Grisly Grisell Or The Laidly Lady of Whitburn Part 8

And as Grisell, in obedience to his call, threw back her veil, Bernard screamed, "Ugsome wench, send her away!" threw his arms round his father's neck and hid his face with a babyish gesture.

"Saints have mercy!" cried the mother, "thou hast not mended much since I saw thee last. They that marred thee had best have kept thee. Whatever shall we do with the maid?"

"Send her away, the loathly thing," reiterated the boy, lifting up his head from his father's shoulder for another glimpse, which produced a puckering of the face in readiness for crying.

"Nay, nay, Bernard," said Ridley, feeling for the poor girl and speaking up for her when no one else would. "She is your sister, and you must be a fond brother to her, for an ill-nurtured lad spoilt her poor face when it was as fair as your own. Kiss your sister like a good lad, and -

"No! no!" shouted Bernard. "Take her away. I hate her." He began to cry and kick.

"Get out of his sight as fast as may be," commanded the mother, alarmed by her sickly darling's paroxysm of pa.s.sion.

Grisell, scarce knowing where to go, could only allow herself to be led away by Ridley, who, seeing her tears, tried to comfort her in his rough way. "'Tis the petted bairn's way, you see, mistress - and my lady has no thought save for him. He will get over it soon enough when he learns your gentle convent-bred conditions."

Still the cry of "Grisly Grisell," picked up as if by instinct or by some echo from the rear of the escort, rang in her ears in the angry fretful voice of the poor little creature towards whom her heart was yearning. Even the two women-servants there were, no more looked at her askance, as they took her to a seat in the hall, and consulted where my lady would have her bestowed. She was wiping away bitter tears as she heard her only friend Cuthbert settle the matter. "The chamber within the solar is the place for the n.o.ble damsels."

"That is full of old armour, and dried herrings, and stockfish."

"Move them then! A fair greeting to give to my lord's daughter."

There was some further muttering about a bed, and Grisell sprang up. "Oh, hush! hush! I can sleep on a cloak; I have done so for many nights. Only let me be no burthen. Show me where I can go to be an anch.o.r.ess, since they will not have me in a convent or anywhere," and bitterly she wept.

"Peace, peace, lady," said the squire kindly. "I will deal with these ill-tongued la.s.ses. Shame on them! Go off, and make the chamber ready, or I'll find a scourge for you. And as to my lady - she is wrapped up in the sick bairn, but she has only to get used to you to be friendly enough."

"O what a hope in a mother," thought poor Grisell. "O that I were at Wilton or some nunnery, where my looks would be pardoned! Mother Avice, dear mother, what wouldst thou say to me now!"

The peel tower had been the original building, and was still as it were the citadel, but below had been built the very strong but narrow castle court, containing the stables and the well, and likewise the hall and kitchen - which were the dwelling and sleeping places of the men of the household, excepting Cuthbert Ridley, who being of gentle blood, would sit above the salt, and had his quarters with Rob when at home in the tower. The solar was a room above the hall, where was the great box-bed of the lord and lady, and a little bed for Bernard.

Entered through it, in a small turret, was a chamber designed for the daughters and maids, and this was rightly appropriated by Ridley to the Lady Grisell. The two women-servants - Bell and Madge - were wives to the cook and the castle smith, so the place had been disused and made a receptacle for drying fish, fruit, and the like. Thus the sudden call for its use provoked a storm of murmurs in no gentle voices, and Grisell shrank into a corner of the hall, only wishing she could efface herself.

And as she looked out on the sea from her narrow window, it seemed to her dismally gray, moaning, restless, and dreary.

CHAPTER X - COLD WELCOME

Seek not for others to love you, But seek yourself to love them best, And you shall find the secret true, Of love and joy and rest.

I. WILLIAMS.

To lack beauty was a much more serious misfortune in the Middle Ages than at present. Of course it was probable that there might be a contract of marriage made entirely irrespective of attractiveness, long before the development of either of the princ.i.p.al parties concerned; but even then the rude, open-spoken husband would consider himself absolved from any attention to an ill-favoured wife, and the free tongues of her surroundings would not be slack to make her aware of her defects. The cloister was the refuge of the unmarried woman, if of gentle birth as a nun, if of a lower grade as a lay-sister; but the fifteenth century was an age neither of religion nor of chivalry. Dowers were more thought of than devotion in convents as elsewhere. Whitby being one of the oldest and grandest foundations was sure to be inaccessible to a high-born but unportioned girl, and Grisell in her sense of loneliness saw nothing before her but to become an anch.o.r.ess, that is to say, a female hermit, such as generally lived in strict seclusion under shelter of the Church.

