Earl Hubert's Daughter Part 13

Doucebelle looked up earnestly, and the girls' eyes met. One of them was groping in the darkness in search of Christ. The other had groped her way through the darkness, and had caught hold of Him. She did not see His Face very clearly, but enough so to be sure that it was He.

"Belasez, dear maid, He said one other thing. 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' Trust me, the surest way to find out who He is, is to come to Him."

"What meanest thou? He is not on earth."

"He is where thy need is," answered Doucebelle gently. "In any labyrinth out of which we know not the way,--over any grave where our hearts lie buried,--we can meet Him."

"But how? Thy words are a riddle to me."

"Call Him, and see if He do not come to thee. And if He and thou do but meet, it does not much matter by which track thou earnest thither."

Belasez was silent, and seemed to be thinking deeply.

"Doucebelle," she said at last, "are there two sorts of Christians?

Because thy language is like the Bishop of Lincoln's. All the priests, and other Christians, whom I have heard before, spoke in quite another strain."

"There are live Christians, and dead ones. I know not of any third sort."

"The dead ones must be fearfully in the majority!" said Belasez: "I mean, if thou and the Bishop are live ones."

"That may be true, I am afraid," replied Doucebelle.

"It must be the breathing of the Holy One that makes the difference,"

observed Belasez, very thoughtfully. "For it is written, that Adonai formed man of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the neshama of life; and man became a living soul. Thus He breathed the life into man at first, in the day of the creation of Adam. Surely, in the day when the soul of man becomes alive to the will of the Holy One, He must breathe into him the second time, that he may live."

"Belasez, what are your sacred books? You seem to have some."

"We gave them to you," was Belasez's reply. "But ye have added to them."

"But the Scriptures were given to the Church!" remonstrated Doucebelle with some surprise.

"I know not what ye mean by the Church," answered the Jewess. "They were ours,--given to our fathers, revealed to them by the Holy One. We gave them to you,--or ye filched them from us,--I scarcely know which.

And ye have added other books, which we cannot recognise."

The flash of fervent confidence had died away, and Belasez was once more the reserved, impenetrable Jewish maiden, to whom Gentile Christians were unclean animals, and their doctrines to be mentioned only with scorn and abhorrence. And as Marie came dancing in at that moment, the conversation was not renewed. But it made a great impression upon Doucebelle, who ever afterwards added to her prayers the pet.i.tion,--"Fair Father, Jesu Christ, teach Belasez to know Thee."

["Bel Pere"--then one of the common epithets used in prayer.]

But to every one in general, and to Doucebelle in particular, Belasez seemed shut up closer than ever.

The January of 1236 came, and with it the royal marriage. The ceremonial took place at Canterbury, and Earl Hubert was present, as his office required of him. The Countess excused herself on the ground of slight illness, which would make it very irksome for her to travel in winter. Her "intimate enemies" kindly suggested that she was actuated by pique, since a time had been when she might have been herself Queen of England. But they did not know Margaret of Scotland. Pique and spite were not in her. Her real motive was something wholly different.

She was not naturally ambitious, nor did she consider the crown of England so highly superior to the gemmed coronal of a Scottish Princess; and she had never held King Henry in such personal regard as to feel any regret at his loss. Her true object in remaining at Bury was to "manage" the marriage of Margaret with Richard de Clare. It was to be a clandestine match, except as concerned a few favoured witnesses; and Earl Hubert was to be kept carefully in the dark till all was safely over. The wedding was to be one "_per verba de presenti_" then as sacred by the canon law as if it had been performed by a priest in full canonicals; and as a matter of absolute necessity, no witness was required at all. But the Countess thought it more satisfactory to have one or two who could be trusted not to chatter till the time came for revelation. She chose Doucebelle along with herself, as the one in whose silence she had most confidence. Thus, in that January, in the dead of the night, the four indicated a.s.sembled in the bed-chamber of the Countess, and the bride and bridegroom, joining hands, said simply--

"In the presence of G.o.d and of these persons, I, Richard, take thee, Margaret, to my wedded wife:" and, "In the same presence I, Margaret, take thee, Richard, to my wedded husband."

And according to canon and statute law they were legally married, nor could anything short of a divorce part them again.

"Now then, go to bed," said the Countess, addressing Doucebelle: "and beware, every soul of you, that not a word comes out till I tell you ye may speak."

"Belasez, when wilt thou be wed?" inquired Margaret, the next morning.

If the thoughts of the bride ran upon weddings, it was not much to be wondered.

"Next summer," said Belasez, as coolly as if the question had been when she would finish her embroidery. There was no shadow of emotion of any kind to be seen.

"Oh, art thou handfast?" replied Margaret, interested at once.

"I was betrothed in my cradle," was the answer of the Jewish maiden.

"To a Jew, of course?"

"Of course! To Leo the son of Hamon of Norwich, my father's greatest friend."

"Is he a nice young man?"

"I never saw him."

"Why, Belasez!"

"The maidens of my people are strictly secluded. It is not so with Christians."

Yet it was less strange to these Christian girls than it would be to the reader. They lived in times when the hand of an heiress was entirely at the disposal of her guardian, who might marry her to some one whom she had never seen. As to widows, they were in the gift of the Crown, unless they chose (as many did) to make themselves safe by paying a high price for "liberty to marry whom they would." Even then, such a thing was known as the Crown disregarding the compact. Let it be added, since much good cannot be said of King John, that he at least was careful to fulfil his engagements of this description. His son was less particular.

Margaret looked at Belasez with a rather curious expression.

"And how dost thou like the idea," she asked, "of being wife to one whom thou hast never seen?"

"I do not think about it," said Belasez, in the same tone as before.

"What is to be will be."

"But what is to be," said Margaret, "may be very delightful, or it may be very horrid."

"Yes, no doubt," was the cool answer. "I shall see when the time comes."

Margaret turned away, with a shrug of her shoulders and a comic look in her eyes which nearly upset the gravity of the rest.

Note 1. These lines are (or were) to be seen, written with a diamond upon a pane of gla.s.s in a window of the Hotel des Pays-Bas, Spa, Belgium, with the date 1793. I do not know whether they are to be found in the writings of any poet.

CHAPTER SIX.

THE NEW CONFESSOR.

"Had the knight looked up to the page's face, No smile the word had won; Had the knight looked up to the page's face, I ween he had never gone: Had the knight looked back to the page's geste, I ween he had turned anon,-- For dread was the woe in the face so young, And wild was the silent geste that flung Casque, sword, to earth as the boy down-sprung, And stood--alone, alone!"

_Elizabeth Barrett Browning_.