine
no letters of array, it was, strictly speaking, none of
the Bishop's business.

The Lord Lovell himself had taken no part at
Bosworth Field, and glad enough he was that he had
not, for he would have been certain to have been
found on the losing side.  But he had been sick of a
quinsy—a malady to which very stout men are much
subject—and, not willing that the Young Lovell
should gain new credit at his cost—for he must have
gone with his father's men-at-arms, horses and
artillery—the Lord Lovell bade his son stay at home
and not venture himself against the presumptuous
Richmond.

And, looking upon the people there, the fat man
chuckled, for there was not one person there who had
not lately suffered from one side or the other.  The
Lord Percy had spent many years in the Tower under
Edward IV; Henry VII had taken from the Bishop
many of his lands and had made him for a time an
exile.  His haughty wife had suffered great grief at
the death of her best brother whose head came off on
Tower Hill to please the Duke of Gloucester, and
Edward IV had had Sir Symonde Vesey five years
in the Tower and had fined Limousin of Cullerford
five hundred pounds after Towton Field.  The proud
Lady Margaret had lost her father and all his lands
after the same battle, the lands going to the
Palatinate.

The Lady Margaret and her mother—they were
Eures of Wearside—had sheltered in farms and peel
towers, lacking often sheets and bed covering, until
the mother died, and then the Lady Rohtraut had
taken the Lady Margaret, to whom she was an aunt.
All these Tyne and Wearside families were sib and
rib.  The Lady Rohtraut had had the Lady Margaret
there as her own daughter and kinswoman, and the
Lord Lovell had had nothing against it.  For the
Eures and Ogles and Cra'sters and Percies and
Widdringtons and all those people, even to the
haughty Nevilles and Dacres of the North, were a
very close clan.  He himself had married a Dacre to
come nearer it, and it made him all the safer to
shelter an Eure woman-child.  And then, in his
graciousness at coming into the North, and afterwards,
after the battle at Kenchie's Burn, the Duke of
Gloucester, at first making interest with his brother,
King Edward IV., and then of his own motion, had
pardoned that Lady the sins of her father, had bidden
the Palatinate restore, first the lands on Wearside and
then those near Chester le Street, and also, at the last,
those near Glororem, in their own part, which were
the best she had.  And, finally, King Richard had
made the Lady Rohtraut her niece's guardian, which
was a great thing, for since she was very wealthy, the
fines she would pay upon her marriage would make a
capital sum.

So they had found the Lady Margaret on their
coming back from Rome, wealthy and proud, sewing
or riding, hawking, sometimes residing in their
Castle and sometimes in her tower of Glororem which
was in sight.  The young Lovell had lost his heart
to her and she hers to him between the flight of her
tassel gentle and its return to her glove, so that it
looked as if the name of Lovell bade fair to be exalted
in those parts, by this marriage too, and if the Lord
Lovell had anything against it, it was only that she
had not chosen his other son Decies.  But there it
was, and he must content himself with paring what
he could from her gear, and his wife's and young
Lovell's while he lived, for he intended to buy Cockley
Park Tower of Blubberymires from Lord Ogle of
Ogle—and to set the Decies up in it.  And his wife
had some outlying land at Morpeth that he would
make shift to convey to his son, so that Decies would
have a goodly small demesne and might hold up his
head in that region of the Merlays, Greystocks and
Dacres.

His son should have the lands of Blubberymires
and part of Morpeth; furnishings for his tower to the
worth of near a thousand pounds, jewels worth nine
hundred and more, fifty horses and the arms for fifty
men, and for his sustenance firstly his particular and
feudal rights, market fees, tenths, millings, wood-rights,
farmings, rents and lastly such profits of the culture of
his lands as it is proper for every gentleman to draw
from them.  And, considering what he could draw
from his own Castle, he thought that the Decies should
have such beds, linen, vessels of latten and of silver,
chests and carvings in wood, tapestries, utensils, and
all other furnishings as should make him have a very
proper tower.  From his wife's castle at Cramlin, or
her houses at Plessey and Killingworth, he could get
very little.  Upon his marriage and since, he had
stripped them very thoroughly, and when he last rode
that way, he had seen that at Cramlin, the rafters,
ceilings, and even the very roofs had fallen in, so that
it had become very fitting harbourage for foxes.
And this consideration grimly amused him, to think
what his lady wife should find when he was dead and
her lands came to her again.  For she had not seen
them in ten years, and imagined her houses to be in
very good fettle, but he had turned the money to
other uses.  It was upon these things that this lord's
thoughts ran, since he had nothing else for their
consumption.  He was too heavy to mount a horse in
those days; he could read no books, and talking
troubled him.  Even the lewd stories of his son
Decies in his cups sent him latterly to sleep; he could
get no more much enjoyment from teasing his proud
wife by filthy ways and blasphemy, and he hated to
be with his daughters or their two husbands.  Thus,
nothing amused or comforted him any longer save
watching contests of ants and spiders, and even
these were hard to come by in winter, as it was then
in those parts where spring comes ever late.

There penetrated into the babble of their voices
slight sounds from the open air, and a hush fell in
the place.  Without doubt they heard cheering, and
quickly the pages of all the company ranged themselves
in a parti-coloured and silken fringe before the
steel of the men at arms that held the commonalty
behind the pillars.  The great oaken doors wavered
slowly backwards at the end of the hall, and they
perceived the road winding down from them through
the grass on the glacis, the greyness of the sea and
sky, and the foam breaking on the rocks of the Farne
Islands.  A ship, whose bellying sails appeared to be
almost black, was making between the islands and
the shore.  At times she stood high on a roller, at
times she was so low amongst the tumble that
they could hardly see more than the barrels at the
mastheads and the red cross of St. Andrew on her
white flag.  The Border Warden said that this was
the ship of Barton, the Scots pirate, and some held
that this was a great impudence of him, but others
said that the weather was so heavy outside that he
was seeking the shelter of the islands, and certainly
none of their boats could come at him in the sea
there was.  And this topic held their attentions
until the sound of a horn reached them.  This was
certainly the Young Lovell's page seeking admission
to the Castle, so that he was near enough.

The monstrous head of a caparisoned horse, held
back by ribands of green and vermilion silk, came into
view by the arch.  It rose on high and disappeared,
so that they knew it was rearing.  Then it came all
down again and forged slowly into view, the little
page Hal and Young Lovell's horse boy, Richard
Raket, that had lost his teeth at Kenchie's Burn,
holding the shortened ribands now near the bit on
either side.  The common men threw up their
bonnets and took the chance of finding them again;
the ladies waved scarves, the Bishop made a
benediction.  The man in shining steel was high up in the
archway against the sea.  Such bright armour was
never seen in those parts before, the light poured off
it in sheathes, like rain.  The head was quite round,
the visor fluted and down, at the saddle bow the iron
shaft of the partisan was gilded; the swordbelt and
the scabbard were of scarlet velvet set with emeralds.
This was the gift of the Lady Rohtraut, and those
were the Lovell colours.  The shield showed a red
tiger's head, snarling and dimidiated by the black
and silver checkers of the Dacres of Morpeth; the
great lance was of scarlet wood tipped with shining
steel.

Those of them who had never seen the Young
Lovell ride before, said that this vaunted paragon
might have done better.  For, when the horse was just
half within the hall, and after the rider had lowered
his lance at once to salute the company, and to get it
between the archway, and had raised it again, the
horse, enraged by the shout that went up from that
place like a cavern, sprang back so that its mailed
stern struck the rabble of grey fellows and ragged
children that were following close on.  The steel
lance-point jarred against the stone of the arch, and
the round and shining helmet bumped not gracefully
forward over the shield.  This was held for no very
excellent riding, and some miscalled the horse.  But
others said that it was no part of a knight's training
to manage a horse going rearwards, and no part of a
horse's to face festivals and cheers.  A knight should
go forward, a horse face war-cries and hard blows
rather than the waving of silken scarves.

But they got the horse forward into the middle of
the hall, where it stood, a mass of steel, as if sullenly,
on the great carpet of buff and rose and greens.
This marvel that covered all the clear space hung
usually on the wall to form a dais, and the Young
Lovell had bought it in Venice with one half of the
booty that he had made in the little war against the
Duchess of Escia.  It weighed as much as four men
and four horses in armour, and had made the whole
cargo of a little cogger from Calais that brought it to
Hartlepool harbour, whence, rolled up, it had been
conveyed to the castle upon timber-trugs.  Few men
there had seen the whole of it.  It had been taken
by Venetians from a galley of the Soldan's, and was
said to be a sacred carpet of Mahound's.  Some men
were very glad to see it, but some of the monks there
said that it favoured idolatry and outlandish ways.
But these were the very learned monks of
St. Cuthbert that had a monastery at Belford, near there.
They stood to the number of forty behind the Bishop
and had habits of undyed wool.  But the young monk,
Francis, who had befriended the Young Lovell before,
maintained now stoutly that it was a very good thing
that the gear of Mahound should first be trampled
underfoot and then coerced into a Christian office
such as that of the creation of a good knight.  The
Lady Rohtraut heard his words, and looking round
at him said that he should have a crucifix of gold for
his inner chamber at Belford, if the rules allowed it,
or if not, five pounds of gold and ambergris to
anoint the feet of his poor and bedesmen at Maundy
tide.  The young monk lowered his eyes and thanked
her.  He was a Ridley that had killed his cousin
by a chance arrow sent after a hare, and so he had
gone into this monastery to pray perpetually for his
cousin's soul.

That man in armour now delivered his lance to
his little page, his shield to the page of a friend of
his, a Widdrington; his sword to Michael Eure, a
cousin of the Lady Margaret, to be an honour to her,
and Richard Raket and other grooms came round
the horse while the rider descended and then they
led the horse away.  But he never raised the fluted
steel of his visor.  And when he was kneeling on
high cushions of black velvet, since his steel shoes
of tapering and reticulated rings were near two foot
long, as the fashion was, the Bishop asked him if he
would not uncover his face.  But he whispered in the
ear of the little page, and presently that boy said
without fear in a high voice that the worshipful
esquire had sworn an oath in the chapel that no
woman should look upon his face or hear his voice
until he was both knighted and betrothed.  Those
who upheld pure knight errants said that this was a
very good vow, but the Percy laughed till his tears
came.

Then, in a high voice, but in an Italian accent,
for he had been many years the King's Advocate
and Ambassador at Rome and had there learnt his
latinity and love for the profane poets, Ovid, Vergil
the Magician, and many others—the Bishop recited
the words of the oath that this esquire should take.
There was his duty to the Bishop Palatine to find for
him, when he came to be a baron, sixteen knights
when letters of array were sent out, and, by the year,
sixty bushels of wheat, one hundred of oats and peas,
ten carts of oat straw and ten of wheat when the
Bishop and his men harboured within ten miles of
the Castle, and the Bishop to have the rights of
infangthef throughout his lands.  Also he would
observe the privileges of all clerks and of Durham
sanctuary within those lands.  The Bishop read also
the oath to the King, for the Lord Percy had little
Latin.  The Knight, when he came to be a Baron,
should find for the King's service, north of the
Humber when the King's letters of array were read,
twenty-two knights, or six only if the Bishop had
before sent his letters calling for sixteen.  For such
lands as he should get from his mother he should pay
the King four horseshoes of gold whenever the King
lay at Morpeth, and for the Lovell lands a gold cup
filled with snow whenever the King lay within the
Cheviot country.  The goods of all those convicted
of treason within his territories at Morpeth should go
to the Bishopric; those from the other parts one-tenth
to the King, six-tenths to the Bishop, one-tenth
to the monastery of St. Cuthbert at Belford, and the
remainder to himself.

These oaths having been recited, a page of the
Bishop's brought a feretory that had lain on the
coffin of St. Cuthbert, and a Percy page a testament;
the esquire laid his right hand first on one and
then on the other, being still on his knees, and then
held up his hand whilst the page recited that that
good esquire vowed faithfully all these things.  Then
the Bishop drew his sword and touched the steel left
shoulder of the esquire with the hilt that had the
form of the cross, this being the symbol that he
would be a good knight and soldier of Christ and
Our Lady.  Then all the people cheered and cried
out and the Bishop said loudly—

"Surge et vocabitur in nomine Dei et Regis
nostri Sir Paris Lovell Castelli."

The Percy laughed and asked what those words
were, and when the Prince Bishop had told him, still
laughing, he smote the metal in the same place with
the flat of his sword and mocked the Bishop with the
words—

"Stand up in the name of God.  And in the
King's name be called henceforth, Sir Paris Lovell of
the Castle."  To name her son Paris had been a
whimsy of the Lady Rohtraut since Paris of Troy
was a goodly knight, and also it stood for a symbol
that he might retake Paris Town if the English had
it not at the time when he was a man, and so that
name had pleased the great Talbot which was a good
thing at the time of his birth.

Then the good knight stood up upon his long feet
and the Percy cried out that they should get the
business of the betrothal over with speed, and so they
did, the knight and the Lady Margaret who came
out, kneeling on black cushions before the Prince
Bishop.  She was wearing a great and long green
gown, to the making of which there had gone
twenty-six yards of patterned damask from the city of
Bruges.  It was worked with leaves and birds and
pomegranates, so that it was very rich in folds.  Her
ribbons in her shirt were of scarlet silk and her fur
edgings of the red fox.  Her hood was of white and
red velvet, the gables at the front being of silver set
with large pearls, and her hair fell in two black plaits
to her heels where she knelt.  So when the Bishop
had recited their oaths they stood up and the knight
pushed up his visor and looked at the lady.  Those
few that could see his face cried out as if they had
seen a ship strike on a rock, so they raised their
hands.  The others only marked that haughty lady
shrink back upon her feet, with a great flowing of
her garments as she drew them together towards her.
She cried out some words of detestation that no man
heard but he, and then with her fist she struck him
in the face.

Then he turned upon the high table, grinning and
unashamed, the dark eyebrows that seemed to have
been painted in with tar, the red cheeks and the
lascivious lips of Decies of the South.

All those at the high table stood up on their feet,
lifting their hands above their heads and crying out.
The Decies cried towards his father, lifting also his
mailed arm to heaven—

"See justice done to me.  My half-brother is gone
upon a sorcery.  His lands and gear are forfeit to me
that inform against him and his name and bride have
been given me by the Prince Bishop."

Then the lawyer, Magister Stone of Barnsides by
Glororem, ran across the hall from the little door in
the great ones.  He began, as it were, a sort of
trafficing between the Knight and the Bishop, not neglecting
the Lord Percy and the Knight's father, but running
backwards and forwards between the one and the
other, raising his hands to their breasts and squeaking,
though there was no hearing what he said.  His
weazened face, his brown furred gown, his chattering
voice and his long jaw worked incessantly so that he
resembled a monkey that was chewing straws with
voracity and haste.  A Widdrington, a Eure and a
Selby, desperate young men and fast friends of the
young Lovell, rushed upon the Decies with their
daggers out.  But the Bishop pushed them back and
cried out for silence.  And because all there saw that
the Lady Rohtraut, upon her feet, was pointing down
at the Lord Lovell and calling out to him, they held
their tongues to hear what she was saying.  They
caught the end of a sentence calling upon the Lord
Lovell to have that filthy and blaspheming bastard
cast from the top of the White Tower.  Then all
eyes saw that the Lord Lovell was laughing.

He had begun with a slow grin: by little and little
he had understood that his son at last had made a
fine, impudent stroke.  He had struck his thigh with
his hand; he had tried to cry out that this was the
finest stroke of all and that his son had got up early
enough, at last.  But he could get no words out.

Then he had begun his laughing.  He laughed,
rolling from side to side: he laughed, shaking so that
his leathern chair cracked beneath him.  His stomach
trembled in an agony of laughter, his eyes gazing
painfully and fixed at the scarlet and green chequers
of the tablecloth.  Between tornadoes of shaken
laughter he gasped for breath, and all the while the
Lady Rohtraut stood gazing down upon him as if he
were a loathsome dog struck with a fit.  All men
there stood still to watch him laugh.

And suddenly he threw his arms above his head,
his face being purple and his eyes closed like a
drunkard's.  With the passion and strength of his
laughter the blood gushed from his mouth and nose
like falling scarlet ribbons.  His body came forward
on the tablecloth; monks and doctors craned forwards
over him.  The Percy moved disdainfully away as if
from a sick and filthy beast, and over the table the
body shook and quivered in the last gusts of
laughter.

The Decies, with his sword drawn, moved backwards
to the arch at the door, and first the Lady
Isopel of Cullerford, the Lord Lovell's daughter, came
round to speak to him, and then the Lady Douce of
Haltwhistle, her sister.  They stood looking back at
their mother, and then they called to them their
husbands, Sir Symonde and Sir Walter Limousin.
They stood at talk, Sir Symonde shrugging his
shoulders and Cullerford grunting whilst the ladies
caught them earnestly by the arms, leaning forwards.
Then they called to them the lawyer, Magister
Stone, who was no great distance away, and he
brought with him the Prince Bishop's Almoner, a dry
man with but one eye who had a furred hood up, to
keep away the draughts, since he suffered from the
earache.  Then they beckoned to them certain of
their armed men and Sir Henry Vesey of Wall
Houses, a knight of little worth in morals but a great
reiver.  And so, by little and little, they had a
company, mostly ill-favoured but violent around
them.  So they perceived that the Lady Rohtraut
had fallen in a swoon, and the knight of Cullerford
went forward and begged the lords and lordings and
the company to avoid that hall and go upon their
errands, since there was sorrow enough, and his
brothers-in-law and their wives would take it kindly
if they could be left alone with their mother.  And,
since he was the husband of the lady's daughter, they
listened to him and went out, and the Vesey of
Haltwhistle saw to it that they had their horses, and soon
there were few left in the hall but the Lord Lovell,
who had a leech, bending over him.  The Lady
Rohtraut, having fallen back in her chair, was being
tended by the Lady Margaret and an old woman
of seventy called Elizabeth Campstones.  Then the
daughters and the Decies went about in the Castle
and were very busy.





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.. _`1-IV`:

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   IV

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The Young Lovell felt as if he had came up out of a
deep dream.  He knew that the lady of the white
horse thought to him:

"And I have all the time of the sea and the sky
and beyond," but she spoke not at all—no words and
no language that he knew.  Only it was as if he saw
her thoughts coursing through her mind as minnows
swim in clear water.  And he knew that, before that,
he had thought, as if beseechingly:

"Even let me go in Christ's name, for I have
many businesses."

She had a crooked and voluptuous mouth, mocking
eyes of a shade of green, a little nose, a figure of
waves, a high breast crossed with scarlet ribbons,
and hair the colour of the yellow gold, shining with
the sun, each hair separate and inclining to little
curls.  In short she was all white and gold save for
her red and alluring lips that smiled askant, and he
thought that he had never seen so bright a lady, no,
not among the courtesans of Venice.  His heart at
the sight of her hair beat in great, stealthy pulses; his
throat was dry and the flowers grew all about her.
And she sat there smiling, with the side of her face to
him, and he heard her think—

"This mortal man shall be mine."

It had been then that he had prayed her in
Christ's name to let him go, and that she had
answered that she had all the time of this earth
and beyond it.

He turned Hamewarts slowly down the dune,
though his heart lay behind him, and, like a mortally
wounded man upon a dying horse, he rode towards
his Castle where it towered upon the crag.  The day
was very bright, in the white sand the wind played with
the ribbed rushes, and very slowly Hamewarts went.
To judge by the sun he had not stayed more than a
half-hour in that place, if so long, for it was very
little above the horizon.  He had not thought the
day would prove so bright.  The sea was very blue:
the foam sparkled and was churned to curds, and the
little wind was warm from sunwards.  He saw the
shepherd coming down a very green slope below
the chapel, and the white sheep, with whiter lambs,
spreading, like a fan below him.  Behind him, over
that shoulder, Meggot, their goose girl, was driving
her charges, a great company of grey with but three
white ones amongst them.

In a stupid way he thought that this great brightness
in an early and raw spring day must come from having
seen so beautiful a lady; so, it was said in stories,
were good knights' hearts elated after such a sight.
But he was aware that his heart was like the grey lead
in his side, and leaden sighs came heavily from him.

When he came to the gate in the outermost wall
he tirled wearily at the pin.  He was aware of a
monstrous heaviness and tire in all his limbs.  A
man opened the little grating; loud yawns came
from him and, very sleepily, he let down bars and
chains and the gate back.  From this gateway a
short, white road went slantwise, up a green bank,
to the chief gate of the Castle.

Young Lovell never looked at this man's face, and
slowly he rode up the steep.  He heard the man say:

"What lording be ye?" but he rode on mute.
The man came running after him, his armour rattling
like pot-lids.  He caught Hamewarts by the bridle
and, looking earnestly at Young Lovell's face, he
said:

"Master, I mauna let ye pass only I ken your
name."  And then he cried out, and his eyes were
almost out of his head:

"The Young Lovell!"  He ran like a hare up the
broad road; his hose were russet coloured.

Young Lovell grumbled to himself that it was
strange to set so new a man to the gate that he
should not know his master's son, and stranger still
that the man should be of the men of his sister's
husband of Cullerford, for all their followers had
russet beneath their steel facings.

And then he saw old Elizabeth Campstones that
had been help-maid to his mother's nurse, coming
out of the littlest door of the inner castle wall
and down the path across the green grass of the
glacis.  She was all in hodden grey, she carried a
great basket of tumbled clouts upon her head, and
so the tears poured from her red eyes that at the
first she did not see him though she came into the
road at his horse's forefoot.  But when he said:

"Why greet ye, Elizabeth?" she looked up at
him on high as he sat there, as if the sun dazzled her
eyes.  And then she screamed, a high long scream.
She caught at her basket and she ran to his bridle.

"Come away," she cried out.  "Cullerford and
Haltwistle have ta'en your bonny Castle.  Your
father's dead.  Your mother's jailed.  There is no
soul of yours true to you here."

If there was one thing that distinguished the
Young Lovell amongst the captains of the North—and
his name was very well known to the Scots of
the Border—it was that he was quick in thinking.
And now, the kindling passion of war being the one
thing that could drive away the thirst of love, made
him see, as if it were a clear table laid out before him,
the minds of his sisters that he knew very well and
the dispositions of his brothers-in-law as well as the
reed of the Decies that was not concealed from him.
And, there being very little decency in his age, he
knew that an hour or so in the Castle with his father
dead and his mother no doubt grieved and shut in
her bower, the men leaderless, since he, that had
been his father's lieutenant and ancient was
absent—that short hour or two that had gone by—and it
might well have been that his father had died over
his cups at the board whilst he himself, the night
before, was a-watch over his arms—would very well
suffice to put Cullerford and Haltwhistle in possession
of his Castle with all his own men butchered during
their sleep.  In those days it was grab while you
could and get back at your leisure.

With the pressure of his knee, he moved
Hamewarts a yard forward and aside; he leant
over his saddle bow and caught the old woman
under the shoulders.  He lifted her, basket and
all—for in the midst of grief, fear and danger, she
would cling first to the clouts that were her feudal
duty—and the great horse with the pressure on his
mouth, cast up his head and wheeled round again
towards the gate at which they had entered.  There
came the bang of a saker, but without doubt it was
rather to rouse the Castle than aimed at them, for
they heard no ball go by them.  Then there was a
sharp scratch as if a cat had spat, and just above his
head an arrow stuck itself through the basket of clouts.
Hamewarts went back downwards in long bounds.

Three other arrows set themselves in the grass
beside their course; one fell on the road, one carried
off his scarlet cap with its frontal and jewel of pearls.
But that arrow too transfixed itself in the basket and
pinned the cap there; so it was not lost, and that was
a good thing, for the pearls were worth two hundred
pounds.  And as he rode he thought that that was
not very good shooting.

The men-at-arms, wakened from sleep, had
gummy and unclear eyes; their bows, too, must
have been strung all night and that had made the
strings slacken and be uncertain.  It was an evil and
untidy practice, but it showed him firstly that fear of
attack must be in that place, and secondly that some
of his own men might be without the castle and apt
to essay to take it again.  Moreover, though he had
not time to turn, he knew that they must have fired
from the meurtrières of the guard house; if they
had taken time to open the great doors they must
have struck him like a hare, for he had not been
thirty yards from the walls.

Hamewarts clattered in his heavy gallop under the
archway of the gate out into the village street, and
the Young Lovell thanked our Saviour that the
porter had been too amazed to go back and close it,
but had run to warn the Castle.  Without that he
had been caught like a fox in a well.  When he was
through and well outside, he caught up his horse, and
turning, gazed in again under the arch.  The inner
walls of the Castle rose immense and pinkish, with
their pale stone, above the green grass.  The sun
shone on such of the windows—about twenty—that
had glass in them.  One of these casements opened
and he saw the naked shoulders of his sister Douce,
holding a sheet over her breasts as she gazed out
to mark why the tumult was raised.  He observed
thus that, in one night, as he thought it, his sister
had taken their mother's bower for herself.  It was
no more than he would have awaited of her.

He perceived then the large gate of the Castle on
top of the mound roughly burst open and there came
running out thirty men in russet who ranged
themselves in a fan-shape on the slope.  Last came a man
in his shirt and shoes—Limousin of Haltwhistle.
The men in russet held bows in their hands and the
man in his shirt waved his hands downwards.  The
archers began to come down, but not very fast and
with caution.  The Young Lovell knew they thought
that very belike he had already raised the country
against them and had men posted in ambush behind
the outer walls.

He rode slowly away with the old woman before
him.  The street was very broad and empty in
the morning sun.  The cottages were all thatched
with sea-rushes and kelp, all the doors stood open
and the swine moved in and out.  Two cottages
had been burnt to the ground and lay, black
heaps, sparkling here and there with the wetness of
the dew.  He marvelled a little that they did not
still smoke, for they must have been set alight since
last nightfall.  He considered the sleeve of his scarlet
cloak that was very brave, being open at the throat to
shew his shirt of white lawn tied with green ribbons.
He saw that the scarlet was faded to the colour of
pink roses.  He looked before him and, on a green
hill-side, he was aware of a great gathering of men
and women bearing scythes whose blades shone like
streaks of flame in the sun.  Also, at their head
went priests and little boys with censers and lit
candles.  The day was so clear that, though they
were already far away, he could see the blue smoke of
the incense.

He rode slowly forward, pensive and observing all
that he might.  The old woman sat before him, but
she was breathing so fast with the late galloping of
the horse that she could not yet speak.  The windows
of the one stone house in that place were still
shuttered and barred, so that without doubt the lawyer
still slept.  Then he remembered that he would have
that man hanged without delay.  Without doubt
he left his windows shuttered to give false news, for
certainly, that morning, he had seen him moving
those stones.  He looked about him to see if in the
open barns and byres he could not see any horse of
the Prince Bishop or the Percy or any of their men
polishing their head-pieces or their pikes.  But,
though many of the barns stood open, none could he
observe.

He looked over his shoulder and saw that the
archers were come to the gateway and were peering
sideways out, with a due caution.  Then some of
them came through and stood with their backs to the
wall, waving at him their hands and shouting foul
words.  They would not come any further for fear he
had an ambush hidden amongst the byres and middens
of the village.  So, still slowly, he rode on between
heaps of garbage where the street was narrow and a
filthy runnel went down.

At the top the street grew very wide till it was a
green swarded place with many slender, sea-bent
trees to make a darkened shade up against the walls
of the small monastery of Saint Edmund.  He
considered whether he should go in there, but he
remembered that there were only a few monks and they had
no men-at-arms to guard those who sought sanctuary
with them from pursuers not afraid of sacrilege.  He
determined, however, to make his way to another
monastery—the great and powerful one of Belford,
where they had fifty bowmen and two hundred
men-at-arms to guard them against the Scots.  There he
would go, unless the old woman told him other news
when her breath came back.  Then the old thing
whimpered:

"Set me down, master.  I cannot speak on horse-back."  He
let her slide to the ground and, with the
basket transfixed by the two arrows, she fell on her
knees.  And then she crossed herself and gave thanks
to God for his coming so well off, and afterwards, his
long-toed shoes being just on a level with her lips
and she on her knees, she set her mouth to the shoe
that was on the right side where she was, and then
placed it over her head as far as the basket gave her
space.  He wondered a moment that this old woman
should be so humble that was used to treat him as a
dirty little boy, long after he had fought in great
fights, she having nursed his mother before and him
afterwards.  But then he considered that she was
doing homage for such small goods as she had and
this was the first of his vassals to do this thing.  And
again he observed that the bright scarlet of his shoe
and the bright green—it being particoloured and
running all up his leg to his thigh—these were dull
pink and dull brown.  They had been the brightest
colours that you could find in the North.

Elizabeth Campstones stood up.

"Where will you go to, my master Paris?"
she asked.  "Woeful lording, where will you find
shelter?"

"The Belford monks, I think, will give me the
best rede and admonition," he said.  "There I am
minded to ride now."

"Then come you down from the brown horse,"
she said, "and walk beside me on Belford road, for
ye could go no better journey, only I cannot speak
up to you with this basket on my poll."

He came down from the brown horse, and as he
did so his stirrup leather cracked and that was more
than passing strange for he had had them new two
days before.  So when he was come round Hamewarts'
head and had the reins through his arm, he
said to the old woman:

"Now tell me, truly, what day is this?"

"This day is the last day of June," she answered.
"My master Paris, it is three months from the day
that you gat you gone, and ye are a very ruined lord
and the haymakers have gone to the high hills."

He answered only, "Ah," and walked thoughtfully
forward.  He had known that that lady was a
fairy....

He walked with the old woman beside him, through
the little grove of thin trees, by the bridle gate into
the yard of the square, brown church with the leaden
roof, and so out into the field where it mounted
towards the Spindleston Hills.

Halfway up the low hillside there was a spring
with blackthorn bushes, sea-holly and broom in thick
tufts about it.  The sun fell hot here, early as
it was.  A grey goat wandered through the rough
and flowery thicket and many great bees buzzed.
He sat himself down upon a soft-turfed molehill and
left Hamewarts to crop the bushes.  The old woman
stood looking at him curiously and with a sort of
dread, for a minute.  Then she took the basket from
her head and began to lament over it.

The two arrows transfixed it through and through,
so that it was impossible for her to draw out her
cloths and linen.  Lord Lovell came out of his trance
of thought a moment.  He looked upon the woman,
and then, taking the basket from her, he broke off the
feathered end of each arrow and so drew them right
through the basket.  The old woman pulled out her
clouts and said, "Eyah, eyah."  Through each clout
one arrow or the other had made one, two or many
round holes.

"These," she lamented, "are all that your mother
has for her bed or her body.  All her others your
sisters have taken."

"I am considering," he answered her, "how I best
may save my mother."

She took her linen to the spring which was deep
and clear, and began sedulously to soak piece after
piece, rinsing it over and over as she knelt, and
beating it with an oaken staff upon an oaken board
that she had in her basket bottom.  And as she
hung each piece over the bramble bushes she looked
diligently into the scene below her to see what was
stirring in the Castle or the village.  Young Lovell
had selected that high spot so that they might know
what was agate by way of a pursuit.  She saw, at
intervals, three men on horseback go spurring up the
street from the Castle arch, but she did not disturb
her master with the news.  She thought it better to
leave him to his thinking, for she considered that he
would hit upon some magic way out of it.  She
imagined that he had dwelt that three months
amongst wizards and sorcerers that he should have
met during his vigil in the little old chapel that was
a very haunted place.

At last he raised his head and said:

"Old woman, tell me truly now, all your news."

What she knew first was that, on the morning
when the Lord Lovell had died, all the lords and
knights and the Prince Bishop and the others being
gone from the hall, there remained only the dead
lord, his wife in a swound, the Lady Margaret Eure
and her.  Then Sir Walter Limousin of Cullerford
with his wife Isopel and the other sister had
approached with several men of theirs in arms and
had carried the good body of her senseless lady up
to a little chamber in the tower called Wanshot, in
the very top of it.  She, Elizabeth Campstones, had
carried her lady's feet, but all the rest of her bearers
had been men-at-arms.  The Lady Margaret had
followed them up into that little stone cell and asked
them what they would do with that lady in that
place.  But no one of them answered her a word,
high and haughty as she was, and at last they went
away and left them, the Lady Rohtraut just coming
to herself on a little, rotting frame bed that had no
coverings but the strings that held it together.

The Lady Margaret had sought to go out with
them, calling them all proud and beastly names and
she was determined to set her own men that she had
there, to the number of twenty, all well armed, to
make war upon these and to raise the Castle.  But
when she came to the doorway that was little and
low Sir Simonde Vesey set his hand upon her chest
and thrust her back so hard into the room that she
fell against the wall and lost her breath.  When she
had it again the door was locked and it was of thick
oak, studded deep with nails.

Finely she raved, but when she came to, the
Lady Rohtraut was in a sort of stupour, sitting still
and shaking her head at all that they said.  She
thought this must be a dream that would vanish
upon her awakening, and so it was lost labour to talk.

So they remained until well on into the afternoon,
seeing nothing but the ceaseless run of the clouds
and the sky and the gulls upon the Farne Islands
and the restless sea, from their little window.  Then
there came three weeping maids of their lady's,
bearing bedding that they set down on the floor, and
a little food and some wine that were placed upon
the window-sill.  But these girls spoke no word, for
Sir Simonde Vesey stood outside and looked awfully
upon them.  The Lady Margaret made to run from
the room, but two men that stood hidden put their
pikes to her breast so that she ran upon them, and
would have been sore hurt only they were somewhat
blunted.

The Lady Rohtraut sat for a long while eating a
little white bread that she crumbled in her fingers,
and sipping at the wine from the black leather bottle,
but still she said little, which was a great pity.

Towards four of the afternoon, to judge by the
shadows, Sir Simonde let himself in at the door and
asked the Lady Margaret if she would forthwith
marry the Decies.  She said no, not if Sathanas
himself branded her with hot irons to make her do
it.  Sir Simonde said she might as lief do it since
she was betrothed to that good knight and that
could never be altered.  Then she caught at the
little dagger with which she was wont to mend her
pens.  It hung in her girdle, and Sir Simonde went
swiftly enough out at the little door.

The Lady Margaret chafed up and down that
small place, but those women said little, for they
knew well what this all meant in the way of robbery
and pillage and bending them to their wills.  But
the Lady Margaret swore that she would have the
Eures of Witton and the Widdringtons and the
Nevilles themselves—aye and the spy Percies—who
were all her good cousins, and they should hang the
Decies and do much worse to the Knights of
Cullerford and Haltwhistle.

And no doubt she had the right of it, for long
after it was dark they saw a glow of light illumining
in a dreary way the face of the White Tower, so that
the Lady Margaret thought it was a fire of joy or at
least a baal-blaze, but Elizabeth Campstones said
that it was houses burning in the township.  Then a
man with a torch came through the little doorway
and lighted in the Magister, or as he now was, the
Bailiff Stone, since the Prince Bishop had signed the
appointment for him that morning.  This rendered
him safe against any persecution or processes of
laymen in those parts, nevertheless, when the
torch-bearer had stuck his torch in a ring by the door
and gone away, the lawyer would have the little door
left open, and they knew afterwards that it was done
so that the men without might rescue him if the
Lady Margaret meant to strike or slay him, for she
could have slain five of such lean cats.

Before the Lady Margaret could bring out a
question, for she was astonished and could not think
why such a person should come there, he broke into
a trembling gibber:

"Oh, good kind ladies; oh, gentle sweet and noble
dames, for God His love and sufferings, save all our
lives and houses of which two are burning!"

The Lady Margaret asked highly what all this
claver was and what he wanted.

"These are very violent and high-stomached
people," the lawyer babbled quaveringly on.  "Two
houses of the township they have burned, and hanged
the husbandmen for an example.  So that if you do
not save us...."

He stretched his hands to the Lady Rohtraut,
but she looked before her and said nothing.

"Well, go you and make common cause with
them," the Lady Margaret said to him contemptuously.
"So you will save your neck.

"Ah, but no," he answered miserably but with a
sort of professional and cunning air.  "I must be on
the side of the law."

"Then what does the law say?" she asked as
bitterly.  "I will warrant you will not be far from the
top dog."

He began, however, to whine and wring his hands
and said that he had not long to live if he could not
win these ladies to do the wills of the violent people
who had taken that Castle, not but what it might not
be said that they had not some shew of equity on
their sides.

"I thought we should come near there," the Lady
Margaret said; "come, Master, what is the worst on 't?"

"Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer said, "this is at the
best a grievous matter; at the worst it is...."  And
he waved his hand as if there were no speaking of it.

"Go on," the Lady Margaret said grimly.

