Читать книгу A Forgotten Hero - Emily Sarah Holt - Страница 4

“Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te.”

Martial.

One at least of the ladies who had disturbed Elaine’s hilarity did not look a person of whom it was necessary to be afraid. She was a matronly woman of middle age, bearing the remains of extreme beauty. She had a good-natured expression, and she rather shrank back, as if she were there on sufferance only. But the other, who came forward into the room, was tall, spare, upright, and angular, with a face which struck Clarice as looking very like verjuice.

“Agatha!” called the latter, sharply; and, laying her hand, not gently, on Elaine’s shoulder, she gave her a shake which rapidly reduced her to gravity.

“Ye weary, wretched giglots, what do ye thus laughing and tittering, when I have distinctly forbidden the same?—Agatha!—Know ye not that all ye be miserable sinners, and this lower world a vale of tears?—Agatha!”

“Truly, Cousin Meg,” observed the other lady, now coming forward, “methinks you go far to make it such.”

“Agatha might have more sense,” returned her acetous companion. “I have bidden her forty times o’er to have these maids well ordered, and mine house as like to an holy convent as might be compassed; and here is she none knows whither—taking her pleasure, I reckon—and these caitiff hildings making the very walls for to ring with their wicked foolish laughter!—Agatha! bring me hither the rod. I will see if a good whipping bring not down your ill-beseen spirits, mistress!”

Elaine turned pale, and cast a beseeching glance at the pleasanter of the ladies.

“Nay, now, Cousin Meg,” interposed she, “I pray you, let not this my first visit to Oakham be linked with trouble to these young maids. I am well assured you know grey heads cannot be well set on green shoulders.”

“Lady, I am right unwilling to deny any bidding of yours. But I do desire of you to tell me if it be not enough to provoke a saint to swear?”

“What! to hear a young maid laugh, cousin? Nay, soothly, I would not think so.”

Mistress Underdone had entered the room, and, after dropping a courtesy to each of the ladies, stood waiting the pleasure of her mistress. Clarice was slowly coming to the conclusion, with dire dismay, that the sharp-featured, sharp-tongued woman before her was no other than the Lady Margaret of Cornwall, her lovely lady with the pathetic eyes.

“Give me the rod, Agatha,” said the Countess, sternly.

“Nay, Cousin Meg, I pray you, let Agatha give it to me.”

“You’ll not lay on!” said the Countess, with a contortion of her lips which appeared to do duty for a smile.

“Trust me, I will do the right thing,” replied Queen Blanche, taking the rod which Mistress Underdone presented to her on the knee. “Now. Elaine, stand out here.”

Elaine, very pale and preternaturally grave, placed herself in the required position.

“Say after me. ‘I entreat pardon of my Lady for being so unhappy as to offend her.’ ”

Elaine faltered out the dictated words.

“Kiss the rod,” said the Queen.

She was immediately obeyed.

“Now, Cousin Meg, for my sake, I pray you, let that suffice.”

“Well, Lady, for your sake,” responded the Countess, with apparent reluctance, looking rather like a kite from whose talons the Queen had extracted a sparrow intended for its dinner.

“Sit you in this chamber, Cousin Meg?” asked the Queen, taking a curule chair as she spoke—the only one in the room.

“Nay, Lady. ’Tis mine hour for repeating the seven penitential psalms. I have no time to waste with these giglots.”

“Then, I pray you, give me leave to abide here myself for a season.”

“You will do your pleasure, Lady. I only pray of you to keep them from laughing and such like wickedness.”

“Nay, for I will not promise that for myself,” said Queen Blanche, with a good-tempered smile. “Go your ways, Meg; we will work no evil.”

The Countess turned and stalked out of the door again. And Clarice’s first castle in the air fell into pieces behind her.

“Now, Agatha, I pray thee shut the door,” said the Queen, “that we offend not my Cousin Margaret’s ears in her psalms. Fare ye all well, my maids? Thy face is strange to me, child.”

Clarice courtesied very low. “If it please the Lady Queen, I am but just come hither.”

She had to tell her name and sundry biographical particulars, and then, suddenly looking round, the Queen said, “And where is Heliet?”

“Please it the Lady Queen, in my chamber,” said Mistress Underdone.

“Bid her hither, good Agatha—if she can come.”

“That can she, Lady.”