"There at least," thought poor Grisell, "there would be none to sting me to the heart with those jeering eyes of theirs. And I might feel in time that G.o.d and His Saints loved me, and not long for my father and mother, and oh! my poor little brother - yes, and Leonard Copeland, and Sister Avice, and the rest. But would Sister Avice call this devotion? Nay, would she not say that these cruel eyes and words are a cross upon me, and I must bear them and love in spite - at least till I be old enough to choose for myself?"

She was summoned to supper, and this increased the sense of dreariness, for Bernard screamed that the grisly one should not come near him, or he would not eat, and she had to take her meal of dried fish and barley bread in the wide chimney corner, where there always was a fire at every season of the year.

Her chamber, which Cuthbert Ridley's exertions had compelled the women to prepare for her, was - as seen in the light of the long evening - a desolate place, within a turret, opening from the solar, or chamber of her parents and Bernard, the loophole window devoid of gla.s.s, though a shutter could be closed in bad weather, the walls circular and of rough, untouched, unconcealed stone, a pallet bed - the only attempt at furniture, except one chest - and Grisell's own mails tumbled down anyhow, and all pervaded by an ancient and fishy smell. She felt too downhearted even to creep out and ask for a pitcher of water. She took a long look over the gray, heaving sea, and tired as she was, it was long before she could pray and cry herself to sleep, and accustomed as she was to convent beds, this one appeared to be stuffed with raw apples, and she awoke with aching bones.

Her request for a pitcher or pail of water was treated as southland finery, for those who washed at all used the horse trough, but fortunately for her Cuthbert Ridley heard the request. He had been enough in the south in attendance on his master to know how young damsels lived, and what treatment they met with, and he was soon rating the women in no measured terms for the disrespect they had presumed to show to the Lady Grisell, encouraged by the neglect of her parents

The Lord of Whitburn, appearing on the scene at the moment, backed up his retainer, and made it plain that he intended his daughter to be respected and obeyed, and the grumbling women had to submit. Nor did he refuse to acknowledge, on Ridley's representation, that Grisell ought to have an attendant of her own, and the lady of the castle, coming down with Bernard clinging to her skirt with one hand, and leaning on his crutch, consented. "If the maid was to be here, she must be treated fitly, and Bell and Madge had enough to do without convent-bred fancies."

So Cuthbert descended the steep path to the ravine where dwelt the fisher folk, and came back with a girl barefooted, bareheaded, with long, streaming, lint-white locks, and the scantiest of garments, crying bitterly with fright, and almost struggling to go back. She was the orphan remnant of a family drowned in the bay, and was a burthen on her fisher kindred, who were rejoiced thus to dispose of her.

She sobbed the more at sight of the grisly lady, and almost screamed when Grisell smiled and tried to take her by the hand. Ridley fairly drove her upstairs, step by step, and then shut her in with his young lady, when she sank on the floor and hid her face under all her bleached hair.

"Poor little thing," thought Grisell; "it is like having a fresh-caught sea-gull. She is as forlorn as I am, and more afraid!"

So she began to speak gently and coaxingly, begging the girl to look up, and a.s.suring her that she would not be hurt. Grisell had a very soft and persuasive voice. Her chief misfortune as regarded her appearance was that the muscles of one cheek had been so drawn that though she smiled sweetly with one side of her face, the other was contracted and went awry, so that when the kind tones had made the girl look up for a moment, the next she cried, "O don't - don't! Holy Mary, forbid the spell!"

"I have no spells, my poor maid; indeed I am only a poor girl, a stranger here in my own home. Come, and do not fear me."

"Madge said you had witches' marks on your face," sobbed the child.

"Only the marks of gunpowder," said Grisell. "Listen, I will tell thee what befell me."

Gunpowder seemed to be quite beyond all experience of Whitburn nature, but the history of the catastrophe gained attention, and the girl's terror abated, so that Grisell could ask her name, which was Thora, and learning, too, that she had led a hard life since her granny died, and her uncle's wife beat her, and made her carry heavy loads of seaweed when it froze her hands, besides a hundred other troubles. As to knowing any kind of feminine art, she was as ignorant as if the rough and extremely dirty woollen garment she wore, belted round with a strip of leather, had grown upon her, and though Grisell's own stock of garments was not extensive, she was obliged, for very shame, to dress this strange attendant in what she could best spare, as well as, in spite of sobs and screams, to wash her face, hands, and feet, and it was wonderful how great a difference this made in the wild creature by the time the clang of the castle bell summoned all to the midday meal, when as before, Bernard professed not to be able to look at his sister, but when she had retreated he was seen spying at her through his fingers, with great curiosity.

Afterwards she went up to her mother to beg for a few necessaries for herself and for her maid, and to offer to do some spinning. She was not very graciously answered; but she was allowed an old frayed horse-cloth on which Thora might sleep, and for the rest she might see what she could find under the stairs in the turret, or in the chest in the hall window.

