Part 8 (1/2)
”Hold there!” The fire had come back to the sunken eyes. ”I would speak with some that come never anigh me, mine own children, that have cast me off, or be kept away from me; they never so much as ask the old mother how she doth. And I slaved and wrought and risked my life for them, times out of mind! And here you keep me, shut up in four walls,-- never a change from year end to year end; never a voice to say 'Mother!'
or 'I love thee;' never a hope to look forward to till death take me!
No going forth of my cage; even the very air of heaven has to come in to me. And I may choose, may I, whether my bed shall be hung with green or blue? I may speak my pleasure if I would have to my four-hours macaroons or gingerbread? and be duly thankful that this liberty and these delicates are granted me! Avena Foljambe, all your folly lieth not in your legs.”
Lady Foljambe evidently did not appreciate this pun upon her surname.
”Dame!” she said, severely.
”Well? I can fare forth, if you have not had enough. What right hath your King thus to use me? I never was his va.s.sal. I entreated his aid, truly, as prince to prince; and had he kept his bond and word, he had been the truer man. I never brake mine, and I had far more need than he. Wherefore played he at see-saw, now aiding me, and now Charles, until none of his knights well knew which way he was bent? I brought Charles de Blois to him a prisoner, and he let him go for a heap of yellow stuff, and fiddled with him, off and on, till Charles brake his pledged word, and lost his life, as he deserved, at Auray. I desire to know what right King Edward had, when I came to visit him after I had captured mine enemy, to make _me_ a prisoner, and keep me so, now and then suffering me, like a cat with a mouse, to escape just far enough to keep within his reach when he list to catch me again. But not now, for eight long years--eight long years!”
”Dame, I cannot remain here to list such language of my sovereign.”
”Then don't. I never asked you. My tongue is free, at any rate. You can go.”
And the Countess turned back to the black satin on which she was embroidering a wreath of red and white roses.
”Follow me, Amphillis,” said Lady Foljambe, with as much dignity as the Countess's onslaught had left her.
She led the way into the opposite chamber, the one shared by Perrote and Amphillis.
”It were best, as this hath happed, that you should know quickly who this lady is that wotteth not how to govern her tongue. She is the d.u.c.h.ess of Brittany. Heard you ever her story?”
”Something, Dame, an' it please you; yet not fully told. I heard, as I think, of some quarrel betwixt her and a cousin touching the succession to the duchy, and that our King had holpen her, and gave his daughter in wedlock to the young Duke her son.”
”So did he, in very deed; and yet is she thus unbuxom. Listen, and you shall hear the inwards thereof. In the year of our Lord 1341 died Duke John of Brittany, that was called the Good, and left no child. Two brothers had he--Sir Guy, that was his brother both of father and mother, and Sir John, of the father only, that was called Count de Montfort. Sir Guy was then dead, but had left behind him a daughter, the Lady Joan, that man called Joan the Halting, by reason she was lame of one leg. Between her and her uncle of Montfort was the war of succession--she as daughter of the brother by father and mother, he as nearer akin to Duke John, being brother himself. [Note 1.] Our King took part with the Count de Montfort, and the King of France espoused the cause of the Lady Joan.”
Lady Foljambe did not think it necessary to add that King Edward's policy had been of the most halting character in this matter--at one time fighting for Jeanne, and at another for Montfort, until his n.o.bles might well have been pardoned, if they found it difficult to remember at any given moment on which side their master was.
”Well, the King of France took the Count, and led him away captive to Paris his city. Whereupon this lady, that is now here in ward, what did she but took in her arms her young son, that was then a babe of some few months old, and into the Council at Rennes she went--which city is the chief town of Brittany--and quoth she unto the n.o.bles there a.s.sembled, 'Fair Sirs, be not cast down by the loss of my lord; he was but one man.
See here his young son, who shall 'present him for you; and trust me, we will keep the stranger out of our city as well without him as with him.' Truly, there was not a man to come up to her. She handled sword as well as any marshal of the King's host; no a.s.sault could surprise her, no disappointment could crush her, nor could any man, however wily, take her off her guard. When she had gone forward to Hennebon--for Rennes surrendered ere help could come from our King--man said she rade all up and down the town, clad in armour, encouraging the townsmen, and moving the women to go up to the ramparts and thence to hurl down on the besiegers the stones that they tare up from the paved streets. Never man fought like her!”
”If it please you, Dame, was her lord never set free?” asked Amphillis, considerably interested.
”Ay and no,” said Lady Foljambe. ”Set free was he never, but he escaped out of Louvre [Note 2] in disguise of a pedlar, and so came to England to entreat the King's aid; but his Grace was then so busied with foreign warfare that little could he do, and the poor Count laid it so to heart that he died. He did but return home to die in his wife's arms.”
”Oh, poor lady!” said Amphillis.
”Three years later,” said Lady Foljambe, ”this lady took prisoner Sir Charles de Blois, the husband of the Lady Joan, and brought him to the King; also bringing her young son, that was then a lad of six years, and was betrothed to the King's daughter, the Lady Mary. The King ordered her residence in the Castle of Tickhill, where she dwelt many years, until a matter of two years back, when she was brought hither.”
Amphillis felt this account exceedingly unsatisfactory.
”Dame,” said she, ”if I may have leave to ask at you, wherefore is this lady a prisoner? What hath she done?”
Lady Foljambe's lips took a stern set. She was apparently not pleased with the freedom of the question.
”She was a very troublesome person,” said she. ”Nothing could stay her; she was ever restless and interfering. But these be matters too high for a young maid such as thou. Thou wert best keep to thy broidery and such-like duties.”
Harvest Home--the sixteenth of August--arrived when Amphillis had been a week at Hazelwood. She had not by any means concluded that process which is known as ”settling down.” On the contrary, she had never felt so unsettled, and the feeling grew rather than diminished. Even Alexandra and Ricarda had tried her less than her present companions, in one sense; for they puzzled her less, though they teased her more. She was beginning to understand her mistress, whose mood was usually one of weary lack of interest and energy, occasionally broken either by seasons of acute sorrow, or by sudden flashes of fiery anger: and the last were less trying than the first--indeed, it seemed sometimes to Amphillis that they served as a vent and a relief; that for a time after them the weariness was a shade less dreary, and the languor scarcely quite so overpowering.
Late in the evening, on the night before Harvest Home, Sir G.o.dfrey returned home, attended by his squire, Master Norman Hylton. The impression received by Amphillis concerning the master of the house was that he was a fitting pendant to his wife--tall, square, and stern. She did not know that Sir G.o.dfrey had been rather wild in his youth, and, as some such men do, had become correspondingly severe and precise in his old age. Not that his heart had changed; it was simply that the sins of youth had been driven out by the sins of maturer life. And Satan is always willing to let his slaves replace one sin by another, for it makes them none the less surely his. Sir G.o.dfrey suffered under no sense of inconsistency in sternly rebuking, when exhibited by Agatha or Matthew, slight tendencies to evil of the same types as he had once been addicted to himself. Had he not sown his wild oats, and become a reformed character? The outside of the cup and platter were now so beautifully clean, that it never so much as occurred to him to question the condition of the inside. Yet within were some very foul things-- alienation from G.o.d, and hardness of heart, and love of gold, that grew upon him year by year. And he thought himself a most excellent man, though he was only a whitewashed sepulchre. He lifted his head high, as he stood in the court of the temple, and effusively thanked G.o.d that he was not as other men. An excellent man! said everybody who knew him-- perhaps a little too particular, and rather severe on the peccadilloes of young people. But when the time came that another Voice p.r.o.nounced final sentence on that whitewashed life, the verdict was scarcely ”Well done!”