Mistress Underdone left the room, and in another minute the regular tap of approaching crutches was audible. Clarice imagined their wearer to be some old woman—perhaps the mother of Mistress Underdone. But as soon as the door was opened again, she was surprised and touched to perceive that the sufferer who used them was a girl little older than herself. She came up to Queen Blanche, who welcomed her with a smile, and held her hand to the girl’s lips to be kissed. This was her only way of paying homage, for to her courtesying and kneeling were alike impossible.

Clarice felt intuitively, as she looked into Heliet’s face, that here was a girl entirely different from the rest. She seemed as if Nature had intended her to be tall, but had stopped and stunted her when only half grown. Her shoulders were unnaturally high, and one leg was considerably shorter than the other. Her face was not in any way beautiful, yet there was a certain mysterious attraction about it. Something looked out of her eyes which Clarice studied without being able to define, but which disposed her to keep on looking. They were dark, pathetic eyes, of the kind with which Clarice had gifted her very imaginary Countess; but there was something beyond the pathos.

“It looks,” thought Clarice, “as if she had gone through the pathos and the suffering, and had come out on the other side—on the shore of the Golden Land, where they see what everything meant, and are satisfied.”

There was very little time for conversation before the supper-bell rang. Queen Blanche made kind inquiries concerning Heliet’s lameness and general health, but had not reached any other subject when the sound of the bell thrilled through the room. The four girls rapidly folded up their work, as though the summons were welcome. Queen Blanche rose and departed, with a kindly nod to all, and Heliet, turning to Clarice, said, “Wilt thou come down with me? I cannot go fast, as thou mayest see; but thou wilt sit next to me, and I can tell thee anything thou mayest wish to know.”

Clarice thankfully assented, and they went down the spiral staircase together into the great hall, where three tables were spread. At the highest and smallest, on the dais, were already seated the Queen and the Countess, two gentlemen, and two priests. At the head of the second stood Mistress Underdone, next to whom was Diana, and Heliet led up Clarice to her side. They faced the dais, so that Clarice could watch its distinguished occupants at her pleasure. Tables for meals, at that date, were simply boards placed on trestles, and removed when the repast was over. On the table at the daïs was silver plate, then a rare luxury, restricted to the highest classes, the articles being spoons, knives, plates, and goblets. There were no forks, for only one fork had ever then been heard of as a thing to eat with, and this had been the invention of the wife of a Doge of Venice, about two hundred years previous, for which piece of refinement the public rewarded the lady by considering her as proud as Lucifer. Forks existed, both in the form of spice-forks and fire-forks, but no one ever thought of eating with them in England until they were introduced from Italy in the reign of James the First, and for some time after that the use of them marked either a traveller, or a luxurious, effeminate man. Moreover, there were no knives nor spoons provided for helping one’s self from the dishes. Each person had a knife and spoon for himself, with which he helped himself at his convenience. People who were very delicate and particular wiped their knives on a piece of bread before doing so, and licked their spoons all over. When these were the practices of fastidious people, the proceedings of those who were not such may be discreetly left to imagination. The second table was served in a much more ordinary manner. In this instance the knife was iron and the spoon pewter, the plate a wooden trencher (never changed), and the drinking-cup of horn. In the midst of the table stood a pewter salt-cellar, formed like a castle, and very much larger than we use them now.

This salt-cellar acted as a barometer, not for weather, but for rank. Every one of noble blood, or filling certain offices, sat above the salt.

With respect to cooking our fathers had some peculiarities. They ate many things that we never touch, such as porpoises and herons, and they used all manner of green things as vegetables. They liked their bread hot from the oven (to give cold bread, even for dinner, was a shabby proceeding), and their meat much underdone, for they thought that overdone meat stirred up anger. They mixed most incongruous things together; they loved very strong tastes, delighting in garlic and verjuice; they never appear to have paid the slightest regard to their digestion, and they were, in the most emphatic sense, not teetotallers.