"I have been so confused," the lawyer answered,
"with much running here and there and seeing such
blood flow and the hearing of such threats...."

"Come, come," the lady said, "you are a man of
law and such a clever one that if I threw you out of
this window you could tell the law of it or ever you
fell to the ground."

"I am not saying," he retorted, with a sort of
relish, "that I go in doubts concerning the law.
What perplexes and affrights me is the fall of great
and powerful lords.  As to the torts, replevins, fines,
amercements and the other things too numerous to
recite, I am clear enough."

"Well, it is in the fall of mighty lords that the
rats of your trade find bloody bones to gnaw," she
answered him.  "But if you are too amazed at the
contemplation of the wealth that you shall make out
of this to tell me, get you gone.  If not, speak
shortly, or I warrant you a few cousins of mine shall
burn this Castle and you in a little space."

The lawyer shrank at these words and she went on:

"I trysted with my cousin Widdrington to meet
him at Glororem at six to-night and bade him fetch
me hence with what companions he needed at twelve
if I were not home, so you have but an hour."

"Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer said, "it is three
hours."

"Well then, you have kept me twelve hours here,"
the lady said; "I shall pay you in full for your
entertainment."

"Ah, gentle lady," the lawyer sighed, "not me,
not me!"

She answered only: "Out with your tale."

He hesitated for a moment, and then began with
another sigh:

"For your noble cousin Paris, Lord Lovell, I fear
it is all done with him."

"I think he may be dead that he did not come to
his betrothal with me," the lady said.  "If that is so
you have my leave to tell me."

"It is worse than that," he groaned.  "Woe
is me, that noble lordings should bend to violent
passions."

The Lady Margaret looked at him with disdain.

"If ye would tell me," she said, "that the Young
Lovell is gone upon a sorcery, ye lie."

Again the lawyer sighed.

"It is too deeply proven," he said.  "These poor
eyes did see him and two other pairs—both his
well-wishers, even as I am."

"Even whose?" she asked.  "And what saw ye?"

"For the eyes," the lawyer said, "they were those
of the Decies and of an ancient goody called Meg of
the Foul Tyke."

"For well-wishers," the Lady Margaret answered,
"you well-wish whence your money comes; the
Decies would claim my cousin's land and gear: and
Meg of the Foul Tyke, though the best of the three
is a naughty witch in a red cloak.  I have twice
begged her life of my lording."

"The more reason," Master Stone said, "why you
should not doubt she is your well-wisher, even more
than the young lording's.  And that is why she
would see you have a better mate."

The lady said: "Aha!"

"I will tell you how it was," the lawyer said.  "I
could not very well sleep that night because I had
been turning of old parchments, where, to make a
long story short, I had found that if the Lord Lovell
should, on the next day, swear to give the Bishop the
rights of ingress and fire-feu over his lands in
Barnside he should do himself a wrong.  For, since the
days of that blessed King, Edward the Second, those
lands have been held by *carta directa*..."

"Get on; get on," the Lady Margaret cried.

"But this is in the essence of the thing," the
lawyer protested, "for a *carta directa*..."

"I will not hear this whigamaree," the lady said,
"Let us take it, though no doubt you lie, that you
had found certain parcels of sheepskin.  But
understand that we have stomachs for other things than
that dry haggis."

"That is a lamentable frame of mind," the lawyer
said, "for look you, a carta of that tenure is the best
that can be come by."  But, at a gesture of the lady's
hand, he began again very quickly: "I spent a night
of groaning and sighing, for it was a grievous dilemma.
On the one hand, my beloved young lord might do
himself a wrong by swearing away his chartered
rights.  On the other hand, if I should tell him that
I had found them, this might be deemed foul play by
the Pro-proctor Regis Rushworth, who is a lawyer for
the house of Lovell in the Palatine districts.  Though
how it is that Rushworth knoweth not of this charter
I cannot tell."

"How came you by them?" the lady asked.
"Without a doubt you stole them to make work."

"They were old papers that were there when I
bought the study of my master that was Magister
Greenwell," the lawyer answered, and again the lady
said: "Get on; get on."

"So, at the last," Stone continued, "I made, after
prayer, the resolution and firm intent to tell my lord.
And so I arose, remembering how he would be
praying in the chapel, and gat me into the street.
And there, in the grey dawn, I lighted upon Meg of
the Foul Tyke, who was returning from gathering of
simples by the light of the moon in the kirkyard."

"There was no moon last night," the Lady
Margaret said.

"Then, by the light of the star Arcturus," the
lawyer claimed.  "Well, my first motion was to rate
her for a naughty witch.  And so I did full roundly
till that woman fell a-weeping and vowed to reform."

"Well, you were more powerful than the prophets
with the Witch of Endor," the lady mocked him.

"And, seeing her in that good mind," Stone went
on with his tale, "I remembered that she was a very
old woman—the oldest of all these parts.  So I told
her that if she could remember matters of Barnside
years agone, since she was in a holier mind, without
doubt the young lording would be gracious to her
and would grant her a halfpenny a day to live by; so
she might live godly, after repenting in a sheet....
So she remembered very clearly that one Hindhorn
of Barnsides, Henrice Quinto Rege, had been used,
once a year, at Shrovetide, to drag with three bullocks,
an oaken log bound with yellow ribbons to the Castle.
This was direct and blinding evidence that the right
of fire-feu ..."

"Well, you went with the old hag to the chapel,"
the Lady Margaret said.  "I can follow the cant of
your mind and spring before it."

"But you may miss many and valuable things," he
retorted.  "As thus....  Whilst we went up the hill,
this old goody, being repentant and weeping, cried
out when she heard whither we were bound: 'Alas!
Horror!  Woe is me!" and other cries.  And, when I
pressed for a reason, she said that the young lording
was a damned soul and that was one of her sins.
For she had taught him magic and the meeting-places
of warlocks; one of which was that chapel that was
an ill-haunted spot, and that was why the lording
was there at night.  And she was afraid to go near
the chapel; for the warlocks would tear her limb from
limb.  And the familiar and succubus of the Young
Lovell was the toad that was, in afore time, the
step-mother of the Laidly Worm of Spindleston, that to
this day spits upon maidens, so much she hateth the
estate of virginity, as often you will have heard."

The lawyer paused and looked long at that lady.

"So that old witch repented?" she said at last,
but she gave no sign of her feelings.

"There was never a more beautiful repentance
seen," the lawyer said.  "So she sighed and groaned
and the tears poured off her face to think that she
had corrupted that poor lording...."  And it had
been her repentance, he went on, that had let them
see what they had seen, and so made it possible for
them to save him.

Now when they came to the chapel, said the
lawyer, the young lording, as if he were demented,
came rushing out from the door, and the Decies who
had watched all night in the porch came out after
him, and asked him what he would.  But he answered
nothing to the Decies and nothing to them, but, with
a marvellous fury, like a man rushing in a dream, he
ran into the shed where his horse was tethered, and
bringing it out, so he galloped away that his long
curls of gold flapped in the wind.  It was not yet
cockcrow, but pretty clear.

Thus those three, standing there and lamenting,
saw how, at no great distance, but just under Budle
Crags, there was a fire lit, and round it danced
wonderful fair women and some old hags and
witch-masters, but most fair women.

The lawyer, saying this, gazed hard at the Lady
Margaret, but once again the lady said no more
than—

"Aye, my cousin was always one for fair women."

"So he kissed and fondled them; it was so
horrid a sight...." the lawyer went on.

"Now is it a horrid thing," the lady asked, "to
see a fine lording kiss a fair woman?"

"I only know," the lawyer said, "that at once all
we three fell to devising how you, ah, most gentle
lady, might be saved from the embrace of this lost
man; and how that poor lording might be saved
from his evil ways, and have his lands and all his
heritage preserved to him."

"And the upshot," the lady asked, with a dry
pleasantness, "was what the Decies did in the Great
Hall."

When the Young Lovell, sitting amongst the
furze and broom, had heard so far, he sighed with a
deep satisfaction.  The old Elizabeth had told her
tale of sorcery alleged against himself at an
intolerable length, dwelling on the nature of linen
clouts here and there, and upon all that she had said
to the Lady Rohtraut when she lay in the swoon.
But he kept himself quiet and did not interrupt her;
he had listened to her tales since he had been a
young boy, and knew that if you hastened her they
took five times as long.  Yet he sat all the while on
tenterhooks for fear she should say they had seen his
meeting with the lady that sat upon a white horse
amongst doves and sparrows.  Had they seen that it
might have gone ill with him in a suit at law.  For,
if they had seen it, it was twenty to one that there
would be other witnesses; the place was well
frequented by people journeying from Bamburgh to
Holy Island.  Nay, he would have been visible to
the very fishers upon the sea, and to stay with
such a lady, he well knew—though at the moment
he sighed deeply—would be accounted a felony
of the deepest magic kind in any ecclesiastical
court.

But now he knew that this lawyer was simply
lying, and that was an easier thing.  He saw, and so
he told Elizabeth Campstones, how they had hit
upon that tale.  The lawyer coming by the chapel,
after the Young Lovell had threatened him with
death for the moving of his neighbour's landstones,
and the old witch meeting with him, after she had
been threatened with drowning for her wicked ways;
both trembling with fear, since they knew him for a
man of his word and a weighty but just lord in those
lands, had come together to the chapel door.  No
doubt they had entered in, meaning to steal his
armour that was visible lying there, and hold it for
ransom as the price of their miserable lives.  But in
the deep porch they would see the Decies snoring
like a hog.

Him they wakened, and, the old witch's mind
running on sorcery, the lawyer's on suits, and the
Decies desiring to have his heritage and his bride,
whilst the other two desired to save their lives; all
three together had hit upon this stratagem that
would give them what they desired.  For in those
days there was in Northumberland a stern hatred of
the black arts, which had grown the greater since the
twelve children of Hexham, two years before, had
been slain, that their blood and members might stew
in a witch's broth—a thing proven by many
competent witnesses.  So that, if the Decies should
come in and claim the Young Lovell's knighthood,
name, and the rest, he might, with the support of his
father, make a pretty good suit of it, and, maybe,
take the whole.  And, if the Young Lovell should
come back soon for his armour, they would murder
him.  Thus, the lawyer, and the witch, the one with a
rope to cast over his neck, and the other with a sharp
dagger, hid waiting behind the thick pillars, whilst
the Decies dressed in his half-brother's harness.

And it had worked better for them than they had
expected, so that now they held the Castle, and the
law might be very hard set, if it ever made the essay,
to get them out of it.

For, as Elizabeth Campstones presently told him,
they had taken all the charters and the deeds of the
Castle to Haltwhistle, where the one knight had them
hidden up, and all the deeds and charters of his
mother's lands and houses to Cullerford, where the
other kept them.  The Castle itself they held all
three, the Decies and the two knights—or rather
their two ladies—being captains there by turns of
three days each, and dividing the revenues of it very
fairly.

They had cast out all the men-at-arms that were
any way faithful to the Young Lovell, taking away
their arms too.  For they, with their armed men, had
been in possession of the Castle and had taken the
keys of the armoury, whilst the Lovell men were
without arms and leaderless.  So that some of the
Lovell men had become bedesmen at the monastery
at Belford, and many perished miserably about the
country in the great storm of the second day of
April, whilst some had taken to robbery, which was
all that was left them.  Those in the Castle had hired
men from the false Scots and other ragged
companions of the Vesty that was Sir Symonde's
brother, and there they all dwelt comfortable, having
between them about three hundred men-at-arms and
a numerous army of bowmen, but no cannon.  They
deemed that they could well await any assault of the
Young Lovell if he should return.  They considered
that he had been slain by the outlaw Elliotts, who
had been seen to ride by, three miles north of the
Castle, going up into the Cheviots.

But all these things happened only after they had
settled with the Lady Margaret in that little room.
And that had happened in this way, Elizabeth
Campstones said:

After the lawyer told her the tale about the fair
witches she had broken into no cries and oaths as he
had expected; not even when he had particularised
one witch with red hair and great breasts that
danced and sprang all naked over a broomstick, with
her hair tossing, and how the Young Lovell had
singled this witch out for favours apart.  The Lady
Margaret said only—

"And so you two and the Decies...."

"We stood there weeping and lamenting," the
lawyer said.

"I marvel that not one of you had heart to
adventure for the caresses of such fair women as you
have told me of.  Had ye been men ye would."

The lawyer answered with an accent of horror:

"But witches and warlocks!"

"Ah, I had forgotten," the lady said.  "So ye
wept and turned your heads away.  And afterwards?"

"After they were gone," Magister Stone answered,
"we fell to devising how we might rescue you, ah
gentle lady, from that lost knight and himself from
himself."  That was to be in this way: The Decies
should seek to possess himself of the lands,
knighthood and name of the Young Lovell, and, if he did
this with the irrevocable blessing of the Lord Bishop,
the act of the Border Warden, who in those parts
stood for the King, as well as in presence of his
father, he might establish a very good title whether
of presumption or possession.  And if in the same
way he might be betrothed to the Lady Margaret
in the presence of the Lady Rohtraut to whom she
was ward and with the formal rite of the Church,
which like the other is irrevocable, the Young Decies
would be in a very fair way to achieve his pious
desires.

"And that should be as how?" the Lady
Margaret asked.

He desired, the lawyer said, to hold the Young
Lovell's heritage only as a faithful steward and
brother and, so holding it with a very arguable title,
neither Prince Bishop or King could extort from it
any very great fines or amercements.  Meanwhile
the Decies should consummate that very night his
wedding with the Lady Margaret whom, after the
betrothal, he alone could marry.  And they had a
good priest there present and himself ready to draw
up marriage charters enough to fill two bridal chests.
And, the more to incline her to this, it was the mind
of the gallant Decies to allow her such marriage lots,
dowers and jointures, out of the heritage of the
Young Lovell as together with her own lands of
Glororem and the other places, and by inducing the
Lady Rohtraut to forego the great fine that they
should pay her upon her marriage, would leave them
one of the richest married pairs of that part of the
King's realms.

And when the Lady Margaret asked how that
should be brought about, and the particulars, feudal
and direct, of the deeds he would make, he went off
into a great flood of Latin and Norman words of the
law.  At last she said:

"I make out nothing of all this talk.  But I think
I will not marry with a great toad that hath a weasel
gnawing at his vitals."

"Ah, gentle lady..." the lawyer began, and his
voice rose in its tones.

"To put it shortly," the lady continued, "the
great toad is the gallant Decies, for toads do shelter
under other men's rocks and stones, and this
gallant—for I will not rob him of the title you give him, and
I know no other by which to call him—is minded to
shelter under the stones and rocks of my cousin's
Castle that in God's good time shall be my cousin's
and mine.  And for who the weasel is that gnaweth
at the vitals of the gallant Decies I will not further
particularise, since I might well go beyond courtesy.
So now get you gone, or I will wave one of the clouts
from this little window which, by the light of the
burning houses, my cousins the Eures and the
Widdringtons and the Percy shall perceive from
where they wait upon Budle Crags, and very soon you
shall be hanging from the White Tower to affright
the morning sun.  And that I promise you...."

The lawyer protested in various tones, rising to a
sick squeak, but she said no more to him.  It was
not true what she said, that her cousins were waiting
to fall upon the Castle, though they would well have
done it on the next morning or in two days' time.
But the lawyer did not know that it was not true and
so he shivered and went away.

A little later there came Henry Vesey of Wall
Houses, the evil knight that was brother to Sir
Symonde.  He had a red nose, a roving eye and
staggered a little.  He affected a great gravity, but she
laughed at him.  His cloak was monstrous and of
green, slit all down the great sleeves to show the little
coat of purple damask.  His shirt was wrought up
into a frill very low down in his neck, so that it
showed much of his chest, and in his stiff biretta of
scarlet he had a jewel of scarlet that held five white
feathers.  His hair, which was reddish, fell almost to
his shoulders, for he affected very much to be in
the fashions of his time—more than most lordings
and knights of that part.  And, indeed, the Lady
Margaret considered him a very proper, impudent
gentleman.

"Cousin Meg!" he began, and then he stammered
with the liquor that was in him.  But he
achieved again an owlish gravity and a sweet reason.
His proposition was that, still, she should marry the
Decies and that he himself would wed the Lady
Rohtraut so that he could defend her interests the
better.  And so they could all live there comfortably
together, for it was better to live in one great family
than scattered here and there.  The Lady Margaret
was already laughing, but he continued with a great
gravity, that, as for the Decies, he loved her so
desperately he did not dare to come nigh her, but,
now he had no need to conceal it, was rolling about
the carpet in the great hall, bellowing with the pain of
his passion.

"Well, I have been aware of it this many months,"
the lady said, "and it is a very comfortable love that
will not let him come nigh me.  I pray it may
continue."

At that Vesey of Wall Houses fell to laughing.

He tried to explain that he had come to her with
the idea that she might be more apt to wed the
Decies if she knew that, by his wedding the Lady
Rohtraut, the Castle should have for its head and
guidance, such a sober, answerable, prudent and
valorous head as himself.

"So the cage of apes made the parrot their
captain when they went a-sailing to the Indies," she
said, and then he laughed altogether.

"Nay, indeed Meg, sweetmouthed Meg," he said,
"will ye still keep troth to the monstrous wicked,
idolatrous, blaspheming lording called Lovell that
dances with fair naked witches and all the other
horrid things that we would all do if we could?
Consider your wretched soul!"

But his liquorish manner showed that he believed
nothing of that witches' dance, and indeed he was
pretty sure that the Young Lovell had been carried
off by the outlaw Elliotts that had been seen near
that place, and that he would return and send them
ransom.

"Friend Henry," the Lady answered, "good Sir
Henry, if my love, who is a gallant gentleman, would
not dance and courteously devise with beautiful
women, naked or how they were, I should think the
less of him supposing they entreated it.  But I do
not believe that he did this thing such as the calling
up of succubi, however fair, since his desire for me
only was so great, and that ye well wis."

"Ah well," the Vesey sighed, "sweet mouth that
ye are, if it was I that had the ordering of this Castle I
should not let you go so easily."

"That I well believe and take it kindly," the lady said.

"But, being as it is," he continued, "the poltroons,
my brother and Cullerford and their wives and the
Decies and the lawyer tremble so at the thought of
your kinsmen camped on Budle Crags that they are
minded to open the gates on this pretty bird.  But
well I know that it is a lie, though they will not hear
me."

"In truth there is a monstrous great host awaits
the waving of my kerchief," she said, "with nine
culverins planted there and all; and ye know what
the culverins did to Bamburgh?"

He closed one eye slowly and then he sighed.
"Well, I must take you down," he said, "I am a
reckless devil, woe is me, and if there are no
Widdringtons and the rest there now, I know that
Wall Houses would burn to-morrow and I should
hang when they caught me....  But oh, I repent me
to let you go...."  And he regarded her with very
amorous and melancholy laughing eyes.

"Friend Henry," she laughed, "if you will open
the doors for me, for me, for your good behaviour you
may kiss me twice, once here and once at the gate, for
I dare say, if the truth be known, though you are too
much drunk to be clear and not drunk enough to speak
the truth, you are more the friend of me and of my love
than any here."

"Well, they are a curst crew," he said, "and I
will not hang with them; only, where there are
pickings I must have my poke, and that is good Latin."

So, approaching and lifting his legs, as high as he
might in the politer fashion of the day, though once
in his progress he fell against the wall, he took her by
the hand and kissed her on the cheek.  She said she
wondered how a man could make himself smell so like
a beast with wine, and so he led her forth from the
room, after he had waved away the guards and after
she had taken leave of the Lady Rohtraut who spoke
never a word.  And that was as much as Elizabeth
Campstones knew of her at that time, except that she
promised not to rest a night in bed until she had
roused all the Dacres of the North to come to her
aunt's assistance.

But afterwards Elizabeth heard that the Vesey of
Wall Houses had conducted the lady very courteously,
not only to the gate, but, having found her a horse and
guards, to her very tower of Glororem.  And on the
way he gave her very good counsel as to how she
should aid her aunt.  But that had proved a very
difficult matter, for the Dacres themselves, in those
disturbed and critical times, lay under such clouds of
suspicion that the best of them were detained in
London near the King and his court; so that, if they
were not actually in the Tower or some other prison,
they might as well have been.  As for coming to rescue
the Lady Rohtraut by force, they could not do it and,
as for aiding her by any process of law, that was a
matter well-nigh impossible for its slowness and
because the Knight of Cullerford had stolen all her deeds
and titles.  Moreover, all the middle part of Yorkshire
was in a state of rebellion, so that it was very difficult
for messengers to come through, either the one way
or the other.  It is true that a lawyer from Durham
came to the Castle and sought an interview with the
lady on behalf of the Prince Palatine, but they pelted
him from the archway with dung at first and then
with flint-stones so that they never heard what his
errand was.  And although many in that neighbourhood
would gladly have set upon the Castle and
sacked it, it was difficult to find a leader and head.
For the Percy was afraid, not knowing how the law
was or how he should best please the King, and the
Nevilles were in the South, so that there was no one
left of great eminence.

The Lady Margaret and some young squires of
degree raised a force of a couple of hundred or so and
began to march on the Castle.  But before they
reached it the men-at-arms repented, saying that they
would not be led by a woman and a parcel of beardless
boys; and when the Lady Margaret beat them with
a whip these men shrugged their shoulders and rode
back the faster to their homes.  She had two of
them led to the gallows and the ropes round their
necks till they fell on their knees and sued pardons.
But that did not mend things much and there the
business sat.

The Lady Rohtraut came to herself one night and
knew it was no dream.  And she would have letters
written to the Lord of Croy in Germany, that was
her mother's father, that he might come to her rescue.
And no doubt he would have sent ships, though he
was a very ancient man.  He was a mighty prince,
and had taken prisoner, in the old time, Edward Dacre,
the Lady Rohtraut's father, in a battle that his
suzerain the Duke of Burgundy, who was of uncertain
mind, fought against the English in Flanders.  So,
waiting in the Castle for his ransom to come, Edward
Dacre loved the Duke's daughter, the Princess
Rohtraut, and was beloved by her.  And, at the
intercession of the Talbot, for the better soldering of
a new friendship between the English and the
Burgundians, the Duke, though sorely against his will,
had given his daughter to Edward Dacre, he being
made a baron of England on the day of the wedding.
Her mother, the Princess Rohtraut, was still alive and
lived with her son, the Lord Dacre, in London.  But
between mother and daughter there was a lawsuit
about some of these very lands that her daughters
sought to take from her, and in that way there was
no commerce between them.

Thus it was that the Lady Rohtraut was very
haughty, and would in no way submit to the importunities
of her daughters and their husbands, for she
had the pride of the Dacres and of a Princess of
Low Germany.  The daughters would still have had
her marry the Vesey of Wall Houses, so that they
might have the management of her properties, but
she answered that for nothing in the world would she
do that thing, and that it would be to give them both
to Satan.  She had the right to an annual dower of
3,000 French crowns and to all the furnishings that
had been taken by her husband, upon their marriage,
from her Castle at Cramlinton, as well as her houses at
Plessey and Killingworth.  And she had the right to
enter again, her husband being dead, into the
possession and administration of those places as well
as of her lands by Morpeth.

She was minded to live as a proud and wealthy
dowager and she was not minded to abate one jot of
her rights and possessions to buy her freedom, though
her daughters and their husbands came day by day
and clamoured to her to do it.

So there abode, like a prisoner in that little room,
the Lady Rohtraut till that hour.  All of her servants
were driven away from her, and she had only
Elizabeth Campstones to dress and undress her: and
of linen she had so little that the old woman must
come forth and wash it every three days.  And,
when she brought it forth, the daughters searched it
into the very seams to see that there was no letter to
the Duke of Croy or to the Dacres concealed within
it.  And the Lady Rohtraut fell ill, and she thought
her daughters had poisoned her with a fig laid down
in honey, till the doctor cured her with another such
fig, the one poison, if it were a poison, driving out the
other.





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   PART II

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   I

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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 Réole 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.





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   II

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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 £10 6s. 4d., and
since they owed Robert Chambers and John Richardson
already £17 13s. 4d., the whole payment then to
be made was £27 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.





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   III

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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.

"My beloved son in religion whom I should hold
as a brother if I were of this world," he said, "I cannot
say if you were pure in heart at that season, yet I
hope you were.  If you were you may take great
pride and be very thankful.  If you were in a state of
sin then consider this for a warning and amend very
much your ways.  And it may well be that the hosts
of heaven who are all round us and watch very
attentively that which we do on earth—that they are and
have been concerned to see how that you regard too
little the needs of the Church that is militant here in
earth, forgetting it in the too frequent contemplation
of the Church Triumphant that is in heaven.  For I
think that your tales of chaste knights of Brittany
and the pursuers of the Holy Grail are rather glimpses
vouchsafed to us of how it shall be with the Church
Triumphant than of anything that can be until that
day.  In these North parts the times are very evil and
we have more need of a great lord and one ready to
be a strong protector than of ten Sir Galahads seeking
mysteries, though that too may be a very excellent
thing in its time and place.  Yet I would rather see
you Warden of these Marches, since the one that we
have, though an earl pious and generous enough, turns
rather his thoughts in fear to the King in London
Town than in love and homage to the Prince Bishop
that is set above us.  And I make no doubt that it
was to exhort you to this that that angel or that
saint came down.  And, in token, you have, for the
time being, lost your lands to very godless people
who have sought to dispossess you by having recourse
to the courts temporal upon a false charge.  You say
to me that ever since you saw that lady's face this
world has seemed as a mirror and an unreality to you
so that you cannot cease from sighing and longing.
I will tell you that those very same words were
written of Gudruna, Saint, Queen and Martyr of
these parts.  Being an evil and lascivious queen she
had in sleep a vision of the joys of paradise and so
she said that she never ceased from sighing for them
all the days of her life.  Yet nevertheless that did
not hinder her from waging war against the heathen
and winning a great part of this kingdom from
Heathenesse, so that she converted forty thousand
souls.  And, for the fact that three months have
passed, I will have you remember the case of the
founder of this monastery—blessed Wulfric.  For
walking in the fields here, Our Lady came to him
and so he remained upon his knees by the space of
forty and nine days in a swoon or trance, being fed
by such as passed by or as gradually flocked there to
see that wonder.  And so, being restored to himself,
he said that Our Lady had but just gone from him,
having staid, as he thought, but a very short while.
And that is explained by this, that to the dwellers in
heaven and in the sight of God, even as marriage is
not, so time is not, it being written that in His courts
one day is as a thousand years.  So it may well be
that that angel—and by that I think it may have
been rather an angel than a saint—having no
knowledge of time and none either of the necessity of
mankind for shelter or food—for the heavenly host
have no need of either—so this fair, pretty angel in
staying ninety days before you may have thought it
was but the space of a minute, for it is only God that
is all-wise.  Yet may God, observing these things
from where He sate in Heaven, and desiring neither
to abash the angel nor to starve and slay you, have
conveyed nourishment to you by the hands of other
angels and have rendered mild the winds.  And now
I think of it, in these last ninety days, there has been
very little or no rain at all so that the hay harvest and
fenaison is a month before its time and all men have
marked this for a marvel.  So I read these wonders,
and so I command you to regard them until you
come upon a man more holy, to interpret them otherwise.
And for that, if I be wrong, we shall very soon
know it, for I will have you go with me—as soon as I
shall have arranged certain matters of this
monastery—to the Prince Bishop himself in Durham.  And
there, if he do not find me at fault, we will devise
with him how best you may again be set in your
inheritance.  For I will tell you this.  A fortnight
gone I had speech with that gracious prince for a
space of two days touching the affairs of the diocese,
and he said that he would very well that you should
be set back in your lands.  And I ask you this: If
such a mighty prince and wise and reverend servant
of God shall say that, commending you, what would
it be in you but a very stiff-necked perseverance in
humility and the conviction of sin to gainsay him, a
prince palatine that hath spent many years in the city
of Rome before the face of the pope himself?"

The Young Lovell sighed deeply.  In all those
long speeches he had heard rather the voice of a friend
that sought to enhearten him than that of a ghostly
pastor and comforter.  And at last he said:

"For what you say, father, of my retaking my
Castle I will do it very willingly, and so I will
administer my lands that, with the grace of God, it
shall be to His greater glory, if so I may.  And for
what you have bidden me believe I will seek to
believe it, but strong within me is the thought of what
before was in my mind that I may not change it all
of a piece.  Nevertheless, by prayer and fasting I
may come to it."

The monk, who had observed his penitent's face
to light up at the mention of his Castle, said quickly:

"Why, I think you have fasted enough," and so
he bade the lay brother to bring there quickly wine
and meat, and hot water to wash with, and clean linen
if they had any good enough.  And so he bade the
young lord lay off the heavier of his garments and
unbrace his clothes, for it was hot weather.  And so
food and a table were brought and the lay brother
washed the feet of the lord, whilst he reclined upon
the bed-foot.  Whilst he ate, little by little the religious
brought the Young Lovell to talk of how he should
have arms and money for his men-at-arms and other
costs.

And the Young Lovell saw that he had still in his
cap his string of great pearls and this he pledged to
the monk Francis for the sum of two hundred
pounds.

Of this sum, one hundred pounds the monk
Francis had of the funds of the monastery, and he
could just make it with the twenty-eight pounds that
John Harbottle had paid him.  This hundred pounds
the Young Lovell should take with him upon his
adventure to Durham and the other hundred should
remain with the good monk.  And this should pay
for the keep of thirty men for a fortnight, at the rate
of fourpence a man, and that would be seven pounds.
And the men should have arms from the armourer of
the monastery and from the men-at-arms there until
they came to arms of their own.  And if they should
return those arms unbroken and unharmed the Lord
Lovell should pay for their hire at the rate of one
shilling the man per week, and all that should be
matter of account out of the hundred pounds that
remained.

So the monk Francis bargained for the good of
his monastery, for he held it against his conscience to
give these things for less.  Moreover, he perceived
that in talking of these things the Young Lovell
appeared to come back to life.  Then the Young
Lovell told this news to his men-at-arms who stood
before the door.

Afterwards the Young Lovell bought of the knight
of the monastery, Sir Nicholas Ewelme, some light
armour for his horse; and for himself he bought a
light helmet, a breastpiece and an axe, which were
not very fair, but sufficient to make the journey to
Durham.  And all these things having taken many
hours, it was decided that they should put off their
departure until the next day at dawn when the Young
Lovell should take with him ten of his men-at-arms.
By that evening, the news of his being at the
monastery having spread, more than twenty more of
his men, with an esquire called Armstrong, came
there and entered his employment.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-IV`:

.. class:: center large

   IV

.. vspace:: 2

The Lady Margaret of Glororem had that day, near
dawn, abandoned hope that the Young Lovell, her
true love, would come again, and for that reason she
rode south to Durham to set about the releasing of
the Lady Rohtraut in good earnest.  She had been
unwilling to do this before hope departed of his
returning, because he was her lord and might have
plans for the retaking of his Castle and the rest, and
any action that she might take might hinder these.

She had said that she would ride to Durham on the
day when the Young Lovell should have been ninety
days away and that was the ninety-first.  That night
she lay at Warkworth where she had the hospitality of
the Percies.  She had with her an old lady called
Bellingham and three maids with forty men-at-arms
under the direction of the husband of the lady called
Bellingham, an old esquire who had never come to be
a knight, but yet a very honest man and capable for
such a post.  For if he had little skill or desire to
take fortresses or the like, he could very well set out
his men so as to drive off any evil gentry.

And that night the Lady Margaret, after supper—which
was late because it was the time of the haying
when every man of the largest castle must be in the
fields whilst daylight lasted—the Lady Margaret held
a hot discussion with the Earl of Northumberland.
The Lady Maud his wife was by, that was daughter
to the Earl of Pembroke, and she sought to moderate
at once the anger of that lord and the importunities
of that hotheaded damsel.  The Lady Margaret would
have the Percy raise his many with cannon and siege
apparatus and march against Castle Lovell to release
her aunt, the Lady Rohtraut who was also that Earl's
cousin.  And so she exhorted him, in the light of a
great fire of sea coal, for the nights were chilly enough
if the days were fine.

She said many words in that sense to the Earl
before he answered her.  At last he spoke to a page
standing behind her, that was son to the esquire, John
Harbottle, and gave him a key and bade him bring a
little box that he would find in an aumbry in the
tower where his muniments and charters were locked
up.  For this Earl, according as he was at Alnwick
which he did not much love, or at Warkworth where
he much delighted to be, so he moved his window-glass,
his muniments and his charters from the one
Castle to the other, and for their greater safety they
were placed in the tower called the Bail.  Night and
day watch was kept in the chambers that were both
above them and below, with the best ancients and
lieutenants that he had, keeping watch upon the
men-at-arms.  So high a value did his lord set upon his
charters.

And when the box was brought to him he opened
it with another key and took out certain old and stained
papers and parchments which he bade this lady read.
And she could make little of them because there was
no light but the firelight, for the Earl and his wife
were accustomed to go to bed after supper.

When she could not read them, the Earl took
them from her and read them easily enough, for he
had them nearly by heart, though the writing was
cramped and nearly fourscore years of age, or more.
And once, whilst he read them, the Earl looked over
the edge of a parchment at the Lady Margaret and
asked her if she had heard of a Percy called
Hotspur.  She answered, yes, indeed; so he read out
lugubriously what was in that writing.

"The King to the mayor and sheriffs of York,
greeting: Whereas of our special grace we have
granted to our cousin Elizabeth who was the wife of
Henry de Percy, Chevalier, commonly called Hotspur,
the head and quarters of the same Henry to be
buried: we command you that the head aforesaid,
placed by our command upon the gate of the city
aforesaid you deliver to the same Elizabeth, to be
buried according to our grant aforesaid."  And, with
a droning voice the Earl followed other pieces of the
body of that Henry Percy about the realm, a certain
quarter of him having been placed upon the gate at
Newcastle, another at Chester, another at
Shrewsbury, and so on.  And when he had done with
Hotspur, the Earl went on to read of the fate of the
father of Hotspur, Henry, the Fourth Lord Percy
of Alnwick.  This lord fell at Bramham Moor
fighting against King Henry IV, as Hotspur had
done at Hately Field, fighting against the same
King four years before.  This lord's head and
quarters were placed upon London Bridge: one
quarter upon the gate of York, another at Newcastle,
and yet further pieces at King's Lynn and
Berwick-on-Tweed.  Lugubriously and in a level voice this
Earl read out all the writs that he had collected,
whether by the King's hand or Privy Seal, whether
of setting up or for burial.  He looked gravely upon
the Lady Margaret and asked her what she learned
from them.  And when she said that she learned
that those Percies were very gallant men, he shook
his head and said that he found from them this lesson,
that it is not healthy for a Percy to rebel against a
King Henry that slew a Richard.  For, just as
Henry IV had put down King Richard II by the aid
of the Percies that afterwards rose against him, so
King Henry VII had put down and slain King
Richard IV on Bosworth Field with the aid of that
Percy that there spoke to her.  And very surely it
would be upon no Bramham Moor or Hately Field
that that Percy would fall, for he was determined to
be a very good liege man of King Henry VII
and that was all he had to it.

Then the Lady Margaret said boldly that, for this
present King she knew nothing of him, nor either
could anybody, seeing that he had reigned but a little
while.  The Percy made sounds of disagreement
and anger, for he was afraid of having such things
said in his Castle, and moreover desired to be in his
bed.

She exclaimed loudly that she regretted having
seen the day when a great lord should talk of loyalty to
a King not a year on the throne, where they, the great
barons of this realm, had set him.  For the Percies
were a respectable family though they were not of
the standing and worth, in those parts, of the Eures,
the Dacres, or the Nevilles; they had acquired the
most part of their lands by a gradual purchase of
Bishop Anthony Bek, who betrayed his ward the
young Vesey, so that the Veseys ever since were
poor enough and some of them as they knew had
taken to evil ways.  Still the Percies had had some
very good knights amongst them, such as that
Hotspur and his father Henry, and others.

At that point the Countess Maud sought to calm
her, but the Lady Margaret would not be quieted.
For she said that this was what all the North part
was saying, and it was better for the Earl to hear it
than to sit all day surrounded by flatterers of the
make of John Harbottle and his like, or than setting
up tablets on the walls of towers as John Harbottle
was doing at Belford, praising the credit and renown
of this Earl.

