The White Rose of Langley. Emily Sarah Holt
“Rare meek and gent, Lady—for a lad, and his ire saved.” (Except when he was angry.)
Dame Agnes saved her conscience by the last clause, for gentle as Prince Edmund had generally been, he was as capable of going into a genuine Plantagenet passion as any of his more fiery brothers.
“But a maiden must be meeker and gentler?”
“Certes, Damosel,” said Agnes, spinning away.
The child reclined in her chair for a time in silence. Perhaps it was the suddenness of the next question which made the old lady drop her distaff.
“Dame, who is Sir John de Wycliffe?”
The distaff had to be recovered before the question could be considered.
“Ask at Dame Joan, Lady,” was the discreet reply.
“So I did; and she bade me ask at thee.”
“A priest, methinks,” said Agnes vaguely.
“Why, I knew that,” answered the child. “But what did he, or held he?—for ’tis somewhat naughty, folk say.”
“If it be somewhat naughty, Lady Custance, you should not seek to know it.”
“But my Lady my mother wagged her head, though she spake not. So I want to know.”
“Then your best way, Damosel,” suggested the troubled Agnes, “were to ask at her Grace.”
“I did ask at her.”
“And what said she?”
“She said she would tell me another day. But I want to know now.”
“Her Grace’s answer might have served you, Lady.”
“It did not serve Ned. He said he would know. And so will I.”
“The Lord Edward is two years your elder, Lady.”
“Truth,” said the child shrewdly, “and you be sixty years mine elder, so you should know more than he by thirty.”
Agnes could not help smiling, but she was sadly perplexed how to dismiss the unwelcome topic.
“Let be. If thou wilt not tell me, I will blandish some that will. There be other beside thee in the university (world, universe).—What is yonder bruit?” (a noise.)
It was little Maude, flying in frantic terror, with Parnel in hot pursuit, both too much absorbed to note in what direction they were running. The cause was not far to seek.
After Maude had recovered from the effects of her exposure in the forest, she lighted unexpectedly on the little flat parcel which her mother had charged her to keep. It was carefully sewn up in linen, and the sewing cost Maude some trouble to penetrate. She reached the core at last. It was something thin and flat, with curious black and red patterns all over it. This would have been the child’s description. It was, in truth, a vellum leaf of a manuscript, elaborately written, but not illuminated, unless capitals in red ink can be termed illumination. Remembering her mother’s charge, to let “none beguile her of it,” Maude had striven to keep its possession a secret from every one, first from the nuns, and then from Ursula Drew. Strange to say, she had succeeded until that morning. It was to her a priceless treasure—all the more inestimable because she could not read a word of it. But on that unlucky morning, Parnel had caught a glimpse of the precious parcel, always hidden in Maude’s bosom, and had immediately endeavoured to snatch it from her. Contriving to elude her grasp, yet fearful of its repetition, Maude rushed out of the kitchen door, and finding that her tormentor followed, fled across the base court, took refuge in an open archway, dashed up a flight of steps, and sped along a wide corridor, neither knowing nor caring that her flying feet were bearing her straight in the direction of the royal apartments. Parnel was the first to see where they were going, and at the last corner she stayed her pursuit, daring to proceed no further. But Maude did not know that Parnel was no longer on her track, and she fled wildly on, till her foot tripped at an inequality in the stone passage, and she came down just opposite an open door.
For a minute the child was too much stunned by her fall to think of any thing. Then, as her recollection returned, she cast a terrified glance behind her, and saw that her pursuer had not yet appeared round the corner. And then, before she could rise, she heard a voice in front of her.
“What is this, my child?”
Maude looked up, past a gorgeous spread of blue and gold drapery, into a meek, quiet face—a face whose expression reassured and comforted her. A calm, pale, oval face, in which were set eyes of sapphire blue, framed by soft, light hair, and wearing a look of suffering, past or present. Maude answered the gentle voice which belonged to that face as she might have answered her mother.
“I pray you of pardon, Mistress! Parnel, my fellow, ran after me and affrighted me.”
“Wherefore ran she after thee?”
“Because she would needs see what I bare in my bosom, and I was loth she so should, lest she should do it hurt.”
“What is that? I will do it no hurt.”
Maude looked up again, and felt as if she could trust that face with any thing. So merely saying—“You will not give it Parnel, Mistress?” she drew forth her treasure and put it into the lady’s hand.
“I will give it to none saving thine own self. Dost know what it is, little maid?”
“No, Mistress, in good sooth.”
“How earnest by it? ’Tis a part of a book.”
“My mother, that is dead, charged me to keep it; for it was all she had for to give me. I know not, in very deed, whether it be Charlemagne or Arthur”—the only two books of which poor Maude had ever heard. “But an’ I could meet with one that wist to read, and that were my true friend, I would fain cause her to tell me what I would know thereabout.”
“And hast no true friend?” inquired the lady.
“Not one,” said Maude sorrowfully.
“Well, little maid, I can read, and I would be thy true friend. What is it thou wouldst fain know?”
“Why,” said Maude, in an interested tone, “whether the great knight, of whose mighty deeds this book doth tell, should win his ’trothed love at the last, or no.”
For the novel-reader of the fourteenth century was not very different from the novel-reader of the nineteenth. The lady smiled, but grew grave again directly. She sat down in one of the cushioned window-seats, keeping Maude’s treasured leaf in her hand.
“List, little maid, and thou shalt hear—that the great Knight, of whose mighty prowess this book doth tell, shall win His ’trothed love at last.”
And she began to read—very different words from any Maude expected. The child listened, entranced.
“And I saigh (saw) newe heuene and newe erthe; for the firste heuene and the firste erthe wenten awei; and the see is not now. And I ioon (John) saigh the hooli citee ierusalim newe comynge doun fro heuene maad redi of god as a wyf ourned to hir husbonde. And I herde a greet voice fro the trone seiynge (saying), lo a tabernacle of god is with men, and he schal dwelle with hem, and thei schulen be his peple, and he, god with hem, schal be her (their) god. And god schal wipe awei ech teer fro the ighen (eyes) of hem, and deeth schal no more be, neithir mournyng neither criyng neither sorewe schal be ouer, whiche thing is firste (first things) wenten awei. And he seide that sat in the trone, lo I make alle thingis newe. And he seide to me, write thou, for these wordis ben (are) moost feithful and trewe. And he seide to me, it is don, I am alpha and oo (omega) the bigynnyng and ende, I schal ghyue (give) freli of the welle of quyk (quick, living) water to him that thirstith. He that schal ouercome schal welde (possess) these thingis, and I schal be god to him, and he schal be sone to me. But to ferdful men, and unbileueful, and cursid, and manquelleris, and fornicatours,