A Forgotten Hero Part 7

"Fifteen thousand and sixty, my Lord of Surrey told me," said Lancaster.

"I doubted if it were not too high a computation; that is why I asked."

"Oh, very likely not," responded Edward, carelessly. "There are as many of them as gnats, and as much annoyance."

"Well, it is a pious deed, of course," said Lancaster, stroking his moustache, not in the dilettante style of De Echingham, but like a man lost in thought. "It seems a pity, though, for the women and children."

"My cousin of Lancaster, I do believe, sings _Dirige_ over the chickens in his barnyard," sneered De Valence.

Lancaster looked up with a good-tempered smile.

"Does my fair Uncle never wish for the day when the lion shall eat straw like the ox?" [Note 1.]

"Not I!" cried De Valence, with a hearty laugh. "Why, what mean you?

are we to dine on a haunch of lion when it comes?"

"Nay, for that were to make us worse than either, methinks. I suppose we shall give over eating what has had life, at that time."

"_Merci, mille fois_!" laughed his uncle. "My dinner will be spoiled.

Not thine, I dare say. I'll be bound, Sire, our fair cousin will munch his apples and pears with all the gusto in the world, and send his squire to the stable to inquire if the lion has a straw doubled under him."

"Bah!" said the King. "What are you talking about?"

"How much will this business of the Jews cost your Grace?" asked De Valence, dropping his sarcasms.

"Cost _me_?" demanded Edward, with a short laugh. "Did our fair uncle imagine we meant to execute such a project at our own expense? Let the rogues pay their own travelling fees."

"Ha! good!" said the Poitevin n.o.ble. "And our fair cousin of Lancaster shall chant the _De Profundis_ while they embark, and I will offer a silver fibula to Saint Edward that they may all be drowned. How sayest, fair Cousin?"

"Nay," was Lancaster's answer, in a doubtful tone. "I reckon we ought not to pity them, being they that crucified our Lord. But--"

But for all that, his heart cried out against his creed. Yet it did not occur to him that the particular men who were being driven from their homes for no fault of theirs, and forced with keen irony of oppression to pay their own expenses, were not those who crucified Christ, but were removed from them by many generations. The times of the Gentiles were not yet fulfilled, and the cry, "His blood be on us, _and on our children_" had not yet exhausted its awful power.

There was one person not present who would heartily have agreed with Lancaster. This was his cousin and namesake, Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, who not only felt for the lower animals--a rare yet occasional state of mind in the thirteenth century--but went further, and compa.s.sionated the villeins--a sentiment which very few indeed would have dreamed of sharing with him. The labourers on the land were serfs, and had no feelings,--that is, none that could be recognised by the upper cla.s.ses.

They were liable to be sold with the land which they tilled; nor could they leave their "hundred" without a pa.s.sport. Their sons might not be educated to anything but agriculture; their daughters could not be married without paying a fine to the master. Worse things than these are told of some, for of course the condition of the serf largely depended on the disposition of his owner.

The journey from Oakham to Westminster was a pleasant change to all the bower-maidens but one, and that was the one selected to travel with her mistress in the litter. Each was secretly, if not openly, hoping not to be that one; and it was with no little trepidation that Clarice received the news that this honour was to be conferred on her. She discovered, however, on the journey, that scolding was not the perpetual occupation of the Countess. She spent part of every day in telling her beads, part in reading books woefully dry to the apprehension of Clarice, and part in sleeping, which not unfrequently succeeded the beads. Conversation she never attempted, and Clarice, who dared not speak till she was spoken to, began to entertain a fear of losing the use of her tongue.

Otherwise she was grave and quiet enough, poor girl! for she was not naturally talkative. She was very sorry to part with Heliet, and she felt, almost without knowing why, some apprehension concerning the future. Sentiments of this sort were quite unknown to such girls as Elaine, Diana, and Roisia, while with Olympias they arose solely from delicate health. But Clarice was made of finer porcelain, and she could not help mournfully feeling that she had not a friend in the world. Her father and mother were not friends; they were strangers who might be expected to do what they thought best for her, just as the authorities of a workhouse might take conscientious care in the apprenticing of the workhouse girls. But no more could be expected, and Clarice felt it.

If there had only been, anywhere in the world, somebody who loved her!

There was no such probability to which it was safe to look forward.

Possibly, some twenty or thirty years hence, some of her children might love her. As for her husband, he was simply an embarra.s.sing future certainty, who--with almost equal certainty--would not care a straw about her. That was only to be expected. The squire who liked Roisia would be pretty sure to get Diana; while the girl who admired Reginald de Echingham was safe to fall to Fulk de Chaucombe. Things always were arranged so in this world. Perhaps, thought Clarice, those girls were the happiest who did not care, who took life as it came, and made all the fun they could out of it. But she knew well that this was how life and she would never take each other.