The Lady Margaret looked a very fair woman
and the Earl had an eye for such, or very certainly he
would have had her taken away, for he regarded
himself like a second king in those North parts.
Her eyes were very dark and flashed with the firelight;
her black hair fell in two plaits, one over her
back and one over her shoulder, and when she pointed
at him her white hand, on which were many rings set
with green stones and red stones, her ample sleeves
of scarlet damask touched the firelit carpet.  In the
dark hall of that place her angry figure appeared to
wave as the flames went over the logs of the sea coal,
and over her shoulder looked the white face of the
old lady, Bellingham, her duenna, who was much
afraid.  For the Lady Margaret continued her rude
speeches.  She was so vexed that the Percy would
not go to the rescue of her aunt, the Lady Rohtraut.

"Sir Earl," she said, "this is the manner of the
governance of this realm of England, that, if the
great barons dislike a King they set him down.  So
they did, for one cause or another, with Edward II
and with Richard II and with Henry VI and with
Edward V and with Richard III.  He, I think, was a
very good King; nevertheless you and others
betrayed him on Bosworth Field, God keeps the issue.
And when we put down Edward II we set up
Edward III; misliking his grandson we set up
Henry Bolingbroke instead.  And that Bolingbroke,
called Henry IV, we did not well like when we had
set him up.  Yet I do not blame anyone either for
setting him up nor yet for seeking to force him down
again.  For somebody must be King.  He will make
fair promises before we come to it, and if he break
them afterwards it must be put to the issue of swords,
pull devil, pull baker.  So this Henry IV was too
strong for Hotspur, God rest his soul...  Then came
Henry V that was a King after my heart and all good
people's hearts, and so it went on...  But that you,
a Percy, should cry out before this King has sat in
his saddle a year, that you are afraid of the fate of
your grandsire Hotspur; that I think is a very filthy
thing and so I tell you.  And we of the North parts
are not like to suffer it."

The Percy smiled a red smile in the firelight.

"Then you of the North parts," he said, "women
and jackanapes, will do what you are held down to
do...  For I tell you this: this Henry Tudor sitteth
so firm in his saddle by my aid that we will break all
your necks or ever you raise them from the dust
where you belong.  And that I say to the North
parts, brawling and fighting brother against brother
as ye are ever doing...  And this I say to you
Margaret Eure and my gentle cousin: that your aunt,
who has broad lands should be in prison to your
cousins of Cullerford and Haltwhistle and to Bastards
suits well my case and there she shall stop for me.
For she has broad lands and the Lovells have broad
lands and so have the Dacres, to whom she belongs,
and whilst they are at each other's throats it is well
for the King in London Town and for me at Alnwick.
And I wish you were all at each other's throats more
than you are; for the King shall have his pickings
by way of fines and amercements, and so will I, and
so will lawyers and bailiffs and others, and so ye are
weakened the more.  And it was for this reason that
I gave judgment against your true love, the Young
Lovell, in my Warden's court, though I knew that
judgment should not stand...  For I think that
Young Lovell was a dangerous whelp, with his
prating of this and that, and his being a very good
knight and commander.  And so I would be very
willing to pull him down again if the Scots had not
hanged him, as I hope they have.  And I have
written a broad letter to the King in London that
these Lovells are a dangerous race with their hearts
full of love for Richard Crookback.  If the King do
not forbid it, and, if Young Lovell shall come again
to raise men and march upon Castle Lovell, I will
march out with men and cannon and hot-trod and
hang him upon the first gallows I come to.  So say
I, Henry, Earl Percy."

The Lady Margaret swallowed her hot rage and
considered that she might better sting this lord
with a low voice.  So she spoke very clearly as
follows:

"Henry Earl Percy, thou art a very filthy knave,
and so thou knowest and so know all thy neighbours.
Thou wast a foul traitor to Richard; thou
art a foul traitor to thy kith and kin and to thy peers.
For thou mightest well put down Richard Crookback.
That was open to any man that could.  And
thou mightest well set up Henry and seek to
maintain him till he has time to prove himself.  But
to seek to weaken thy kith and thy kin and thine
order and thy kind that he may sit firm rivetted
whether he deserve it or not, with the house of Percy
as his flatterers, servants and pimps—that is not a
pretty and gallant thing.  For my cousin Lovell, I do
not think ye dare set out against him, for if ye did,
all the North part—and it is not yet so cast
down—should rise upon you, and there should not remain, of
Alnwick, nor yet of Warkworth, one stone upon
another.  And for this thing of my cousin and true
love, I think you have a little mistaken it.  For whiles
my true love is away we, such as the Eures and the
Dacres and the Nevilles and the Widdringtons and
the Swinburns and the commoner sort, and the
Elliotts and Armstrongs, go a little in doubt.  For,
if my true love be dead, it is his sisters that are his
heirs, and to set them out of that Castle would be to
set down his heirs, which is a thing not to be done.
But if the Young Lovell should come again I think
you should see a different thing, for there is not one
of these people but should rise upon you, aye, and
the Prince Palatine.  I think you could not stand
against us all.  For that so they would do I have
upon their oaths...."

The Countess Maud said then:

"So there you have the end of it."  But the Earl
was in haste to seize a point:

"Then there you are convicted by your own
mouth," he said hatefully to Lady Margaret.  "I
hold that Young Lovell to be dead and his sisters'
husbands are the heirs of that Castle.  How then
shall I march upon a Castle that is the lawful property
of Cullerford and Haltwhistle upon an idle peasant's
tale that a lady there is captive?"

The Lady Margaret made him a deep reverence,
leaning back in her scarlet gown that had green
undersleeves.

"Simply for this," she said, "that there are Percies
that would have done it."  Then she laughed; and
after she was done with her curtsy that took a long
time, she said:

"So, now I have what I wish, I will get me gone
from this your Castle of Warkworth."

So she made her way to her room that had dark
hangings all of the crowned lion of the Percies.
And when she was there she called to her the old
squire, John Bellingham, that had charge of her
men-at-arms.  He had gone to his bed and was some
time in coming.

So she bade him rouse all her men because she
would ride forth from the Castle.  Then he said it
would be very dangerous, seeing the darkness of the
night and the rumours of Scots being abroad.  She
answered that, if the night were dark it would be as
hard for the Scots to see them as for them to see
the Scots.  And she had chosen him, John Bellingham,
to be the ancient of her men because he was said to
possess much knowledge of the different ways of that
country-side, that never the Scots could come to him
if he had but two minutes' start by night.

In the middle of that dispute came the Countess
Maud a knocking at the door.  She cried out that it
was not to be thought of that this lady should leave
their Castle in that wise.  She, the Countess, had
done as best she might to make hospitality for that
lady, and it would be an ill discourtesy if she left them
so.  This Countess Maud, daughter of Sir Herbert
Stanley, Earl of Bedford, was of the South parts, and
she was amazed at all these clamours.  Indeed she had
not well understood all that had been said, for when
the Earl and the Lady Margaret had become heated
they spoke in the Northern fashion of which she knew
nothing.  So the Countess said again that she had done
all she knew to do honour to that her guest.  If she
had fallen short of due hospitality, very gladly she
would amend it.  This Countess was a large, white
woman that had once been very fair.  And she wrung
her hands.

Then the Lady Margaret laughed and bade
peremptorily John Bellingham to bid her men
arm themselves and lie all together under arms, for
they had been scattered about the Castle.  And, at
all those noises the women of the Lady Margaret
awakened and came into the little room where they
slept; two were in their shifts and one had her bed
clothes about her.  Then the Lady Margaret bade
them dress themselves and lie down upon their beds;
but to be ready.  After that she answered the
Countess Maud that her entertainment had been
such as she had seldom had before, lacking nothing,
but with certain dishes added, that in their rough
North parts they had seldom seen before though they
had heard of them.  Such were the scents in the
water for washing hands, the golden apples of Spain,
and the fowl called a Turkey.  And indeed the
Countess had made her great cheer.  Nevertheless,
since eating these things she and the Earl had
become sworn enemies, and it would be contrary to
the rules of hospitality if she stayed longer in that
Castle.

The Countess wrung her hands again and said,
"What was this of making enemies and why could
they not live amicably together as cousins did in the
South?"  The Lady Margaret laughed and answered
that if the people of the South were better than they
of the North in these matters, then they were better
than God meant men to be; nevertheless she was
glad of it.

Then came John Bellingham, who by now understood
the danger of the matter, to say that the Lady
Margaret's men were all together and armed in a
room in a wall by the postern gate and at the foot of
a stairway just beside that lady's chamber-room.
Then the Lady Margaret bade him let her men lie
down upon straw in that room; but upon any sound
that the Percy's men were arming or at any movement
of lights in the Castle, he should come at once
to her.

Then the Countess Maud asked what was this, for
she had not understood what had passed between the
lady and her ancient, by reason that they spoke in
the Northern tongue.  Then came a knocking at the
door and the dame Bellingham said that there stood
the Earl Percy in his night-gown.  So the Lady
Margaret said that was what she feared—that the
Earl should come down at night with amorous
proposals; but she was jesting.  The Countess did
not know this and she went to the door and began
to cry out upon that lord for desiring to dishonour
her.

Then between the two of them came a great
clamour, the Countess holding to that, and the Earl
crying out that she was a fool and that this matter
might lead to the deaths of them all if she would not
let him come in to speak to the Lady Margaret.
This the Countess did not wish to allow, for the
Countess Maud had no comprehension at all of what
all this trouble was about, and it seemed to her to be
nonsense to say, as her lord did, that this matter
might lead to the deaths of them all.

Nevertheless, when the Lady Margaret heard
those words she laughed very silently but long to
herself.  For she knew that now, if she could come
out of the Castle and get safe away, she had a power
that might well drive that Earl to do all that she
wished later, or some of it.

Henry, Earl Percy, had indeed said much and so
much to his kinswoman in his anger.  For it was
indeed his intention, secret but resolute, to break the
power of all the barons and great nobles in the North,
so that King Henry VII should be almighty and
himself the King's viceregent.  When the day came
there would be indeed no end to his power in those
parts, for the King would be very distant and there
would be no one to oppose him.  So he fomented all
the quarrels that he could amongst these people, and
he had seen with joy the troubles that were afoot
about the Castle Lovell.

But as yet he was not ready; for all these people
were still very strong in armed men, wealth and lands,
and, if they joined together they might well overset
both himself and King Henry VII with him.  Thus
he wished he had bitten his tongue out before ever,
in his anger, he had revealed what was his secret
design to his cousin.  For the Lady Margaret was a
great gadabout and, if he could not come to her,
either to modify what he had said or to bind her to
secrecy, there would not be a Dacre or a Eure or a
Widdrington that would not soon know the worst of
his design.

He had sought his bed, but his pillow had seemed
to be of nettles, and since he had discerned that it
might be her design to ride away early, he had sought
her chamber door to have speech with her.  He did
not in truth know what to do.  He was very willing
to have laid her by the heels and to keep her a
prisoner in that tower.  But he was afraid that that
might bring about his ears a hornet's nest of his
cousins, and even it might bring him reproof from
the King.  The King was not at all willing or ready
to have the whole of Northumberland rise upon him
at that time.  Nay, Henry VII had bidden him to be
very careful that, whilst he weakened these troublesome
people as much as he could, he should rouse
their anger as little as he might.

All this, laughing behind the door, the Lady
Margaret knew very well, even to the fact that the
Lord Percy might come to shutting her up in prison.
But she knew that, whilst the silly Countess kept him
crying at the door, he could not bid his men to arm
against her, and whilst her men were armed and his
not, he could do little or nothing at all.  They could
all go out at the postern gate and so into the
trackless sedges of the sea and the marches.  Moreover,
the Percy and his Countess were such married people
that, upon any occasion they quarrelled furiously and
at great length and so they did now.

For the Countess was well begun upon her
grievances such as, as how the Earl had dealt with
his lands of her dowry, as to the little attention he
paid her as his wife, as to the fact that she had no
more than four damask dresses and, very particularly,
as to the store he set by one of her ladies called
Isabel.  And at the last she pushed the door to
against his resistance and set the bar across it.

The Earl thundered upon it very violently but in
the end he went away.  The Lady Margaret did as
best she might to comfort the Countess Maud until
at last John Bellingham came to tell her that people
were astir in the Castle with some lights, though
whether they were about arming themselves or getting
ready for the day and the hay harvest, he could not
well say.  But indeed the Earl Percy had twice
ordered his men to arm and seize the lady and twice
he ordered them to desist, during that night; for he
was in a very great quandary.

So the Lady Margaret went down the little stairway,
after she had roused her women, and found her
men by the postern gate.  The keeper of the gate
did not dare to withhold the keys for he knew that
they, being thirty to one, could slay him very
peacefully.

When they had walked from the walls of that
Castle over the bridge and two good gunshots beyond
and the day was beginning to break, they all stood
together upon a little mound, and the Lady Margaret
sent a little boy called Piers, that was her kinsman
and page, back to the Castle to ask for their horses.
For they could not have taken horses out by the
postern way which went narrowly down twisting
steps.  She did not think that the Earl would dare
to come and take her there.  It would have been too
great an outrage, to set upon a lady of her quality in
the open; besides, being thirty and more, they would
be able to give account of themselves and no doubt
get away by tracks that John Bellingham knew very
well.  So the ladies sat down upon shields of the
men-at-arms, for the grass was wet with the night's dew,
and they watched the dawn come up over the sea and
across the wide stretches of the Coquet river.  The
Lady Margaret and her handmaidens made merry
and played a game with white stones that they
picked up; but the old lady Bellingham moaned
and grumbled a great deal, for she was weary with
having watched and stiff with the rawness of the air.

So, after a time, when it was quite light, the page
called Piers came back.  He reported that at first
the Earl had been in a great rage and had threatened
to hamstring all the Lady Margaret's horses; but,
afterwards, he had seemed to change his mind and
had given orders that all the horses should be sent
out to her.  Moreover, he sent her word that, if she
would come back into the Castle he would give her
news of the Young Lovell, for his receiver, John
Harbottle, had sent him, through the night a
messenger from Alnwick with very certain tidings,
and these she should have and might make a treaty
with the Earl if she would go back.

But she believed this to be more lying in order to
get her back into his power; so she sent ten of her
men to fetch the horses from the Castle gate and very
soon they perceived all the horses come round the
Castle wall, to the number of thirty-two with eleven
mules.  The Lady Margaret rode a tall horse called
Christopher, a brown, that she loved, and John
Bellingham had another tall horse.  But the old lady
and the three maids had mules, and there were seven
pack mules that carried the Lady Margaret's
hangings, furnishings for her room if she slept in an
inn, her dresses and much things of value as she
would not willingly leave in the Tower of Glororem.
The men-at-arms rode little, nimble horses, such as
the false Scots had, very fit for picking their way
amongst springs, heather and the stones of hillsides.
This lady could not bring herself to believe that her
true love was not dead, so that, although she laughed
and jested to keep up the hearts of her maids, as her
plain duty was, within herself she was a very sad woman.

When the sun was off the horizon they broke
their fast with small beer and cheese that they got
from a husbandman's tower near Acklington, for they
were sticking inland.  This husbandman advised
them to go by way of Eshot Hill and Helm, for, by
reason of the dry weather, the road from this latter
place to Morpeth was very good travelling, and it
ran straight.  The Lady Margaret was minded to
sleep that night at Newcastle, which would be
twenty-four miles more or less, for she had no haste
to be in one place more than another.  She had little
pleasure in life; although she wished to rescue the
Lady Rohtraut she thought this could only be done
by means of the Lady Dacre, her mother, that had
been a Princess of Croy.  And, from the news she
had, it was very unlikely that that ancient lady would
reach her house in the city of Durham before that
night or the next day.

So, as they rode between the fields, the sun rose
up—its rays poured down fiercely and smote on
them.  It was marvellously hot weather, so that
those ladies must at first lay off their gray cloaks
and then open their shifts at the neck and fan
themselves with their neckerchers.  A great langour
descended upon the Lady Margaret; her head ached
sorely and her sadness grew unbearable.

And all, even to the men-at-arms and the page
Piers, complained of the great heat and because they
had had little sleep the night before, and the ladies
yawned and half slept upon their mules.  So, when
they came to a little green hill where ash trees
climbed to the top, the Lady Margaret said, out of
compassion to them, that when they were at the top
of the hill, so that they could see the flat country all
round, they might get down from their horses and
mules and sleep the noontide away in the shade.
And so they did.

The men-at-arms got down from the sumpter
mules mattresses that the ladies might lie upon them,
and there, in a shady grove, they lay and slept.  The
men set their backs against trees and let their heads
fall forward between their knees.  One or two were
set to walk as sentries outside that wood, to watch
the flat country below, so that no sound was heard in
that little wood save the light noises of steel and
of buckles clinking as the watchmen walked.  And
so they lay a long time, all recumbent, some
covering their faces with their arms, some casting them
abroad.

The Lady Margaret awakened from a slumber,
and the sun had climbed far round in the heaven.
Then she perceived a lady watching her through the
trees and smiling.  So beautiful and smiling a lady
she had never seen.  She stood between the stems
of two white birch trees and leaned upon one, with
her arm over her head in an attitude of great leisure.
The Lady Margaret rose from her mattress and went
towards that lady; she had never felt so humble, nor
had her eyes ever so gladdened her at the sight of
the handiwork of God.

Then that lady walked through the wood, very
light of foot, so that the long grass was hardly
trampled at all, and no briars caught at her gown.
Yet the Lady Margaret could not overtake her.
So that lady came to the edge of the wood and
the hill to the west, looking over the tower called
Helm, where the white road ran southward and the
green lands swung up towards the distant hilts.  And
here there was a white charger and a great company
of ladies-in-waiting, all very beautiful, in gowns of
sea-blue silk with girdles of silver and gold.  The
Lady Margaret had never seen so fair a company,
though she had seen the Queen of Richard Crookback
with all her court.  Then it seemed to her that
that lady pointed down into the plain as if she
wanted to show her lover and her lord.  On the
road that came from the North, the Lady Margaret
perceived one that she knew for a knight, by the sun
upon his armour, and a monk that walked beside him.
And a mile behind, by the cloud of dust that rose,
she knew there were men-at-arms, and perceived
their spears above the dust.  The Lady Margaret
knew that this must be the other lady's husband, for
certainly such a troop of fair women would never
ride abroad in that dangerous country without men
to guard them.

Then she saw that lady riding down the hill, with
all her many, towards the little figures in the plain;
but they went so quickly that it was like a flight of
blue doves in the sunlight below her.  Then the
Lady Margaret wondered who that lady must be, for
she knew of none in that neighbourhood that could
keep up so fair a state, except it were the King of
Scots, and not even he, and that could not be the
Queen of Scots, for she was a stout, black lady,
whereas this one had been a tall woman with
red-gold hair, such a one as she could have loved if she
had been a man.  And, at the thought that that
woman was going to her lover and her lord, the
Lady Margaret wept three or four tears, for that she
would never do herself, and going back to her
guards, she upbraided them for that they had let
that lady pass unchallenged.  But they said they haD
seen no one.





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   V

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The Princess Rohtraut of Croy, Tuillinghem and
Sluijs, Duchess of Muijden and Lady Dacre, dowager
of the North, was a vociferous old German woman
who passed for being ill to deal with.  She would
cry at the top of her voice orders that it was very
difficult to understand, and, when her servants did
not swiftly carry these out, she would strike at them
with the black stick that she leaned upon when she
hobbled from place to place.  This she did so
swiftly that it was a marvel; for she was short and
stout.  She could not move without groans and
wheezing and catching at the corners of tables and
the backs of chairs.  Nevertheless she would so
strike with her stick at her servants, her stewards,
the gentlemen attendant upon her son, the Lord
Dacre, or even at knights, lawyers, or lords that
frequented her son.  She had told the King,
Richard III, that he would come to no good end;
she had told the Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, that
she was an idle fool, and King Henry VII that
his face was as sour as his wine.  For that King,
being a niggard, served very sour wine to his
guests.  Richard III had laughed at her; the
Queen Elizabeth Woodville had gone crying with
rage to King Edward IV.  King Henry VII had
affected not to hear her, which was the more prudent
way.  For her father, the Duke of Croy, who still
lived, though a very ancient man of more than
ninety, was yet a very potent and sovereign lord in
Flanders, Almain, and towards Burgundy.  Seventy
thousand troops of all arms he could put into the
field either against or for the French King, and
eighty armed vessels upon the sea.  The Emperor
of Rome was afraid of him, for he was very malicious
and had great weight with all the Electors from
Westphalia to Brunswick and the Rhine.  Moreover,
though he himself rode no longer afield, his son, the
brother of the Princess Rohtraut, was a very cunning,
determined, and hardy commander.  And that was
to say nothing of the powers of the Dacres in
England.

So those Kings and Queens did what they could
least to mark the outrageous demeanour of this
Princess.  They did no more than as if she had been
a court jester, and affected to wonder that she had
once been a beautiful and young Princess, for love
of whom her husband, then a simple esquire, had
languished longer than need be in prison in Almain.
Yet so it was.

This Princess spent the winter of most years,
latterly, in London for the benefit of the climate.
The summers until lately she had been accustomed
to spend in Bothal Castle or Cockley Park Tower,
which she hired of Sir Robert Ogle, who had lately
been made Lord Ogle of Ogle.  Upon the death
of her husband she had inherited much land near
Morpeth and she considered that she would have
had much more had not the Lord Lovell, lately dead,
seized so much of it by reason of his marriage with
the Lady Rohtraut, the Princess's daughter.  The
lawsuits about these lands were not yet concluded,
and it was these that the knights of Cullerford and
Haltwhistle were seeking to force from the Lady
Rohtraut by keeping her imprisoned.  The Princess
had, however, by no means abandoned her claim to
these lands and it was to prosecute her lawsuits that,
each summer, she came to the North.  She was
otherwise a very rich woman, having many coronets,
chains with great pearls, rubies, ferezets, silks,
hangings, furniture and much gold.  Moreover, she
was for ever trafficking in parcels of land with the
Ogles, the Bartrams, the Mitfords and other families
round the town of Morpeth.  In that way she had
both occupation and profit, and she harried the
leisure of the several receivers of her son, the Lord
Dacre whom the King kept in London.

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Now, upon a day, being the second day in July
of the year 1486, this lady sat upon a chair
resembling a high throne upon three stone steps
covered with a carpet.  She had behind her yet
another carpet that mounted the wall and came
forward over her head in the manner of a dais.  This
old lady inclined always to the oldest fashions.

Thus, upon her round, old head she had an
immense structure that bent her face forward as if it
had been that of our Father at Rome beneath the
triple tiara.  It was made of two pillows of scarlet
velvet, covered with a net of fine gold chains uniting
large pearls.  Such a thing had not been seen in
England for two or three score years, but the ladies
at her father's court had worn them when she had
been a girl.  For the rest of her, she was dressed in
black wool with a girdle, from which there hung ten
or a dozen keys of silver, steel, or gold inlaid with
steel.

The room was fair in size, but all of stone and
very dark because of the smallness of the windows.
The roof went up into a peak.  All painted the
stone walls were, with woods and leaves, with fowlers
among trees setting their nets, and maidens shaking
down fruits, and men and women bathing in pools,
and the vaults of the ceiling showed the history of
the coffin of St. Cuthbert.  Each history was divided
from the other by ribs of stone painted fairly in
scarlet with green scrolls.  There you might see how
the good monks set out from Holy Island, or how
the coffin floated of itself, or how the women called
one to the other about the Dun Cow.  This room
without doubt had formerly been some council
chamber or judgment room of the Prince Bishop's
in old days.  But its purpose was by now forgotten,
and the Lord Dacre had bought the house lately, for
he considered the practice of living always in castles
to be barbarous and uncomfortable.  It was his
purpose to pull down this old stone house and build
there a fair palace where he might dwell in comfort.
But, for the time being, it suited his mother well
enough to dwell there.

She was sitting in the chair like a throne, leaning
forward and perusing a great book of accounts held
up to her by an old fellow who knelt before her in
black cloths with the badge of the Dacres upon one
shoulder and the silver portcullis of Croy upon the
other.  The old lady puzzled over this tale of capons,
pence, eggs, bolls of wheat, oats and the rest that her
tenants owed her.  She thought it was not enough.
And consequently messengers came in from the
Prince Bishop, from the Dean, from the Chapter,
down to the sacristan, to ask how it was with her
health after her long journey from London city to
Durham.  She had come there the night before.
And one brought her the offering of a deer, another
of two fat geese, a third a salmon, a fourth a basket
of strawberries grown beneath a southern wall.  And,
as each of these things was brought before her, she
would lean forward and look upon it, and so she
would lose her place in the book of accounts and
scold perpetually at the old man that held it up for
her.

In one of the deep, narrow window spaces stood
a notable man of forty, stout and grave, with a brown
beard cut squarely, and wearing a very rich blue
cloak and blue round hat with a great white plume.
He said nothing at all, but pared his finger-nails
with a little knife.  He looked between whiles out
upon the high, wooded banks of the Wear that
confronted his gaze across the river, and were all
ablaze with the sunlight: once the Princess Rohtraut
turned her head stiffly to have sight of him.  But he
was standing too far in the depth of the window, her
chair being between one window and the other.  So
she cried out in a rough voice that was at once
insulting and indulgent:

"This is very easy spying for King Henry."  Then
she chuckled and added, "Do you hear me,
Sir Bertram of Lyonesse?  This is very easy spying
for King Henry."

He made no answer to this gibe, but instead he
pushed open the window and carefully surveyed the
deep gorge beneath him, for this place was new to
him.  The night before they had come in by torch-light,
over a steep bridge above a black river.  The
gate into the tower had been opened for them only
after long parleying, but he had perceived walls well
planned and formidable, great heights in the blackness,
and steep, up-and-down streets amongst which
they went between strong, stone houses.  But he
had been aware that this city of Durham was a very
strong place.

He had been set to sleep that night in a room
that faced inwards, and rising in the morning he had
seen that just before his face were the great stones of
the wall surrounding and fortifying the cathedral.
Beneath his gaze were two great towers, pierced with
meurtrières, which are slits through which arrows
may be shot.  Between these two towers was a
gateway which he doubted not had a double portcullis,
devices for dropping huge stones and rafters upon
any enemy that should break through the first
portcullis and be captured by the second, so that
they would be like rats in a trap.  By craning his
head out of his window he could see, further along,
both to his right and to his left, tall towers in this
inner wall, each tower having the appearance of an
arch let into its face.  But this Sir Bertram was an
engineer well skilled in the plans of fortresses, and he
knew that what appeared to be arches led up to two
slanting holes in each tower, and that the slant of
each hole was directed with a fell and cunning
purpose.  For, to each tower foot a steep and narrow
street of the town came up.  So, if any enemy should
have won the town itself and should come up those
streets, then those in the tower would set running
down these slanting holes balls of stone weighing
two, three or four hundred pounds.  By the direction
of the slantings, those balls of stone would run
bounding down those narrow streets and cause dreadful
manglings, maimings and death, principally by the
breaking of legs.

By those and other signs, this Sir Bertram knew
that here, even within the walled town was a fortress
almost impregnable and dreadful to assault.  This
Bishop might well be a proud and disdainful prelate.
He was safe, not only from foreign foes, but from his
own townsmen, which was not so often the way with
Bishops.  For it is the habit of townsmen to be at
perpetual strife with their Bishops, seeking to break
in on them by armed force and to make the Bishops
give up their rights and rents and fees in the towns,
which if the Bishops could not prevent was apt to
render them much the poorer.  But at this Prince
Bishop the townsmen could never come, so strong
was this citadel within the town.

So he would become ever richer, not only for that
reason but because of the great shrines of St. Cuthbert
and of the Venerable Bede.  To these, year in,
year out, at all seasons and in all weathers, thousands
resorted with offerings and tolls and tributes.

So this Sir Bertram perceived it would be no easy
thing to humble this Palatine Prince even though the
Percy had reported to King Henry VII that he could
smoke out Bishop Sherwood at very little cost.

It was true that, as the Percy thought, King
Henry VII heartily desired the downfall of this
Bishop Sherwood.  He had supported Richard Crookback
and loved little King Henry.  And indeed, Sir
Bertram knew, for he had the King's private thoughts,
that the King would very willingly see the downfall
not only of the Bishop Sherwood but of this whole
see of Durham.  For it was contrary to that Prince's
idea of kingship to have within his realm a Palatine
county with a Bishop there having such sovereign
powers that it was as if there was no King at all in the
realm.  But, to be rid of the bishopric, even King
Henry thought would be impossible since it would raise
against him all the Church and get him called heretic
and interdicted as King John had been.  So that
the King would very willingly have had the Percy to
act as his catspaw and make civil war upon Bishop
Sherwood and so drive him out of the land.  That
might impoverish and weaken the see a little, but not
much.  For a Bishop is not like a temporal baron;
though Sherwood be cast out another must succeed
him and have all his rights and grow as strong or
stronger.

It was upon these things that this Sir Bertram—a
cool and quiet knight, loving King Henry and beloved
by him above most men—meditated whilst that old
lady cast up her accounts, and he trimmed his finger
nails.  So, when he leaned out of that bright window,
he perceived how steeply perched was the house in
which he was.  Sheer down to the river ran rocky paths
with here and there a tree.  At the bottom was a
high wall well battlemented and slit for archers to
hold it.  The river ran very swiftly.  On it there was
a fisherman casting his nets from an anchored boat.
The boat tugged and tore so at its chain that even
the practised fisherman had difficulty to stand.  So
the river must be very swift, and there would be no
mining there.

On the other side of the river the banks rose as
steeply and were clothed with trees.  There cannon
might be set against the town.  But to shoot so far
they must be great guns and the Percy had none of
these, nor were there any large enough nearer than
Windsor.  If the Percy had them, it was difficult to
think that he could drag them there into position, and
all that would take a year or two years.  So, this Sir
Bertram, who had been sent there by the King to
advise him, considered, as his first thoughts, that if
the Earl of Northumberland attacked this Bishop
Palatine he might take the city, but hardly the inner
citadel, and never at all the castle within.  Or, if the
King lent him cannon, he might break the wall of the
citadel.

On the other hand, having the Bishop shut up in
the castle the Earl might starve him out—but this he
could not do unless all the country round were
friendly to the Earl and hated the Bishop.  Without
that there would be no doing it.  And the same
might be said of any project for dragging cannon on
to those heights.  For the cannon must be brought up
narrow valleys where ambushes very easily could lie,
and that could not be thought of in a hostile country.

The Percy had reported himself to King Henry
as being cock of all the North parts; if that were
true, he might very well be loosed upon the Bishop.
But from conversations that he had had with the
Lords Dacre and Ogle, as well as with the Abbot of
Alnwick and lesser men, this Sir Bertram thought it
was possible that the Earl Percy was not so strong
nor yet so beloved in those parts as he would have
the King believe.  In that case, if he relied upon this
Earl and this Earl's faith, the King might get great
discredit and no profit either in those parts or
elsewhere.  It was in order to study and inquire into
these things that this cautious Sir Bertram was come
into those parts.  So he leaned upon the sill of the
window and looked down upon the river that appeared
two hundred feet below.

After he had watched the river and reflected a long
time, for he was a slow thinker, adding point to point
in his mind, to have as it were a strong platform on
which to build, he heard a woman's voice say highly:

"I tell you, ah, gentle Princess, that there is no man
more hated in these North parts, and if you will lend
your sanction and your wealth we may speedily have
down not only these robbers that hold your daughter
imprisoned by his encouragement but also that flail
of the North himself."

Sir Bertram turned slowly on his elbow, leaning
upon the sill and looked into the room.  There he
saw a monstrous beautiful young lady that kneeled
with her voluminous rich gown all about her and held
out her two hands towards the Princess whom he
could not see.  The Princess did not speak, and that
lady held her peace, so that knight moved softly and
deliberately forward, and when he was near the
younger lady he asked her:

"Even who is this man who is so hated in the
North parts?"

That young lady looked at him with astonished
lowering and resentful eyes, as much as to say, who
was he that he should ask her such a question?  The
Princess had been leaning back in her chair with both
elbows upon the arms and a hand caressing her chin,
for all the world as if she had been an old man
considering a knotty point.  But, when she saw Sir
Bertram and heard his voice, she said hastily and
harshly:

"Get up, child and your ladyship.  It is not
decent that a lady of high rank and my kinswoman
should be spoken to kneeling by a Cornish knight of
nowhere and yesterday, God help me, if he be ten
times a King's spy!"  And so she bade the lady, who
was the Lady Margaret of Glororem, to fetch a stool
from a corner of the room and set it by her throne on
the step.  And there she had the Lady Margaret sit
beside her and that Sir Bertram fetch off his hat with
the large feather and so stand before them.  "For,"
said she to that knight, "you may well be the King's
companion, but in this place the King's writ does not
run and I am a royal Princess and this is my cousin
and niece."

It was nonsense and a tyranny, but Sir Bertram
did it with calmness.  He cared little about forms
when there was news to be had that could help
him and only one old woman and one very beautiful
and proud one before whom to abase himself.  So
he made an apology, saying that he had not known
that lady to be of such high rank, she being in the
dim room and not over plain to his eyes which had
been gazing on the sunlight.  He bent one knee and
stood there composedly with his hat in his hands
before him.

Then that old Princess, who had affected anger
affected now a complaisance towards that gentleman.
She spoke as follows, formally to the Lady Margaret:

"This Sir Bertram of Lyonesse," she said,—"though
God knows where Lyonesse is; I have heard
it is some poor islands in Scilly or Cornwall or where
you will,—so this Sir Bertram of Lyonesse is the King's
commissioner to inquire into the state of these North
parts.  And if you will ask me what make of a thing
a commissioner is, I will answer you that he is what
you and I and other simple folk do call a spy.  But
the King calls him his commissioner and that is very
well."

She looked upon Sir Bertram maliciously to see
if he winced.  But that knight turned his face
composedly to the Lady Margaret.

"Ah, gentle lady," said he, "you may count that
for truth.  I am here to find out what I can."

The old Princess liked this Sir Bertram, in truth,
very well.  She counted him so low, on account of
his obscure and distant birth and his former poverty,
that she could jest with him as if he had been a
peasant boy.  She considered English lords as of so
low a rank against her own that she thought not much
about them, one with another, except may be it was
the Dacres and their kin.  So she was very glad to
keep this Sir Bertram, if she could do it without
trouble or expense, and have some amusement
from it.

She turned upon the Lady Margaret and said again:

"You must know that, though in a concealed
manner, this Sir Bertram is of great worth in the
counsels of King Henry VII.  Why this should be
so, God knows, for one says one thing and one will
say another.  But so it is; in all matters in which a
king may be advised this new knight rules the King."

Then again Sir Bertram looked upon the Lady Margaret:

"Ah, gentle lady," he said, "to dispel what may
appear of mystery in this royal Princess's account of
me, let me say this—for I would not have you think
evil of me: I have twice saved this King's life, once
by discovering assassins sent to murder him in France
before he was King and once, since, at Windsor where
I caught by the wrist a man with a knife that came
behind him when he walked in the gardens.  And I
have farmed the King's private lands to greater
profit than came to him before and, having studied
the art of fortifying of a pupil of the monk Olberitz
that made most of the strong castles of France, I have
designed or strengthened successfully certain strong
places for this King.  If I could say I had saved this
King's life in gallant battles I would rather say it, for
it would gain me greater honour in your sight.  But
I am rather a man of the exchequer board than of
the tented field.  It is for caution, defence and
prudence that the King trusts me rather than for
things more gallant that should stir your pulse in the
recital.  I wish it were the other way, but that is not
the truth of it."

"Well, it is true what this knight says," the old
Princess confirmed him.  "He has twice saved the
King's life by caution and has increased the King's
gear and so on.  Now he is sent here as the King's
spy—the King's reconciler or the King's trumpeter or
what you will.  For his mission is to take a survey of
these North parts first and then to prove to them that
the King is a mild, loving, gracious and economical
sovereign."

"Well, that is my mission," Sir Bertram said to
the Lady Margaret, "and I hope I may do it."

"I will tell you what I think of it," the Lady
Margaret said then, "as soon as I have your opinion
on certain words I said two nights ago to Henry
Percy, my cousin, Earl of Northumberland."

"I shall hear them very gladly," Sir Bertram
answered.

Then, in her own way, the old Princess exposed
all these matters to Sir Bertram of Lyonesse, how
certain filthy rogues had taken prisoner her daughter
Rohtraut, and the rest.  Sir Bertram had heard all
that before.  The King had ordered him to travel to
the North with the Princess of Croy, protecting her
the better with his train and bearing a share of her
expenses, so that he might the better make out the
affairs of the Dacres, what was their wealth, who
resorted to them, and whether they seemed to
conspire with other rebels.  And, upon the road, in three
various towns, three delayed messengers had met the
Princess of Croy, coming from that very Lady
Margaret with broad letters in which she told the
story of the things that passed at Castle Lovell.  So
Sir Bertram had heard most of the tale before, nevertheless
he heard it very gladly again, more particularly
as the Lady Margaret corrected the old Princess here
and there and made things the plainer.

