The White Rose of Langley Part 48

"I do verily trust," she said humbly, "that He hath paid for me the debt eternal; yet is there a debt earthly, and this is for my paying."

"Never a whit!" cried Maude earnestly. "Dear my Lady, not one cross [farthing] thereof! That which we suffer at the hand of our Father is not debt, but discipline; the chastising of the son, not the work wrung by lash from the slave. 'The children are free.'"

"Ay, free from the curse and the second death," she said, still despondingly; "but from pains and penalties of sin in this life, Maude, not freed. An' I cut mine hand with yonder knife, G.o.d shall not heal the wound by miracle because I am His child."

Maude felt that the ill.u.s.tration was true, but she was not sure that it was apposite, neither was she convinced that her own view was mistaken.

She glanced at Sir Ademar de Milford, who sat on the settle, studying the works of Saint Augustine, as if to ask him to answer for her.

Ademar was no longer the family confessor, for the family had given over confessing; but Archbishop Chichele, professing himself satisfied of his orthodoxy, had revoked the now useless writ of excommunication, and the priest had resumed his duties as chaplain. Ademar laid down his book in answer to the appealing glance from Maude's eyes.

"Lady," he said, "how much, I pray you, is owing to your Grace from the young ladies your daughters, for food and lodging?"

"Owing from my little maids!" exclaimed Constance.

"That is it which I would know," replied Ademar gravely.

"From my little maids!" she repeated in astonishment.

"It is written, Madam, in His book, that as one whom his mother comforteth, He comforteth us. Wherefore, seeing that the comfort your Grace looketh for at His hands is to have you afore the reeve for payment of your debts, it setteth me to think that you shall needs use your children likewise."

"Never!" cried Constance emphatically. "And so say I, Lady," returned Ademar significantly. "But, Sir Ademar, G.o.d doth chastise His children!"

"Truly so, Madam, as you yours. But I marvel which is the more sufferer--yourself or the child."

He spoke pointedly, for only the day before Isabel had chosen to be very naughty, and had imperatively required correction, which he knew had cost far more to Constance to administer than to her refractory child to receive.

"Then, Sir Ademar, you do think He suffereth when He chastiseth us?" she asked, her voice faltering a little. "I cannot think, Dame, that He loveth the rod. Only He loveth too well the child to leave him uncorrected."

"O, Sir Ademar!" she cried suddenly--"I do trust He shall not find need to try me yet again through these childre! I am so feared I should fail and fall. Ah me! weak and wretched woman that I am,--I could not bear to see these two forced from me! G.o.d help and pardon me; but me feareth if it should come to this yet again, I would do anything to keep them!"

"The Lord can heal the waters, Lady, ere He fetch you to drink them."

"He did not this draught aforetime," she said sadly.

"Maybe," replied Ademar, "because He saw that your Ladyship's disorder needed a bitter medicine."

There was a respite for just one year. But ever after the news of her brother Richard's death, Constance drooped and pined; and when the fresh storm broke, it found her an invalid almost confined to her bed. It began with a strong manifesto from Archbishop Chichele against the Lollards. Then came a harshly-worded order for all landed proprietors in the Marches of South Wales to reside on their estates and "keep off the rebels." One of these was specially directed to Constance Le Despenser.

But who were the rebels? Owain Glyndwr had died twelve months before.

It could not mean him; and there was only one person whom it could mean.

It meant Lord Cobham, still in hiding, whom Lord Powys was in the field to capture, and on whose head a rich reward was set. The authorities were trembling in fear of a second outbreak under his guidance. Bertram gave the missive to Maude, who carried it to Constance. Disobedience was to be visited by penalty; and how it was likely to be punished in her case, Constance knew only too well. She received it with a moan of anguish.

"My little maids! my little, little maids!"

She said no more: she only grew worse and weaker.

Then Lord Powys, in search for the "rebels," marched up and demanded aid. He was answered by silence: and he marched on and away, helped by no hand or voice in Cardiff Castle.

"I must give them up!" Constance whispered to Maude, in accents so hopelessly mournful that it wrung her tender heart to hear them. "I cannot give Him up!"

For just then, in the eyes of every Lollard, to follow Lord Cobham was equivalent to following Christ.

Weaker and weaker she grew now; always confined to bed; worse from day to day.

And at last, on the 28th of November, 1416, the ominous horn sounded without the moat, and the Sheriff of the county, armed with all the power of the law, entered the Castle of Cardiff, to call the Lady Le Despenser to account for her repeated and contumacious neglect of the royal command.

"Lady mine," said Maude, tenderly, kneeling by her, "the Sheriff is here."

"It is come, then!" replied Constance very quietly. "Bring my little maids to me. Let me kiss them once more ere they tear them away from me. G.o.d help me to bear the rest!"

She kissed them both, and blessed them fervently, bidding them "be good maids and serve G.o.d." Then she lay back again in the bed, and softly turned her face to the wall so that the intruders would not see it.

"The Sheriff may enter in," she said in a low voice. "Lord, I have left all, and have followed Thee!"

Does it seem a small matter for which to sacrifice all? The balances of the Sanctuary are not used with weights of earth.

The Sheriff came in. Maude stood up boldly, indignantly, and demanded to know wherefore he had come. The answer was what she expected.

"To seize the persons of the Lady Le Despenser and her daughters, accused of disobedience to the law, and perverse contumacy, in that she did deny to aid with money and men the search for one John Oldcastle, a prison-breaker convict of heresy and sedition."

"Is he taken?" said Bertram almost involuntarily.

"Nay, not so yet; but the good Lord Powys is now a-hunting after him.

He that shall take him shall net a thousand marks thereby, and twenty marks by the year further."

Maude drew a long sigh.

"Much good do they him!" exclaimed Bertram ironically.

Maude went back to the bed and spoke to her mistress.

"Lady, heard you what he said?"

There was no answer, and Maude spoke again. Still the silence was unbroken. She touched the shoulder, and yet no response.

"An' it like you, Madam, you must arise and come with me," said the Sheriff bluntly, as Maude bent over the sufferer. Then, with a low moan, she sank on her knees by the bedside, and a cry which was not all bitterness broke from her.

"'And thus hath Christ unwemmed kept Custance'!"

"What matter, wife?" said Bertram in a tone of sudden apprehension.

"No matter any more!" replied Maude, lifting her white face. "Master Sheriff, she was dying ere you came to prison her,--on a sendel thread [a linen cloth of the finest quality] hung her life: but ere you touched her, G.o.d snapped yon thread, and set her free."

Ay, what matter?--though they seized on the poor relic of mortality which had once been Constance Le Despenser?--though the mean vengeance was taken of leaving her coffin unburied for four dreary years? "After that, they had no more that they could do." It was only the withered leaves that were left in their hands; the White Rose was free.

"What shall become of the young ladies, Master Sheriff?"

"Nay," growled the surly official, "the hen being departed, I lack nought of the chicks. They may go whither it list them; only this Castle and all therein is confiscate."

Maude turned to Isabel, now a tall statuesque maiden of sixteen years.