I would mine heart had caught that wound
And slept beside him rather!
I think it were a better thing
Than murdered friend and marriage-ring
Forced on my life together.

E. B. Browning, The Romaunt of the Page.

Ladies were accustomed to live for weeks, months, nay, years, without news of those whom they had sent to the wars, and to live their life without them. The Lady of Whitburn did not expect to see her husband or son again till the summer campaign was over, and she was not at all uneasy about them, for the full armour of a gentleman had arrived at such a pitch of perfection that it was exceedingly difficult to kill him, and such was the weight, that his danger in being overthrown was of never being able to get up, but lying there to be smothered, made prisoner, or killed, by breaking into his armour. The knights could not have moved at all under the weight if they had not been trained from infancy, and had nearly reduced themselves to the condition of great tortoises.

It was no small surprise when, very late on a July evening, when, though twilight still prevailed, all save the warder were in bed, and he was asleep on his post, a bugle-horn rang out the master’s note, at first in the usual tones, then more loudly and impatiently. Hastening out of bed to her loophole window, Grisell saw a party beneath the walls, her father’s scallop-shells dimly seen above them, and a little in the rear, one who was evidently a prisoner.

The blasts grew fiercer, the warder and the castle were beginning to be astir, and when Grisell hurried into the outer room, she found her mother afoot and hastily dressing.

“My lord! my lord! it is his note,” she cried.

“Father come home!” shouted Bernard, just awake. “Grisly! Grisly! help me don my clothes.”

Lady Whitburn trembled and shook with haste, and Grisell could not help her very rapidly in the dark, with Bernard howling rather than calling for help all the time; and before she, still less Grisell, was fit for the public, her father’s heavy step was on the stairs, and she heard fragments of his words.

“All abed! We must have supper—ridden from Ayton since last baiting. Aye, got a prisoner—young Copeland—old one slain—great victory—Northampton. King taken—Buckingham and Egremont killed—Rob well—proud as a pyet. Ho, Grisell,” as she appeared, “bestir thyself. We be ready to eat a horse behind the saddle. Serve up as fast as may be.”

Grisell durst not stop to ask whether she had heard the word Copeland aright, and ran downstairs with a throbbing heart, just crossing the hall, where she thought she saw a figure bowed down, with hands over his face and elbows on his knees, but she could not pause, and went on to the kitchen, where the peat fire was never allowed to expire, and it was easy to stir it into heat. Whatever was cold she handed over to the servants to appease the hunger of the arrivals, while she broiled steaks, and heated the great perennial cauldron of broth with all the expedition in her power, with the help of Thora and the grumbling cook, when he appeared, angry at being disturbed.

Morning light was beginning to break before her toils were over for the dozen hungry men pounced so suddenly in on her, and when she again crossed the hall, most of them were lying on the straw-bestrewn floor fast asleep. One she specially noticed, his long limbs stretched out as he lay on his side, his head on his arm, as if he had fallen asleep from extreme fatigue in spite of himself.

His light brown hair was short and curly, his cheeks fair and ruddy, and all reminded her of Leonard Copeland as he had been those long years ago before her accident. Save for that, she would have been long ago his wife, she with her marred face the mate of that nobly fair countenance. How strange to remember. How she would have loved him, frank and often kind as she remembered him, though rough and impatient of restraint. What was that which his fingers had held till sleep had unclasped them? An ivory chessrook! Such was a favourite token of ladies to their true loves. What did it mean? Might she pause to pray a prayer over him as once hers—that all might be well with him, for she knew that in this unhappy war important captives were not treated as Frenchmen would have been as prisoners of war, but executed as traitors to their King.

She paused over him till a low sound and the bright eyes of one of the dogs warned her that all might in another moment be awake, and she fled up the stair to the solar, where her parents were both fast asleep, and across to her own room, where she threw herself on her bed, dressed as she was, but could not sleep for the multitude of strange thoughts that crowded over her in the increasing daylight.

By and by there was a stir, some words passed in the outer room, and then her mother came in.

“Wake, Grisly. Busk and bonne for thy wedding-morning instantly. Copeland is to keep his troth to thee at once. The Earl of Warwick hath granted his life to thy father on that condition only.”

“Oh, mother, is he willing?” cried Grisell trembling.

“What skills that, child? His hand was pledged, and he must fulfil his promise now that we have him.”

“Was it troth? I cannot remember it,” said Grisell.

“That matters not. Your father’s plight is the same thing. His father was slain in the battle, so ’tis between him and us. Put on thy best clothes as fast as may be. Thou shalt have my wedding-veil and miniver mantle. Speed, I say. My lord has to hasten away to join the Earl on the way to London. He will see the knot tied beyond loosing at once.”