It was a very long congress that they held in that
room with the vaulted ceiling and the painted walls,
that were all sprays of leaves and dark green boskage
with the figures of men and women in scarlets and
whites and blues, holding bows and fowling nets and
fish nets and falcons.  For, when the Princess had
told that story she was impatient to know, but with
sarcastic and hard words, what this adviser of the
King would advise her to do.  For her own part, she
said, it was her purpose to go with a small train, and
unarmed, up to that Castle Lovell and in at the door.
And she did not think it was those robbers who
would withstand her when she set free her daughter,
opening the door of her prison with her own hands,
and so leading her out into the light of day and so
there to Durham, where she might dwell till justice
was done about the lands and other things that
were in dispute.

The Lady Margaret said she was very glad to hear
this, for she had been afraid that the Princess had too
much displeasure against her daughter, seeing that in
fifteen years she had not spoken to her or written
broad letters.

The Princess erected her old, round head stiffly,
with the pillows upon it, and exclaimed that it
was not the fashion of their royal house to quarrel
with its daughters or to do less than decency demanded
for their rescue and sustenance.  She would not wish
that Lady Rohtraut to dwell in her house and at her
charges for ever, for she must have her due train and
estate, and that would make a great charge.  But,
until she were set up in her own lands and had her
wealth again, that Princess would there maintain her
and her train.

The Lady Margaret said again that she was very
glad of it, and she was certain that those robbers
would very quickly release the Princess's daughter.
For they would fear the might of the Dacres and the
Duke of Croy with his tall ships, his cannon, and
his thousands of men that would come by sea and
burn that Castle.

It was at that that Sir Bertram said that the King
of England would not very willingly seE Flemings
and Almains landing in his dominion; but the Lady
Margaret might be certain that that King would see
justice done to that injured lady by his own knights
and the terror of his name.

Then the old Princess scowled upon both that
knight and the lady so fiercely that her eyes grew red
and dreadful.  She smote her breast with the handle
of the black crutch that dangled from her wrist and
cried:

"Mutter Gottes!  By the mother of God!  It is
not the King of England nor my father, the Duke of
Croy, that shall go to that Castle but I alone and *bij
Gott*!  It is at my wrath that the knees of these
robbers shall knock together and the keys fall from
their hands."

Then the Lady Margaret said that that might well
be the case and Sir Bertram said that so it would be
much better.  The old Princess bent her brows upon
that knight and asked him, jesting bitterly, if he had
any better advice to give her.  He said that he had
none, but that he would very gladly hear what Henry,
Earl Percy, had had to say to the Lady Margaret and
she to him and also something of Sir Paris Lovell,
that well-esteemed lording.

The Lady Margaret told him very clearly all that
she knew, and that knight considered her to be as
sensible as she was fair.  When she told him of the
disappearing of her true love and of the rumours that
were told against him he had a pensive air; but when
she told him of the Percy's high words of how he was
minded to break the great lords of the North and that
that was the King's mind, Sir Bertram frowned
heavily.  When she said that it was the duty of great
lords not to support too readily a new King that they
had set up, nor too abjectly to obey him or lavishly
fawn upon him, that knight's eyebrows went up, for
this was a new thought to him.  And so, whilst she
recited to him the history of this realm of England as
she had done to the Percy, he continued with his left
hand behind his back holding his blue hat with the
white feather and his right hand to his mouth whilst
he hit the knuckles and reflected.

The old Princess of Croy said that all that the
Lady Margaret uttered was nonsense; the truth of the
matter was that all the English and their lords were
murderers and wallowers in blood, slaying their kings
without reason or pity or the fear of God, but like hogs
fighting at a trough.

When she was done Sir Bertram took down his
hand from his mouth and smoothed his beard.  He
said that if that was the mind of the Northern lords,
though it was a new thought to him, he need quarrel
little with it.  For, though he might need to reflect
further upon the principle, yet undoubtedly the case
of King Richard III had gone in favour of the Lady
Margaret.  He was a King set up by certain lords and
pulled down again when they found him evil.  And,
as far as the practice went, he would be satisfied to
have that the touchstone for King Henry VII.  For
he was certain that that King would prove a dread
lord benign, loving and prudent; all mighty lords and
Princes of the North parts would gladly acknowledge—in
the course of a year or two—that there had
never been so good a King and they would all of them
very willingly support him.  And, if King Henry VII
did not prove as good a King as he then reported,
Sir Bertram, though he loved him, would very willingly
see him cast down as Richard Crookback had been.

The Lady Margaret said she was very glad to
hear it, and that upon such terms they might soon be
good friends.  Then Sir Bertram smiled a little in his
beard and said:

"Ah, gentle lady, I perceive from certain words
you have dropped that you did not think all these
thoughts of the constitution of this realm of England
by your lonely self."  And so he perceived certain
tears in that lady's eyes.

"Nay, truly," she said, "I learned them of the lips
of my lord, Sir Paris Lovell, in sweet devising and
conversations that we had before his death, and may
God receive his poor soul and give him sweet rest in
paradise!  For such a gentle lording or one so wise in
the reading of books, anxious for the good of his
estate, so fine of his fair body, so fierce in war and
fightful in the breach, or so merciful to his foes, they
being down, God never did make.  Though he was of
young age yet he had fought in Italy, in Ferrara, in
Venice, in France, in harness; in this realm against
the false Scots and upon fightful journeys into
Scotland."

Sir Bertram lowered his head a little.

"I wish I had been such a one," he said.  "This
was a very gallant gentleman.  I have heard other
such reports of him."

The old Princess said:

"I did not know I had had such a swan and
phoenix amongst my grandchildren."

"Why, it is true, madam," Sir Bertram said.  "You
have lived too much amongst the Dacres to know that
you had this lording for part heir."

Now this house, built in the old days before that
time, and all of stone, like a fortress, had for its
greater strength only one staircase.  It wound round
in a little space, all of thick stone, so it would be very
difficult for an enemy to come up it if it were at all
defended.  On the lower floor there were no windows
at all towards the street, to make it the stronger,
and that staircase served all the rooms.  This old
fashion struck the Lord Dacre as very barbarous,
and he would have it all pulled down, with a big
hall and hangings upon the ground floor and
large square windows with carvings on them, as
was the pleasanter fashion of London and that new
day.  The paintings, too, in that room he would have
whitened over, and the stone ceilings covered in with
wood and beams, that should be bossed and carved
and gilded and with coats of arms.  But, for that
time, so it was, and the staircase came up from the
street.

Now it happened that, below, the door into the
street was open, and a fisherman owing a tithe of
fish for that Princess's table stood before it offering
fish.  The old steward had gone to him and
complained that his fish and trout, eels and lampreys,
were not fine enough to set before that Princess.
Much of this could be heard in that room, and then
came the sounds of the feet of a company of horse
and the clank of armour and loud knockings upon the
gate that went into the cathedral precincts and voices
crying out and answering.  With one thing and
another none of those three could hear a word that
there they uttered.

So the Princess was angry and clapped her hands
for an old woman to come that had a white clout
hanging down before her chin, for all the world as if
it were a beard.  The Princess bade take that
fisherman into the kitchen and he to be given twenty
stripes—for she had heard what passed between him
and the steward—the door into the street was to be
shut and news to be brought her what knight that was
that rode with his many up the street.  And if it was
a knight of these parts and one she knew, she ordered
him to come to her for she desired news of that
countryside.

So that old woman, as best she could, went down
the stairway sideways, for she was very old and fat
and the stairway very little and winding.  Then they
heard her clamorously upbraiding alike old steward
and the fisherman for the clamour they had made.
Afterwards, the door was closed and there was peace.
Then Sir Bertram looked gravely upon the Lady
Margaret.  And:

"Ah, gentle lady," said he, "from what I have
observed of your conversation I can tell you this
much.  You tell me that this Sir Paris Lovell was a
good friend to Richard Crookback that is dead.  And
I do not much blame him for it, since, as you tell me,
that late King showed great courtesy here in the North
parts when he was Duke of Gloucester.  And well
King Richard III knew how to bear courtesy when
it suited him, though at other times he was a false
tyrant.  So that this Sir Paris Lovell was a friend to
Crookback and could have aided him against my
King if his father would have given him leave.  But
this his father would not do and it is so much the
better.

"And further you have reported to me that this
Sir Paris Lovell has said to you, in his own words:
'Now this King Richard is dead and alas for it!
And we have another King of whom I, Sir Paris
Lovell, know little, though I fear he may be a heavy
ruler.  But so as it is'—so you say you remember the
words of this lord—'what I am minded to do,' said he,
'is to set up a chantry where masses may be said
for the dead King's soul.  If he had been alive I
would have fought for him, but now I will see if I
may live at peace with Henry of Richmond for a
King.  For to be sure, what we need in these North
parts is peace amongst ourselves, that husbandry and
mining and fisheries may flourish on my lands and
others.  And so one may make such a great journey
into Scotland that the false Scots may not raise their
heads for fifty years or more again.  And so we may
have leisure to go upon our own affairs.  Therefore I,
Sir Paris Lovell, for one will, if I may, live at peace
with King Henry VII and be his subject if he will
be bearable.' ... Now therefore I, Sir Bertram of
Lyonesse..."

"God keep us," the old Princess cried out here,
"you speak more like a lawyer drawing a bond than
a gallant knight."

"Madam and gentle Princess," Sir Bertram said,
"I am more like a lawyer than a gallant knight."  And
so he looked again gravely upon the Lady
Margaret who, in her voluminous gown, sat on her
little stool beside that kind of throne and leaned her
arm along its arm, folding her hands together.  She
looked upon him earnestly and, after a time, she said:

"Good Knight, if you talk with me thus to make
an agreement with me in the gentle Lord Lovell's
name, I tell you that can never be, for he is dead."

"Ah, gentle lady," Sir Bertram answered, "how
can it be said that any man is dead that is but three
months away?  These are strange and evil times.
God knows I am no very learned knight and one not
overways well-read in the lore of Holy Church.  Yet
nowadays strange things are seen, books not written
by hand, Greek sorcerers, as I have heard, driven out
of Byzantium by the Sultan, who press with new
learnings across Christendom.  I have heard there
was lately one new Greek Doctor at London called
Molossos, or some such name, though I never came
to see him.  And he had crabbed books of Greek and
other sorceries.  So, if your true love and lording be
but ninety days away..."

"Sir," the Lady Margaret said, "my lord was
never for so long a prisoner amongst the false Scots
or the thieves of Rokehope without news to me.
Surely they have killed him."

"I do not well know this country as you tell me;
but let me ask you this: if the false Scots had killed
so great a lord would they not boast and say great
things?  Or if the thieves of Rokehope or the Debateable
Lands, or of those places that I do not know, had
taken him, would they not have made more attempts
at his ransoming than once sending to Castle Lovell?
For you tell me that you think he was taken by Gib
Elliott, as you call him, or some such naughty villain,
and that Gib Elliott sent to Castle Lovell for his
ransom and that the Knights of Cullerford and
Haltwhistle refused to give either white mail or black, as the
saying is.  And maybe, as you think, they clapped
that messenger into prison for greater secrecy, so that
the countryside might have no news of your lord
but consider him gone away with warlocks and others.
But, in the first place, is it to be thought that such a
messenger could be come from that Elliott to Castle
Lovell and no one know it?  Would not the Castle
Lovell bondsmen see him and report it to your
bondsmen and so on through all the countryside?  For
what cause should that messenger have in going to
Castle Lovell, to be very secret, though Cullerford
and Haltwhistle should desire to keep it secret
afterwards?  Or again, why should Gib Elliott, if that be
his name, slay the Lord of Castle Lovell merely
because Haltwhistle and Cullerford refused ransom
or imprisoned his messenger?  Gib Elliott I take it,
is as other men, and seeketh money and how best he
may have it.  Moreover, Castle Lovell is a great
Castle, and cannot be taken in a little corner.  I will
tell you this: that within a fortnight that news was
known to us in London Town; for merchant wrote
it to merchant at the bottom of his bills, and packman
passed the news on to packman from town to town."

"Say you so!" the old Princess called out at this.
"Ye knew it and I did not, yet ye never told me!"

"Madam and gentle Princess," Sir Bertram
answered, "that is the duty of the servants of a King,
to be all ears and no tongue.  And partly that is why
I am here, for the King desired to know if such
lawless robberies could be done in any part of his realm.
So now I am inquiring into this matter.  And this I
will ask you, my fair and gentle lady—if that news
was known in London Town under a fortnight, should
not that Gib Elliott know it in a day or two days at
the most, seeing that all the countryside talked of
that and nought else?  For it is not every day that a
great lord dies and robbers seize upon his Castle and
imprison his sad widow.  So, very surely, this Gib
Elliott would hear of this thing or ever his messenger
could come to Castle Lovell and back again.  And
then, very surely, he would send another messenger
to some friend of the Young Lovell, to see if he might
not get a ransom of them, since his enemies held his
Castle.  Consider how that would be with a cunning
robber.  Full surely he would have sent a messenger
to yourself, ah, fair and gentle lady, to have money
of you, if of none others?"

"Sir," the Lady Margaret interrupted him hotly
and with a sort of passion—"I am very certain that
that lord is dead.  For three times Saint Katharine,
whom I love above other saints, appeared to me in a
gown of gold and damask and leaning upon her
wheel.  She looked upon me sorrowfully, as who
should say my true love—for whom I had besought
that saint many times—was dead to me."

The Cornish knight raised his hand.

"God forbid," he said, "that I should say anything
against that sweet madam Katharine.  Yet there are
true dreams and false dreams and dreams wrongly
interpreted.  And of this I am instantly assured,
that this Lord Lovell is held prisoner by no border
raiders.  It is not to be thought upon."

The Lady Margaret spoke to him contemptuously
and almost with hatred, so her breast heaved as she
bade him say then where he considered that that lord
should have been or should even then be hiding.  The
Cornish knight answered slowly:

"Ah, gentle lady, what to believe I do not so well
know.  But this I know that I would rather believe
in tales of sorcery in this matter than in that idea of
border robbers.  For these are strange times of
newnesses coming both from the East and the West.
From the East is come new learning which is for
ordinary men, a thing very evil at all times, leading
to sorceries and civil strife and change.  And from
the West is talk of a New World possessed with
demons and pagans and dusky fiends as is now on
the lips of all men.  And I hold it for certain that, if
anything evil and inexplicable shall occur in this
land from now on it shall come from that East or
that West.  The path to the West having been found,
shall it not lead those demons and dusky fiends in
upon us?  And, all the contents of Byzantium having
been set flying in upon us, shall we go unharmed?"

"This is very arrant folly," the old Princess said;
"what shall a parcel of soft Greeks or Indian savages
do to this island in the water?"

"Madam and gentle Princess," the Cornish knight
answered, "I speak only the misgivings of wealthy
and sufficient men of London Town.  It may be a
folly here.  But this I hold for strange: this lording
was the one of all the North parts to have most of
new-fangled lore, as I have heard: he has read in
many books of which I know not so much as the name;
such as *Ysidores Ethimologicarum* or *Summa
Reymundi*—or maybe I have the names wrong.  And he
has travelled to Venice where many evil, eldritch and
strange things are ready for the learning....  And
now I will ask you this: ah, gentle mistress
... Have you of late had news of a monstrous fair lady
that several people have seen to ride about these
parts, attended, or not attended at all ... upon a
white horse?"

"Such a one I saw yesterday," the Lady Margaret
said, "and so fair and kind a lady it made me glad
to see her."

Then Sir Bertram crossed himself.

"And have you," he asked, "heard where she
dwells or who she is?"

"I never heard," she said; "I thought she was the
King's mistress of Scotland, for a lesser she could
not be."

"I have heard of her this many months," Sir
Bertram said, "for, for this many months, I have been
set by the King to gather information about these
North parts.  And now from one correspondent, now
from another; now by word of mouth, now here, now
in Northumberland, I have heard tell of this White
Lady.  And this again I will tell you....  An hour
agone, as I looked out of this window, I saw a knight,
with a monk and a small company of spears go over
Framwell Gate Bridge.  The sun was upon their
armour.  And, as they rode over it, I perceived upon
the banks before me a wondrous fair figure of a
woman in white garments, going among the thick of
the trees as lightly as if it had been a flower garden.
And, as she went, she held her hand over her eyes to
shield them from the sun so as to gaze upon that
knight.  And I think that was that strange lady.
And, if you ask me what she is, I think she is a
vampire, a courtesan or a demon from the East.
And if you ask me where your lord is, I will say I
think she has him captive amongst weary sedges and
the bones of other knights, if they have been dead
long enough to become bones.  And there he sits
enthralled by her and she preys upon his heart's
blood...."

The Lady Margaret stood up with her hand to
her throat.  Her face was blanched like faded apple
blossom.

"Good sir," she said, "I think ye lie.  For that
lady had the kindest face that ever I saw."

"Yet such fair faces," Sir Bertram said, "are, as is
known to all men, best fed by the heart's blood of
true knights."

"Before God," the old Princess cried at him,
"I have heard such tales of my bondsmen's
wives...."

"Or, if you will have it a little otherwise," Sir
Bertram said to the Lady Margaret, "let it be thus.
This monstrous fair and magic lady saw this Sir Paris
in a grove or amid the smoke of war or where you
will in Venice or near it.  And so she fell enamoured
of him.  Such things happen.  And so, coming in a
magic boat, in the morning before cockcrow she finds
him—having waited many years for this chance—by
the sea-shore where you say that chapel was.  And
so she beguiles him to step aboard and miraculously
they are transported to the very isles of Greece.  And
there, poor man, he sitteth in the sun, lamenting
beneath a vine as they say there are in Greece, and
to beguile him she dances before him...."

The Lady Margaret held out her white hand to
silence the words upon his lips.  And so they heard
a voice speak to the porter below and a heavy tread
upon the stairfoot.

"Sir," the Lady Margaret said to the Cornish
knight, "I think you do lie.  For I hear my true
love's voice and his foot upon the stair."

At that heavy beating of an iron foot on the stone
steps a sort of fear descended upon both Sir Bertram
and the Lady Margaret; but the old Princess said
jestingly:

"Now I shall see the eighth wonder of the world."





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.. _`2-VI`:

.. class:: center large

   VI

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John Sherwood, Bishop Palatine of Durham, was
seated in a deep chair, in the vestiary of his dwelling
in Durham Castle.  He had just come in there from
the cathedral, and he was very weary with having
sung a solemn mass for the soul of Sir Leofric Bertram,
one that had, in times past, been a great benefactor
of that see.  This mass was sung every year upon the
second day of July and, along with the oration, it
lasted a full two hours.  He had had a little fever
too, and was weak with the monthly bloodletting
which had been done the day before; for the Prince
Bishop and his household were bled upon the first
day of each month.  Moreover, he was fasting till
then, and it was close on the stroke of eleven.

So, although a good dinner awaited him, of five
courses, each of fifteen dishes, he had felt so tired
that there, in his own vestiary—for he did not wear
the vestments of the cathedral or the monastery, but,
in all his canonicals, walked across the green from the
cathedral down to the castle with the people all
kneeling and candles and a great cross and his crozier
carried before him—he had fallen down into the deep
chair in his mass garments.  It made it the worse
that his vestiary was up two flights of stairs in the
castle that was old and not well arranged.

This vestiary was a large hall, but so tall that it
seemed narrow and, in spite of two deep window
spaces, its sombre vaulting of stone went up into
darkness.  The Bishops of Durham had always very
many and very splendid vestments of their own, not
belonging to the cathedral, and so on three sides of
the room and from twelve feet high or more there
were chests of oaken wood to hold vestments, with
round cupboards in which copes could be laid out.
In the two angles of the wall between the windows
were all manner of great pegs and wooden bases upon
which armour was hung or displayed.  Upon three of
these pegs were three helmets, the gauntlets hanging
beneath them.  Below each were the breastplates,
the thigh pieces and so on.  The great swords, with
their crossed hilts, and scabbards covered in yellow
velvet, were in stands along the bottom of the wall,
like a fence.  Above them were the more splendid
and bejewelled plumed hoods for his falcons, their
jesses, and leashes for his hounds; and tall steel
maces made, as it were, panels between them.
Spears or lances this Bishop had none, his arm being
the heavy mace.  He had four suits of armour, a
black one, English, and kept well greased, for rainy
weather or dangerous times; a French one of bright
and fluted steel that he wore on Spring days; and
one Milanese, very light and so beautiful in its lines
that it pleased him to see it—a steel helmet that
seemed to float like a coif, without a visor at all, and
steel chain-mail as light as silk yet impenetrable even
to the steel quarrels of arbalests.

These three suits were arranged upon the wall.  The
suit of state, of black steel inlaid thickly with gold,
stood upon a stand, like a threatening man, between
the two windows and catching the light from each.
This piece came from Nuremberg, where it had been
worked for the Prince Bishop of Münster, but he
dying, the Bishop had bought it of the heirs.  Upon
the helmet was a prince's circlet of gold and all the
breastplate, the thigh and kneepieces were hammered
and graved and inlaid in gold with scenes from the
life of Our Lady.  Her Coronation in Heaven was
shown upon the visor.  This fine piece the Bishop
wore only upon occasions of great state, such as if
he should make a progress through the Palatinate
with the King upon his right hand out of courtesy,
since, of right, his left alone belonged to the King
and the right to the Pope of Rome alone.  This
Bishop Palatine thought himself a delicate rather
than a splendid prince; he had, before being Bishop,
spent many years in Rome, as the King of England's
friend and advocate; so he thought that better could
be done by a display of simplicity and elegance, for
a sovereign Bishop, than by great profusion of coarse
things.  Thus, such Bishops as Anthony Bek, that
was Patriarch of Jerusalem as well, had had forty
suits of mail to his own body alone.

So there, now, Bishop Sherwood sat, leaning back
in his chair and crushing up his cope which was a
grief to his vestiarius, an old and orderly man.  For
this was a very splendid cope of black velvet from
Genoa; it was worked with broad silver in pomegranates,
the sacred initials being of seed pearls over
silver, and the vestiarius did not like to see it crushed.
The crozier leant against an oaken case in the corner;
and a great cross was against the heavy table where
the Bishop sat.  The Bishop had sent away his pages
and attendants, saying that his head ached so that he
could not bear the opening and closing of cases where
these things should be placed.  He had sent for some
wine, a manchet of bread and a little salt to refresh
himself with and these, in vessels of silver, stood
before him.  He had made shift to pull the rich
glove off his right hand, and so he had taken a
sip of wine and was dipping the bread in the salt.
He felt himself a little refreshed.  Before him, upon
the table, stood two mitres, and his glove lay between
the silver dish of bread and the wine cup.

Then the vestiarius, who stood in the doorway,
perceived that Bishop, all black and silver, lean
forward in his chair, gazing out of the window with his
jaw falling down.  The sunlight was streaming in.
The vestiarius considered with disfavour—for he was
a sour old priest—that the Bishop was undoubtedly ill,
and God knew when he should get those vestments
put away, which should be done before the stroke of
noon.  So the Bishop passed his hand across his eyes,
after he had made the sign of the cross repeatedly.

"Gilbert," the Bishop said, "my eyes are very tired."

"It would be better, then," the vestiarius said, "not
to look out at that window upon the sunlight.  You
have tired them with looking upon the picture of the
new missal while you said mass."

"That may well be," the Bishop said.  He was a
little afeared of the anger of his vestiarius, who had
been with him twenty years, and would not let him
do as he would.  So he continued for a little looking
at the napkin they had laid beneath his refection.  It
was worked in white damask with the letter M, being
the initial of Our Lady's name.

After a while, being anxious to lessen his weakness
in the eyes of his servant, the Bishop raised his
eyes to the two mitres that stood before him.  Both
were of white silk stuff, very curiously and beautifully
sown, but one was high and the other more squat.
The Bishop was about to speak of these, to placate
the old sour man—for it was in such things that he
took most interest.  It was very quiet in that room.

There came a knocking, like a fumbling at the
door.  So the vestiarius went to it, and, opening it by
a crack, whispered out by that way.  And then he
turned and said sourly:

"Here is a monk.  A monk of Belford called
Francis.  He says he has your word that he may come
to you at all times and seasons."  The Bishop made
a sign with the hand, that hung over the arm of his
chair, that that monk should come in.  And indeed
the Bishop had given orders that the monk Francis
should come in to him at all times.

For those, as the Bishop saw them, were evil days
and full of sudden perils that must very suddenly be
reported to him.  And, as far as peril from the North
went—and mostly from Alnwick way—he knew no
man, monk or laymen, that could more swiftly warn
him.  Besides, the Bishop heard his conversation with
pleasure and counted him a very holy young monk,
so that he would gladly have had him for his
confessor.

He accounted him the best adviser that a Bishop
could have in that see.  For of the religious that he
had round him there, the lay priests were too
ignorant, with a rustic simplicity; the monks of
Durham were too haughty; those of Belford too
learned; those of Alnwick too set upon the glory of
their abbey.  The ecclesiastical lawyers quibbled too
much over parcels of land; the knights were too
formal and concerned for the state of the see.  But
this monk Francis loved God and considered the world.

The Bishop had been reflecting in that way for
some time whilst the monk, entering in his woollen
robes had knelt beside his chair.  Then the Bishop
stretched his hand languidly out and the monk set
his lips to the ring upon it.  So the Bishop pointed
a finger to the taller of the two mitres.

"This is my new one," he said, "it has just come
to me from Flanders, while I was at mass."

The monk Francis looked upon the new mitre.

"I have never seen finer stitching in silver," he
said.  The vestiarius said harshly:

"I consider the old one more fitting.  For a
Prince of the Church Militant it is more fitting.  It
sits more squatly upon the head, like a helmet."

The monk Francis looked upon him, and seeing
that the Bishop did not wish to speak, he said:

"That is true!  But then this new one, with its
greater height is more graceful and seemly.  Moreover
there is room upon it for another panel over the
forehead.  The old one, you perceive, has only a
picture of the crucifixion of our Lord worked in
pearls and silk.  Whereas the new one has below it
a picture of Our Lady at the Tomb.  It is always
good to have a picture of Our Lady."

This was a thing that the vestiarius could not
gainsay.  So he brought out:

"Well, if the Bishop and monks are content with
it, it may work to the greater glory of God;" and then
he said: "Prince Bishop, I would have you go to
another room that I may put away your vestments."

The Bishop stood up upon his feet and the
vestiarius went down upon his knees.  So the Bishop
blessed him and put his hand heavily into the arm of
the monk Francis.

"You shall lead me to my chamber," he said.

"God help us," the vestiarius cried, "shall I not
first take off your vestments?"

"I had forgotten," the Bishop said.  So he stood
by the table whilst that old man took off the great
cope, the silver cross and the white robes and stole
that were beneath and fetched a purple gown edged
with fur—for he considered that Bishop to be cold
and weak with the blood that had been let from him
the day before as the custom was.  Upon the Bishop's
head he set a furred cap, covering his ears, and hung
round his neck once more the silver chain with the
great crucifix in silver dependent.  And so the Bishop,
when he had drunk a little more wine, went up the
stairs slowly to his chamber, and the vestiarius called
in several pages and young boys and saw to it that
they laid those vestments away in due order.

.. vspace:: 2

The Bishop's chamber had been taken out of a
Norman gallery with pillars and arcades.  Here many
men-at-arms in parti-coloured woollen garments of
natural wool and yellow, sat about on the floor or
between the arcades, playing at dice together or
drinking from flagons.  Their immensely long pikes
stood against the arches beside them.  One, with
his eyes shut, leaned back against the wall, saying
prayers in penance for a crime he had committed.

The Bishop, upon the monk's arm passed slowly
down this corridor to his chamber which had bare
walls painted yellow in honour of St. Cuthbert; a
great quantity of books, very big or very little, were
upon shelves.  A great many manuscripts in rolls lay
upon other shelves, and papers that overflowed from
chests, of which there were five, along one wall.
There was a pallet bed in this room; a three-cornered
stool and a coarsely hewed lectern; a prie-dieu and a
crucifix.  Thus it was a very bare room.  This
Bishop, though he affected somewhat great state
before the people, was, in secret, a very ascetic man.

Few people, however, came into this bare room—not
even his highest officers.  The square windows—but
that had been done in Bishop Skirlawe's days
just a hundred years ago—were filled with bright
glass, showing once again the history of the translation
of St. Cuthbert.  All in little squares this history
was, monks with shaven heads crouching down as if
the space would not contain them, and the head of
Dun Cow showing yellow against a background
of glass shining like pigeon's blood rubies.  One
of these little, square casements hung open and
through it the distant landscape showed clear, with
hills grey and woods grey-blue, astonishing for its
tranquillity.

So, the monk Francis being sat up on his three-legged
stool, the Bishop began to pace up and down
before the long window space—backwards and
forwards over the tiles, with an immense swiftness.
Once he turned his face imperiously to where the
monk sat and said harshly:

"Pray God, you bring me no ill news."

The monk, who had been gazing, out of respect, at
the tiles, raised his glance to say:

"I think it is rather good news."

The Bishop said:

"I thank God!" and touched his fur cap.  Once
again he resumed his pacing, biting his lips and
clenching and unclenching his fingers.

Suddenly, in the stillness there resounded a rustle
of wings, and, balancing unsteadily upon the iron
frame of the open window, there appeared a blue
pigeon that craned its head to one side or the other,
watching the Bishop.  From outside there came a
still greater rustle of wings.

Then the monk's face grew colourless.

"Father in God," he said in a low voice, "what is
that fowl?"

The Bishop turned his lean head round over his
shoulder, when he saw the pigeon that gazed
anxiously at him, he smiled a kindly and soft smile.

"That is my weakness, Brother Francis," he said.
With his brushing step he crossed the smooth tiles
towards one of the chests that was filled with parchments.
As he lifted the lid that pigeon flew from the
window on to his shoulder.  And immediately another
pigeon took its place in the opening.  "Brother
Francis," he continued, "you are a stern man, yet be
indulgent to my weakness.  It was your namesake
that was called 'of the Birds.'  And in Scripture
you may read the exhortation: 'Be ye guileless as
doves and with the wisdom of the serpent.'"  So he
lifted that chest-lid and took from it a little linen
bag of pease.

Then the face of the monk became radiant.

"Father in God," he said, "I thank heaven for
this.  For those very words I used twenty hours ago
and now you use them again."

"Why," the Bishop said, "what harm ever came
from these pretty fowls of heaven?"  The pigeon on
his shoulder stretched its neck out to reach his mouth
with its bill.  Urgently and insistently it did this.
And others were entering the window space.  Then,
before the flutter of their wings should drown his
voice, the Bishop said that these birds reminded him
that his dinner hour was come.  And he begged the
monk Francis to tell a page that he should find
amongst the men-at-arms in the gallery that the
Lord Bishop would have his guests sit down to
dinner and eat with a good appetite; whereas he
himself was a little indisposed and would have his
own cook send up to him four eggs with a little
saffron and some of the drink called clary, such as
the cook knew he wished for when he was ill.  So,
the monk Francis went out and, after some time,
found that page, who was playing knucklebones with
another in the stairway.  And when the monk had
cuffed him well he sent him upon his errand, and
so went back to the room.  The Bishop was smiling
down at from twenty to thirty pigeons.  They were
around his feet, upon his bed where he had sat down,
upon his knees and, precariously they found footholds,
fluttering their wings upon his moving arms.

So there he sat, looking upon those fowls of the
air and smiling.  And in a little time that page
brought him the four eggs, the saffron and the
beverage called clary.  And so the Bishop ate his
meal, sprinkling the saffron upon the eggs.  He
scattered fragments of the hard yolk amongst the
pigeons.  And when he was done and had drunk his
drink he shook the crumbs off his gown and came
over towards the monk Francis, all the pigeons
scattering before his feet.

The Bishop was a man much taller than the monk
and much thinner in the features.  That is to say
that, of late years, he had grown thin with his cares,
but his purple and furred gown gave him a certain
bulk.  So he looked down upon the monk and said:

"My brother in God, you have perceived my
weakness, for each day I spend certain minutes upon
these birds and gain comfort from the contemplation
of their beauty and guilelessness.  And I think they
are the only friends I have, so lonely is my state in
these great and peopled halls.  Time was, no doubt,
when a Prince Bishop was beloved, dwelling amongst
people of a simple piety.  And in such a day I
could have done well.  But, as I have often told
you, my brother, in this place I cannot see my way.
I am troubled with many doubts.  If these were
again the days of St. Thomas of Canterbury, I could
at least extend my neck to the butcher's sword.  I
think I should have had that courage....  But this
then is my road and in which God has set me.  And
very willingly I totter along it.  Only, from time to
time, my brain reels; I seem to see nothing, amongst
great defiles, with rocks that roll down upon me.
And this my see appears like a little church set
between towering precipices....  And so I rest my
brain by playing with these birds."

"So," the monk Francis said, "St. Gerome had a
lion, that lightened his labours and the solitude of
his cell, and so many other saints had."

"But I am no saint," the Bishop said, "and have
no licences so to disport myself as they had....
But even so it is!  God give me guidance.  For it is
certain that the King that we have hates me a little
and in some sort fears me.  And he is a strong,
persevering and cunning prince.  And I do take him
to be an evil prince that murdered a very good King,
my friend and the friend of this see.  And if I had
courage and could see clearly, I should raise up the
standard of this my see and call to me the barons
and the knights and so, in a crusade, march to the
dethroning of this King.  But, as you know, I am
not framed for such a part.  I am no commander,
neither has God given me the golden gift of oratory
to inflame men's hearts to a holy war.  Nor yet, in
this age, is the spirit of piety abroad among the
people, and I know not who are my friends....  So
here I sit in doubt and perplexity.  And now there is
come, even to this my city, a man calling himself
commissioner of this upstart King.  For such a man
thundered upon the city gates last night.  And very
willingly I could have refused him entrance, but in
my trouble and perplexity I did not dare.  What
say you then, brother Francis, to all these things, for
I will hear you very willingly?"

The monk kept his eyes for some time longer
upon the floor and at last he spoke:

"My lord and prince," he said, "pardon me
beforehand if in what I shall tell you now I have
done aught amiss.  But this I will tell you at once:
this commissioner of King Henry's is a subtle spy.
Therefore, taking upon my own person the shame, if
shame there be, I have set myself to counterspy
him.  For it fell out in this way: in certain secret
manners—not under seal of confession—I have
known for some time past that this Sir Bertram
of Lyonesse, was gathering news of the North
parts.  There are certain contractors for the building
of our Tower in Belford, and one of them is
called Richard Chambre, a burgess of Newcastle.
And because I have lent him now and then a little
money and much good advice, this contractor is my
good friend and child.  So one day, last September,
this Richard Chambre told me, whilst devising of
other things, that there was one, John of Whitley,
a burgess of Newcastle, that went gathering news for
a knight of the King's court called Sir Bertram, of
Lyonesse.  He was writing him letters and the like,
and this John of Whitley had come to Richard
Chambre, and had asked him for news of our
monastery of Belford, and of how we monks were
affected towards the new King....  And so, gathering
here a piece of news and there another, I gathered
that this Sir Bertram had agents here and there—one
a monk in Alnwick called Ludovicus and another, a
bailiff of our own, called the Magister Stone at Castle
Lovell.  But that Magister is much in Durham...."

"God help me," the Bishop said, "I have seen
him often upon the affairs of the Knights of Cullerford
and Haltwhistle...."

"Well, he is an agent of that Sir Bertram's," the
monk said.  "Now let me go on further with my story."

"But this is very terrible hearing," the Bishop
said.  "All this spying and treachery is a new thing.
It is even as it is in Italy."

"This is a new age, Father in God," the monk
said, "and you will find this King to employ as many
spies as any Duke Borgia or of Ferrara.  And so it
will go from bad to worse.  Therefore let us be
prepared....  So this matter is: I came this morning,
riding with a certain knight and lord, to Framwell
Gate Bridge, just as they opened it.  And because I
would speak certain private words with that lord I
had ridden with him a mile ahead of his spears.  So
we waited at the bridge for them to come up.  Then
I fell a-talking with the captain of the bridge as to
the news and so I heard, as ye know, that this same
Sir Bertram, calling himself commissioner of the
King had come in last night with the old Princess of
Croy and her train—but his own train had been sent
to lodge in Old Elvet.  So I learned where he was,
for every woman in the street could tell me.

