The White Rose of Langley Part 28

"Very well. I will be ready."

Before Edward could reply, Bertram Lyngern's horn sounded through the forest, saying distinctly to all who heard it, "Time to go home!" The three rose and walked towards the trysting-place, both Constance and Maude possessed of some ideas which had never presented themselves to them before.

Bertram and Maude rode back as they had come. Maude was very silent, which was no wonder; and so, for ten minutes, was Bertram. Then he began:--

"How liked you this forest life, Mistress Maude?"

"Well, Master Lyngern, and I thank you," said she absently.

"And to-morrow is a week our Lady's Grace shall wed?"

"Why, Master Lyngern, you know that as well as I."

Maude wished he would have left her to her own thoughts, from which his questions were no diversion in any sense.

"Mistress Maude, when will you be wed?"

The diversion was effected.

"I, Master Lyngern! I am not about to wed."

"Are you well avised of that, Mistress Maude?"

"Marry, Master Lyngern!" said Maude, feeling rather affronted.

"If you will take mine avis.e.m.e.nt, you will be wed likewise," said Bertram gravely.

"What mean you, Master Lyngern?"

Maude was really hurt. She liked Bertram, and here he was making fun of her, without the least consideration for her feelings.

"Marry, I mean that same," responded Bertram coolly. "Would it like you, Mistress Maude?"

"Methinks you had better do me to wit whom your avis.e.m.e.nt should have me to wed," said Maude, standing on her dignity, and manufacturing an angry tone to keep herself from crying. She would certainly have released her hold of Bertram, and have sat on her pillion in indignant solitude, if she had not felt almost sure that the result would be a fall in the mud.

Bertram's answer was quick and decided.

"Me!"

Maude would have answered with properly injured dignity if she could; but a disagreeable lump of something came into her throat which spoilt the effect.

"Thou hadst better wed me, Maude," said Bertram coaxingly, dropping his voice and his conventionalities together. "There is not a soul loveth thee as I do; and thou likest me well."

"I pray you, Master Lyngern, when said I so much?" responded Maude, stung into speech again.

"Just twenty years gone, little Maude," was the gentle answer.

Bertram's voice had changed from its bantering tone into a tender, quiet one, and Maude felt more inclined to cry than ever.

"Is that saying truth no longer, Maude?"

Maude's conscience whispered to her that she must not say any thing of the sort. Still she thought it only proper to hold out a little longer.

She was silent; and Bertram, who thought she was coming round, let her alone for a short time. The grey towers of Cardiff slowly rose to view, and in a few seconds more they would no longer be alone.

"Well, Maude?" asked Bertram softly. "Is it ay or nay?"

"As you will, Master Lyngern."

This was Bertram's wooing; and Maude wondered, when she was alone, if any woman had been so wooed before.

Constance expressed the greatest satisfaction when she heard of her bower-woman's approaching marriage; but one item of Bertram's project she commanded altered--namely, that Maude's nuptials should not take place on the same day as her own.

"Why, Maude!" she said, "if our two weddings be one day, I shall have but an half-day's rejoical, and thou likewise! Nay, good maid! we will have each her full day, and a bonfire in the base court, and feasting, and dancing to boot. Both on one day, quotha! marry, but that were n.i.g.g.ardly."

So Maude was married on the Sat.u.r.day previous to her mistress. She was dressed in lilac damask, trimmed with swansdown, and her hair, for the last time in her life, streamed over her shoulders and fell at its own sweet will. Matrons always tucked away their hair in the dove-cote, while widows were careful not to show a single lock. Bertram exhibited extraordinary splendour, for he was generally rather careless about his dress. He wore a red damask gown, trimmed with rabbit's fur; a bright blue under-tunic; a pair of red boots with white b.u.t.tons; and he bore in his hand a copped hat of blue serge. The copped hat had no brim, and was about a foot and a half in height. Bertram's appearance, therefore, to say the least, was striking.

When the ceremony was just completed, without any previous intimation, the Duke of York, who was present, drew his sword, and lightly struck the shoulder of the bridegroom, before he could rise from his knees.

"Rise, Sir Bertram Lyngern!"

So Maude became ent.i.tled at once to the honourable prefix of "Dame."

The grander wedding was on the following Thursday. The Earl of Kent's costume baffles description. Suffice it to say that it cost two thousand pounds. The royal bride doffed her widow's weeds, and appeared in a crimson silk deeply edged with ermine, low in the neck, but with long sleeves to the wrist. She wore the dovecote, and over it an open circlet of gold and gems, to mark her royal rank.

At the threshold of Constance's bower, after the ceremony, the old Lady Le Despenser met the Earl and Countess of Kent.

"The Lord bless you, fair daughter!" she said, laying her hands on the bowed head of the bride.

But a little later the same evening, she said unexpectedly, "Ay me! I am but a blind thing, Dame Maude; yet this match of the Lady Custance doth sorely misgive me."

At the other end of the room, the Duke of York was saying, "You will visit me at Langley, fair sister, this coming spring?"

"With a very good will, Ned."

It only remains to be noted that Father Ademar officiated at both marriages; and that as in those days people went home for the honeymoon, not away from it, the Earl and Countess set out from Cardiff in a few days for Brockenhurst, the birthplace and favourite residence of the young Earl. The children were left with their grandmother; they were to follow, in charge of Maude and Bertram, to Langley, where their mother intended to rejoin them. Maude continued to be bowerwoman to her mistress; but some of the more menial functions usually discharged by one who filled that office, were now given to a younger girl, who bore the name of Eva de Scanteby.

It was in the evening of a lovely spring day that Constance, accompanied by Kent, rejoined Maude and her children at Langley.

CHAPTER NINE.

PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT.

"He that hath a thousand friends hath not a friend to spare, And he that hath one enemy shall find him everywhere."

On the evening of Constance's arrival at Langley, two men sat in close conference in the Jerusalem Chamber of the Palace of Westminster. One of them was a priest, the other a layman. The first priest, and the first layman, in the realm; for the elder was Thomas de Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the younger was Henry of Bolingbroke, King of England.

The Archbishop was a tall, stout, portly man, with a round, fair, fat face, on which sat an expression of extreme self-complacency. A fine forehead, both broad and high, though slightly too retreating, surmounted a pair of clear, bright grey eyes, a well-formed nose, and lips in which there was no weakness, but they were just a shade too smiling for sincerity. Though his age was only fifty-one, his hair was snow-white. Of course his face was closely shaven; for it is an odd fact that the higher a man's sacerdotal pretensions rise, the more unlike a man he usually makes himself--resembling the weaker s.e.x as much as possible, both in person and costume. This man's sacerdotal pretensions ran very high, and accordingly his black ca.s.sock fell about his feet like a woman's dress, and his face was guiltless of beard or whisker.