The dining-hall, but not the table, was decorated with flowers, and singers, often placed in a gallery at one end, were employed the whole time. A gentleman usher acted as butler, and a yeoman was always at hand to keep out strange dogs, snuff candles, and light to bed the guests, who were not always in a condition to find their way upstairs without his help. The hours at this time were nine or ten o’clock for dinner (except on fast-days, when it was at noon), and three or four for supper. Two meals a day were thought sufficient for all men who were not invalids. The sick and women sometimes had a “rear-supper” at six o’clock or later. As to breakfast, it was a meal taken only by some persons, and then served in the bedchamber or private boudoir at convenience. Wine, with bread sopped in it, was a favourite breakfast, especially for the old. Very delicate or exceptionally temperate people took milk for breakfast; but though the Middle Ages present us with examples of both vegetarians and total abstainers, yet of both there were very few indeed, and they were mainly to be found among the religious orders.

In watching the illustrious persons on the dais one thing struck Clarice as extremely odd, which would never be thought strange in the nineteenth century. It was the custom in her day for husband and wife to sit together at a meal, and, the highest ranks excepted, to eat from the same plate. But the Earl and Countess of Cornwall were on opposite sides of the table, with one of the priests between them. Clarice thought they must have quarrelled, and softly demanded of Heliet if that were the case.

“No, indeed,” was Heliet’s rather sorrowful answer. “At least, not more than usual. The Lady of Cornwall will never sit beside her baron, and, as thou shalt shortly see, she will not even speak to him.”

“Not speak to him!” exclaimed Clarice.

“I never heard her do so yet,” said Heliet.

“Does he entreat her very harshly?”

“There are few gentlemen more kindly or generous towards a wife. Nay, the harsh treatment is all on her side.”

“What a miserable life to live!” commented Clarice.

“I fear he finds it so,” said Heliet.

The dillegrout, or white soup, was now brought in, and Clarice, being hungry, attended more to her supper than to her mistress for a time. But during the next interval between the courses she studied her master.

He was a tall and rather fine-looking man, with a handsome face and a gentle, pleasant expression.

There certainly was not in his exterior any cause for repulsion. His hair was light, his eyes bluish-grey. He seemed—or Clarice thought so at first—a silent man, who left conversation very much to others; but the decidedly intelligent glances of the grey eyes, and an occasional twinkle of fun in them when any amusing remark was made, showed that he was not in the least devoid of brains.

Clarice thought that the priest who sat between the Earl and Countess was a far more unprepossessing individual than his master. He was a Franciscan friar, in the robe of his order; while the friar who sat on the other side of the Countess was a Dominican, and much more agreeable to look at.

At this juncture the Earl of Lancaster, who bore a strong family likeness to his cousin, the Earl of Cornwall—a likeness which extended to character no less than person—inquired of the latter if any news had been heard lately from France.

“I have had no letters lately,” replied his host; and, turning to the Countess, he asked, “Have you, Lady?”

Now, thought Clarice, she must speak to him. Much to her surprise, the Countess, imagining, apparently, that the Franciscan friar was her questioner, answered, (Note 1), “None, holy Father.”

The friar gravely turned his head and repeated the words to the Earl, though he must have heard them. And Clarice became aware all at once that her own puzzled face was a source of excessive amusement to her vis-à-vis, Elaine. Her eyes inquired the reason.

“Oh, I know!” said Elaine, in a loud whisper across the table. “I know what perplexes thee. They are all like that when they first come. It is such fun to watch them!”

And she did not succeed in repressing a convulsion behind her handkerchief, even with the aid of Diana’s “Elaine! do be sensible.”

“Hush, my maid,” said Mistress Underdone, gently. “If the Lady see thee laugh—”

“I shall be sent away without more supper, I know,” said Elaine, shrugging her shoulders. “It is Clarice who ought to be punished, not I. I cannot help laughing when she looks so funny.”

Elaine having succeeded in recovering her gravity without attracting the notice of the Countess, Clarice devoured her helping of salt beef along with much cogitation concerning her mistress’s singular ways. Still, she could not restrain a supposition that the latter must have supposed the priest to speak to her, when she heard the Earl say, “I hear from Geoffrey Spenser, (Note 2), that our stock of salt ling is beyond what is like to be wanted. Methinks the villeins might have a cade or two thereof, my Lady.”

And again, turning to the friar, the Countess made answer, “It shall be seen to, holy Father;” while the friar, with equal composure, as though it were quite a matter of course, repeated to the Earl, “The Lady will see to it, my Lord.”

“Does she always answer him so?” demanded Clarice of Heliet, in an astonished whisper. “Always,” replied Heliet, with a sad smile. “But surely,” said Clarice, her amazement getting the better of her shyness, “it must be very wanting in reverence from a dame to her baron!”

