Long Will Part 22

"I think of her," Etienne answered him sadly.

"There is more kinds of love than one," Calote protested. "Is there not a love for the whole people that is as worthy as the love for one woman? Yea, and more worthy, for 't is Christ's fashion of loving.

What matter if I lose my life, if so be the people is free?"

Richard kindled to her words. "So must the King love!" he cried. "Fie, for shame, Etienne! But only yesternight thou wert persuading me how honourable 't is when a man lose his life for the world's sake and Christ Jesu--as crusaders and such."

"And what is this I preach, but a crusade," demanded Calote, "to free the people?"

"A crusade?" the King questioned. Then his face came all alight. "A crusade!--And when the preaching 's done I 'll be the leader of the crusade.--And I 'll make all England my Holy Land!"--For if Richard had not been a king, he might have been a poet.

"Now praise be to Christ and Mary Mother!" said Calote joyously. "And what for a token dost give me, sire, that the people may know me a true messenger?"

"A token, parde!" and he looked him up and down hastily. He had on a green jerkin all embroidered over with R's entwined in a pattern of gold threads, and b.u.t.toned with little bells of gold. His one leg was scarlet, his other was green. About his neck, at the end of a long jewelled chain, hung a little hunting-horn of silver, with his badge of the white hart graven upon it and set round with pearls.

"Take this!" he said, and flung the chain over her head.

"By G.o.d's will, I 'll call the King's menye to him with this horn,"

quoth Calote, a-kissing it.

The King laughed merrily then, and went and cast himself upon his squire's neck:--

"Etienne, cheri, mignon,--be not so glum! When Richard is King in the Kingdom of Love, not Dan Cupid's self shall dare to cross thy suit to thy lady. Thou shalt be married to Calote, and I 'll make thee chief counsellor. I 'll take mine Uncle John's land and richesse in forfeit and give them to thee."

"Ah, no, no!" Calote exclaimed.

"But I will if I 'm King?" said Richard.

And then did Stephen laugh.

"Now wherefore so merry?" Richard asked, eyeing him in discontent.

"Beau sire, you bade me be merry," Stephen made answer, and to Calote he said "When dost thou start a-preaching, and whither?"

"When Parliament is departed,--I go about in the villages to the south and west of Gloucester. Meanwhile, I 'll lodge with a kindly forester's wife in Malvern here. But now I must away to find an old monk, my father's schoolmaster. My father was put to school in Malvern Priory."

"Why, 't is very true!" cried the King. "The Vision maketh a beginning in the Malvern Hills."

"I bring the Vision to this monk; and he 's a-fishing hereabout in the Chase, the porter saith. Saw ye a burn as ye came hither?"

"Yea, verily!" Richard answered her. "We crossed it but fifty paces back, and 't was there the dogs went off the scent and back to the pack and the other folk, in the lower chase. Hark to them now! We 've lost the hunt; let us go with the maid, Etienne. If her father's schoolmaster is the same that sat at my side yestere'en and told me tales, he 'll wile an hour right prettily for us. He said Dan Chaucer, our Chaucer, came hither a little lad years agone, afore mine Uncle Lionel died. I 'd rather fish than hunt. Leave Robert de Vere and my brother John Holland to slay the deer."

So they went through the wood leading their jennets; and Calote, with the King's horn about her neck, walked by the King's side.

CHAPTER III

By a Burn's Side

Brother Owyn gazed dreamily into the flashing waters of the burn. His fish-basket was empty; twice he had lost his bait. But if the hunger and thirst of a man be in his soul, 't is little he recks if he have not fish for supper. Forty years past, when Brother Owyn was a young man, he had fled into the Church in the hope to escape the world. But he learned that monastery gates are as gossamer; and the world, the flesh, and the devil, all three, caper in cloister. To-day he was in disgrace with his prior--not the old dull prior, but a newer, narrower man--for defending the doctrine and opinions of Master John Wyclif, concerning sanctuary, and the possession of property, and the wrong that it is for prelates to hold secular office.