"I went swiftly afoot to the house of the Princess
of Croy, and the door stood open with the old steward
before it, chaffering with a fisherman.  So, frowning
fiercely upon that steward, I crept up that stairway,
my sandals making no sound, and going higher than
the door, I stood upon the stairs and had a fair view
of this Sir Bertram and heard much of what he
said....  I would have come to you the sooner,
Father in God, but this was a very pertinent matter
and I heard you were saying of mass."

Then the monk Francis reported to the Prince
Bishop much of what that Sir Bertram had said, but
keeping back some of it for the time.  The Bishop
stood before him, clasping and unclasping his hands;
the pigeons, having dispersed about the tiles in the
search of pease that had rolled away, flew now, by ones
and twos, out of the little window again.

.. vspace:: 2

In the view of the monk Francis the coming of
this Sir Bertram meant, as he under-read that knight's
words, an immediate calm in those parts, but afterwards,
in three years or four, a much greater danger.
For, as the monk saw it, it was the design of that
King Henry Seventh to show himself to the great
lords of the North, a very kind, indulgent and lenient
ruler.  So he should gather them under his wing to
be a potent engine against that see of Durham, that
powerful kingdom within his kingdom.  Thus, for the
time being, the monk perceived no danger for that see.
He thought—and time would very likely prove him
right—that that Sir Bertram would begin, to the
Bishop as to the great lords, with kind and soothing
words, or even with presents.  So, peace being there
established and the memory of King Richard
forgotten, the King would begin to move the lords of
the North against that bishopric.  And, doubtless,
the further extent of his design—the bishopric being
weakened by the meeting of the lords—would be to
lop off the great lords, one by one, advisedly and with
caution until the King had the upper hand of all in
those parts....

"This is a very fell scheme, my brother," the
Bishop said.  "I had rather the King would march
upon me with his flags on high."

"So would all the King's enemies," the monk
Francis said, "for that would bring him down.  He
is not strong enough for that."  He paused for a
moment: "If my lord and prince will let me speak
my mind..." he began again.

"You are here for that," the Bishop said.  "What
I need is counsel."

"Then I will say this," the monk Francis began
again: "To a mine you set a countermine and so
may we.  This subtle King will by acts of graciousness
win the North parts to him.  My lord and prince
under God, you may do this very much more easily
than he.  For, by the grace of God, in these days
you are a very wealthy Prince but he for a King is
very poor, he having great expenses for wars in France
and elsewhere where rebellions break out.  And acts
of graciousness, in this world, end either in gifts of
money or the remission of fines, rents and amercements.
These this King cannot come to do, or he
will starve.  But all these things you can do very
easily.  If he can spare the nobles a little he will do
it, but he must then press the more heavily upon the
commons and so great cries against him will rise up
in these parts....  But you, lord and prince, can be
gracious to all.  And so I would have you show
yourself.  Thus, at the end of three or four years this
King may find himself only the poorer for his
efforts."

"I hope you may be right," the Bishop said.

"Time will show it," the monk answered, "and
the grace of God.  Now I will talk to you of the
Young Lovell....  He is come here again."

"God help me," the Bishop said, "I have been
talking of him all this morning."

The monk Francis said:

"Ah, that is what I had thought.  And it was
with that bailiff—the lawyer, Master Stone."

"It was even with him," the Bishop said.  "He
seemed a worthy and a pious man and full of zeal for
this see of Durham."

"Well, you shall hear," the monk said.  "I will
wager he came with this advice—that you should lay
hands upon the estates of the Young Lovell under a
writ of sorcery, and so divide them between yourself
and the Knights of Haltwhistle and Cullerford.
Thus you should be beforehand with the Earl of
Northumberland who would do as much for the
King's disgrace in these parts."

"It was even that that he reded me do," the
Bishop said.  "He urged the see should gain much
good land thereby."

"And lose much worship," the monk said.  "It is
that that Sir Bertram wishes."

"I can see as much as that," the Bishop answered.
"And this Master Stone—who is an ill-looking
man—never told me that the Young Lovell, as you say,
was come again, but said that he was dead and that
Cullerford and Haltwhistle, being by marriage his
heirs, would very willingly divide with me.  He was
insistent with me to issue that writ this afternoon."

"Well, it was a clever, foul scheme," the monk
Francis said.  "For well that bailiff knew the Young
Lovell had been seen riding into Castle Lovell!
Hard he has ridden here—if a lawyer can ride hard—to
get that writ against the Young Lovell or ever
we could come to you.  So with that he would have
earned great disgrace for you and this see.  But
what I would have you do is to confirm, as far as the
see goes, that Young Lovell in his inheritance.  So
it will rest with the King, the Earl of Northumberland,
and this Sir Bertram to dispossess him.  And thus
shall their names stink in the nostrils of all this
country-side.  For that young man is very beloved,
by gentle and simple, having fought well against the
false Scots at Kenchie's Burn, as these eyes did see."

The monk spoke long and earnestly in that sense;
and indeed he had the right of it.  There would have
been none in that country that would not have cried
shame on the Church for her greed, if the Bishop had
divided these lands with foul knights like Sir Walter
Limousin and Symonde Vesey and Vesey the outlaw
and the Decies.  But if the Bishop would confirm Sir
Paris Lovell in the lands over which the see had
rights and overlordships, great discredit would fall
upon the Percy for having, in a Warden's Court,
essayed to ruin the Young Lovell on a false charge.

And after the monk Francis had talked in that
way for some time, the Bishop was convinced of—nay
he shuddered at—the trap into which he had nearly
fallen.  But, he said, the lawyer Stone had so
bewildered him with one legal point and another—such
as how the Decies, being knighted and plighted
by the Prince Bishop himself in the name of the
Young Lovell, had all the rights forfeited by that
lording.  He would very willingly resign a portion
of his rights by way of fine; it was, moreover, in the
protocol of the Bishops of Durham that no Bishop
could refuse such a gift freely made, to the
disadvantage of the see.  And the lawyer said, from his
knowledge of canon law, that, the Bishop having
made the Decies into Young Lovell and a knight of
the Church and the betrothed of the Lady Margaret
of Glororem, nothing could undo all those things but
a bull or dispensation of the Pope.

"Well," the monk Francis said, "I have considered
that point and have read in such books as our poor
monastery hath, both upon the canon and the civil
law—such as the book of decrees of which the first
leaf begins '*Jejunandi*' and the penultimate leaf
ends '*digestus erif*,' or the book of decretals which
begins '*Nullain res est*' and ends: '*in causa
negligenciae*.'  Also I have spoken with the most
learned of our brethren upon this case and with your
sergeants of law and your justices and all with one
accord agree that a long law case might be made out
of it.  That Decies hath his grounds of appeal, at
least upon the matter of knighthood and betrothal.
For it is very uncertain if you could unknight him or
break his betrothal with the Lady Margaret of
Glororem without an appeal to our Father in Rome.

"As to the matter of the other rights conveyed by
that name, that is much simpler.  For the Young
Lovell has only to make appeal to you through a
person of the Church as his best friend.  Then you
shall give him licence, under the decretal '*in causa
negligenciae*' and he may at once enter upon his
lands by force or how he may...."

"What then should the man called Decies do?"
the Bishop asked.  "I am not very learned in these
laws; but that lawyer Stone said he may do great
things."

"For that," the monk Francis said, "he might.
But, if I can have a say with that Decies, he shall
hang from a very high tree.  Or, if the Young Lovell
is too tender of his half-brother, for that the Decies
is, the Decies shall at my complaint to your officers
and, after a fair trial, be broken upon the wheel.
For before a court non-ecclesiastical he hath brought
false witness against a vassal of your see upon an
ecclesiastical charge, to wit sorcery.  There is no
escape for him."

The Bishop was, by that, hot to do grace to the
Young Lovell.  And, after he had made the monk
Francis recite over again all that he had said, he
agreed very heartily to do all that that monk asked
of him.  For that was a position that jumped very
well with Bishop Sherwood's character, and one that
made all things the plainer to him.  Being a churchman,
subtle rather than vigorous, he desired above all
things the good and glory of his see.  He desired
that, so much above his own glory and good, that in
later years he left his see and went into exile rather
than that the bishopric should suffer from the King's
hatred of his person.  But he could see very well that
the bishopric of Durham would lose rather than gain
by taking the lands of a young lord, well loved and
deserving well of those parts.  The Church, as he was
aware, was called, in those days, avaricious, gluttonous
and avid of lands and rent.  But here, by a shining
instance, he might show that the see-palatine of
Durham held its hand and so that see should gain in
credit and renown at the expense even of all other
bishoprics in the realm and of the realm itself.  And
here was a course of action that this Bishop could
very well understand and set going.  Besides, of
his own predilection, he had a hearty inclination
towards such high and chivalric natures as was the
Young Lovell's.  He saw in him a shining and
armoured protector against the foes of his see.  Seeing
things very much in symbols and pictures, this Bishop
seemed to see that young lord, in silver harness,
shining in the sun and raising his sword against the
mists, fumes and flames that beset this fair city of
Durham.

Therefore he said hastily to the monk Francis that
if that monk would take a sheet of parchment and
write the various matters of canon law and the rest,
he, the Bishop, would commit them to memory, and,
that evening he would call before him the lawyer
Stone, the Young Lovell and, if it seemed advisable,
the King's commissioner and announce to them what
his rede was in all these matters.

So he gave the monk a great sheet of parchment
from a chest and the monk turned round to the pulpit
and began to write.  The Bishop walked up and down
behind his back, rubbing his hands delicately together
with pleasure at that their scheme and at the
discomfiture of the King's commissioner that must
ensue therefrom.

.. vspace:: 2

Now let us turn for a moment to what passed in
the house of the Princess Rohtraut of Croy, Lady
mother of Dacre, during this time, whilst the monk
wrote.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-VII`:

.. class:: center large

   VII

.. vspace:: 2

At that heavy beating of iron upon the stair the Lady
Margaret and Sir Bertram of Lyonesse looked into
each other's eyes, crossing glances of apprehension in
the one case and of terror in the other.  For the Lady
Margaret was divided between joy and love and the
sad and sorrowful gaze that three times the Bride of
Christ had cast upon her in her dreams.  Sir Bertram,
for his part, was filled with dread of sorceries, fearing
for his soul.  For, if in matters of statecraft and the
affairs of this world he was a very cool man, yet—as is
often the case with those who are half men of law,
half men of state, new and rising men not very
scrupulous of means but solidly set upon matters of
their day—this Sir Bertram quailed like a dog before
thoughts of death, sorcery, the omens of superstition
and hell fire.  So he crossed himself again and again.
For, though much of his talk with those ladies had
been wary and cautious, he had very sincerely believed
when he said that this Paris Lovell had been carried
off by a white witch or a magic courtesan.  Such
things he believed in as he believed in treachery, guile,
want of faith in men and the deceit that lies in
women, coming from Adam's snake-wife, called Lilith.

Only the old Princess leaned forward in her
throne-chair, watching the dark stone doorway with
pleasant eyes, for she believed neither in the sorceries
nor the prowess of her grandson, but made sure of
finding him an arrant fool.

So a figure in very shining steel stood in that little
painted arch.  At sight of it, at the very first, the
Lady Margaret cried out.  For she knew very well
every detail of the silken dresses and accoutrements
of her lord and love.  And there he stood in his
armour of state, fluted, with long steel shoes and a
round helmet without a plume, like the head of a
bull-dog.  This suit of armour she had last seen upon
the Decies, and it seemed to her like a sort of sorcery
that he should wear it there.  For she never thought
it was the Decies that stood before her; she had
known too well the young lord's voice upon the
stairs.

How he had come by that suit was no sorcery
but a very simple matter.

At Castle Lovell, since they could by no means
come at the late lord's gold in the White Tower,
they were much in need of money; for they could
gather no rents and no fines and no tolls.  The people
would not pay them.  Therefore, in those months
past, without remorse they had sold all such furnishings
of the Castle as they could find buyers for.  For
the jewels of the Lady Rohtraut they could not do it
very easily, since the goldsmiths of Newcastle set
their heads together and would have none of them,
fearing the reprisals of the Dacres and suits at law
and the like.  But certain hangings and furniture
they sold for a good price to a German of Sunderland,
who shipped them beyond the seas.  And certain
arms that they had, more than they had men for, they
sold for what little these would fetch to certain
armourers of the town of Morpeth.  Amongst these
had been this suit of state.  For this suit was too
small for the Decies; it had galled him very
uncomfortably beneath the arm-pits and between the thighs,
when he had played the part of his half-brother, and
he had been heartily glad to be out of it.  It had been
too large for the Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle,
so that they rattled inside it like walnuts in their
shells in June.  As for Henry Vesey of Wall Houses,
the evil knight, he said he would be hanged if he wore
the Young Lovell's armour, for it would bring him
ill-luck.  So they sold it for forty shillings to a Morpeth
armourer called Simon Armstrong, who thought he
had a bargain.  But he found that neither knight nor
esquire of that countryside would take it of him, for
the reasons given by Henry Vesey.  So there it was
in his store.

Now two days before, very early in the morning,
the monk Francis, Young Lovell and ten men-at-arms,
well found, had set out from the monastery of Belford,
the monk upon a trotting mule, the Young Lovell, in
light armour, upon Hamewarts, and the men-at-arms
upon little galloways, small horses such as the Scots
use when they came raiding over the borders.  But
at the monastery gate they found nine men of the
old Lovell men-at-arms waiting to come into Young
Lovell's service.  There was no room for them to be
harboured in the monastery, so they must come along
with the Young Lovell.  And, ever as he rode along—and
he went slowly for that purpose—came men-at-arms
and bowmen hastening out of the hay-fields,
where they had taken service, to come under the
banner of the Young Lovell, until he had forty
men and more.  And at a cross in the hill-paths, ten
miles below Belford, there were awaiting them
Cressingham and La Rougerie, esquires that had been
in service at Castle Lovell.  They were well armed,
upon little Scots horses, and came out of the hills
where there was a deserted tower.  They had with
them seventeen men, and four women that had served
in Castle Lovell, and all were well fed and found, so
what they had done in the meantime it was better not
to inquire, though they swore that all they had came
from the Scots' side of the border.  The Young Lovell
was well heartened by the sight of all these men, and
they rode onward, to the number of sixty-five men
and two esquires; twenty-two men having no horses
and holding by the stirrups of them that had.

They made a circuit round Alnwick, for the monk
Francis doubted the friendship of the Earl of
Northumberland.  So they went from the high
ground by Hagdon to Eglingham and so, holding
always to the hills and moors, above Broom Park and
Overthwarts and across the North Forest, going south
and to the east of Rothbury.  There they deemed
themselves safe of the Percy, and they could take to
the lower grounds and such roads as there were.
There being a good road from Eshot Hill to Morpeth,
they made for that, and hit upon it towards two in the
afternoon, having come nearly forty miles since four
of that morning because of the roundabout path they
had followed.

There, because they were near his mother's lands,
it came into the Young Lovell's head, and seemed
good to him to visit these places and take possession
of them in her name.  Therefore they made what
haste they could and so came to the Castle at Cramlin
by six of the evening.  This Castle of his wife's the
late Lord Lovell had very much neglected, having
stripped it of all its furnishings and even of much of
the lead upon the roofs.  And, where there were
slates or stone roofing, the rains and snows had
penetrated to the upper floors.  Nevertheless the
lower rooms were sound enough.  So the Young
Lovell said that that night he would sleep there.
Mattresses and bedding were brought from the
bondsmen of that place for the Young Lovell, the monk
and the two esquires; the men slept very well upon
straw in the stables.  Also the Young Lovell sent the
esquire Cressingham with the men to his mother's
house at Killingworth, and the esquire La Rougerie
with the men to her other house at Plessey, which
stood in a pleasant place.  So then the monk Francis
went to his prayers and the Young Lovell round the
battlements of that smallish Castle.  He noted
carefully what stones were sound and which tottered,
and so he came to the conclusion that, with a little
mason's work well expended, his men might hold it
very well for a space.

Then came back those two esquires, having left
five men each in the houses at Plessey and Killingworth.
The houses they reported to be in as sad a
plight as that Castle, or worse, so that it seemed that
they must fall into utter ruin.  At a bondsman's
house the esquire Cressingham had come upon a
fellow calling himself the receiver for the Knights of
Cullerford and Haltwhistle.  This man the esquire
had brought with him and he proved of much use.
For, in the first place, he had taken some money
which he had about him and, in the second, he had a
great book of accounts which showed what was due
to the Lady Rohtraut from each holding.  So they
kept that fellow in a stable, taking from him the
money and the book.  Both these esquires said that
all the men of these villages and hamlets welcomed
the coming of their lord and were ready to do him
suit and service.  In those parts the Lady Rohtraut
had nine thousand acres of serviceable land and
twenty of heathery and indifferent.  So they slept
very well that night.

On the morrow they had much to do.  Thus the
monk went with the esquire Cressingham and men
bravely armed from farm to farm, warning the men
there that those were the lands of the Lord Lovell
and his mother.  They had that false bailiff well
trussed upon a little horse to show them the way;
but long before noon he had begged to be allowed to
take up the service of the Lord Lovell, and so they
were the quicker done and had no hindrances, all the
peasants vowing to do their services very willingly.

One other thing was good, and that was that the
esquire La Rougerie was the son of a Frenchman,
very skilled in matters of fortifying and building in
stone.  This Frenchman the old Lord Lovell had
brought from France to see to the building of the
White Tower, which he wished to make a citadel, as
it were, of Castle Lovell.  And this esquire had
learned much of his father; the Young Lovell could
trust him very well.  So the Young Lovell sent that
La Rougerie into the countryside to find masons and
stone workers, and he found some, though not many,
for most men of that class worked in the fisheries in
summertime, coming back to building only when the
storms drove them off the seas.  The Young Lovell
was minded to have that Castle put first into a state
to withstand an assault and later to have it roofed
and rendered fair, with the lower part of one of the
round towers turned into a wheat-pit and another
made into a great pit of brine, in which they could
cure whole carcases of oxen, swine and sheep, to the
number of five hundred or more.  So, when he had
showed La Rougerie the weak places he had discovered
the night before, he took thirty of his men for the
greater safety and rode unto the town of Morpeth,
Here he sent for the bailiff of that town to come to
the market place and told him that his errand was
very peaceable.  For he desired to buy arms and
bows for twenty of his men, with twenty-five pikes
and two hundred barrels of arrows and several
pack-horses, and a saker or two for the defence of Castle
Cramlin and ten or more pack-horses to carry all
these things.  So the bailiff of that town answered
him very civilly saying that he was glad of that lord's
visit because he was akin to the Dacres and the
Ogles and the Bertrams and other lords that had
been friends to the good town of Morpeth.  And he
did what he could amongst the armourers and
citizens that had arms to sell.  So, in a short time, the
Young Lovell had a good part of what he sought.
This would not have been the case so easily but for
the arms that those of Castle Lovell had sold to these
very armourers.  As it was, many of the Young
Lovell's men got back arms that they had borne in
that Castle before.  Then came the armourer called
Armstrong to the Young Lovell and begged him to
be his good lord and pardon him.  This the Young
Lovell said he would do if his crime was not very
great.  So that armourer revealed to the Young
Lovell that he had that lord's armour of state which
he had bought for forty shillings, but no knight of
that part would buy it of him.  And he said that if
the Lord Lovell was his very good lord he would pay
him again that forty shillings, but, if not, he might
take it and welcome.  Then the Young Lovell was
glad of that armourer, and said that if Armstrong
would put new straps to all places where straps should
go he would pay him fifty shillings for his honesty.
So the armourer was very glad.

It was four of the afternoon before the Young
Lovell came back to Cramlin Castle, having nearly
all that he needed of harness, pikes, bows, pack-horses
and the rest, but only one hundred and twenty barrels
of arrows, three sakers and a little gunpowder, for
the town of Morpeth could not supply more at that
time.  Still it was well enough, and there he found
that La Rougerie had brought masons and carpenters
enough to do his work roughly in a week's time, and
afterwards to amend it fairly and in permanence.
And, towards six, came back the monk Francis and
the others with good news of the bondsmen's
submission.  They drove before them three young oxen and
over thirty sheep and lambs, and these things were
offerings from the various hamlets of the Lady
Rohtraut, together with eleven hogsheads of beer and
other things eatable that should come after.  And
these bondsmen promised that for six months they
would supply all that should be needed for the support
of such men as the Lord Lovell should see fit to leave
in that Castle, the price being left in account between
that lord and them, and the men-at-arms to be
ready to defend them against raiders if any should
come.

So the Young Lovell began to be of better spirits
for, with all these preparations for warfare, he had
thought less of the lady of the doves.  And the monk
Francis encouraged him in this, though once or twice
he sighed.  But when the Young Lovell asked him
why this was, he said it was because of his cousin that
he had slain.  One thing that had given heart to the
Young Lovell was this, that amongst the arms that
had come from Castle Lovell unto the hands of the
Morpeth armourers was a fair lance and rolled round
it a small fine banner of silk with the arms of Lovell
upon it.  Now, the Lord Lovell, because of his estate
in those parts, had the right to ride across the lands
of the Bishop of Durham with his banner displayed,
and he would have ridden to that city very unwillingly
without it.

So, after taking counsel together, they decided
that they would lie down and sleep at six and, rising
at twelve, should ride to Durham so as to come there
at the dawn.  The Young Lovell would take with
him twenty spears and the esquire Cressingham to
bear the banner, who was a fine man of thirty with
good armour of his own.  And the twenty spears
should be all fine men on the best horses that they
had.  So they should make a fair show when they
rode into the city of Durham; and, the more to that
end, the Young Lovell took with him his armour
of state upon a pack horse, that he might put it
on when he was a mile or so away from the bridge.

The remaining five and forty men with the esquire
La Rougerie, who was a man to be trusted, should
remain to hold Castle Cramlin for the Young Lovell
and to aid in the buildings that should go forward
there.  In that way the Young Lovell rode out from
a Castle of his own.

And, in that way too, he came before the Lady
Margaret and his grandmother, the Princess Rohtraut,
as well as Sir Bertram of Lyonesse, in his armour of
state.  He seemed to survey them for a space
through the opening of his helmet.  This he had
kept closed in riding through the city for fear any
friend of the Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle
should by chance be in those streets and aim an
arrow at him from a window or from behind a
buttress.  Then he pushed up the visor.

Stern he always looked when his face was framed
in iron, but so stern as he looked that day the Lady
Margaret considered that she had never seen him.
He had broad, level eyebrows of brown, a pointed
nose, firm lips and a determined chin.  The Lady
Margaret knew that he had a pleasant smile but he
showed none of it then, and he paid no attention
either to her or to the Cornish knight.  His grandmother
regarded him with a keen, hostile glance, and
with his eyes set upon hers he advanced grimly
towards her.  His short dagger was girt around him,
but he had no sword.  So, in that shining harness, he
knelt before that old lady on the second step.  He
lifted up his hands and said:

"Madam, Princess and my Granddam, to whom I
owe great honour...."

"That is a good beginning, by Our Lady," the
Princess said.

"I would not so soon have come to you," he
continued in firm tones, "but that you sent me your
commands."

"Well, this grows better and better," the old
woman said.

"It is neither out of lack of duty, nor of due awe
and natural affection, that I had not the sooner come,"
the Young Lovell said.

"That passes me!" the Princess cried out.  "By
Our Lady, I do not understand that speech."

The Young Lovell who towered on high when he
stood, and was tall enough though he knelt, appeared
like a great hound, attacked by this fierce little
woman as by a savage lap-dog.

"Madam and gentle Princess," he said slowly,
"I cannot easily say what I would say, for no man
would say it easily."

"Then you are on a fool's errand," the Princess
said, "for a wise man can say most things."  She
considered him for a moment and then said jeeringly:
"If you had business in the town, stiff grandson of
mine, say you had business: if you were gone after
wenches, lie about it.  But I care very little.  I
sent for you to have your news; so leave the
complimenting and give me that."

"Madam and gentle Princess," he began again,
though the old lady grunted and mumbled.  "I did
not come before because I sought assoilment."

"What is assoilment?" she asked.

He answered briefly:

"Pardon for sin, witting and unwitting."

"Well, get on," she said impatiently.

"Lacking that assoilment," he said, "I did not
know if I were a fit knight to come into your
presence."

"Why, I am an old horse," she said, "and not to
be frightened by a dab of pitch.  If you never
showed yourself but after confession you might live
in a cave, or so it was in my time."

"Then," said he, "know this.  I came to my
Castle and they shot upon me.  So I have gathered
together certain of my men and have taken my
mother's Castle of Cramlin and hold it.  So that is
my news.  And when I have the pardon of the
Bishop and have paid forfeit, or what it is, I will get
more of my men.  For my standard is set up in
Castle Cramlin and my men come to it from here
and there.  So in a fortnight or less I will retake my
Castle; and I shall hang my brothers-in-law, send
my half-brother across the sea, and put my sisters
into nunneries.  These are my projects."

"Body of God!" the old lady said.  "By the
Body of God!"

Then the Cornish knight moved round and
stood beside the Princess and spoke to the Young
Lovell.

"Ah, gentle lord," he said, "may I ask you a fair
question?"

"By God's wounds," the Young Lovell said, "you
shall ask me none.  Who be you?"

"A poor knight," Sir Bertram answered, "but
the commissioner of the most dread King Henry!"

"Then you are a friend of the false Percy," the
Young Lovell said.  "Get you gone.  You are no
friend to me."

And at that the old Princess cried out:

"Body of God!  You have taken Castle Cramlin?
Then without doubt you have taken Plessey House
and Killingworth?"

"Madam and gentle Princess," the Young Lovell
said, "I have taken and hold them for my mother.
And so I will do for all my mother's lands whether
round Morpeth or elsewhere."

"Then I have no more to say," the old Princess
said.  "Get you gone."  The Young Lovell remained
nevertheless kneeling for a space.

"Madam," he said, "it comes to me now that ye
have a lawsuit with my mother for certain of those
lands."

"Aye, and I will have them," she said.  "It is
not you nor any stiff popinjay shall hold them from
me."  She leaned out from her chair and cried these
words into his face, her own being purple and her
eyes bloodshot.  So he crossed himself with his hand
of bright steel.

"Madam," he said, "I cannot talk of lawsuits.
They have done me too much wrong."

"But I will talk of lawsuits," she said.  "By God,
I will take a score of my fellows and drive your rats
from my Castle of Cramlin!"

"Madam and gentle Princess," he answered, "you
could not do it with ten score nor yet twenty.  For I
have there forty of the best fighting men of this
North country; and in two days I think I shall have
six score.  How the rights of this lawsuit may be I
do not know.  But my mother's necessity is great.
She has languished for a quarter year in prison
during which time you have done nothing for her.
When the lands fall to me upon my mother's death
you and the Dacres may have them again.  That is
all that I know.  And so I pray our gentle Saviour
to have you in His keeping; and so I get me gone."

All this while the Lady Margaret had sat motionless,
gazing upon her true love's face that never cast
a glance aside at her.  For it was not manners that
she should speak before that old lady.  But when he
was on his feet and near the door, she ran down from
that throne-step, and her rich robes and her great
veil ran out behind her.  The Cornish knight was
already in the stairway, and the Lady Margaret came
to it before the Young Lovell, for he walked slowly
on account of the weight of his armour.  So in the
stairway she came before him and held up her hands
to his steel chest:

"Ah, gentle lord," she said, "will you speak no
word with me?"  And, in having said so much,
because she had spoken before he had, she had said
too much for manners, and she hung her head and
trembled, for she was a very proud woman.

He looked at her with stern and affrighting eyes.

"Ah, gentle lady," he said, "you are plighted to
my false brother."

"No!  No!" she said, "not with my will.  Would
you believe I am in a tale against you, with your
false sisters?"

He raised his voice till it was like the harsh
bark of the male seal; his eyes glowed with hatred.

"Gentle lady," he cried out, "ye should have known!"

The sight of this lady had been to him a sudden
weariness, like the sound of a story heard over and
over again.  And hot anger and hatred had risen
violently in his heart when she spoke.

But then he perceived her anguished face, the
corners of the proud lips drawn down and the
features pale like alabaster.  And he remembered
that all things, to pursue a fair course, must go on
as they before would have gone—even all things
to the end.  So that, although his heart was
weary for the lady of the doves and sparrows, he
said:

"Ah, gentle lady, I believe you.  I remember
me.  My false brother was inside these pot-lids.
You could do no otherwise.  All these things shall
be set in order.  We will sue to the Pope.  So it
shall be."  He could not easily find words; that was
very difficult speaking for him; for still this lady
was wearisome beyond endurance to him, because of
the lady of the doves and sparrows.  But he would
not let her see this, for he knew she was a loyal and
dutiful friend to him, and he must take her to wife
when he had his Castle again and the dispensation
of our Father that is in Rome.  And indeed she
fell upon her knees before him there in the stairway:

"Gentle lord, my master and my love," she said,
"I smote your false brother on the mouth in that
day.  And all my lands are yours and my towers of
Glororem and on Wearside; and all my red gold
and all my jewels of price.  And all my men-at-arms
are yours, to the number of eight score, and two
esquires; and all my bondsmen that can bear bows,
and my rough pikemen...."

He stepped back stiffly in his arms, so that he
was nearly within his grandmother's chamber again.
And this he did that he might avoid her touch.
And he said "No!  No!"  That he said because it
seemed horrible to him to have her aid in the
retaking of his Castle.  But, before she was done
speaking with her deep and full voice, he knew that these
things too must be.

Therefore he advanced upon her courteously, and
stretched out his hands in steel and raised her up.

"Ah, gentle lady," he said, "all these things shall
be, and I thank you.  And peaceful times shall, God
willing, repay these troublous ones."

She looked upon him a little strangely; but she
held her cheek to him.

"Ah, gentle lady," he said, "I may not kiss
you.  For, as I stand before you, I am a man
under a ban, so I think I may not do it until my
lord the Prince Bishop shall have assoiled me and
taken cognisance of my plea to Rome against my
false brother."

She wished to have said: "Ah, what reck I of
that!" and so to have taken him in her arms, steel
and all.  But that she might not do for fear of her
manners.  For she had been well schooled, and,
whereas, she might well, if she would, give him her
towers and lands and men and bondsmen, still she
could not go against the ban of the Church; for the
ladies of her house of Eure were very proud ladies.
Neither, for pride, though the tears were wet upon
her cheeks, would she ask him what ban it was that
he lay under.

So, seeing those her tears, he said as gently as he
could—for when the head of the axe is thrown the
helve may as well go with it:

"Ah, gentle lady, be of very good cheer!  For I
am assured of assoilment by such a very good
churchman that I know no better.  And, that once
had, shall we not make merry as in the old time?
Aye, surely, for if you will, I will well.  And so,
that it may be the sooner done, I will go to that
good prince."  Yet, as he said these words, he
sighed.  Then he added: "In a little while, gentle
lady and my true love, I will come back to you."

So she stood back in the stairway to let him
pass; but it was piteously that she looked after him.
For she had never seen him so earnest and so sober.
He seemed the older by twenty years, and never had
his foot been so heavy on the stairs; it was like the
beating of a heart of lead.

.. vspace:: 2

Now when the Young Lovell came to the stair-foot
where there was a square space, there there was
standing the Knight Bertram of Lyonesse.  And so
he stood before the Young Lovell that that lord
could not pass him or get to the street.  And hot
rage was already in that lording's heart, for never
had he talked so painfully as he had done to that
Lady Margaret, and it seemed as if his breast must
burst its armour.  Up to him stepped that Cornish
knight and spoke in gentle tones, bending his
particoloured leg courteously, in the then fashion of
London town.

"Gentle lording," he said, "you called me even
now the friend of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland.
Let me say presently that by my office I
stand above that lord, though far below him in my
person.  So I am no friend of his, though not his foe."

The Young Lovell held his brows down and
gazed upon this man beneath them, breathing heavily
in his chest.

"Go on," he said.

"Then I will tell you this," the Cornish knight
went on.  "I have heard you twice say ye were
beneath a ban.  Now that may well be and I think
it is along of a White Lady."

The Young Lovell loosened his dagger within its sheath.

"My silken knight," he said, "ye were never so
near your death."

"Gentle lording," that knight answered, "if I
die another will take my place and no one will lament
me.  But it is my function and devoir to talk and so
I take it."  He paused for a moment, and then he
went on: "God forbid that I should say word against
Holy Church; I am not one that does it.  Yet I will
say this: If Holy Church will not raise the ban from
you, yet I, Sir Bertram of Lyonesse, who have some
skill at inquiries, will so put this matter to the King
and dread lord that, without more words said, that
judgment of the Warden's Court against you shall be
revised, and if those false Knights shall withhold
your Castle from you you shall have instant licence
to take it again and do justice upon them as you will.
And the fines due of you under that judgment shall
be remitted to you.  For I acknowledge that therein
the Percy hath overstepped himself; for firstly he
can give no judgment and foul no bill upon a suit of
sorcery.  And secondly, I am convinced that here was
no sorcery.  For, touching that White Lady...."

"Sir Knight," the Young Lovell said, "I bid you
stand aside from that door and see a thing...."  Then
Sir Bertram stepped down into the roadway.

The Young Lovell took out his dagger and raised
it above his shoulder.  It was of the length of his
forearm.  The door that stood against the wall,
being open, was of thick oak, studded with large
bosses of iron.  The Young Lovell brought forward
that dagger over his head and it sank into that door
up to the hilt, and sank in and passed through the
door, and so into the mortar between two stories and
the door was nailed there.

"Sir," the Young Lovell said, "seek to withdraw
that dagger."

"Nay, that I cannot do," Sir Bertram said.

"Neither can I nor any man," the Young Lovell
said.  "And I am glad of it.  For if you had spoken
more upon that theme, that dagger should have gone
through your throat.  And this I tell you: there is
no knight in all the North parts that could have done
that, and I think none in all Christendom.  How it
may be in Heathenesse I do not know, for I hear
that the Soldan has some very good knights.  And
that I did to show you that I am no braggart if you
will hear me further."

"Very willingly will I hear you further, ah, gentle
lording," the Cornish knight answered, and again
he bent his knee where he stood in the street.

"Then," the Young Lovell said, "it is because I
can do such deeds as that you have seen that all the
men of the North parts will willingly follow me upon
any journey.  So it would be well if the Percy let
me be.  For—an he will not I will come to Alnwick
and to Warkworth with twice four thousand men
for this Percy is little beloved.  And so, with scaling
hooks and hurdles and faggots and the rest I will
smoke him out of Northumberland and hang him
upon the first tree in this County Palatine.  And
that you may tell your King."

"Ah, gentle lording," Sir Bertram said, "I tell
you that judgment is already reversed."

"Of that I know nothing," the Young Lovell said.
"But so it is as I have told you.  If your King will
dwell at peace with us of the North parts he may
for me, and I ask nothing better.  And so much
more I will say, that he has good servants; for no
man ever went nearer his death than you when you
spoke to me now.  And I think you know it well,
yet you gave no ground and spoke on.  I do not like
your kind, for I have seen some of them about the
courts of princes, here and elsewhere and you are the
caterpillars upon the silken tree of chivalry that shall
yet destroy it.  Yet that was as brave a feat as ever
I saw, and your King is happy if he have more such
as you."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-VIII`:

.. class:: center large

   VIII

.. vspace:: 2

In the meanwhile that monk Francis sat writing in
the Bishop's room and the Bishop walked up and
down behind his back.  Once or twice the Bishop
paused in his walking as if he wished to speak to the
monk, but again he walked on and the monk Francis
continued to write rapidly, pausing now and then
and looking upwards as he sought to remember the
words of the decree beginning: "Jejunandi," or the
Decretal: "Nullam res est...."

So at last the Bishop stood for a long time near
the door, looking down at the nails of his fingers,
and then suddenly:

"Touching the matter of sorcery, my brother in
God...." he said.

The monk swung quickly round upon his stool:

"There was no sorcery," he said determinedly.
"Those three of Castle Lovell were perjured."

"So I gathered," the Bishop said softly; "I
considered that; it appeared so from what was said
to me by the lawyer, Magister Stone."

The monk looked with the greater respect at the
Bishop.

"Father in God," he said, "will you tell me how
you came upon that thought?"

The Bishop smiled a little faint smile of pleased
vanity.  For he liked to be considered that he was a
subtle reader of the hearts of men.  In that he
thought that he was the superior of this monk.

"When a man comes to me," he said, "with two
tales, to each of which he will swear to find many
witnesses, I am apt to think that one is false.  So it
was with this our friend called Stone."

"May I hear more?" the monk asked.

