Star of Mercia Part 13

The Lady Edith dipped a clout in the well and bathed the heads and necks of the little ones, gave them to drink, and set them to lie in the shade. Soon the girl-child stirred and wept, and Edith lifted her up in her arms. A shrill cry made us all turn to behold a poorly-clad woman, hot and unkempt, who stumbled towards us, tears in her eyes and terror in her voice.

"Ye naughty ones!" she stormed at sight of the children. "Here have I been...."

Then she stopped short, with open mouth, and stared at the slender, bare-headed woman who held her younger child, until one whispered: "It is the King's Lady!" when she louted down upon her knees.

"Hush! hush!" said Lady Edith to her sobbing burden. "Fear not, sweetheart! Thou must go home now--go to thy mother indeed!" and she laid her in the arms of the kneeling woman.

Never had she been more lovely than in that moment, her face shining like a rose, her eyes most tender and brightly-beaming. When, a short while after, she turned from mother and child and came seeking me, a huge pity rushed up within me, and I think that she read that pity in my look.

"Dread lady," said I, being a little mazed, and all soft with ruth, "how goes it with our Lord the King?"

"Whenas I left my lord, all was right well with him," she answered. "He had some sickness in the spring, but it irked him little, truly, for his years. Such an holy life he leads, and yet he is so long-enduring towards them of worldly mind! It is great joy to me that I may see him sometimes, and be somewhat near him."

She crossed herself, and the fair light faded from her.

"Wherefore do I murmur?" said she. "Is not Jordan flood better than all the rivers of Damascus?"

And so saying, she folded her meek hands above her heart, and went her way.

I never saw her again. The well that she found for us abideth for her memorial: clear and cool in every weather--the freshest in all the countryside. I have often thought of her since that day; and I think of her more often now than ever in the long night hours that are not the drowsy hours when one has grown old. Dreams, Gundred, dreams--waking dreams, but idle things none the less! But sometimes meseemeth that her very self is near me, standing as I best knew her, arms outheld, face aglow. She lived and died childless; the old King had made an oath, they say, for fear he might fall short of heaven. Once or twice evil tongues have made free to slander her fame! She was staunch, I know, and flawless; and yet her heart was quick and warm. Girl, I have ever recked little of the greater deal of the saints to whom prelates bid us pray. Of G.o.d and of his goodness I reck much; and this is the saint whom I worship before all others, crowned in this world or uncrowned--Edith the well-beloved Lady, whom all her people honoured and pitied.

Richard the Scrob

"Better than mine, Kenric--better than thine!" said Grim. "Ever his are taken, and ours are left. Who will look at our sheep and our oxen when the Scrob's are by?"

Kenric withdrew the straw that he had been chewing from between his teeth, and ceased to stare at the white-limbed, red-spotted cattle in the pen before him.

"Eh! he buyeth for the Bishop," he mumbled. "And he buyeth for the folk of Hereford town. And for the Abbot of Leominster. And for the Prior of Wenlock. His salted meat is rowed upon Wye and upon Severn to feed the merchantmen of Bristol. Grim, this Frenchman is a worker of spells."

"And even so the beasts of his own breeding are such as thou wilt not meet with on any other man's land within the two shires. Heavier!

Fatter! Sleeker! I would that his lord the devil would fly away with him soon! Hast thou but seen his woolsacks yonder? What other has such great store to sell? True, he can have little spinning at home, with no women."

"I have not seen him--Richard the Scrob," said vague Kenric, returning to his straw-munching. "Are not these sold already----"

"Kenric, stand not and grumble, with blind eyes," cried Munulf the maltman, who now accosted these two. "Here is a sight not often seen--the little widow, Kenric, the plump widow. Look up and behold the light of thine eyes, where she cometh, girt about with her husband's stalwart kinsfold."

"Hey? who?" Kenric rejoined. "Who cometh yonder? Alftrude the widow of Winge? Oh, aye, it is a pretty woman enough----"

"And should be rich woman enough," said Grim. "They are watchdogs indeed, the brethren of the Moor. I wonder that they let her show her nose at Ludford fair--so little and straight is it that many a man will love it, by heaven! My good wife pities Alftrude greatly. She will be widow to the end of her days, they ward her about so wilily."

"I know it, I know it!" wheezed Kenric. "And Ulwin, Alward, and Ednoth--they are three ill men to deal withal. Alack! no hope have I!"

He summoned up a faint sigh of good-humoured resignation. "If but now thou found me grumbling," he explained, "it was at French Richard."

Munulf raked his fingers through his long yellow hair, and looked mysterious.

"I have heard cunning talk of late," said he "Men say that these outland folk that swarm about our King shall soon be outlanders twofold; for shall they not be bundled off, beyond the seas, whither they came? Earl G.o.dwin called together his Mickle Gemot seven weeks ago. I would we knew how that has sped. G.o.dwin is wont to bring about his will!"

"Why, my lords, he hath brought it about, the good Earl!" sounded in an excited cackle behind them. Hildred the ale-wife hastened to join the three speakers, her red face unusually resplendent with pride in being foremost retailer of news for that day. "A man of Worcester brought great tidings yestereve. G.o.dwin is driving out the accursed Normans, every one--man, woman, child, and priest. Even Ralf our Earl, the King's nephew, shall go, though his mother were English G.o.dgifu!"