Clarice’s ideas of wifely duty were of a very primitive kind. Unbounded reverence, unreasoning obedience, and diligent care for the husband’s comfort and pleasure were the main items. As for love, in the sense in which it is usually understood now, that was an item which simply might come into the question, but it was not necessary by any means. Parents, at that time, kept it out of the matter as much as possible, and regarded it as more of an encumbrance than anything else.

“It is a very sad tale, Clarice,” answered Heliet, in a low tone. “He loves her, and would cherish her dearly if she would let him. But there is not any love in her. When she was a young maid, almost a child, she set her heart on being a nun, and I think she has never forgiven her baron for being the innocent means of preventing her. I scarcely know which of them is the more to be pitied.”

“Oh, he, surely!” exclaimed Clarice.

“Nay, I am not so sure. God help those who are unloved! but, far more, God help those who cannot love! I think she deserves the more compassion of the two.”

“May be,” answered Clarice, slowly—her thoughts were running so fast that her words came with hesitation. “But what shouldst thou say to one that had outlived a sorrowful love, and now thought it a happy chance that it had turned out contrary thereto?”

“It would depend upon how she had outlived it,” responded Heliet, gravely.

“I heard one say, not many days gone,” remarked Clarice—not meaning to let Heliet know from whom she had heard it—“that when she was young she loved a squire of her father, which did let her from wedding with him; and that now she was right thankful it so were, for he was killed on the field, and left never a plack behind him, and she was far better off, being now wed unto a gentleman of wealth and substance. What shouldst thou say to that?”

“If it were one of any kin to thee I would as lief say nothing to it,” was Heliet’s rather dry rejoinder.

“Nay, heed not that; I would fain know.”

“Then I think the squire may have loved her, but so did she never him.”

“In good sooth,” said Clarice, “she told me she slept many a night on a wet pillow.”

“So have I seen a child that had broken his toy,” replied Heliet, smiling.

Clarice saw pretty plainly that Heliet thought such a state of things was not love at all.

“But how else can love be outlived?” she said.

“Love cannot. But sorrow may be.”

“Some folks say love and sorrow be nigh the same.”

“Nay, ’tis sin and sorrow that be nigh the same. All selfishness is sin, and very much of what men do commonly call love is but pure selfishness.”

“Well, I never loved none yet,” remarked Clarice.

“God have mercy on thee!” answered Heliet.

“Wherefore?” demanded Clarice, in surprise.

“Because,” said Heliet, softly, “ ‘he that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is charity.’ ”

“Art thou destined for the cloister?” asked Clarice.

Only priests, monks, and nuns, in her eyes, had any business to talk religiously, or might reasonably be expected to do so.

“I am destined to fulfil that which is God’s will for me,” was Heliet’s simple reply. “Whether that will be the cloister or no I have not yet learned.”

Clarice cogitated upon this reply while she ate stewed apples.

“Thou hast an odd name,” she said, after a pause.

“What, Heliet?” asked its bearer, with a smile. “It is taken from the name of the holy prophet Elye, (Elijah) of old time.”

“Is it? But I mean the other.”

“Ah, I love it not,” said Heliet.

“No, it is very queer,” replied Clarice, with an apologetic blush, “very odd—Underdone!”

“Oh, but that is not my name,” answered Heliet, quickly, with a little laugh; “but it is quite as bad. It is Pride.”

Clarice fancied she had heard the name before, but she could not remember where.

“But why is it bad?” said she. “Then I reckon Mistress Underdone hath been twice wed?”

“She hath,” said Heliet, answering the last question first, as people often do, “and my father was her first husband. Why is pride evil? Surely thou knowest that.”

“Oh, I know it is one of the seven deadly sins, of course,” responded Clarice, quickly; “still it is very necessary and noble.”

Heliet’s smile expressed a mixture of feelings. Clarice was not the first person who has held one axiom theoretically, but has practically behaved according to another.

“The Lord saith that He hates pride,” said the lame girl, softly. “How, then, can it be necessary, not to say noble?”

“Oh, but—” Clarice went no further.

“But He did not mean what He said?”

“Oh, yes, of course!” said Clarice. “But—”

“Better drop the but,” said Heliet, quaintly. “And Father Bevis is about to say grace.”

The Dominican friar rose and returned thanks for the repast, and the company broke up, the Earl and Countess, with their guests, leaving the hall by the upper door, while the household retired by the lower.