"It was in this way," the Bishop said, "and now
you will see why I was troubled in my conscience
when you found me.  This lawyer Stone took it for
postulated that I thirsted for the lands of this Young
Lovell.  He would have it no other way.  Though
once or twice I said I loved justice better than land
he would have it no other way, but took my protestings
for the solemn fooleries of a priest.  He is, I
think, a very evil man, with the face of an ape, stiff
gestures, and the voice of a door hinge."

"I know the man very well," the monk Francis
said.  "He has twice proposed to me the spoliation
of widows with false charters for the benefit of our
monastery."

"So," the Bishop said, "he would have it that I
was greedy of gold and lands for my see.  And
indeed I am if I may have them with decency.  So
he saith to me under his breath that, in two ways I
might have Castle Lovell.  One tale was that this
Young Lovell had capered with naked witches and
others round a Baal fire.  For that he had as witnesses
himself and another gossip called Meg of the Foul
Tyke and that bastard called the Decies."

"It is because of that false witnessing that the
Decies shall be broken on the wheel," the monk
Francis said.

"Well, it was false witnessing," the Bishop said.
"And so I divined.  For, afterwards, this lawyer,
brings along another story.  And it was easy to see
that this lawyer considered this the better story of the
two and would be mightily relieved of doubt if I
would adopt it.  And it was this."

The monk Francis looked now very eagerly upon
the Bishop, who stood straight and still in his furred
gown, lifting one hand stiffly:

"There is in the village of Castle Lovell," he said,
"a fair lovechild called Elizabeth.  Some will have
it that the father is the Young Lovell, some that it is
of the Young Lovell's father.  How that may be I do
not know, but it is certain that that child is of the
Lovell kin and Harrison is its name.  Now, as May
comes in, that child, as children will, goeth afield
seeking herbs for a coney that the mother had
a-fattening.  So the child Elizabeth goeth further and
further amongst these hills of sand where green stuff
is rare.  For, that she might not pluck herbs in the
bondsmen's fields, that are laid down to hay, that child
very well knew.  So, looking up suddenly, that child
perceived upon a high sand-hill, and sitting upon a
brown horse that she well knew, a knight that very
well she knew too, being the Young Lovell.  For
this lording was accustomed to bring the child
Elizabeth pieces of sugar and figs and to give her
fair words and money to the mother.

"So that child had no fear of the Young Lovell,
but ran up to him crying out for sugar and figs.  But
he paid no heed to her, only sat there upon his horse.
So the child looked further and perceived, upon a white
horse, a lady in a scarlet gown, in a green hood, who
smiled very kindly at her.  So that child was afraid,
as children are, and ran home.  That was in the midst
of May....

"Now came fell poverty into the hut where
dwelled that woman and her child.  The last pence
were gone, the fatted coneys eaten; they must go
batten upon roots, and when that mother sought
relief of the Ladies Douce and Isopel in the Castle
they jeered and spat upon her.  And ever the mother
cried that if the Young Lovell would come they
would find relief.  Then at last that child took
courage and said that she knew where the Young
Lovell was and would lead her there.

"So she leads her mother through these hills of
sand—and it was then close to July, the 29th of
June as it might be.  There upon the hills of sand
that mother perceives the Young Lovell.  He sat
upon his brown horse, in his cloak of scarlet, with
his parti-coloured hose of scarlet and green.  He wore
his cap of scarlet set about with large pearls...."

"These pearls," the monk Francis said, "I have
as a gage in my aumbrey of Belford."

"His long hair fell down upon his shoulders and
he looked away.  Then wearily that mother climbed
the sand-hill crying out to the Young Lovell for gold.
He never looked upon her but gazed always away;
nevertheless he fingered his girdle and found his
poke and cast down to her a French mark of gold."

"I thank God he did that charity," the monk
Francis said, "even if he did not know it; and I
think he did not."

"Why let us thank God," the Bishop said.  And
he asked: "Then this is a true tale?"

"I think it is," the monk Francis answered.
"But, of your charity, tell me more."

"Then," the Bishop said, "that poor woman fell
upon that piece of gold in the sand and kissed it.
And, as she looked up over it to kiss too the Young
Lovell's hand, so she saw a fair, kind woman.  Red
hair she had and was clothed in white with a jewel of
rubies in a white hat.  Such a kind, fair lady that
woman had never seen, and the Young Lovell gazed
upon her and she into his eyes.  Then tears blinded
that woman and grief and pain at the heart.  So she
came back to her hut, she knew not how; and, indeed,
she knew no more until there came the lawyer Stone
holding a cordial to her lips.

"For, you must know that that child, taking that
piece of gold from her mother's fingers and being all
innocent, went away into the village to buy food for
her mother.  So the first man she came to, seeing
her with it, took her to the house of the lawyer
Stone to have the right of it.  Then the lawyer
having beaten her, she told him that the Young
Lovell had that day given it to her mother.

"So the lawyer, avid of news of the Young Lovell,
jumped like an ape to that poor hut.  But it was
two days before that woman could speak, though he
nursed her and fed cordials to her never so.  Then that
lawyer got men-at-arms and scoured the country
according to her directions.  But upon the Young
Lovell he never came."

"By that day," the monk Francis said, "he was in
my cell commending himself to God."

The Bishop looked apprehensively upon the monk
Francis.

"Then this you take for a true tale," he said.
"Woe is me."

They were both silent for a while, and then the
monk said—for they were looking with faces of
great weariness upon the tiles:

"Father in God, tell me truly, I do pray, all that
you know from this lawyer."

"Brother," the Bishop said, "God help us, this
lawyer was insistent that the tale of sorcery against
this lording should be let to lapse or changed for
another, such as that he consorted with old fairies
and worse."

"How then," the monk Francis said, "would he
put aside his former perjuries?"

"He would say," the Bishop said, "that his eyes
deceived him, magic being in the air, and that on
that morning the Young Lovell rode furiously past
him going as if he knew not whither."

"Why so he did!" the monk Francis said, "but
that shall not save the lawyer.  His former oaths are
written down."

"Brother," the Bishop said, "it is that lawyer's
plan to begin another suit in the courts ecclesiastical
and there not to swear at all, but ignoring the bill
before the Wardens, to bring many witnesses about
this fairy lady."

"What other witnesses has he?" the monk Francis
asked.  He spoke like a man without hope.

"You must know," the Bishop said, "that this
lawyer during these months was enquiring of the
Young Lovell in the past.  So in Newcastle he found
a master-tailor to whom the Young Lovell for long
owed four pounds.  And one day in February this
tailor, needing money, went out from Newcastle
towards Castle Lovell, riding upon an ass.  And so,
upon the way, he saw a lady that had a white horse
and was little and dark.  He was in tribulation for
his money and pondered much upon the Young
Lovell whether he was a lording that would pay
him or one that would have him beaten at the gate.

"And, as he thought that, this lady looked upon
him as if she would ask the way to where the Young
Lovell dwelt.  She was little and swart and had a
green undercoat.

"And again in February there was a ship boy
that went from Sunderland with a white falcon his
ship had brought from Hamboro', for the Young
Lovell.  Now, upon this voyage, this ship boy had
conceived a great love for that falcon even as boys
will that upon ships are beaten by all and conceive
loves for dumb beasts.  So that ship boy went
pondering with the white hawk and wondering and
almost weeping to think that that lording might
be a cruel master to the falcon.  For he loved that
falcon very well.  So he was aware of a kind, fair
lady with a white horse that looked upon him as much
as to say that the Young Lovell would be a gentle and
kind lord to that fowl.  She was a great fair woman
in a German hood of black velvet—such a one as that
ship boy had seen and, as boys will, had conceived an
ardent love for, in Hamboro'."

The monk Francis said: "Ah," and then he
brought out the words: "Father in God, I too have
seen her—and twice.  When I thought of the Young
Lovell."

Then the Bishop groaned lamentably; three times
and very swiftly he walked from end to end of the
cell, holding his hands above his head.  Then he ran
upon a shelf and with a furious haste pulled out a
large book bound in white skin.  He threw it open
upon his bed and bade the monk come look at a
picture.

This picture was all in fair blues and reds and
greens, going across the two pages of the book.

"I had this book in Rome," the Bishop said,
"of a Greek called Josephus.  Look upon this
picture."

The picture showed a mountain with trees upon it.
And round the mountain went a colonnade of marble
pillars.  In between the central columns, where it was
higher, sat a grey-bearded and frowning man.  Naked
he was to the waist and he was upon a throne of gold.
At his left hand was an eagle; in his right the forked
lightning of a thunderbolt.  Beside him stood a proud
woman in purple with a diadem of gold.  In the next
temple was a helmed woman that leaned upon a
great spear; next her, a man all furious, that held up
a great round shield and a pointed sword.  Over
against him reclined a great man with a lion's hide
who leant upon a club; beyond him a man all white
with the sun in his hair and beyond that a youth
with wings upon his feet, upon his cap and upon a
rod, twined with snakes that he held.  All these
were in the temple, and many more, such as a woman
in a chariot drawn by oxen, and an old crowned man
rising from the blue waves of the sea.

Then the Bishop laid his trembling imperious
fingers upon a place higher up the mountain, above
the temple.

"Look upon this," he said.  There, amongst olive
trees, the monk perceived a pink, naked woman.  In
one hand she held a mirror into which, lasciviously,
she smiled.  Her other hand held out behind her a
wealth of shining hair like gold.  Above her,
clouds upon the blue sky turned over and let down a
rain of pink roseleaves.

"I do not know who these be," the monk Francis
said.  "I was never in Rome."

Then the Bishop said harshly:

"Was the woman you saw like this woman?"

"Not so," the monk answered, "she had dark hair
divided down the middle and parted lips.  She was
like the cousin that I slew and so she smiled."

The Bishop groaned.  And so he wrung his hands
and cried out:

"As God is good to me, I saw that naked woman
stand so and smile so, in my vestiary, this morning
after I had said mass.  Six times I made the sign of
the cross and she went not away.  I was pondering
upon the case of the Young Lovell....  She went not
away....  Pondering....  God help me, a sinful
man....  The eremites of the Libyan desert....
But no, it was not so....  No temptation...."

The waves of terror shook that Bishop with the
thin features.  His hands were so knitted and squeezed
together in a paroxysm that it seemed the blood
must spurt from his finger nails.  And even as he
stood, so he groaned with a hollow and continuous
sound.  Then the monk Francis cried out:

"Those are the fairies!  Those women are the
fairies!  God help you, Lord Bishop, you cannot
condemn my friend because he has seen them, if you
cannot keep them out of your own vestiary....  For
all about this world they are....  They peer in upon
us.  Thro' the windows they peer in!  Looking!
Looking!  You cannot condemn my friend....  Like
beasts of pray in the night they peer into the narrow
rooms....  Hungering! ... Hungering!"  His
voice was like heavy, fierce sobs and it sounded
against the Bishop's moans.

"God forgive me," he cried out, "it was upon
these that I thought when I comforted my friend
with talks of angels and saints....  I lied and thought
I was lying....  Angels!  These are the little people!
The little angels, as the country people say, that were
once the angels of God.  But they would not aid Him
against Lucifer, doubting the issue of the combat....
They it is, have brought this fine weather we enjoy.
A great host of them, like fair women, is descended
upon this country.  They cannot live without fine
weather...."

Both these churchmen were weakened with fasting
and prayers when they might have slept.  The monk
Francis had great fears, their minds leapt from place
to place.  That long, bare room seemed surrounded
with hosts of fair, evil fiends.  He imagined devils
with twisted snouts and long claws scraping and
scratching at the leads of the painted glass and at
the stones of the mortar.

Then the Bishop cried out upon him with a fearful
voice, calling him ignorant, a fool rustic monk, a low,
religious filled with barbarous superstitions.  He
came close to the monk Francis and cried into his
very face:

"God help me, thou fool, bleating of fairies....
All those women were one woman! ... And again
God help me!  When I heard thee bleat ignorantly
of the prowess of that young knight I did not believe
thee....  But now I do believe he is the most
precious defender we have in this place....  I will
asperge his shining armour with holy oils....  I will
bless his sword....  God help him....  How shall
he fight against a goddess with a sword of steel....
Yet she is vulnerable!  All writings say she is
vulnerable...."

He began a pitiful babble that the monk could not
well understand, of Italy where he had lived many
years as the King's Friend.  So he spoke of cypress
groves and the ruined corners of old temples, and
fireflies and nights of love.  He spoke of earth
crumbling away in pits and great white statues with
sightless eyes rising out of the graves on hill-sides,
tall columns that no one could overset, and the
gods of the hearth.  Of all these things the monk
Francis knew nothing.  The Bishop spoke of crafty
Italians with whom he had spoken, and of subtle
Greeks of the fallen Eastern Empire; and of how
this subtle creature, as the credible legends said,
dwelt now, since the fall of Byzantium, upon a
mountainside in Almain, and of an almond staff that
flowered....

Then that Bishop cast himself upon his bed, face
downwards, and so he lay still.

That monk sat there many hours upon the little
stool, and whether the Bishop slept or thought he
could not tell, for the Bishop never moved.  Then
that monk considered that that Bishop had many and
strange knowledges, having passed so long a time in
foreign parts.  And there was fear in that monk's
heart, for he thought he was with a sorcerer that
aimed to make himself pope by sorceries.  And
afterwards he fell to considering of how this Bishop
should deal with his friend the Young Lovell, for that
Bishop was master and lord.

And so, being the harder man of the two, he went
over in his mind the necessity that that see had for a
champion in those parts and how there could be none
so good as the Young Lovell, even though that
knight were, as he feared, a man accursed and certain
of a pitiful end.  Yet he might as well do what he
could for the Church before that end came.  And the
monk thought of the evil King and the subtle Sir
Bertram and the grim coward that the Percy was and
the discontent of the common sort and how that
might be used.  And he thought of all these things
for a long time, as if they were counters he moved
upon a chess-board.  And he cried to himself: "Ah,
if I were Bishop I would control these things."

And then he remembered that it was long since
he had prayed for the soul of his cousin that he had
slain.  So he set himself upon his knees and sought
to make up for lost time in prayer.  Those windows
faced towards the west, being high over the river that
rushes below.  And from where one knelt he could
see the tower of St. Margaret's Church through the
open casement of stained glass.  And at last, towards
its setting, the sun shone blood red through all those
windows of colours, ruby, purple, vermeil, grass green
and the blue of lapis lazuli.  All those colours fell
upon the tiles of the floor that were hewn with a lily
pattern in yellow of the potter.  Twenty colours fell
upon the figure of the Bishop, lying all in black upon
his bed and as many upon the form of the monk
where he knelt and prayed.  Scarlet irradiated his
forehead, purple his chin and shoulder, and to the
waist he was bluish.

The voices of the pigeons on the roofs lamented
the passing of the day with bubbling sounds, the great
bell of the cathedral and many other bells called for
evening prayer in the fields; it was late, for that was
the season of hay-making.  Then that praying monk
perceived, through the small window, a great red
globe hastening down behind the tower of
St. Margaret's Church and, with a sudden deepening,
twilight and shadows filled that long room because of
the opaque and coloured windows.

And ever as the monk prayed there, he was
pervaded by the image of his cousin's face—Passerose
of Widdrington she had been called, for she was held
to exceed the rose in beauty.  In that darkness where
he knelt he was pervaded by the thought of her face
with the hair divided in the middle, the smooth brow,
the so kind eyes and the parted lips.  He knew she
must be in purgatory for that space, for he had killed
her with an arrow in the woodlands, unassoiled, and
he could not consider that his prayers yet had
sufficed to save her so little as five hundred years of
that dread place.  Yet, tho' he knew her to be in
purgatory, in those dark shadows he had a sense that
she was near him so that he could hear the rustle of
her weed moving around him.  She had loved green
that is very dark in shadowy places.  A great longing
seized upon him to stretch out his arms and so to
touch her.  Then he remembered that it was that face
that had looked kindly in upon him in his cell, and he
groaned and cried upon our Saviour and His Mother
to save him from such carnal longings.  He had much
loved his kind cousin whilst he had been a rough
knight of this world.  Many had loved her, but he
alone remembered, and he considered how she that
had been most beautiful was now no more than a
horrible and grinning skull, God so willing it with all
beauty that is of this world and made of the red blood
that courses through the veins.

At the sound that he then gave forth he heard
another sound which was that of the Bishop where he
stirred upon his bed.  And, in the deep shadows, he
was aware that that Bishop sat up and looked upon
him.  And at last John Sherwood, Bishop Palatine
spoke, his voice being harsh and first.

"Brother in God," he said, "I have determined
that this Young Lovell shall have my absolution and
blessing upon his arms and the sacrament of knighthood
and all the things of this world that you desired
for him.  Touching the things that are not of this
world I will not say much, but only such matters as
shall suffice for your guidance.  For of these matters
I know somewhat and you nothing at all."

The Bishop paused and the monk said humbly:

"Father in God and my lord, I thank you."

"I lately rebuked you," the Bishop said, "for
meddling brutishly in things of which you knew
nothing.  For you cried out to me ignorant and rustic
superstitions, such as it is not fitting for a religious to
meditate upon.  And so I rebuke you again and I
command you that you ask of your confessor such a
penance as he shall think fitting for one that has
miserably blasphemed, and in a manner of doctrine....
Now this I tell you for your guidance....
This apparition that you have seen and I, appeareth
with many faces and bodies, being the spirit that
most snareth men to carnal desires.  So doth she
show herself to each man in the image that should
snare him to sin, with a face, kind, virtuous and
alluring after each man's tastes.  That is the nature
of such false gods.  For this is a false god, such as I
have discerned you never, in your black ignorance,
to have heard of.  But Holy Writ, which I have much
studied and you very little, after the fashion of certain
monks, enjoins upon us to believe in the existence of
false gods.  So there are ever strange and cold
creatures, looking upon this world with steadfast eyes.
For Lucretius says, that was a writer, pagan yet half
inspired: 'The universe is very large and in it there
is room for a multitude of gods.'  So I rede you,
believe of false gods."

"Father in God, I will," the monk said, "I
perceive it to be my duty.  For now I remember me the
Church enjoins upon us to be constant in fighting
against such, therefore they must exist."

"Then this too I command you as a duty," the
Bishop said from the thick darkness, "that for the
duration of his life you quit never this knight but be
ever with him, seeking how you may win him from
the perception of this evil being.  For signing of the
cross shall not do it, neither shall sprinklings with holy
water such as avail with the spirits of men deceased
or with Satan and such imps.  For this is even a god
and the only way you may prevail against it is by
keeping the mind of your penitent upon the things of
this world of God.  If you shall perceive this form
of a woman here or there you shall speak to him
quickly of setting up an oratory, or charity to the
poor, or riding, in the name of God, against the false
Scots.  This shall avail little, but somewhat it may.
Do you mark me?"

"Father in God," the monk said, "you put me in
much better heart than I was before.  For if I may,
I will tell you how once I have done."

So the monk, from the darkness, told the Bishop
how for the second time he had seen that lady.  This
was upon the road below Eshot Hill, going to
Morpeth, near the farmhouse called Helm.  Here, as
he rode with the Young Lovell, a little before his men,
he had seen that lady come out of a little wood and
mount upon a white horse with a great company of
damsels upon horses about her.  And so all that
many, brightly clad, rode down to a little hillock and
watched that lording pass them, all smiling together.
So that monk for the first time had been afraid that
this was no St. Katharine and no angel of God.

But the Young Lovell had gone drooping in the
hot sun and thirsting within himself and had not
seen that lady.  And at first that monk had wished
to pull out his breviary and bid the Young Lovell
read a prayer in it.  But in his haste he could not
come upon it amongst his robes for he was riding
upon a mule.  So, in that same haste, he had made
certain lines with his finger nail upon the saddle
before him and commanded the Young Lovell to
look upon them saying it was a plan of Castle Lovell
that he scratched, and the White Tower.  And to
have money, he told the Young Lovell, that lord
must go with a boat to below the White Tower where
it stood in the sea.  And so Richard Raket should
lower him gold in baskets at the end of a rope.

And the Young Lovell had looked down upon
these markings attentively and said it was a good
plan and never looked up at that lady and her
company who sat there, all smiling, until they were
passed.

"Well, she can bide her time," the Bishop said;
then he said: "Brother in God, I have never seen
this Young Lovell, but I perceive that he must be
fair in his body."

"He is the fairest man of his body that ever I saw,"
the monk answered, "And as I have heard said by
servants that went to meet him and his father, to
Venice, he was esteemed the fairest man that those
parts, as all the world, ever saw.  But how that may
be I know not."

"You may say he is the fairest knight of Christendom,"
the Bishop said.  "That is very certain.  I
know it that have never seen this lord....  But so it
is that I see you are not so great a fool as I had
thought.  And it is ever in such ways that you shall
deal with this Young Lovell as you did then."

"I will very well do that, if I may," the monk
said.  "And if I may do nothing more I will spit
upon that foul demon who without doubt beneath a
fair exterior beareth a beak or snout, claws, and
filthy scales...."

"Nay do not do that," the Bishop said, "for if
God who is the ancient of days permitteth these false
gods to walk upon this godly earth that is His, shall
we not think that they are in some sort His guests?
Or so I think, for I do not know."

So by that hour both these churchmen were very
hungry and weary too.  For that reason the fury was
gone out of them, and it was ten at night.  So the
Bishop called for torches in the gallery and went
into a little refectory that he had in that part of
the Castle.  Whilst these two ate heartily together,
the Bishop sent messengers to the higher officers of the
monastery to rouse them from their beds and to say
that shortly after midnight, as soon as they might,
the Prince Bishop begged them to rise from their
sleep and sing a *Te Deum* in the cathedral, upon a
very special occasion.

In the black cathedral, near the steps that pass
into the choir, the Young Lovell knelt.  Beside him,
since he was so great a lord, stood the esquire
Cressingham supporting his banner and his shield and
having in his arm the helmet of state.  There were
lay brothers up before the altar, moving into place a
great statue of Our Lady that ran upon wheels.
This they were bringing from near the North door
to stand before the high altar.  This statue was
twelve foot high of brass gilt and, the better to see,
these lay brothers had placed a candle upon Our
Lady's crown.  That was all the light there was in
the great space that smelt of incense and was sooty
black.

As near as she might to the black line in the
floor—beyond this no woman may go in the cathedral of
Durham and even Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine had
been beaten with rods by the monks when she passed
it to join King Edward—beyond this line knelt the
Lady Margaret of Glororem in the darkness, and
behind a pillar was the lawyer Stone who would fain
speak some words with the Young Lovell.  For he
wished to have sold the people of Castle Lovell to
him if the Young Lovell would pay him a small
price.

The lawyer had waited all that night from seven
or earlier.

Then a little noise began to be heard in the great
cathedral, and two little boys came in and lit candles
by the North door and then came a page bearing a
great sword.  He leant it against a vast pillar and
began to laugh with the little boys that had lit the
candles.  Then there came in the Bishop with his
chaplain and the monk Francis.

So the Bishop went and stood before the Young
Lovell and said he had permission of them of the
monastery to hear that lord confess himself there
where he knelt.  So the esquire Cressingham removed
himself to a distance and drove away the little boys
when they would have approached.  And so the
Bishop absolved the Young Lovell and bade him rise
from his knees and go with him to where the Lady
Margaret of Glororem knelt in darkness.

Her too he bade rise from her knees, and so walked
up and down between them, saying comfortable things
and exhorting them, when the Pope should have
given them licence, to marry one another and live
faithful each to each and to be charitable and piteous
to the poor and be good children of Holy Church.
And so by twos and threes monks began to come in,
and, going behind the high altar, they sang a mass
with a *Te Deum*, for it was just past midnight.

Then the Prior of that monastery placed between
the lips of the Young Lovell the flesh of our Lord.
The Prior wished to do this that he might do honour
to that young lord, and that great boon of giving him
the sacrament.  And, afterwards, with the sword that
page had brought, sitting in his stall the Bishop made
a Knight of that lord.

In that way the Young Lovell had his knighthood
and his pardon.





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   PART III

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   I

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On the fourteenth day of July in the year of our
Lord, 1486, in the dark of the night between two
o'clock and four, the Young Lovell took the Tower of
Cullerford, setting fires all round it and beneath it and
driving out all its inhabitants.  On the seventeenth,
a little before six in the morning, he stood on the
height of the White Tower and looked down into
Castle Lovell.  This was a very still dawn, the sun
being already risen, for it was near midsummer.  The
sea was a clear blue, and in a sky as clear that sun
hung, round and pale gold.  To the eastward, towards
the seas called The Lowlands, were several monstrous
grey shapes, going up into the heavens like tall
columns in a church and twisting in a writhing
manner as if they had been pallid serpents in an
agony.  They advanced towards one another as if
they had been dancers.  Separated again and so ran
before the pale sun, that they appeared to be sentient
beings.  But, waterspouts such as these, far out to
sea, were no very unfamiliar sight in those parts
during hot weather and no man heeded them very
much.

The better to have a sight of this Castle of his—for
the great courtyard was occupied with many
hovels, so that even from on high it was difficult to
see who there was moving—the Young Lovell
mounted upon the parapet of the battlements and
stood looking down.  He was all in his light armour,
for it would fall to him to be very active that day,
so that he had steel only upon his chest, his arms,
and the forepart of his thighs, shins, and feet.  In
such accoutrement he could spring very easily over a
wall five foot in height, and his round helmet was a
very light one of black iron surmounted by a small
lion's head.

This Castle that he now looked down upon was a
very fair great Castle.  The battlements which were a
circle of nearly a quarter of a mile, had in them three
square towers of three stories each and two round
ones of two, the peaked roofs of all these towers being
of slate.  In the centre of the space enclosed by the
battlements rose up the keep, a building of four stories,
four round towers being at each corner that spread
out at the top with places for pouring down lead,
Greek fire, or large stone bullets upon any that should
assault those towers.  But, in between the keep and
the battlements, there had gradually grown up a
congeries of hovels like a dirty thatched town.  The
Young Lovell had never liked this in his father's day,
but then he had been the son and had had no say
in these matters.

This state of things had arisen, although the
tenure of the lands appertaining to the Lovells was as
follows: that is to say, that in time of war each of the
outer towers should be manned by able-bodied
fellows from the one hundred and twenty-seven hamlets,
villages, townships, and parishes that the Lovells
owned.  Thus, giving on the average five capable
tenants to each of these, there should have been six
hundred men to hold the outer walls, being forty men
to each of the towers in the walls and two hundred
and eighty for the battlements between.  The inner
keep should in such a case be held by the best
men-at-arms and the knights and the squires that a Lord
Lovell should have about him.  And the tenure of
the six hundred bondsmen from those hamlets and
parishes was such that, by giving their services for
indefinite periods during times of war for the defence
of that Castle, they were excused all further services,
or service in any other parts.  For it was held, that
the defence of that Castle was very necessary for the
protection of the realm from the false Scots if they
should take Berwick and so come down into England
by that way.

That had been the original tenure, but by little
and little, when the Percies had had those lands of
the Vescis by the treachery of Bishop Anthony Bek,
they had begun to make changes in these tenures,
desiring to have men to accompany them upon
journeys whether against the Kings of England or
Scotland, as suited their humour.  So that in many
townships and parishes the Percies bargained with
their bondsmen for so many days' service in the year
and rent-hens and other things.  And this the
bondsmen had agreed to readily enough.  For, on
account of the perpetual takings and re-takings of the
town of Berwick by the Scots and the English, there
was never any knowing when they might not be called
in to defend that Castle for a year's space at a time,
and so their farmings would go to rack and ruin,
and their towers, barnekyns and very parish churches
lie undefended at the mercy of the false Scots.  And
when the Lovells had bought these lands of the
Percies they had changed the tenure still more, not
so much because they desired to ride upon journeys,
for by comparison with the Percies, they were
stay-at-homes, but because, as a family, the Lovells were
greedy of money and desired rather the payments of
rents and the service of men in their own fields than
much military doings.

So they had had to hire men-at-arms by the year
or for life.  Thus, in that Castle, which had been meant
to be defended by six hundred men upon varying
services, sleeping on the floors of the towers, or here
and there as they could, the Lovells would have a
certain number of men-at-arms, but seldom more than
two hundred and fifty that dwelt there in the Castle.
And because these men-at-arms would have wives
and children and kith and kin, or they would not
stay there, they could not sleep to the number of
many families in these towers, whether round or
square, that went along the battlements.  Some of
them, it is true, took these towers for homes, making
great disorder, keeping them very foul and filthy,
shutting up the meurtrières, or slits for arrows, in
order to keep out draughts, and much unfitting that
Castle for defence when sieges came.  For there, in
those towers which should be places of defence, there
would be warrens of children crying out and shrieking
women.  And other men-at-arms had built them
hovels between the battlements and the keep, building
with mud and roofing with rushes, so that all
that space was like a disorderly town with little streets
and sties for pigs and middens and filthy water that
ran never away.

Thus this place had become a source of manifest
danger, but the Young Lovell's father would not clear
out all these places, because to him they were a source
of much profit, for he employed the women and
children and the hangers on and rabble to work in
his fields all the year round, and so he had much
money by that means.  But because he recognized
that his Castle was thus in some danger—for any
enemy that won on to the battlements might, by
casting down a few torches, set all these roofs on fire,
and so the inner keep would stand in the midst of
a furnace and all those people within the battlements
be burned and slain like rats in a well—the old Lord
Lovell had determined to make a safe place for
himself and for the money that he and his father had
hoarded up, being a very vast sum.  So he had hired
to come to him out of France an esquire called La
Rougerie, being the son of the man that the King
Louis XI of France used to build all his fortresses.
So this La Rougerie had considered very well the
situation and extent of this Castle that upon three
faces was thundered upon by the seas at high tide.
Then that La Rougerie perceived at about ten yards
from the North-east end of the Castle, a crag of rock
well in the sea even at high tide, in shape like a dog's
tooth and nothing useful except to gannets, and not
even to them of much use, for they would not build
their nests so near the Castle.  So this La Rougerie
had advised that Lord Lovell that he should build
upon that rock a great slender but very high tower,
with walls of stone six yards in thickness.  For the
first eighty feet of its height there should be no
openings at all, not so much as slits for the firing of
arrows.  And in the windowless chambers there the
Lord Lovell should keep his treasure walled up.
And above these there should be rooms for the guards
with arrow holes in the form of crosses, and above
these fairer rooms with somewhat larger windows,
where the Lord Lovell and his family might retire, if
so be his Castle should be taken, and above these
dwelling rooms should be attics and granaries where
gunpowder and ammunition should be stored and
arrows and the quarrels of cross-bows, and there the
sakers should be kept so that they should not rust
upon the battlements in time of peace.  And there
were pulleys for hauling up these cannons on to the
battlements above.  Seven of these sakers there were
that could cast a bullet weighing thirty pounds of
stone or fifty of iron, in full flight into the furthest
part of that Castle upon which those battlements
looked down as a church steeple looks into the
graveyard.  For this tower was intended solely for the
protection of that lord and his people in case any
enemy should take the Castle itself.  They would
retreat there by a little narrow drawbridge giving
into a very little door at the foot of the tower, being
thirty feet long, and over a piece of sea that by nature
of the currents, and by reason that the Frenchman
hollowed out the rocks, ran there almost tempestuously
if there were any wind at all, which happened on
most days in these parts.  And once there, the Lord
Lovell could thunder upon his Castle thus taken by
enemies with cannon balls of stone and iron, with
arrows and with iron bolts shot by arbalists.  There
could not any inch of that Castle go unsearched, for
the battlements were one hundred feet above the
keep itself.

This then was the White Tower upon which the
Young Lovell stood.  Up to the seaward side of this
tower he had come from a boat, just before sunrise,
climbing up iron spikes that were inserted in the
mortar for that purpose, and coming to a very small
door in the guard room.  This tower had been held
for him by Richard Bek, Robert Bulman, and Bertram
Bullock, who had been its captains, and dwelt there
in his father's day, being much trusted by the old
Lord Lovell.  These esquires, with ten men, had
held this tower very stoutly against them of the
Castle that could in no wise come to them.  To them
had resorted ten or fifteen other stout fellows, that
had slipped in over the drawbridge or came there by
climbing up the spikes of the seaward wall.  They
victualled themselves how they could from the sea;
but indeed they had food enough within the tower
of the old lord's storing, except that at first they
lacked of fresh meat, which in the summer time was
a grievous thing.

What the Young Lovell could not tell was how
many men they of the Castle had, for some reported
that they had as few as a hundred and eighty, and
others as many as three hundred.  How that might
be it was very difficult to say, for there was a
constant coming and going between Castle Lovell
and Cullerford and Haltwhistle, as well as
Wallhouses, where the evil knight, Henry Vesey, had his
men.  In short, if they had withdrawn all their men
into Castle Lovell they might have three hundred
well armed between them.  And this the Young
Lovell thought might be the case, for when he had
taken the tower of Cullerford there had been very
few men there, or none at all.  So he judged that Sir
Simonde Vesey would have been forced by agreement
to withdraw all his men from Haltwhistle to
the defence of that Castle if Sir Walter Limousin had
agreed to leave Cullerford defenceless.  And without
doubt, too, the Vesey of Wallhouses would have his
men there as well.  Thus there might be as many as
three hundred stout fellows there, and that might
make the adventure a difficult one, for the Young
Lovell had not gathered any more men himself,
though what he had were mostly very proved fighting
men, there being five knights that were his friends,
twenty-seven esquires, one hundred and twenty of
his own men, and those the best, and one hundred
and seventy that were the picked men of his friends
and of the Lady Margaret of Glororem.

So he had gone up to the battlements to see how
many men he could observe in that Castle.  But
because he could not very well see between the
openings in the battlements, he seized his chance
and sprang on to the very top of the stones.  He
had observed the watchman on the keep below him.
This man walked regularly from side to side, keeping
his watch, and at each turn he would be gone
regularly for as long as you could count ninety-eight.
So, in the absence of that watchman, he stood there
and looked down.

But until he stood there many things had gone
before; there were so many people active about his
affairs.  There were the Bishop Palatine, Sir Bertram
of Lyonesse, the old Princess of Croy, the Lady
Margaret, the Earl of Northumberland, the
bondsman Hugh Raket, and the people in the Castle
themselves.  And all these ran up and down that
county of Northumberland upon the Young Lovell's
affairs.

Let us consider them in that order.

First there was the Bishop Palatine, John Sherwood.
He did not stir himself much.  Nevertheless
he sent a messenger to the people of the Castle—the
Knights of Cullerford, Haltwhistle, and Wallhouses,
as well as the Decies.  He warned them that he had
given his full absolution to the Young Lovell, and
had accepted his homage as a tenant-in-chief of the
See of Durham.  He commanded them, therefore, on
pain of absolution, to evacuate the Castle and lands of
that lord.  Those in the Castle replied with an
assurance of their ready and prompt obedience to the
Prince Bishop.  They said that they would immediately
set the Young Lovell in possession of all such
lands and emoluments as he held as tenant-in-chief
of the Palatine see.  They would do it immediately
upon his producing to them the title deeds and
charters of such lands of his.  For, as matters were,
they did not know which of his lands and townships
he held of the Prince Bishop and which of the King,
their most dread lord.  As for his holdings from the
King, those they could not, nay, they dare not,
surrender; for these had been adjudged to them
by a writ fouled in the court of the Warden of the
Eastern Marches.  That might be a small matter in
itself, but, in addition to the assigning of the lands to
themselves, there went certain huge fines to the King,
as was fit and proper.  At that moment they were
very ready to surrender their own holding of the
Castle, but they could not themselves pay the fine
to the King, for they had not so much money
amongst them.  Supposing, therefore, that the
Young Lovell held that Castle of the King, they
would be guilty of high treason if they surrendered
it without paying those fines, and they could not
pay themselves, neither could they have any security
that the Young Lovell would do so.

So they said they would very willingly surrender
all the lands that that lord held of the Palatine see
as the Young Lovell should produce to them his
charters and show which was which.

This was a very cunning answer, for by professing
to be so ready to surrender at the command of the
Bishop that prelate was precluded from proceeding to
their instant excommunication which he would have
done.  That would have caused at least half of their
men, if not a greater proportion, to fall away from
them, for there was a sufficiency of piety left in the
North parts.  Moreover, as against that answer, the
Bishop was advised that he could not, as he would
willingly have done, send his own forces with the
Young Lovell against the Castle.  For it was true
enough that, until the Young Lovell could appeal
against that judgment of the Lord Percy's, those false
knights held a certain part of his lands in the interests
of the King, so that the Prince Bishop could not well
war upon them.