"Bless the work!" exclaimed Grim. "These Normans have a knack of drawing to themselves the wealth that should be ours. There should be pickings, eh? for all true Englishmen!" He nudged Kenric, and whispered:

"H'st! see where Richard comes!"

Richard the Norman came up to his cattle-pen. He was a small man, slightly built, and of upright carriage, and he moved with a spring in his gait. He had an aquiline nose, a persistent chin, and a strong, exceedingly well-formed mouth; his eyes were dark and deeply-set beneath the fine straight line of brow, and they looked straight into the eyes of others. His face was clean-shaven like a cleric's, and more than ordinarily wrinkled about mouth, eyes, and brow for his age, which was a little over thirty; the black hair of his head was cut short at the nape of the neck and the top of the forehead. He wore a short tunic of dull-coloured cloth, and leather boots, and from his waistbelt hung a small, shabby leather bag. Behind him walked his two servants, Howel the Welshman, and his own countryman Perot.

"Good day, Thane Kenric," said Richard the Scrob. "Good day, lords both, and to you, worshipful Munulf."

"Ah! Good day, Richard Scrob's son."

"Warm weather for November. A very Martin's summer," said Richard.

"Aye," from Grim. "Oh, aye, right warm, this weather. It may become hot. It shall soon be hot for all Frenchmen!" he concluded savagely.

Richard seemed unconscious of Grim's words and of their tone. He unfastened the bag from his belt, opened it, and surveyed the contents complacently. Oswin, the maltman's son, a weak-kneed, loose-lipped youth, gave a laboured imitation of the Norman's air of detachment, a few yards away.

"Why, son," said Munulf, when he had finished guffawing at this specimen of his offspring's wit, "what bearest in thy bosom?" pointing to the opening at the neck of the lad's jerkin, where a small, dark head was seen to writhe.

"Oh, it is my weasel," Oswin replied. "He harms me not, for I feed him, but others he biteth. There are some shall feel his fangs before Holy Martin's fair is out, I warrant you, my father!"

"Here are the Moor folk at last. I shall sit down," Kenric announced portentously. He withdrew to the customary resort of thanes and great men on market-days, on holidays, and at all public functions held upon Ludford green--the huge elm whose boughs cast their shadow as far as the cattle-pen of Richard the Scrob. There he subsided upon a bench, and sent a serving-woman of the ale-wife's for beer.

The green was now crowded with buyers and sellers of every degree. Grim and Munulf, who leant upon the hurdles surrounding Richard's exhibits, saw the throng before them part to release a procession of two thralls, four lean oxen, four women in riding-mantles, and three corpulent men who wore the grimy remains of once-fine garments, and had pretentiously heavy gold ornaments at their necks and about their wrists and fingers.

Three of the women were comely and commonplace: the pleasant person of the fourth could not have failed to command attention in any surroundings. She was young, of moderate height, and generously built; she was small-featured, white skinned, blue-eyed, and her lips were full and wholesomely red. Over her head and the greater part of her figure was a hooded cloak, evidently new, of periwinkle-blue cloth; and upon her breast lay her hair in long plaits of that soft shade which is not golden, nor brown, nor chestnut, but all three, and has yet an ashen-silver haze upon its surface when the sun shines behind it. Her gown was black, and much the worse for wear, and at the base of her throat gleamed a bunch of the spindle-tree's pink berries, fastened in place with a silver pin.

"Good day, or else good morrow, Ulwin," said Grim, scarcely attempting to veil the sneer in his voice. "Ye are late with your stock."

"Late--aye!" panted the eldest, fattest, most showily-dressed of the newly arrived men. "Aye--late! All for women--hindered by women! I ask you, fellows, what should women do at fair or market, if they bring not wares to sell? Squander good money! Bedizen themselves to the nines!

Would G.o.d that I had let thee from coming forth in thy prideful gear!"

he snarled at her of the blue mantle. "Did I not say that thou wouldst seem no better than a tumbling-girl in the eyes of the folk? Dost thou mind that my brother lies in his grave?"

Richard the Scrob's right hand closed upon the hurdle in a convulsive grasp.

"It is five years since he died," said the woman.

"Get behind me, and stay behind me, out of our way," said Ulwin. "See here, Alftrude, thou shalt not stir whence I now bid thee stand. I will not have thee waste our goods on womanish nothings. Geegaws and sweet foodstuffs, forsooth! What lacks the woman? Will she tell the world that we clothe her not nor board her?"

She made no reply. For a moment she looked him full in the face: there was no reproach in her gaze, but only contempt and a spice of derision; then she turned and walked calmly, with unflushed cheeks, to join the other women in the background, and stood with them. The market-crowd surged all about them.

"These are thine?" growled Ulwin to Richard, indicating the penned oxen.

"Mine they were," answered Richard. "I sold them to Edmund the flesher of Worcester this morning, when the fair was but new-begun. But I have others, Ulwin Ednoth's son, if ye wish to buy."

"Buy! Pah! no, not I! It is not of buying that I have to speak with thee, Richard."

"Of what then, worthy thane?"