The preparations for sleep were almost as primitive as those for meals. Exalted persons, such as the Earl and Countess, slept in handsome bedsteads, of the tent form, hung with silk curtains, and spread with coverlets of fur, silk, or tapestry. They washed in silver basins, with ewers of the same costly metal; and they sat, the highest rank in curule chairs, the lower upon velvet-cove red forms or stools. But ordinary people, of whom Clarice was one, were not provided for in this luxurious style. Bower-maidens slept in pallet-beds, which were made extremely low, so as to run easily under one of the larger bedsteads, and thus be put out of the way. All beds rejoiced in a quantity of pillows. Our ancestors made much more use of pillows and cushions than we—a fact easily accounted for, considering that they had no softly-stuffed chairs, but only upright ones of hard carved wood. But Clarice’s sheets were simple “cloth of Rennes,” while those of her mistress were set with jewels. Her mattress was stuffed with hay instead of wool; she had neither curtains nor fly-nets, and her coverlet was of plain cloth, unwrought by the needle. In the matter of blankets they fared alike except as to quality. But in the bower-maidens’ chamber, where all the girls slept together, there were no basins of any material. Early in the morning a strong-armed maid came in, bearing a tub of water, which she set down on one of the coffers of carved oak which stood at the foot of each bed and held all the personal treasures of the sleeper. Then, by means of a mop which she brought with her, she gently sprinkled every face with water, thus intimating that it was time to get up. The tub she left behind. It was to provide—on the principle of “first come, first served”—for the ablutions of all the five young ladies, though each had her personal towel. Virtue was thus its own reward, the laziest girl being obliged to content herself with the dirtiest water. It must, however, be remembered that she was a fastidious damsel who washed more than face and hands.

They then dressed themselves, carefully tying their respective amulets round their necks, without which proceeding they would have anticipated all manner of ill luck to befall them during the day. These articles were small boxes of the nature of a locket, containing either a little dust of one saint, a shred of the conventual habit of another, or a few verses from a gospel, written very minutely, and folded up extremely small. Then each girl, as she was ready, knelt in the window, and gabbled over in Latin, which she did not understand, a Paternoster, ten Aves, and the Angelical Salutation, not unfrequently breaking eagerly into the conversation almost before the last Amen had left her lips. Prayers over, they passed into the sitting-room next door, where they generally found a basket of manchet bread and biscuits, with a large jug of ale or wine. A gentleman usher called for Mistress Underdone and her charges, and conducted them to mass in the chapel. Here they usually found the Earl and Countess before them, who alone, except the priests, were accommodated with seats. Each girl courtesied first to the altar, then to the Countess, and lastly to the Earl, before she took her allotted place. The Earl always returned the salutation by a quiet inclination of his head. The Countess sat in stony dignity, and never took any notice of it. Needlework followed until dinner, after which the Countess gave audience for an hour to any person desiring to see her, and usually concluded it by a half-hour’s nap. Further needlework, for such as were not summoned to active attendance on their mistress if she went out, lasted until vespers, after which supper was served. After supper was the recreation time, when in most houses the bower-maidens enjoyed themselves with the gentlemen of the household in games or dancing in the hall; but the Lady Margaret strictly forbade any such frivolous doings in her maidens. They were still confined to their own sitting-room, except on some extraordinary occasion, and the only amusements allowed them were low-toned conversation, chess, draughts, or illumination. Music, dancing (even by the girls alone), noisy games of all kinds, and laughter, the Countess strictly forbade. The practical result was that the young ladies fell back upon gossip and ghost-stories, until there were few nights in the year when Roisia would have dared to go to bed by herself for a king’s ransom. An hour before bed-time wine and cakes were served. After this Mistress Underdone recited the Rosary, the girls making the responses, and at eight o’clock—a late hour at that time—they trooped off to bed. All were expected to be in bed and all lights out by half-past eight. The unlucky maiden who loitered or was accidentally hindered had to finish her undressing in the dark.

Note 1. This strange habit of the Countess is a fact, and sorely distressed the Earl, as he has himself put on record, though with all his annoyance he shows himself quite conscious of the comicality of the proceeding.

Note 2. The dépenseur, or family provider. Hence comes the name of Le Despenser, which, therefore, should not be spelt Despencer.