As for the Young Lovell's deeds and charters they
were hidden up by the Knight of Haltwhistle in his
tower at that place, so that, for the moment, he could
by no means come at them and it was difficult for the
Bishop's advisers to say how he might have them
again.  For they had not even any certain evidence
that those muniments were at Haltwhistle.  The
Young Lovell had the news of Elizabeth Campstones,
his old nurse, and she was a prisoner in the Castle.  It
was true that the lawyer Stone had by that time come
round to the side of the Young Lovell, and he was
assured that those charters and deeds had been
removed to the tower at Haltwhistle.  Still he had
not seen this done, for they had gone at dead of night.

Therefore the Bishop wrote another letter to them
of the Castle, saying he was assured that they and no
others held all those deeds and summoning them
immediately to surrender.  To this the Decies
answered that he had not those deeds and papers: that
they were very certainly not in that fortress as far as
he commanded it: that he would very willingly
surrender them, but he did not know where they
were.  He imagined that they might be in the White
Tower over which he had no control.

The lawyer Stone said that that might very well
be the truth that was in the Decies' mind.  For that
ignorant fool was mostly heavy with wine.  The evil
Knight of Wallhouses had counselled the others that
they should make the Decies commander in name of
that Castle at the very first, so that if any penalties
should fall on any heads for the seizure it should be
on the Decies'.  Moreover, they had removed the
muniments without telling the Decies, so that they
might the more easily be rid of him when it served
their turn.

Thus the Bishop's advisers said that here was a
very difficult and lengthy matter to deal with.  For if
the Bishop should write to any one of those cunning
people for those deeds he would immediately, or
beforehand, pass them on to the other and say he
could not surrender them since he had them not.  If
on the other hand he wrote to them all at once they
would give the deeds to their wives or to some safe
person and so make the same answer.  So they must
issue writs against all the county at the same moment.

So far the Bishop had got in those fourteen days.
In the meantime it was the turn of the Knight of
Lyonesse.

This Sir Bertram rode well attended to the Castle
of Warkworth to talk with the Earl of Northumberland
and to lay before him all the truth of that
matter, and how the King did not wish that the North
parts should be enraged against him.  And at first
the Earl treated this Cornish knight with little
courtesy.  But very soon that Sir Bertram showed to
the Earl a paper that he had of the King to empower
Sir Bertram to remove the Earl from the wardenship
of the Eastern Marches if the Earl would not do all
that Sir Bertram bade him.  And Sir Bertram proved
to the Earl how necessary it was, the King's purse
being at that time in no good condition, to win the
goodwill of the great lords of the North.  He said
that the Earl might take all that he could get from
the poorer people, but the nobles he must keep his
claws from.

Then the Earl agreed with Sir Bertram upon that
matter and they set their heads together to see what
they might do.  And here again it was no easy
matter to act by course of law.  For there was no
doubt that the Earl had given his judgment against
the Young Lovell, and there was no process that he
knew of by which he could reverse a judgment that
he had once given.  The Young Lovell must make
an appeal to the King in Council and that was a long
process.  The Earl was willing—though not
over-willing—to call out his own ban and arrière ban and to
take Castle Lovell by due course of siege.  But, if he
did that, he must kill utterly the Decies, the two
other knights, Sir Henry Vesey of Wallhouses, and
the two sisters of the Young Lovell.  Moreover, to do
as much, the Earl must draw off a great number of
his men, and he did not trust some of his neighbours
over much.  Also, if any one of those persons
escaped he or she would have cause to begin endless
lawsuits against the Percy for slaying the others or
even for taking the Castle from them.  For they had
his own writ for holding it.  Moreover, the Young
Lovell would by no means hear of the Percy's laying
siege to his Castle.  For all that Sir Bertram could
say, he declared that if the Percy did this he would
fall upon the Percy's forces with his own men.  He
said that, in the first place it would be black shame
to him; in the second, the Percy must needs bang
Castle Lovell about more than he himself would care
to see, before ever he came in; and finally the Young
Lovell shrewdly doubted whether the Percy would
ever come out again once he was in.

In the same way the Young Lovell would have no
men of the Percy to help him in the attack on his
Castle, for he would not trust the Earl of Northumberland.
Thus the Knight of Lyonesse did very little of
what he was most minded to do.  For he wished not
only to help the Young Lovell and so make him a
friend to the King, but he desired to reconcile him
with the Earl of Northumberland that there might be
peace in the North parts.  However, Sir Bertram
achieved this much, that the Young Lovell would
let the Lord of Alnwick be in peace if the Lord of
Alnwick would let him be, and that was something
gained, for at first the Young Lovell had
declared that he would try it out with the Percy
as soon as he had achieved his first enterprise.
But the Percy sent him a very courteous apology,
saying that he had delivered his judgment against the
Young Lovell only because he must do so as a justice
according to the law as the lawyers advised him and
that now he was very sorry that he had done it.

For now the raider Gib Elliott was boasting in all
the market towns that he had access to, saying that
he had held the Young Armstrong prisoner for three
months and had ransomed him in Edinburgh.  This
Elizabeth Campstones, his foster-cousin, had got him
to do, sending him word by a little boy and the
promise of fifty French crowns.  And indeed he was
very glad to do it, since it might not only cause
strong fellows to resort to him for the renown of it,
but it might gain him the friendship of the Young
Lovell, which would be a good thing for his widow
when he came to be hanged at Carlisle.

And everybody was very glad of that rumour—the
Bishop Palatine because it was more to the credit
of the Young Lovell whom he supported; the Earl
of Northumberland and Sir Bertram of Lyonesse,
because it afforded them an excuse for writing broad
letters to the King and his Council, asking that the
former judgment given by the Earl might be reversed
because of the perjury by which it was obtained.
The Young Lovell was glad of it too.  He thought
that it was better for his bondsmen that they should
not believe that their lord had spent three months
gazing on a fairy woman.  For that otherwise they
would believe and that it was some make of sorcery,
for all that the Bishop had given him absolution.  The
Young Lovell considered that it is not always good
for the lower orders, set in their places by God, to
know truths apart from the truths of Holy Church.
For the lower orders have weak brains wherein too
much truth is like new wine in feeble bottles.

But the Knight of Lyonesse, who had been
bidden by King Henry, if he could, to establish
himself in the North parts with lands and worship,
and to do it, if possible, without calling upon the
King to pay for it, went upon another enterprise
before June was fourteen days old.  For on all hands
he heard that the Lady Rohtraut of Castle Lovell
was the richest dowager for lands in all Northumberland,
and by the disposition of his mind he was not
desirous of marrying a young girl that might make a
mock of him or worse.  Moreover, he heard that the
Lady Rohtraut was a fair enough woman of forty-three,
with a good temper if she were well-used and
not dishonoured, and that he thought he could do
well enough.  So he was doubly anxious to be of
service to the Young Lovell, for, the more he heard of
it, the more he was certain that this lady would make
a good match for him, and that so he would please
King Henry.

For her lands were broad and mostly fertile for
the North; her Castle at Cramlin would be a very
strong Castle after the Young Lovell had finished the
repairs to it at his own expense and it stood very
handy at the entrance into Northumberland, so that
with help in men from the King, he might very easily
work against troubles in that part, whether they came
from the North or the South.

So, being in that mind, he went after ten days to
pay his devoirs to the old Princess of Croy, for, after
he had dwelt with her for one day, he had considered
that she desired to charge him too much for his
lodging and that he could do better for himself at an inn,
where he could send out for his meat and have it
cooked by his own man at the common fire.  He had
enquired of the prices of meat in that town and
found that that was so.

But now he wished that he had not done that,
since he might have gained more of the old Princess's
favour by paying her exorbitant prices.  However, he
found that that was not the case, for that Princess had
so great a respect for money that she esteemed a man
the more for being careful of his purse strings, even
though it hurt her own pocket.  So she greeted him
with pleasure and said that she wished her son, Lord
Dacre, had been another such.

Sir Bertram had observed a great white mule—the
largest he had ever seen—to stand before her door,
and she told him that she was just about to set out
upon a journey.  For, said she, and her face bore
every sign of fury, the Young Lovell, as Sir Bertram
had heard, had treated her with lewd disrespect and
she was minded to read him a lesson.  "Madam and
my Granddam and gentle Princess," he had said to
her—and she mimicked his tones with so much anger
that she spat on each side of her, "my mother has
languished in prison during half a year and all that
time you have done nothing for her."

And now, the old woman said, she was going to
do something for her daughter that the Young Lovell
would never dare to do.  For upon a pillion on that
mule, behind her old steward, she was about to ride
to Castle Lovell.  No guards she would take and no
bowman, and there was no other Christian in the City
of Durham that dare do as much in those dangerous
lands.  And being come to Castle Lovell, she would
release her daughter with her own hands and all
alone, and what make of a boasting fool would that
Young Lovell appear then!

The Knight of Cornwall, when he heard those
words, bent one knee on the ground and begged that
that Princess would take him with her, for he would
gladly do so much for that fair lady as well as witness
the Princess doing these things.  The Princess looked
at him sideways in a queer glance and said that he
might do if he would bring no men-at-arms to spoil
the fame of her feat.  He answered that he had the
courage for that, but he said gravely that it might be
for the comfort of the Lady Rohtraut, who had not
the courage of her mother and would fear to travel
alone, if his men-at-arms to the number of forty
followed behind them, and so, meeting them at Belford
or somewhere in that neighbourhood, guarded them
on the homeward road.  The Princess said that he
might do that.

So they rode out and in four days' time they came
to Castle Lovell.  The Princess was on the white
mule behind her steward and Sir Bertram was on a
little horse.  For, although he would have presented
a more splendid appearance to the Lady Rohtraut
upon a charger, he did not wish to be at the charges
for horsefeed for such a great animal, whereas the
galloway could subsist off the grass and herbs that it
found by the roadway, though all green things were
by that time much withered by the drought.  Such
weather had never been known in the North parts.

They met with no robbers; only, as they went
near the sea to avoid the town of Morpeth so that
the Young Lovell should not hear of this adventure,
he being at Cramlin all this time—near High
Clibburn and just north of Widdrington Castle there
met with them Adam Swinburn, a broken gentleman
with ten fellows and would have robbed them.  But
when he heard how they were going to rescue the
Lady Rohtraut that all the world was talking of he
burst into an immoderate fit of laughter.  For he had
never had such cause for amusement as to see this fat
old woman holding on behind a lean old servingman,
with a man all in silks and colours with a great brown
beard upon a little horse beside her, his feet brushing
the ground.  And these three were going to storm a
mighty Castle that no forces before ever had sufficed
to take.  So, when he had done laughing, he rode
with them a great piece of the way, even as far as
Lesbury and past Warkworth.  For he said that if
the Earl of Northumberland saw them he would
certainly rob them and so deprive that countryside of
a great jest.  Sir Bertram found this Adam—who
was red-headed like all the Swinburns—very
pleasant company, and when they parted Sir
Bertram swore that when it came to hanging that
Adam he would pray the King, if he could not save
his life, at least to let it be done with a silken rope.

So, on the fourteenth day of June, at eleven in
the morning—and that was seven hours after the
Young Lovell took and burned the tower of
Cullerford—the mule being very tired and the galloway
none too fresh, that company of five, men and beasts,
climbed wearily up the hill to Castle Lovell.  The
captain of the tower called Wanshot where the gate
was, let them pass, for he could not see any danger
from this old woman and the man in silks.  At the
door of the keep the Princess slid down from her
mule, and pushing the guards there in the chest with
her crutch, she went past them into the great hall
and the guards let Sir Bertram follow her.  In the
hall, and crossing it, they found Sir Henry Vesey
devising beside a pillar with his sister-in-law Douce
that was a little woman.  The Princess with a furious
voice bade this Lady Douce fall upon her knees, for
this was her granddam.  That the Lady Douce did,
for she could think of no reason to excuse her
from it.

Then the Princess Rohtraut began to call out for
the keys of her daughter's room, and various men
came running in as well as the Lady Isopel, that was
the other grand-daughter.  There was a great noise,
and so Sir Bertram of Lyonesse drew Sir Henry
Vesey behind a pillar, and in a low voice strongly
enjoined on him to let the Lady Rohtraut go.  For
he said that he was the King's commissioner and that
all that were in that Castle were in a very evil case,
for very likely it would soon be taken and all the men
there hanged.  And he said that Sir Henry was in a
different case from the other leaders and that he, Sir
Bertram, promised to save his life and gain favour for
him with the King if he would let the Lady Rohtraut
go.  Moreover, he whispered that, Sir Symonde his
brother being dead, Sir Henry might have his lands
and be free to love his sister-in-law as he listed.  For
the rumour went that this evil knight was over-fond
of the Lady Douce, and it was in that way Elizabeth
Campstones saved her life.  For, when there was talk
of hanging her for having talked to the Young Lovell,
she told the Lady Douce that she would inform
against her to her husband—which well she could do.
So the Lady Douce begged her life of the others.

And after Sir Bertram had talked for a time to Sir
Henry Vesey, making him those fair promises, Sir
Henry sent a boy for the keys of Wanshot Tower.
When he had them he begged that Princess very
courteously to follow him, saying that he would take her
to her daughter and so set her free.  Then began a great
clamour between the Ladies Douce and Isopel.  The
Lady Isopel said that Sir Henry should not do this,
the Lady Douce that he should, for she was in all
things the slave of Sir Henry, and that the Lady
Isopel told her very loudly.  But the Knights of
Cullerford and Haltwhistle had ridden out to see if
they could have news of the Young Lovell, for they
knew that he was gathering his forces to come against
them.

So Sir Henry did not at all heed the clamour of
the Lady Isopel, but walked very grandly before the
Princess Rohtraut to Wanshot Tower, and sparks of
triumph came from that hobbling old woman's eyes.
So when he was come to the door on the inner side
of the wall Sir Henry gave into the hands of the
Princess the two keys, one of that door and one of
the room where the Lady Rohtraut was.  Then the
Princess went into that tower, and after a space
down she came again, and with her were the Lady
Rohtraut and Elizabeth Campstones.  The Lady
Rohtraut took nothing away with her but the clothes
she had on her back.  Only in her great sleeves she
had her little lapdog called Butterfly.

They went as fast as they could up the Belford
road, for they were afraid of meeting with Cullerfurd
or Haltwhistle.  But they had only been gone a little
way—the Lady Rohtraut and Elizabeth Campstones
riding on Sir Bertram's galloway—when they came
upon Sir Bertram's men that were riding over the lea
to find him.

That was the first sight Sir Bertram had of that
lady whom afterwards, to the scandal of all the North
parts, he married.  For he was accounted a man of
very mean birth and she a very noble lady.  But he
made her a very good husband, doing her proper
honour and very ably conducting her lawsuits, so that
she had never a word to say against him.

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As for Sir Henry Vesey, when the Knights of
Cullerford and Haltwhistle came back, the Lady
Isopel cried out against him, calling him a false
traitor.  But Sir Henry said that the King's
commissioner had given him very good reasons why they
should let the Lady Rohtraut go.  As thus: The
Young Lovell, as they had known for a week, held
that lady's Castle of Cramlin as well as her houses of
Plessey and Killingworth and all her lands.  They,
on the other hand, held her title deeds, so that was
all they could have.  If they could have known of the
taking of Castle Cramlin earlier, they might have
taken it again, by going there in a hurry, but now the
Young Lovell sat there, and he was a very difficult
commander, and every day more men came in to his
orders.  They could never get him out of that Castle.

But they held that lady only in order to force her
willingly to resign those very lands to them.  What,
then, would it avail them to hold her any longer,
since, if she resigned them twenty times over, the
Young Lovell would never let them go?  As for
threatening to slay that lady if the Young Lovell did
not give them her lands, that was more than they
dare, so it would enrage all that countryside against
them.  Even as it was, some that they had counted
on as being their friends had fallen away and, if that
went further, they would never be able to have fresh
meat from their towers.

So Sir Henry gave them many excellent reasons
for his action.  The Knight of Cullerford would have
grumbled against him, for his wife, the Lady Isopel,
set him to it.  But his brother, Sir Symonde, said he
had done very well, for his wife made him say that.
The Decies was drunk and took no part in that
council.  Moreover, they were all afraid of Sir Henry
Vesey, and he treated them like children that must
do his bidding.





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   II

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Indeed they had few of them much joy in that Castle
where at first they had thought to have had great
mirth.  Only three days before Adam Swinburn,
that had sworn to stand their friend, had ridden to a
knoll near at hand and had asked to have speech
with Sir Symonde Vesey, who was more his friend
than the others.  So Sir Symonde had gone to a
little window that was near the ground in the tower
called Constance, and from there had spoken with
him.  And Adam Swinburn had said that in no way
could he any longer promise to aid them, for it was
grown too dangerous.  He preferred to rob upon the
roads.  And he counselled them very strongly to
make a peace with the Young Lovell who was
gathering many men, all the countryside being his
friends, and had sworn to hang every man of them
that was a leader from the White Tower, and to put
his sisters into nunneries.  And he said that John of
Rokehope and James Cra'ster the younger, as well
as Haggerston and Lame Cresswell, who desired to
make their peace with King Henry, were all of like
mind with him.

It was upon his homeward journey from saying
this that Adam Swinburn had come upon the
Princess Rohtraut and Bertram of Lyonesse.

All these people, Cra'ster, Haggerston, Lame
Cresswell, Adam Swinburn, and others had, in the
earlier days of their being at Castle Lovell, held
high revel there with them.  They were mostly rude
and boisterous gentry of very good family who,
having been ruined fighting for or against King
Edward IV, King Richard or King Henry, were
outlawed and lived by robbery, which was also the
case with Sir Henry Vesey, of Wallhouses.  And
when those of the Castle had at first seemed to be
triumphing these raiders had made great cause with
them.  They hoped that thus they might get their
lands again of the King.  So they had feasted there
and drunk and slept in one tower or another along
the walls, and had sworn to hold those towers if ever
Castle Lovell was attacked.

But, by little and little, all of these gentry had
wanted money, and of that those of that Castle had
very little or none at all to give them.  All the old
Lord Lovell's money was in the White Tower, and
the bondsmen and other feudal debtors of Castle
Lovell refused them their dues.

These things were very sore blows to those of the
Castle.  They had hoped that Richard Bek, the
captain of the White Tower, would surrender that
money to them so that they would have been able to
give some of it to those boon companions.  But
Richard Bek would not even answer their summonses;
and when they had begged the outlaws to aid them
to take the White Tower, James Cra'ster had
answered courteously for the rest that they would
very willingly have done it had they had wings, but
they were not gannets nor yet the angels of God,
and so they could not.  It was the same thing when
those of the Castle asked the outlaws to ride down
among the bondsmen that would not pay their
rent-hens.  None of them would do it.

For the truth of the matter was that Adam
Swinburn and the rest were too good friends of
Hugh Raket, Barty of the Comb, Corbit Jock, the
Widow Taylor with her seven able sons, and the rest.
They were the most capable rievers that they could
find to ride under their leadership into Scotland or
elsewhere.  Even Sir Henry Vesey, of Wallhouses,
had their aid and company at times.

For the matter of that, Sir Henry Vesey, of
Wallhouses, was not so very eager to aid them of
the Castle; as the time went on he grew less keen
about it.  For what they got out of it beyond the
shelter of the stone walls he could not tell.

At the first his brother and Sir Walter Limousin
had promised him his share of the plunder in the
Castle and the money in the White Tower.  But
the plunder in the Castle had been a small matter.
It was not much they had got for the armour sold to
Morpeth, though he had taken some of the best
pieces and sent them for safety to Wallhouses; they
had got very little for such furnishings and carpets as
they had sold to the German at Sunderland, and the
jewels, as has been told, they could not sell at all.

They had the Castle, but in it not much more
than two hundred men, which was little to hold so
so great a place with.  Thus they could not hold it,
as castles are held, as a place from which to ride
out and rob in the Borders; they could not spare
the men.

So, when Adam Swinburn and the others understood
how that case really was, they went, one after
the other, away from the towers in the wall where
they had slept with their men.  They went with
courtesy, saying that they would come again and
defend those towers if there were need of it.  But
the truth of the matter was that all of the fresh meat
was eaten, which is a thing very unbearable in
summer; the best wine was all drunk, for they had
pressed heavily on the liquors in the early days;
they had tired of all the serving maids that there
were in the Castle; the Lady Douce was occupied
with Sir Henry Vesey; the Lady Isopel was ugly
and a shrew.  So they had neither desirable wine
nor women; not much prospect of meat nor gold,
and what else should keep them?  Therefore they
rode away.

Then those of the Castle sat down there to wait
until Richard Bek, the captain of the White Tower,
should surrender, so that they might take the gold.
But that was a long matter.  For Richard Bek and
his men had at their command a great store of the
best commodities that had belonged to the late lord.
He had stored them in that strong place that was
made for it.  Sugar even they had and pepper and
pippins, and the best wine and figs in honey.  They
of the Castle had not even fish for Fridays or none
but salted cod.  But they could see Richard Bek
and his men catching fish from the sea with long
lines.  The water did not come up far enough to let
those in the Castle catch fish even at high tides; but
to the foot of the White Tower which was further
out it came at all times, and the Lord Lovell, under
the directions of the French castle-builder, had had
the rocks there hollowed away so that a boat could
ride there very comfortably when the weather was
not too rough.  Nevertheless, over that sort of
boat-house a machicolation jutted out, so that the
boats of any enemy could be swamped with great
stones or set burning by means of Greek fire.

Thus those in the Castle could perceive those of
the Tower receiving from the sea the carcases of
sheep, goats, and small bullocks, so that those men
lived very well and comfortably, and there seemed
little reason for their ever rendering up that place
which the Lord Lovell had built very cunningly for
just such an occasion.  Of wheat in the Castle they
had a sufficient store, and also of salt meat and
stock fish.

For two of the towers in the outer wall, that
called Constance and that called de Insula, after the
Bishop of that name, were nothing less than the one a
wheat pit and the other a brine cistern.  Those
towers contained a chamber each, in the upper story,
but all beneath it, to the ground, was windowless
space.  In the brine that filled thus the tower
Constance there floated the carcases of two thousand
sheep, one thousand swine, five hundred goats, and
five hundred oxen.

Thus they had enough of that sort of food, and in
addition they had a great quantity of peas in a barn.
But of fresh meat they had none at all.  When they
wished for it they must send for beasts to Cullerford
or Haltwhistle, and on the second occasion that they
did this they lost fourteen steers and a quantity of
sheep and goats.  For, as their men drove these
beasts along by the Roman Wall, in a very lonely
spot, there came springing down upon them a great
number of men well armed, but with their faces
blacked.  These killed two of the Castle Lovell men
and drove away all their cattle through a gap in the
Wall towards the North.  Those in the Castle
thought that this had been done by Haggerston and
Lame Cresswell, who were fast friends, and by Barty
of the Comb and his fellows.  But they had no proof
of this, so they could not even fyle a bill against
them in the Warden's Court.  Moreover, three weeks
before they had heard that a vessel was come to
Hartlepool that had a number of cannon on board
and more than she needed for her defence.  These
they desired to buy so as to try conclusions with the
White Tower.  They had with them at that season
a Ridley of Willimoteswick as a guest.  He was going
by sea into Holland, and to this Ridley they confided
the buying of such cannon as he could get for them
from that ship as well as a great store of gunpowder,
for this Ridley was a very honourable man and they
could well trust him.  So they gave him a hundred
and fifty pounds.  One or other of those knights
might have gone on this errand, but by this time
they were all grown very irritable and suspicious,
and believed each of them that the others would
work him some mischief if he went away even for a
little time.  For there they were kicking their heels
in that fine summer weather, without comfort or
occupation.  They hardly dared to ride hunting
without such a troop of men-at-arms as scared all
the deer out of the woods, and at that season of the
year they should have been riding into Scotland
for their profit and to do feats of arms.  Yet there
they sat.

A week after that they had a letter from that
Ridley of Willimoteswick to say that he had not
bought their cannon and should not.  For he had
heard from his cousin Ridley, that was the monk
Francis of Belford, how the Young Lovell was alive
that they had sworn to him to be dead.  Moreover,
that lord had done no sorcery at all, but all that was
false witnessing.  Therefore Ridley of Willimoteswick
counselled them very earnestly to give up that Castle
to its rightful lord or he would never be their friend
again.  Moreover, he said that the monk Francis
advised him that the hundred and fifty pounds they
had given him for the purchase of cannon was no
money of theirs but belonged of right to the Young
Lovell.  How that might be he did not know, but he
was determined to buy them no cannon and to hold
that money in his own hands until the rightful
ownership should be determined.

Then those of the Castle cried out on the evil that
there was in their world and time, and that there was
neither faith nor truth in man.  The heat blazed
down upon them; the Castle stank, and now terror
began to come into their souls so that the women
wakening in the night or walking round the corners
of the stony corridors would scream out suddenly.
For on all hands they heard how the Young Lovell's
men resorted to him and how Richard Bek had sent
him basketsful of gold from the White Tower, lowering
them to boats that came on his behalf in the dawn.
And knowing him as well as they did, they knew that
he was a very fierce and cruel man to evil-doers and
destroyers of order in his lands.

Then there came those letters from the Bishop
and spread dismay amongst them, for the Lady Isopel
had a great dread of priests and raised perpetual
outcry in the Castle, asking that it should be given up
to the Bishop.  So they answered those letters as
best they could.  Then came other letters from the
Earl of Northumberland in which he reded them very
strongly to give up that Castle and sue for mercy.
For, said the Earl, he must now withdraw from them
all his countenance and he had written a broad letter
to the King in his Council praying him to reverse the
judgment that that Earl had given, on false witness
brought before him, against the Young Lovell.

So, upon that, they sent for all the armed men
they had from Cullerford and Haltwhistle and Wallhouses,
and kept men continually on the walls in arms,
for they could not tell at what moment the Young
Lovell might not break in upon them like a raging wolf.
And at last Sir Henry Vesey said that the moment
was come for them to make the best terms that they
could with their kinsman, and that if they would not
he would get him gone from that Castle with all his
men, for who could tell at what moment that lord
might not burn down Wallhouses itself?  Therefore
they sent a letter to the Young Lovell at Cramlin
Castle where they heard that he was, saying that if
he would surrender to them half his mother's lands
and ten thousand pounds in gold they would give up
to him that his Castle and go to live in their own
houses and towers, and as for the Decies the Young
Lovell might deal with him how he would.

To that letter no answer came and their messenger
that bore it never came back.  Fear fell still more
upon them because of this silence, in which they
seemed to read better than in any letter the menacing
nature of their kinsman's fell spirit.  And at that
time they began to talk of running each to his own
home, and this they would have done but that they
feared that in that way the Young Lovell would fall
upon them the more easily, each one in his little
tower.  Moreover, their own men would by no means
suffer this.

These men were of several minds.  Some had
been promised great sums of money to come into that
Castle, and they would by no means let the Knights of
Cullerford and Haltwhistle go unless they had their
pay, but proposed to hold them prisoners there in the
hope of receiving pay from the Young Lovell.  Others
thought that they could very well hold that strong
Castle, beat off the Young Lovell and take the White
Tower, if one of their number were elected their
captain instead of these irresolute knights.  Others
desired to murder those knights and their ladies, and
to take the jewels that they had and so to scatter
about the country each to his own intent.

The men of Sir Henry Vesey were, however, faithful
enough to him.  He made the others pay them at
least, though they could not pay their own, and even
without it they would have been his very good
servants, for he was always a fortunate commander in
raids, being as cunning as a fox and very brave.  So
he knew himself to be very safe, and he assured the
Lady Douce that she need have no fear, for his men
would protect her as well as him.  Of late he had
thought much of the Lady Margaret Glororem in the
way of love—more particularly when he had
considered the Young Lovell to be dead.  And indeed
that lady had no hatred for him, since she considered
him to be cunning and humorous and brave.  And
possibly she would have married him, for marry
somebody a rich young maiden must, be her heart
never so broken, in the North.

So, in that time, Sir Henry Vesey and the Lady
Douce had quarrelled bitterly, for she was most
jealous.  But since the Young Lovell had come
again they were once more friends.

So there they all sat and waited, the Knights of
Cullerford and Haltwhistle riding out daily a little
way to see what news they might get.  They heard
that there was a great gathering of Eures, Ridleys,
Widdringtons and others at Glororem, and at the
neighbouring Castle of Bamborough where the King's
captain gave them shelter.  But of where the Young
Lovell might be they could get no news; only they
heard that he had left Cramlin, having with him
nearly a hundred men.

Of when he would come against them they could
not tell at all; they could not even tell whether their
own men would fight for them.  Only they thought
they might; for the men of the North parts of those
days were great fighters and would seldom miss an
opportunity of a tulzie, unless there was a great
football match to go to, and even for that generally they
would contrive to leave off a fight for the time being,
to resume it after the game was over.  And they
would do as much for a horse-race, though they
preferred football, as being the more dangerous.





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   III

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In the meantime the Young Lovell had dwelt at
Cramlin.  There was nothing that had not prospered
with him, or that by diligence, cunning or swiftness
he had not made to prosper.  Daily men
resorted to him and sought his service, coming in
from the hills and moors and Debateable Lands, all
strong and hardy men so that it was difficult to make
a choice.

In a week's time it was known what his terms
were.  To every man that he took with him he
would give three pounds English, for there would be
little booty; such prisoners as they took he would
ransom himself, for he wished to have them at his
disposal to spare or to slay as seemed best to him.
Such cattle as they took they might keep for
themselves, or he would buy them at a fair price, for he
understood that there were none left at Castle Lovell,
where he would need them when he was the lord
settled in that place.  These terms he would make
with every man, whether of his own men-at-arms,
those he hired especially, or those that were the men
of his friends.  In the meantime he would find them
in wine, meat, beer, bread and shelter.

In that way he had soon four hundred picked
men—being one hundred and fifty archers, two
hundred men-at-arms, and fifty of his bondsmen or
bondsmen of his friends, men that were notable, light
and swift-moving rievers.

There had joined him at Cramlin five young
knights and eleven esquires that had been his friends
before.  These were Eures, Ridleys, Widdringtons,
Riddells of Felton, Greys and Roddams, all being
young men of his own generation.  At first those
of them that had fathers, uncles, or guardians found
it a hard thing to get the consent of these to their
going.  For the days were past then of riding upon
knight errantry, crusades, chevauchees, and other
enterprises more splendid than profitable, and most
fathers would not very willingly let their young men
go fighting unless the gain in money much outweighed
the costs.  They would ride very well into
Scotland if they were a great many together, so that
it was a safe journey; but at that day France was
lost to England.  Most fathers would have gladly let
their sons ride into France; such an enterprise as
that of the Black Prince was still talked of.  In that
chevauchee he had ridden through France from north
to south, from Calais to Marseilles, and had sacked
more than six hundred towns and slain more than
sixty thousand men, meeting with very little
resistance.  That had been a very chivalrous, gentle,
joyous, and splendid raid.  But since then France
was gone; no Prince should ever make such a
chevauchee again across that pleasant land; and the
wars between King Henry VI and King Edward IV,
and later between King Richard III and him that
was then King Henry had impoverished and
embittered all the older men of the North that knew
things by hard facts rather than books of faicts of
arms.  These men were rather bitter, cynical, and
perforce mercenary, than loyal, pious, and chivalric.
They viewed with disfavour this enterprise that
meant the attacking of a strong Castle, strongly held,
with only a few men, no cannon, and not so much as
a mangonel, a catapult, or such old-fashioned things.
On the other hand, if their sons went to such a siege,
they must go, richly caparisoned, in the best armour
that they or their fathers had, and at great cost, for
the Young Lovell was a great lord, and they could
not let their sons and nephews come before him in
ill harness.  Yet, in such a desperate siege, such
armour must at least be battered and dinted, the
silken housings torn, the great chargers lamed, even
if the young men were not killed or held for ransom
in black mail or white.  And even if that Castle
should be taken there would be no great rewards—they
could not sack it, for it would be their
friend's.  They would have nothing for it but praise,
renown, the love of God, and the approval of Holy
Church, as well as some plenary indulgences.  But
these were all things that filled no bellies and brought
no cattle home.

Nevertheless, as from the first news of Young
Lovell's home-coming the days went on, there came
every day fresh news of how blind Fortune held her
wheel still and favoured that lord.  Those elders
heard how, as it seemed, miraculously, he had taken
Cramlin and held his mother's broad lands; how the
Bishop had blessed and knighted him; how the
King's commissioner hastened to do him service, and
bent before him, and the Earl of Northumberland at
his side.  Then they heard of men-at-arms flocking
to him, and, at last, how the White Tower was held
for him that had in it one hundred and forty thousand
pounds in gold and many rich stores.  And they
heard how, in boats, during four days at dawn,
Richard Bek had sent him six thousand pounds, so
that he could very sumptuously entertain any knights
that came to him.  Then, indeed, it seemed to these
elder men that it might be profitable then, and in
the future, to aid this favourite of the blind
goddess—for some of them had learning enough to
have heard that Fortune is blind, though many
had not.

And all this while their sons and nephews and
bastards pressed them unceasingly for leave to go on
this enterprise, saying that it was not easy to have
experience in the taking of strong castles, and that
the Young Lovell was a leader that it would be great
glory to serve under.  So the elders yielded under
these considerations, doing what they would not for
the love of God at the bidding of Holy Church, or for
the sake of oppressed chivalry.  Therefore, the monk
Francis, who heard of many of these discussions, and
took part in one or two where the lords were in easy
reach, said that those were very evil times where no
thought was of anything but money, and God so
nearly forgotten.  And he said that before long a
great calamity should fall upon England; nay, that
the saints of God must soon leave hovering over a
country so vile.

Nevertheless, afterwards he somewhat changed
his note when he saw how many young knights of
good family came to join the Young Lovell.  These
were, as has been said, five knights and eleven
esquires of the families of Eures, Ridleys, Widdringtons,
Riddells of Felton, Greys and Roddams.
Amongst them was one older than the others, being
Sir Matthew Grey, that had seen the French wars
under Edward IV.  Of him the Young Lovell
was very glad, for he intended to divide his forces
into two camps, and needed a commander.

So, on the flat ground around the Castle of
Cramlin arose many tents, and it was like a fair
in the sunshine on the short and baked grass.  The
Lady Margaret of Glororem had had made in the
city of Durham a great tent all of fair silk, in the
green and vermeil colours of the house of Lovell, and
from that city the Young Lovell had had brought
many vessels of silver, salt-cellars and great dishes
and goblets that he had bought of a Canon of
Durham, having more than he needed.  A silversmith
had wrought on them very swiftly the
arms of that lord, and it was his intention to
leave those furnishings in Castle Cramlin, that his
mother might be fairly served when she came there.

They set up that tent on the eleventh of June,
and were two days arranging the banquet that there
was given by the Young Lovell.  Many fair ladies
came from Durham and Morpeth and the Castles
around, and cooks came, and scullions and servers,
for those knights and esquires lent to the Young
Lovell their pages, that they might go to all the
places around and deliver his invitations.  Those
ladies might all sleep in that Castle, for by that time
he had bought for it, out of the gold that Richard
Bek had sent him, furniture, hangings, beds a many
and all such silken stuffs as should make it fair.
This he did to be an honour to his mother when she
came there.

So all those esquires and knights, and the ladies
and the Lady Margaret, and the Young Lovell sat to
take their dinner in the silken tent.  That banquet
began at noon, and at seven in the evening they still
sat at the board.  Five courses that meal had, each
of sixty dishes, each dish being different, so that it
was agreed that such a banquet had never been given
in those parts, unless it was one that the Earl of
Warwick gave upon the occasion of the marriage of
his daughter.  The sides of that tent were held up
upon gilded staves, for it was very hot and breathless
weather, so that many men said a storm must soon
come.  The haze of heat ran all across that champaign
country; the high banks of the river were all clothed
with green and whitened here and there with elder.
The men-at-arms marched before them in shining
steel; the bowmen in green, each with the badge of
the esquire or knight that he served upon his
shoulder; and the bondsmen, having each a little
target, a great sword, and a very tall pike with a
hook at its end.  Upon these pikes they could set
torches the better to put fire upon roofs or in at the
upper windows of peel towers.  So, before their eyes,
the bowmen set up targets and shot at them for their
entertainment, and they passed these hot hours very
joyously.  When the cool of the evening was come,
the Young Lovell took Sir Matthew Grey apart into
a grove beside the river.