"Dost thou defend a devil's wight that is under ban of Holy Church,"

quoth the prior, "and yet call thyself a servant to G.o.d and the Pope?"

"Which Pope?" saith Brother Owyn; for at this time there were two popes in Christendom, the one at Avignon and the other at Rome, and they were very busy cursing each other.

"Such levity in one of thy years is unseemly, brother," the prior made answer, and turned his back.

Nevertheless, Brother Owyn was sore perplexed. Having that vision of the Holy City ever before his eyes, and his daughter awaiting him on the other side of the River of Death, he was altogether minded to keep him from heresy. He began to be an old man now; haply the time was short till he might enter into that other Kingdom. Was Master John Wyclif the Devil, who taketh the word out of the mouth of Dame Truth?

Yet a many of those men, even his enemies who reviled him for his doctrine, revered him for a holy man and a scholar. Some said there was not so great a man in England, nor so good, as John Wyclif. Here, then, was the old perplexity, to know what was truth. But Brother Owyn erred in that he thought to save his soul alive by flight.

"Malvern coveteth a hermit," he mused; "but if I go apart, and sleep in a cave, and never wash me, nor cut my beard, straightway there 'll be a flocking of great folk to look on me, and to question me of their wives' honour, and of the likelihood of these French wars, for that I 'm a holy man. Alack, my Margaret, my Pearl, now lead me out of this quandary away into a quiet place to pray, for John Wyclif's word draweth. Soon I 'll be a heretic and accursed."

Hereupon Brother Owyn lifted up his eyes, and suddenly cried out aloud; for, on the other side of the burn, there stood a golden-haired maid.

"Ho! thou hast lost a fine fish, see him!--gone!" cried a merry voice, and the boy that was the King of England came a-leaping and laughing from stone to stone across the sun-flecked water. After him tiptoed the maid, but the squire with the two horses bode on the farther side.

"Nay, climb not to thy feet, good brother," said the King. "Thy fright hath shaken thee; in sooth, we meant it not."

"My lord, my lord," murmured Brother Owyn, and there were tears in his eyes; "methought 't was my young daughter come to take me home,--home where a man sinneth no more, and the walls of the city are jasper, and the gates are twelve pearls." He covered his face with his hands, and the tears trickled down his beard.

Richard knelt beside him and put his arm about the bent shoulders: "Oh, but I 'm sorry!" he said distressfully. "Don't weep! prythee, don't weep!"

"If I be not thy daughter, yet my father was as a son to thee," Calote a.s.sured him, kneeling at his other side. "'T was thou taught him to sing, and to-day he 's sent his song to thee."

Brother Owyn had lifted up his face to look on her, and now he touched her bright hair, soft, with his finger, and "Will Langland's voice was wonderly sweet," said he, "and low. 'T is nigh on thirty years since he went out from Malvern, but his was not a voice to be forgot. His daughter, thou?--He ever did the thing he had not meant to do." He looked on her with a curiosity most benevolent, staying his gaze a long while at her eyes; and:--

"Doth Will Langland sing at court?" he asked.

Calote laughed, her father's image in the threadbare gown flashing sudden in her mind.

"Nay, he hath not yet; but he shall one day, when Calote cometh again to London," declared the King. "'T is not so merry a poet as Master Chaucer; but I do love his solemnite. Whiles he jesteth, but his tongue 's a whip then,--stingeth."

Brother Owyn nodded his head, as he were hearing an old tale; and turned him again to Calote:--

"Will Langland went a-seeking Truth, his lady, thirty years past. Hath he found her?"

"She is here," Calote answered simply; and unrolled the parchment to set it open before him.

The old man looked on her keenly: "Thou hast a great trust in thy father?"

"More than in all men else," she said; and the squire on the other side of the burn thrust his foot among the fallen leaves noisily, and jingled the bridles of the horses.

"I am in sore straits to find Truth," quoth Brother Owyn, with a half-smile. "Many a man will thank Will Langland heartily, if so be he hath found her."

He turned the pages, slow, reading to himself a bit here and there.