Whitehall was reached at last, on that eve of Saint Botolph. Clarice was excessively tired, and only able to judge of the noise without, and the superb decorations and lofty rooms within. Lofty, be it remembered, to her eyes; they would not look so to ours. She supped upon salt merling [whiting], pease-cods [green peas], and stewed fruit, and was not sorry to get to bed.

In the morning, she found the household considerably increased. Her eyes were almost dazzled by the comers and goers; and she really noticed only one person. Two young knights were among the new attendants of the Earl, but one of them Clarice could not have distinguished from the crowd. The other had attracted her notice by coming forward to help the Countess from her litter, and, instead of attending his mistress further, had, rather to Clarice's surprise, turned to help _her_. And when she looked up to thank him, it struck her that his face was like somebody she knew. She did not discover who it was till Roisia observed, while the girls were undressing, that--"My cousin is growing a beard, I declare. He had none the last time I saw him."

"Which is thy cousin?" asked Clarice.

"Why, Piers Ingham," said Roisia. "He that helped my Lady from the litter."

"Oh, is he thy cousin?" responded Clarice.

"By the mother's side," answered Roisia. "He hath but been knighted this last winter."

"Then he is just ready for a wife," said Elaine. "I wonder which of us it will be! It is tolerably sure to be one. I say, maids, I mean to have a jolly time of it while we are here! It shall go hard with me if I do not get promoted to be one of the Queen's bower-women!"

"Oh, would I?" interpolated Diana.

"Why?" asked more than one voice.

"I am sure," said Olympias, "I had ever so much rather be under the Lady Queen than our Lady."

"Oh, that may be," said Diana. "I was not looking at it in that light.

There is some amus.e.m.e.nt in deceiving our Lady, and one doesn't feel it wrong, because she is such a vixen; but there would be no fun in taking in the Queen, she's too good."

"I wonder what Father Bevis would say to that doctrine," demurely remarked Elaine. "What it seems to mean is, that a lie is not such a bad thing if you tell it to a bad person as it would be if you told it to a good one. Now I doubt if Father Bevis would be quite of that opinion."

"Don't talk nonsense," was Diana's reply.

"Well, but is it nonsense? Didst thou mean that?"

It was rather unusual for Elaine thus to satirise Diana, and looked as if the two had changed characters, especially when Diana walked away, muttering something which no one distinctly heard.

Elaine proved herself a tolerably true prophetess. _Fete_ followed _fete_. Clarice found herself initiated into Court circles, and discovered that she was enjoying herself very much. But whether the attraction lay in the pageants, in the dancing, in her own bright array, or in the companionship, she did not pause to ask herself. Perhaps if she had paused, and made the inquiry, she might have discovered that life had changed to her since she came to Westminster. The things eternal, of which Heliet alone had spoken to her, had faded away into far distance; they had been left behind at Oakham. The things temporal were becoming everything.

In a stone balcony overhanging the Thames, at Whitehall, sat Earl Edmund of Cornwall, in a thoughtful att.i.tude, resting his head upon his hand.

He had been alone for half an hour, but now a tall man in a Dominican habit, who was not Father Bevis, came round the corner of the balcony, which ran all along that side of the house. He was the Prior or Rector of Ashridge, a collegiate community, founded by the Earl himself, of which we shall hear more anon.

The Friar sat down on the stone bench near the Earl, who took no further notice of him than by a look, his eyes returning to dreamy contemplation of the river.

"Of what is my Lord thinking?" asked the Friar, gently.

"Of life," said the Prince.

"Not very hopefully, I imagine."

"The hope comes at the beginning, Father. Look at yonder pleasure-boat, with the lads and la.s.ses in it, setting forth for a row. There is hope enough in their faces. But when the journey comes near its end, and the perilous bridge must be shot, and the night is setting in, what you see in the faces then will not be hope. It will be weariness; perhaps disgust and sorrow. And--in some voyages, the hope dies early."

"True--if it has reference only to the day."

"Ah," responded the Prince, with a smile which had more sadness than mirth in it, "you mean to point me to the hope beyond. But the day is long Father. The night has not come yet, and the bridge is still to be shot. Ay, and the wind and rain are cold, as one drops slowly down the river."

"There is home at the end, nevertheless," answered the Dominican. "When we sit round the fire in the banquet hall, and all we love are round us, and the doors shut safe, we shall easily forget the cold wind on the water."

"When! Yes. But I am on the water yet, and it may be some hours before my barge is moored at the garden steps. And--it is always the same, Father. It does seem strange, when there is only one earthly thing for which a man cares, that G.o.d should deny him that one thing. Why rouse the hope which is never to be fulfilled? If the width of the world had lain all our lives between me and my Lady, we should both have been happier. Why should G.o.d bring us together to spoil each other's lives?

For I dare say she is as little pleased with her lot as I with mine-- poor Magot!"

"Will my Lord allow me to alter the figure he has chosen?" said the Predicant Friar. "Look at your own barge moored down below. If the rope were to break, what would become of the barge?"

"It would drift down the river."