He told that knight very carefully how he would
have him dispose the men that should be under his
command, for he should not see those men again
before they met victoriously in the Castle.  Sir
Matthew Grey listened to him and said that that
was a very good scheme and he would observe it
carefully.  So, just as the young moon set, Sir
Matthew Grey with all the men-at-arms, all the
bowmen and fifty of the rievers, making in all two
hundred and fifty men, having with him all the
knights and esquires as well as the Young Lovell's
most trusted esquire, Cressingham, that knew very
well the ways into Castle Lovell—all rode over the
whiteness of the river at the ford and were lost
beneath the light of the stars.  Then such of the
ladies as would sleep at Castle Cramlin went into it;
the others had already ridden away with their
attendants.  The cooks and scullions and serving
men began to take down that great silken tent, and
the men-at-arms that remained struck those that had
sheltered their former comrades.  The Young Lovell
begged the Lady Margaret very courteously that she
would walk with him in the grove of the river where
he had talked with Sir Matthew Grey.  The white
small moon looked in on them through the branches;
the river ran very swiftly.

There walking, he told once more to that lady
very carefully his plan for the taking of Castle Lovell,
for it was such things that she heard of more
willingly than of any others.  Sieges, tourneys,
journeys, feats of arms and dangerous quests, of
these she was never tired of talking; she loved them
better than putting on the newest hood made after a
Queen's model of France.

This plan for the taking of Castle Lovell was as
follows, and it was to get under way at the hour of
five on the sixteenth day of June —— that was to
say, in three days' time.  There were three entries to
be made into that Castle within five minutes, one
through the great gate that was beneath the tower
called Wanshot: one through the passage coming up
beneath the flagstones in the men's kitchen that was
built into the wall between the towers Constance and
de Insula; the third was to take place from the White
Tower over the little drawbridge that connected that
hold with the Castle.

The first entry, that through the great gate, was
to be conducted by the Young Lovell's esquire
Cressingham that well knew the ways into the
Castle.  This was a very dangerous enterprise, or one
with no danger at all as it turned out.  Besides the
esquire Cressingham there were to be engaged upon
it four young knights greedy of glory—Sir Michael
Ridley, Sir Thomas Eure, the Lady Margaret's cousin,
Sir Hugh Widdrington, and Sir Edward Riddell of
Felton.  It was in this way.  There were usually five
guards at that great gate, four to man the meurtrières
and one to go to the grille; the space there was
scarcely sufficient for more, nor were more necessary,
so strongly was the gate protected from above by
machicolations, stone balls and bowmen.  So there
were usually no more than five men there.  Now
those four knights, under the command of the esquire
Cressingham, covering their armour completely with
peasants' clothes and cloaks, should go up to that
gate in the quiet of the morning with sacks on their
backs.  In these sacks they should have a good store
of last year's walnuts and apples—though it was
difficult enough to find these in June, yet some they
had found that had ripened very late the year before.
So these pretending peasants should say that they
had heard that there was a great dearth of agreeable
meats in that Castle, and that they were come with
some fruits for sale from the neighbourhood of
Sunderland.  Then, very surely, those guards would
desire to see those fruits, for it was certain that they
all in the Castle were thirsting for such things.  The
false peasants should make to open a sack, and it
would be a very easy thing to let the contents of one
whole one fall to the ground and run rolling here and
there.  Very surely, too, then those guards would bend
down to pick up those fruits and nuts, for it is not in
human nature to withstand such a temptation.

The four knights and the esquire Cressingham
should have their daggers privily ready under their
cloaks and so they might very easily stab each of
those guards in the back of the neck, and if they did
that with skill they might slay them so peaceably
that they would speak never a word.  It was in that
way that the Spaniards won the city of Amiens from
the French a little later.

If then those guards died without tumult the
esquire Cressingham should go quietly to the
within-side of the gateway and wave a little cloth up to
those on the White Tower.  If, on the other hand,
they make a noise, that outcry in itself should serve
for a signal.  The danger of this enterprise was this,
that if the Castle was at all diligently guarded there
would be in the chamber above that gate a great
company of archers under a captain, and if those
guards should make an outcry the archers might
very easily come down and work some mischief to
those knights.  Moreover, the herse or portcullis was
worked from that upper chamber by means of pulleys
and chains.  Thus the archers there if they knew
what was passing below might let down that portcullis
and thus not only should they catch those knights
like rats in a trap, but they should prevent others
entering in.

To guard against this the Young Lovell gave the
following directions: In the first place, as soon as
those guards were over-mastered or slain, one of the
knights should close the door that let men down
from the upper chamber.  A very strong door it
was, at the bottom of narrow steps, so that it would
be no easy task to break through it.  Thus, if those
archers desired to come at those knights they must
run along the battlements and down by the steps of
the tower called de Insula, and that would take time.
As for the portcullis, there was across the great gate
a very strong and stout balk of wood, running in
bolts.  This they should take out and set upwards in
the slots down through which the herse descended.
Once that was there there should be no closing that
way.  This the Young Lovell knew very well, for
once when he had been a boy he had done it out of
devilment to plague the captain of the archers.

Upon the sign from the esquire Cressingham, or
upon hearing a tumult in the gate house, the Young
Lovell, from the top of the White Tower, should fire
cannon shots into that Castle, and the firing of those
shots should serve a double purpose.  In the first
place they should be for a signal to all the others to
go forward; in the second, they should serve to
frighten and distract the archers in that upper
chamber if that were necessary.

Upon those sounds at once the men in the tunnel
should issue out into the kitchen and fall upon the
hovels that were around the keep and slay all that
would not yield and afterwards set fire to the hovels
themselves, for that would make not enough flame to
burn down the keep but enough to smoke out all
that were in it.  Those that were in that tunnel were
to be the Castle Lovell bondsmen, Hugh Raket,
Barty of the Comb, and others.  They should have
introduced themselves secretly and under cover of
the night into Corbit Jock's Barn that stood, as had
been said, against the Castle wall, not fourteen feet
from where that tunnel came into the grassy mound.
Under cover of that same darkness Sir Matthew
Grey, the elder knight, should have hidden himself
with one hundred men-at-arms and esquires, all
mounted, and one hundred bowmen in the houses
of the township of Castle Lovell and in the barns,
some of which were not twenty yards from the Castle
gate.  And upon the firing, those bowmen from
behind the middens and the hillocks should rain
arrows at those that were on the battlements, and
Sir Matthew Grey with his men-at-arms should ride
furiously up to the gate that should be kept open for
him by those five knights, and a little afterwards
those bowmen should follow, putting up their bows
and drawing their hangers and dirks.

Then, when all these engaged the attention of
those of the Castle, the Young Lovell, giving up his
firing of artillery, should issue fiercely from the White
Tower over the drawbridge with the twenty or
thirty men that that tower held, and he could not
well doubt that that should be the coup de grâce to
those of the Castle.  Then he would hang the
Knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle and Henry
Vesey.  His sisters he would put into nunneries,
and the Decies send beyond the seas if the monk
Francis did not claim him for the courts ecclesiastical
to be broken on the wheel.  But this the Young
Lovell did not wish, for the Decies was his father's
son.

The Lady Margaret said that that was the very
properest scheme she had ever heard for the taking
of a castle, part by stratagem and part by force.  And
they walked, devising of that scheme for a long time,
beneath the night-black boughs, with the thin white
moon that peeped between and the swiftness of the
river below their feet.  And ever the Lady Margaret
was aware of a bitter grief in his tones, spake he
never so hotly.  Ever the Young Lovell was aware
that the thought of marrying with this woman was
an intolerable weariness to him, though she was
gallant and fair and loving.  He looked upon her face
in the moonlight and saw how fair it was with the
shadows of the hazel wands across it.  That place
was called the banks of Cramlin, and bitter banks
they were to him.  For there was no mark against
that lady and none in those parts could be a fitting
mate for him but she.  And he considered how she
had cherished him and helped him, and that he had
no grief against her.  Ever he sighed deeply and yet
talked of the joy they would have in pleasaunces and
in the wilderness hawking, in devising, in the stables,
picking the wild flowers in spring, watching their
husbandmen with the ploughs, sitting in the little
chambers before the fire in winter, and at bed and
board.  And ever the Lady Margaret put aside the
talking of those things and talked of firing cannon
into Castle Lovell with the bitter tears on her lids.
She knew him so well she read his heart.

So with a heavy sigh he kissed her on the cheek
her that had been used to lie in his arms, and her tears
were wet upon his lips, and in the darkness, amidst the
waternoises of those Cramlin banks—for the miller
had let down his sluices whilst they talked—amidst
the glimmer of the birch trunks that grew with the
hazels, he left her that he should never see again for
many weary years.  Then, with his fifty bondsmen,
he rode north into the black night beyond the ford.

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It was three in the morning when the Young
Lovell came to Cullerford Tower, and it was very
dark.  By daylight that baleful place upon the open
moor was smoking to the sky, and that was not
much more difficult to do than cracking a walnut,
though a very great and square tower it was, more
like the keep of a castle than a peel, though it followed
those lines.  Forty-seven paces it was in length and
twenty across, the walls being three yards deep in
solid stone.  It was entered from the ground by a
door like that of a barn, and indeed the lowest story
was no more than such a barn, containing no rooms
nor partitions, and serving, in dangerous times, to
store wheat, cattle or whatever the Knights of
Cullerford had that was of value.  No staircase led from
this story to the rooms above, but only a ladder
going to a trap hatch, so that when that ladder was
drawn up there was no coming to them of the tower.
At that time there were no men-at-arms there at all,
only several old fellows under the command of an old
man called Hogarth, together with a few women and
several children, and the cattle were all in the barn
below them.  The hay that they had lately got stood
in stacks round about that tower, and a hundred
yards away were nearly three hundred lambs that
should have been driven to market the next day, and
filled the night with their bleatings, for they were but
newly taken from their mothers.  But so sorely did
Sir Walter Limousin need money that he wished to
sell them before they were ready.

The Young Lovell had with him fifty rievers
mounted on little horses and fifty men-at-arms that
he had taken from Cramlin, where he had left one
hundred men under the command of the esquire La
Rougerie, and that bleating of lambs aided those
rievers to creep up to that tower door.  They had the
door half burst down before ever those above were
aware that they had come.  Then a great wail went
up from those women and children in the tower, for
they thought it had been the false Scots and that
their deaths were near.  Some old men came running
up on to the battlements on the top of the tower,
intending to cast down rocks and other things on the
rievers that were at work upon that stout door.  But
the Young Lovell bade shoot so many arrows up
that that handful of old men could not stay there,
and very loudly he called out to them his name
and titles.  So an old man came to a window and
said that his name was Adam Hogarth and that he
had command there.  So the Young Lovell bade him
render up that tower, for he was in a hurry and could
not stay to be gentle with them, which was the greater
pity, for the number of women and children that he
could hear were there by their cries.  Adam Hogarth
said that he would not render up that place until they
had fought well for it, not to the brother of his lady
and mistress or to any man.  Then the Young Lovell
said that he was sorry for it.

It was very dark then, but those rievers were
skilful men, and whilst the Young Lovell spoke with
Adam Hogarth they had that great door open and
began to drive out the cattle that came willingly
enough in the darkness, but it was dangerous work
because of the horns.  One hundred and forty-seven
steers were there and nineteen cows with calves, as
well as over a dozen heifers.  Whilst these came out
an old man at a window above that door came with
a crock of boiling water and poured it out.  It fell on
no man, but on the backs of several bullocks that
stampeded into the night and came amongst the
men-at-arms that were upon horseback.  This caused
some confusion and the Young Lovell bade light a
torch or two, and indeed there were some torches lit
in that lower barn so that it showed like an
illuminated caravan beneath the black shape of the tower.
The stars were very fine and it was very dark just
before the dawn.  All the while cries went up from
the women and children in the tower; so that the night
was unquiet.

Then that old man came again to the window to
pour out boiling water, but there was a little light
behind him from the fire that he had used for the
heating.  The Young Lovell had a bowman ready
and that man loosed an arrow.  It sped invisible
through the night and went in that old man's mouth
and killed him there, so that he never poured any
more water.  The Young Lovell said that was very
well shot, considering the darkness of the night, and
he gave that bowman two French crowns for having
done it.

Then Adam Hogarth loosed off a demi-saker
that he had in an upper room.  He aimed it at the
Young Lovell who stood upon a little mound with a
torch flaring near him.  But that bullet went a shade
wide, nevertheless it killed a steer, striking that beast
on the cheek beside the eye.  Then the Young
Lovell bade put out the torches and commanded his
bowmen to direct a stream of arrows against all the
windows that were on that side of the tower, so that
though that demi-saker sent out once more its stream
of flame and spoke hoarsely, that was the last of it.
For the rest of that work they could see well enough
without torches; it consisted in taking mounds of hay
into that barn, and when it was half filled they poured
water and fat upon it so as to damp it, and a little
tar.  Then into that mass they cast three or four
torches and so they watched it smoulder.  Of flame
there was very little, but the smoke and stench in
verity were insupportable, and that filtered into the
upper part of the tower.

Then the dawn began to point over the Roman
wall and grey things appeared, and fat smoke curling
up all around the doomed tower in the still air of the
morning.  It grew a little cold so that they must
slap their arms around them, and said that that
waiting was slow work.  As soon as it was light
enough, the Young Lovell began to count those
cattle.  He sent men also to drive up the hurdled
lambs that had cried all night, and others to find
their dams that were in charge of a shepherd in the
fields beyond the Wall.  The Wall began to show
clear on top of a rise, running over the tops of hills
and down into hollows, grey, into invisibility.  Then
after a time, those men brought in the sheep.  They
had caught that shepherd where he slept, and drove
him before them, pricking him with lances so that he
commanded his dogs to drive those sheep where they
should go.  Thus then were all the flocks and herds
of Cullerford collected together in a goodly concourse,
and when the Young Lovell knew that he had them
all, he ordered the men-at-arms that he had brought
from Castle Cramlin to drive them to that place, for
he had no more need of men-at-arms.

So they went away over the moors to the north
and east, going through a gap in the wall just after
they were out of sight.  Those sheep and cattle the
Young Lovell meant for the provisioning of his
mother.  He thought that his sister would not need
them when her husband was hanged and herself in a
nunnery.  So, whilst he stood and watched that fatly
smoking tower from which there came a strong odour
of burning grease, a great sadness fell upon him at
the thought that all this profited him nothing, for he
desired none of these things for his intimate pleasure.
It was all for decency and good order in his lands
that he did it, and to punish evildoers.  So his
head hung down and he sat his horse like a dying man.

It was these moods in him that the monk Francis
dreaded.  But the monk Francis thought he had him
safe for two days or three, for he himself had urgent
business in his monastery of Belford, more
particularly over the affair of the hermitage of Castle
Lovell.  For it was reported to him that that pious
hermit was really dead.  During ten days he had
spoken words none at all and the stench that came
out of the little hole where they put in his bread and
water was truly unbearable and such as it had never
been before.  So the monk Francis had gone to
Belford to see how that might be.  The Young
Lovell he thought he might well leave.  For with the
banquet and the sending off of his troops he would be
well occupied, and he had made the Lady Margaret
promise to be a zealous lieutenant and see that that
lord was never unoccupied till he rode on that raid.
For the monk Francis considered that whilst he was
upon a raid, that emissary of Satan or whatever she
was would have no power over him, so ardent a
soldier was this young lord.

But here he had reckoned without the obstinacy of
Adam Hogarth who kept all those aged men and the
women and children stifling in that fat smoke.  The
Young Lovell was never in greater danger.  He looked
down upon the ground and sighed heavily.  He had it
in him to ride into a far country and leave all those
monotonies.  But at last on the top of the tower he
perceived Adam Hogarth, who held up his hands.  So
he knew that that tower had surrendered.  Then he
called out that all those in the tower might come down
a ladder that they might set down from an upper
window, and that they might bring down their clothes
and gear and take it away with them where they
would—all except Adam Hogarth, with whom he had
some business.  As for that Tower he meant to burn
it out.

So down the ladder came thirty or forty poor
people with ten or a dozen children.  Their eyes
were red and wept grimy tears, and they were all in
rags of grey homespun, such as the poor wear, for Sir
Walter Limousin and his wife were very bad paymasters,
and such a collection of clouts the Young
Lovell thought he had never seen in the grey of the
morning.  Nay, he was moved to pity at the thought
that this dishonoured his kin, and to each of those
poor people he gave a shilling that they might have
wherewithal to live till they found other masters, and
to women that had children he gave four groats.
Some carried pots, some pans, and all of that ragged
company filed away over the moorlands beneath the
Wall, making mostly for Haltwhistle, and showing
no curiosity at all, except two or three old women
that had to do with Adam Hogarth.

Then the Young Lovell took Adam Hogarth down
to a little grove of trees that was near the ford and
asked that blear-eyed old man where his master,
Cullerford, had hidden the charters and muniments
of his mother the Lady Rohtraut; for he knew that
there they were.  Adam Hogarth said that he did
not know and set his teeth.  Without more words the
Young Lovell had a rope brought and a slip-noose
made.  He sent a man up a great elm to drop the
noose over a stout branch and Adam Hogarth
watched him dumbly.  Then the Young Lovell had
that noose set round Adam Hogarth, beneath the
arm-pits and three men hauled him up till he hung
thirty feet high, looking down with the tears dripping
out of his red eyes.  So when the Young Lovell had
watched him for a minute or two and he spoke no
word, the lording walked away to where the womenkind
of that pendard were, and asked which of them
were his kinswomen.  One red-eyed crone was his
sister, another his wife.  So the Young Lovell took
that sister to where Adam Hogarth hung and pointed
him out.  He bade her tell him where those charters
were, but she would not.  Then he had Adam
Hogarth let down.  The rope was set about his neck
and the Young Lovell bade his men haul slowly.
Adam Hogarth choked in his throat and rose up to
his tip-toes, but he would make no sign with his hand
and his sister would not speak.  Then that man was
let down again and the Young Lovell said it was the
greater pity, for he must bring the wife.  So the other
old woman was brought, and when Adam Hogarth
swung the height of a man's thigh with his feet off
the ground, and his legs were working like those of a
frog and his face purple with the hempen collar round
his neck and the knot beneath his ear so that he
should not die very quickly, that old woman fell on
her knees and cried out that she would tell the Young
Lovell that news.  So the Young Lovell cut through
that rope with his sword to do Adam Hogarth greater
honour, and he fell to the ground very little the worse
for wear.

The old woman took the Young Lovell to a
haystack where, beneath the trampled hay around it,
there was a well-head locked with a great padlock.
This padlock a man with a hammer knocked off, and
a chain went down into that well, the well being dry.
So they pulled up that chain, and at the end of it was
the muniment-box of the Lady Rohtraut that the
Young Lovell well knew.  So when he had had the
iron lid prised open with a lance-head—for without
doubt the Lady Isopel wore the little gold key of it
round her neck—the Young Lovell recognised that
the deeds were there, for, though he had no time to
read them, he knew them by their seals.  Then he
was well content for his mother's sake, for, though it
is a good thing to have lands in actual possession, it
is twice as well to have the muniments appertaining
to them.

Then he bade his men get together what balks of
timber and wood they could find and cast them into
the hay that still burned in that lower story so that
the fire might spring up, and also to take torches and
cast them through the upper windows so that that
tower might well burn in all parts where it was
wooden.  After that he called before him that Adam
Hogarth and commended him for his faith to his
master and commended his sister as well.  And he
said that that man and his sister might have for their
own, to divide between them, such steers as had escaped
during the stampede of the night before, as well as
three bulls that were upon the upper pastures with
several sheep, and some pigs and hens that were in a
barn by the river and had escaped observation.  And
he said that Adam and his sister might dwell in that
tower, after the fire had well burned it so that it could
not be held as a fortress, but it would shelter them
very well until he should decide whether he would
hold that tower himself or till the heirs of Sir Walter
Limousin should compound with him for his sister's
dower.  For Sir Walter, he said, was as good as a
dead man.  As for Adam Hogarth's wife, they might
do what they liked for her, but he would give her
nothing, for he held that she had not done well in
betraying her master's secret, to keep which should
be the first duty of a servant, man or woman.  And
as for his reward to Adam Hogarth, he gave him
those things which would make him richer than he
had ever been in his life before in order to encourage
such faith as he had shown.  And if he husbanded
those cattle well they would increase and multiply.
But Adam Hogarth said no more than "Least said is
soonest mended," for he was a crabbed old man of
few words.

Then the Young Lovell and his men made a
breakfast of some small beer and bread that they
found in that tower, and so they rode away northwards
through the Wall, for it was five o'clock with the sun
high and they had far to go, but their little horses
would carry them well.  He left two or three men to
see that Adam Hogarth and his wife and sister did
not seek to quench that burning.  But he did not
think they would, for when he looked back he could
see against the pale sky the pale flames rise over the
hill.

But as soon as he was gone that Adam Hogarth
fell upon his wife and beat her very furiously.  He
said that he knew very well that that Young Lovell
would never have hung him, for there was no priest
there to confess him, and that never would he have
betrayed that secret until after the Young Lovell had
let him be shriven.  So the Young Lovell must have
paid him much money.  Besides, he could have borne
with hanging for a quarter of an hour longer and
come to no harm.  So he beat that woman and she
screamed out, and the men that the Young Lovell
had left behind roared with laughter and the tower
burned.

So, when those men caught up with the Young
Lovell, which they did near Fontoreen, west of
Morpeth, they told him of the cunning of that
husbandman.  So the Young Lovell did not know
whether to be more vexed with that peasant, because
it was not so much love for his master as greed that
made him be half-hanged, or whether to marvel that
such a low fellow should have read his mind so
well, for surely he would never have hanged him
unshriven.

They rode on all that day until they came to Sea
Houses by North Sunderland, having covered nearly
sixty miles of rough country, for they went by the
South Forest and past Rothbury and the high moors
so that they might not be observed.  Four miles
from Sea Houses, it being then ten o'clock at night,
the Young Lovell sent his men forward towards Castle
Lovell, and in a fisherman's hut on the sounding
pebbles of the sea he found the monk Francis, who
was very glad to see him and glad of his news.  The
monk had been that day in the village of Castle
Lovell and had found that the hermit was indeed
dead.  So he had appointed the day following at six
in the evening for skilled masons to come and disinter
that holy man to give him holy burial.  For he
thought that by that hour the Young Lovell would
be well established in his Castle.

So when they had exchanged their news the lord
and the monk lay down to sleep a little on a pile of
nets that the fisherman heaped up for them in a
corner of his hut, he himself lying outside upon
seaweed with his wife.  At a quarter to three he waked
them and they set out upon their voyage to the White
Tower.  There was a good following breeze from the
due south, so that they might well come to Castle
Lovell in an hour or a little under.  But the dancing
motion of that little boat made that monk Francis
very ill, which was great pity for the Young Lovell.
With fasting, prayer and vigil that good monk was
become very weak, though he had once been a very
strong knight.  He lay on the bottom-boards of that
boat, and so deeply had he fainted that when they
had come to the little harbourage beneath the White
Tower he was insensible and they could not tell that
he was not dead.  So there was no getting him up the
ladder of iron spikes that was all the way there was
into that tower from the sea.  The Young Lovell
would not trust those spikes to bear the two of them
or he would have carried the monk up.  So he climbed
up alone, and Richard Bek and the others were
awaiting.  But the fisherman rowed that monk straight to
the shore and carried him over the sand to the
township.  Here in a hut he found the Lady Margaret
of Glororem, who had ridden all that day and
night before to come there.  So she tended that
monk and in about an hour he could stand again.
But then there was no way of coming into that tower.

Therefore the monk Francis and the Lady
Margaret went up to the little mound on which was
the chapel the Young Lovell had first watched his
harness in.  This was so near the Castle that half
of the bowmen under Sir Matthew Grey had been
appointed to spend the night in it so that they might
come out when the gun fired and shoot their arrows
against the battlements between de Insula and
Wanshot Towers.  So that monk and that lady knelt
in that porch, and between their prayers for the
success of their dear lording they watched the dawn
pointing over the sea, which came with the grey forms
of waterspouts.  These moved silently, here and there
upon the horizon.  So they saw the sun come up
white and fiercely shining between those monstrous
appearances.  The monk Francis said that that pale
sunrise was a certain sign that the weather was
breaking, and he thanked God that all their hay was
in.  Then they saw the Young Lovell spring up on to
the coping of the White Tower.  So clear the weather
and the light were that they could mark the little
lion's head that was carved on the peak of his helmet
like the handle of a curling stone.

So he went down out of sight again and they
prayed very fiercely, holding each other's hands for
comfort.  The bowmen whispered from the door
behind to know if it were not near time.  White
smoke flew out from the top of that tower, and the
monk cried out so loudly that they never heard the
sound of the shot, for he knew that the great gateway
was taken.  Out ran the archers with their bows bent
and stood on the green sward.  They shot arrows
high so that they fell over the battlements—long
arrows with great feathers of the grey goose that
journeyed intently through the air.  So that gun
sounded again and again, and they saw the Young
Lovell once more upon that coping.  The bowmen in
the Castle were sending arrows up against him, but
they glanced off his armour because of their slanting
flight.  He stood there looking down and behind him
were the grey waterspouts.

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Now as for such as dwelt within the Castle:

A little before the exact minute of sunrise such of
them that slept were awakened by the firing of cannon
shot, two following.  A stone ball came into the
window of the Lady Douce and broke a chest.  Then
from many quarters there came cries, sharp but short
like gun shots.  And then one scream so high and
dreadful that all men stood deaf and amazed.  Such
a cry had never before been heard in all Northumberland
amidst the rain of arrows.  There were men
bursting in at the great gate of the Castle and others
with their swords high coming from the men's kitchen
that was between the tower called Constance and
that called Wanshot.  The men upon the battlements
had their bows bent or held up beams and
bolts of iron, or were setting iron poles under great
stones to roll them down through the machicolations.
And the Knight of Wallhouses was whispering to the
Lady Douce, who had run down into the great
hall, that there were no men coming against the
little postern nearest the sea, and that he and she
and his men would make their way out of the
Castle by the gate.

That tide of dreadful war had come upon them
so quickly that it seemed as if, before Henry Vesey's
eyes could see, men were bursting in at the great gate
and from other places in the Castle.  Then he knew
that the Young Lovell must be aware of secret ways
in that none of them had heard of, and before that
fray was two minutes gone he knew that they were
lost.  Therefore he made ready to get himself gone
by the postern.

But when that most dreadful cry was heard all
those people stood still; the men with bows, balks,
and levers, the men running in with swords; Sir
Henry whispering; the Lady Isopel calling from her
window; the Decies turning in his bed, and Sir
Symonde running along the battlements.  That cry
deprived them of the powers of motion and made
their bones quiver within their flesh like shaken
reeds.  Some that then heard it said afterwards that
it was no more than the voice of the elements.

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The monk Francis deemed to the end of his life
that he had heard the cry of fear of a false goddess,
for, when he went, a broken man, to commune of these
things with the Bishop Palatine, that Bishop told him
that so that false goddess whom they most dreaded
and who is the bane of all Christendom, since in
quiet hearts she setteth carnal desire—so that false
goddess had cried out when, in the form of a cloud
of mist or may be of a rainspout, she had hastened
to the rescue of the hero Paris.  That had been at
the siege of a strong Castle called Troy.  That Paris
of Troy she had carried away to the top of a high
hill near the town, as it might have been Spindleston
Crags, and there she had kept him till that battle was
done.  And part of the cry had been for fear, and
partly it was from pain because an arrow had struck
her, she being vulnerable, though her blood would
turn to jewels.

So the monk Francis was very certain that he
had heard at least the cry of fear of a false goddess
wailing for her love, and that in the waterspout
that bore the Young Lovell away he had seen her
twisting and writhing form.  Whether she were
wounded or not he did not know, but he hoped she
was, and well she might have been, for arrows a
many were glancing round the form of the Young
Lovell where he stood upon the battlements, and
all around him and below people stood rigid like
figures seen in a flash of lightning whose hearts had
ceased to beat, and it fell as black as in the hour
before the dawn.

Sir Symonde Vesey, who had been running along
the battlements looking up, perceived, so near his
hand could touch them, millions of little black clouds
twisting in an agony like snakes.  Then all that
water fell upon him and hurled him from that height
into the inner court, where he lay senseless a long
while, and so was drowned in a gutter.  There was
no man there could stand up against that torrent of
rain twisting round.  Four waterspouts struck that
Castle one after the other, and for ten hours so it
rained that most of the hovels in the courtyard were
washed down, and the mud there was so deep it was
up to a man's thighs.

Men fought a little in the corridors, and some
three or four were killed in the great kitchen where
some had taken refuge.  But they could find none
of their leaders for a long time, and most of them
gave over.





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   IV

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At seven of that night the monk Francis with his
masons had opened the hermitage, and lay brothers
from the little monastery had borne the hermit's
rotten corpse in a sheet into the church where a
coffin was.  So, because of the terrible smell, they
carried the coffin itself out from that church and set
it in the grave, though that was so full of rain-water
that the coffin floated in it and the funeral rites were
inaudible in the heavy gusts of rain.  Though it was
no more than eight o'clock in July the sky lowered,
so that in the shadow of the church it was night.

The monk Francis staggered as he walked; his
face was like alabaster where no mud was on it, and
mud was over all his habit, splashed above the
shoulder as if he had torn through brakes above
water-courses.  All that while he groaned and beat
his chest and looked fearfully, now up the hills, now
out to sea, now towards Scotland.  Once whilst the
masons worked he had fallen on his face in the water
that ran round the church end.

But he had that hermitage for his charge and he
would let no man lead him away.  So, in that darkness,
whilst the wind sighed furiously in the trees and
the rain was in all their faces, they buried that holy
man as best they might, saying that they would hold
a fairer ceremony upon another day, for they were all
affrighted and cast down by the events of that day
and the heavy disasters that might follow.  Then, as
the lay brothers were bearing away the stretcher
upon which they had carried that coffin, one of them
cried out like a scream.  Against the steely light of
the North he had perceived a great cloak tossing out,
over the churchyard wall.  Then all heard a voice
calling to them to send a religious there.  So the
abbot bade an old monk go, for that might be some
sinner that desired to become an eremite in place
of that holy man now dead.  For thus God works
in His wondrous way.

And so indeed it proved.  They all stood there in
the rain whilst the old monk talked to that form of
darkness.  The monk Francis was on his knees.  Then
that old monk came back to them and said that here
indeed was come one that desired to go into that
little hermit's kennel and there end his days.  He
was one that had been a good knight, but had sinned
so grievously that until he was shriven he would not
come upon the holy ground of that churchyard, and
he desired the monk Francis to come to him and
shrive him!  Then that monk cried out with fear,
but afterwards he went without the wall and stayed
there.  The tossing form had disappeared; for the
man had kneeled down for his confession.

In the thick darkness the monk Francis came back
to those that stayed and said that he approved that
that man should be the eremite.

It all passed in the black night.  That shape
passed in at the little hole the masons had made, and
an old mason, so skilled that he could do his work in
the dark, put again those stones in their places.  Then
those monks sang as best they could the canticle
"Ad te clamavi," and all men went away to talk
under their beaten roofs of these fearful things.
Upon all that place the black night came down,
whipped by the fell and chilly rain, and all over that
churchyard the water gurgled and washed, for it lay
very low and all the gutters of the church poured
down their invisible floods.

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In a very high valley of Corsica the mistress of
the world sate upon a throne of white marble in a
little round temple that would not hold more than
two or three people.  A round roof it had, like a
pie-dish, and little columns of white marble.  All up
the green grass of that valley amongst the asphodels
walked her women, devising and sporting, in gowns
of white and playing at ball with a sphere of gold.
Down the valley ran a fierce stream with great and
vari-coloured rocks, and in that warm place the sound
of its torrent was agreeable to the ear.  Agreeable
too was the sight of the dazzling snows upon the
Golden Mountain; they shone in the sun and the sky
was more blue than can be imagined.  At the feet of
the goddess sat a large woman and extremely fair.
Beside her, so that he held her hand, sitting on a
couch of rosemary, was a dark shepherd very limber
in his bronzed limbs, wearing a tunic of goat skins, a
chain of gold that supported a gourd, a Phrygian cap
of scarlet woollen work that was entwined with the
leaves of the vine upon his black locks.  He had in
his hand a bow of ivory with tips of gold.

So they sate at ease and looked out of that
temple.  In his shining armour a young knight that
sat upon his steel horse was devising with a hero of
the gentle feats of arms.  This hero was lithe rather
than huge of form.  His face was stern and
commanding at the same time that it was open and
courteous and attentive.  He was naked, and whilst
he gazed with attention upon the young knight's
arms, he rested his harmonious limbs, leaning upon a
round shield of triple-plated bronze.  Upon his head
was his helmet of shining bronze with a great plume
of horsehair that nodded far forward over his brows;
in his right hand was a very heavy spear tipped
with bronze, and upon his bare legs he had bronze
greaves.  And they were talking of the respective
fitnesses of the arms that they bore.  Just where
they stood was a level sward that might be a quarter
of a mile across.

Then that hero signed with his spear and there
came out from a thicket a chariot of ivory drawn by
four white horses driven by a helmeted charioteer.
So that hero mounted into the chariot and covered
the charioteer and himself with the great shield and
took from the charioteer three casting spears that
were very heavy in the beam, and so they went at it
for the entertainment of the onlookers.  Here and
there over that little plain darted the ivory chariot
with the white horses.  That hero was seeking to
get to the hindward of the young knight to cast his
spears, for he considered that the war-horse was not
limber.  But he was limber enough, and always the
shield with the chequers of green and scarlet faced
the white chariot.  So they went at it.

At the last the hero cast his three spears, one
upon the horse, one upon the shield, and one upon
the helmet of the good knight.  But the bronze bent
upon the steel; it would not enter in though it were
thrown with never such a force.  The young knight
reeled in his saddle, and his steed upon his feet.
Yet, as that hero drove the chariot in, to cast the
last spear, the young knight spurred his horse
suddenly in upon them, and though the charioteer
was very agile with his car, nevertheless the young
lord's spear met the great shield of bronze and
pierced it through; between the hero and the other
the point went, and the ivory wheels of the chariot
broke and the white horses fell one upon the other,
being taken upon the side by that steel-clad horse.
Then that hero sprang from the chariot and ran more
swiftly than the young lord could follow to a great
rock that was in the grass by the streamside.  So
he had up the great rock of marble before ever
Hamewarts was upon him, and cast that rock upon
horse and rider so that both fell down among the
asphodels.  Then that knight in armour drew himself
from under his horse, for the ground there was
soft and marshy, and he was but little crushed.
And so he stood up upon his feet, having in one
hand his bright dagger that was the length of his
fore-arm.  And that hero had had no time to cast
himself upon the knight, for he was for the moment
out of breath with the exertion of casting that great
rock.

So all there were well pleased and declared that
that was a drawn battle.  They had off their harness
and their clothes and went all a-bathing in the foam
of that rapid stream.  And, as each one would have
it, so those bright waters were warmed by the heat of
the sunlight through which they had passed, or icy
with the snows that had been their origin.

And afterwards, the women of the goddess
anointed the limbs of those combatants with juices
and oils so that all their wounds were healed whether
of the horses or the heroes.  And those women took
the harness, both of the bright steel and of the
sounding bronze, and rubbing upon the dents with
their smooth fingers, soon they had all marks of that
combat erased so that the armours shone like waters
reflecting the blue sky or like the beaten gold of a
bride's girdle.  Then all lay them down upon
couches of rosemary, heather or asphodel, that were
covered with the white fleeces of rams, each person
being with whom he would.  And they fell to
devising from couch to couch, some of times past,
some of times to come, and others upon what should
have been the issue of that late combat had it been
fought upon the wearisome fields known to mortal man.
Some said the hero would have won it though arms
he had none, for he could run the more swiftly, and
might make shift with rocks and stones to pelt that
knight until his armour broke.  But others said that
soon that horse would have revived and the knight,
mounting there upon and recovering his great spear
would spit that naked hero as he ran, through the
back.

Through the opening of that valley the goddess
showed them the blue sea with triremes upon it,
the white foam going away from their oars as they
had fought at Actium.  The galleys of Venice she
showed them too, all gilded and with the embroidered
sails bellying before the soft winds.  The cities of
the plains they saw, and Rome and Delphi and Tyre,
and cities to come that appeared like clouds of
smoke, with tall columns rising up and glittering.
So, courteously, they devised upon all things, and
that knight thought never upon the weariness of
Northumberland or upon how his mortal body lived
in the little hermitage not much bigger than a
hound's kennel that was builded against the wall of
the church....

No, there they lay or walked in lemon groves
devising of this or that whilst the butterflies settled
upon their arms.  And when they would have it
night, so there was the cool of the evening and a
great moon and huge stars and dimness fit for the
gentle pleasures of love.

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   THE END

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   PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

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