The broken, dilapidated fragments which seemed to Grisell mere rubbish were treasures and wonders to Thora, and out of them she picked enough to render her dreary chamber a very few degrees more habitable. Thora would sleep there, and certainly their relations were reversed, for carrying water was almost the only office she performed at first, since Grisell had to dress her, and teach her to keep herself in a tolerable state of neatness, and likewise how to spin, luring her with the hope of spinning yarn for a new dress for herself. As to prayers, her mind was a mere blank, though she said something that sounded like a spell except that it began with "Pater." She did not know who made her, and entirely believed in Niord and Rana, the storm-G.o.ds of Norseland. Yet she had always been to ma.s.s every Sunday morning. So went all the family at the castle as a matter of course, but except when the sacring-bell hushed them, the Baron freely discussed crops or fish with the tenants, and the lady wrangled about dues of lambs, eggs, and fish. Grisell's attention was a new thing, and the priest's p.r.o.nunciation was so defective to her ear that she could hardly follow.

That first week Grisell had plenty of occupation in settling her room and training her uncouth maid, who proved a much more apt scholar than she had expected, and became devoted to her like a little faithful dog.

No one else took much notice of either, except that at times Cuthbert Ridley showed himself to be willing to stand up for her. Her father was out a great deal, hunting or hawking or holding consultations with neighbouring knights or the men of Sunderland. Her mother, with the loudest and most peremptory of voices, ruled over the castle, ordered the men on their guards and at the stables, and the cook, scullions, and other servants, but without much good effect as household affairs were concerned, for the meals were as far removed from the delicate, dainty serving of the simplest fast-day meal at Wilton as from the sumptuous plenty and variety of Warwick house, and Bernard often cried and could not eat. She longed to make up for him one of the many appetising possets well known at Wilton, but her mother and Ralf the cook both scouted her first proposal. They wanted no south-bred meddlers over their fire.

However, one evening when Bernard had been fretful and in pain, the Baron had growled out that the child was c.o.c.kered beyond all bearing, and the mother had flown out at the unnatural father, and on his half laughing at her doting ways, had actually rushed across with clenched fist to box his ears; he had muttered that the pining brat and shrewish dame made the house no place for him, and wandered out to the society of his horses. Lady Whitburn, after exhaling her wrath in abuse of him and all around, carried the child up to his bed. There he was moaning, and she trying to soothe him, when, darkness having put a stop to Grisell's spinning, she went to her chamber with Thora. In pa.s.sing, the moaning was still heard, and she even thought her mother was crying. She ventured to approach and ask, "Fares he no better? If I might rub that poor leg."

But Bernard peevishly hid his face and whined, "Go away, Grisly," and her mother exclaimed, "Away with you, I have enough to vex me here without you."

She could only retire as fast as possible, and her tears ran down her face as in the long summer twilight she recited the evening offices, the same in which Sister Avice was joining in Wilton chapel. Before they were over she heard her father come up to bed, and in a harsh and angered voice bid Bernard to be still. There was stillness for some little time, but by and by the moaning and sobbing began again, and there was a jangling between the gruff voice and the shrill one, now thinner and weaker. Grisell felt that she must try again, and crept out. "If I might rub him a little while, and you rest, Lady Mother. He cannot see me now."

She prevailed, or rather the poor mother's utter weariness and dejection did, together with the father's growl, "Let her bring us peace if she can."

Lady Whitburn let her kneel down by the bed, and guided her hand to the aching thigh.

"Soft! Soft! Good! Good!" muttered Bernard presently. "Go on!"

Grisell had acquired something of that strange almost magical touch of Sister Avice, and Bernard lay still under her hand. Her mother, who was quite worn out, moved to her own bed, and fell asleep, while the snores of the Baron proclaimed him to have been long appeased. The boy, too, presently was breathing softly, and Grisell's att.i.tude relaxed, as her prayers and her dreams mingled together, and by and by, what she thought was the organ in Wilton chapel, and the light of St. Edith's taper, proved to be the musical rush of the incoming tide, and the golden sunrise over the sea, while all lay sound asleep around her, and she ventured gently to withdraw into her own room.

That night was Grisell's victory, though Bernard still held aloof from her all the ensuing day, when he was really the better and fresher for his long sleep, but at bed-time, when as usual the pain came on, he wailed for her to rub him, and as it was still daylight, and her father had gone out in one of the boats to fish, she ventured on singing to him, as she rubbed, to his great delight and still greater boon to her yearning heart. Even by day, as she sat at work, the little fellow limped up to her, and said, "Grisly, sing that again," staring hard in her face as she did so.

CHAPTER XI - BERNARD