To dress herself was all poor Grisell could do in her bewilderment. Remonstrance was vain. The actual marriage without choice was not so repugnant to all her feelings as to a modern maiden; it was the ordinary destiny of womanhood, and she had been used in her childhood to look on Leonard Copeland as her property; but to be forced on the poor youth instantly on his father’s death, and as an alternative to execution, set all her maidenly feelings in revolt. Bernard was sitting up in bed, crying out that he could not lose his Grisly. Her mother was running backwards and forwards, bringing portions of her own bridal gear, and directing Thora, who was combing out her young lady’s hair, which was long, of a beautiful brown, and was to be worn loose and flowing, in the bridal fashion. Grisell longed to kneel and pray, but her mother hurried her. “My lord must not be kept waiting, there would be time enough for prayer in the church.” Then Bernard, clamouring loudly, threw his arms round the thick old heavy silken gown that had been put on her, and declared that he would not part with his Grisly, and his mother tore him away by force, declaring that he need not fear, Copeland would be in no hurry to take her away, and again when she bent to kiss him he clung tight round her neck almost strangling her, and rumpling her tresses.

Ridley had come up to say that my lord was calling for the young lady, and it was he who took the boy off and held him in his arms, as the mother, who seemed endued with new strength by the excitement, threw a large white muffling veil over Grisell’s head and shoulders, and led or rather dragged her down to the hall.

The first sounds she there heard were, “Sir, I have given my faith to the Lady Eleanor of Audley, whom I love.”

“What is that to me? ’Twas a precontract to my daughter.”

“Not made by me nor her.”

“By your parents, with myself. You went near to being her death outright, marred her face for life, so that none other will wed her. What say you? Not hurt by your own will? Who said it was? What matters that?”

“Sir,” said Leonard, “it is true that by mishap, nay, if you will have it so, by a child’s inadvertence, I caused this evil chance to befall your daughter, but I deny, and my father denies likewise, that there was any troth plight between the maid and me. She will own the same if you ask her. As I spake before, there was talk of the like kind between you, sir, and my father, and it was the desire of the good King that thus the families might be reconciled; but the contract went no farther, as the holy King himself owned when I gave my faith to the Lord Audley’s daughter, and with it my heart.”

“Aye, we know that the Frenchwoman can make the poor fool of a King believe and avouch anything she choose! This is not the point. No more words, young man. Here stands my daughter; there is the rope. Choose—wed or hang.”

Leonard stood one moment with a look of agonised perplexity over his face. Then he said, “If I consent, am I at liberty, free at once to depart?”

“Aye,” said Whitburn. “So you fulfil your contract, the rest is nought to me.”

“I am then at liberty? Free to carry my sword to my Queen and King?”

“Free.”

“You swear it, on the holy cross?”

Lord Whitburn held up the cross hilt of his sword before him, and made oath on it that when once married to his daughter, Leonard Copeland was no longer his prisoner.

Grisell through her veil read on the youthful face a look of grief and renunciation; he was sacrificing his love to the needs of King and country, and his words chimed in with her conviction.

“Sir, I am ready. If it were myself alone, I would die rather than be false to my love, but my Queen needs good swords and faithful hearts, and I may not fail her. I am ready!”

“It is well!” said Lord Whitburn. “Ho, you there! Bring the horses to the door.”

Grisell, in all the strange suspense of that decision, had been thinking of Sir Gawaine, whose lines rang in her head, but that look of grief roused other feelings. Sir Gawaine had no other love to sacrifice.

“Sir! sir!” she cried, as her father turned to bid her mount the pillion behind Ridley. “Can you not let him go free without? I always looked to a cloister.”

“That is for you and he to settle, girl. Obey me now, or it will be the worse for him and you.”

“One word I would say,” added the mother. “How far hath this matter with the Audley maid gone? There is no troth plight, I trow?”

“No, by all that is holy, no. Would the lad not have pleaded it if there had been? No more dilly-dallying. Up on the horse, Grisly, and have done with it. We will show the young recreant how promises are kept in Durham County.”

He dragged rather than led his daughter to the door, and lifted her passively to the pillion seat behind Cuthbert Ridley. A fine horse, Copeland’s own, was waiting for him. He was allowed to ride freely, but old Whitburn kept close beside him, so that escape would have been impossible. He was in the armour in which he had fought, dimmed and dust-stained, but still glancing in the morning sun, which glittered on the sea, though a heavy western thunder-cloud, purple in the sun, was rising in front of this strange bridal cavalcade.

It was overhead by the time the church was reached, and the heavy rain that began to fall caused the priest to bid the whole party come within for the part of the ceremony usually performed outside the west door.

It was very dark within. The windows were small and old, and filled with dusky glass, and the arches were low browed. Grisell’s mufflings were thrown aside, and she stood as became a maiden bride, with all her hair flowing over her shoulders and long tresses over her face, but even without this, her features would hardly have been visible, as the dense cloud rolled overhead; and indeed so tall and straight was her figure that no one would have supposed her other than a fair young spouse. She trembled a good deal, but was too much terrified and, as it were, stunned for tears, and she durst not raise her drooping head even to look at her bridegroom, though such light as came in shone upon his fair hair and was reflected on his armour, and on one golden spur that still he wore, the other no doubt lost in the fight.

All was done regularly. The Lord of Whitburn was determined that no ceremony that could make the wedlock valid should be omitted. The priest, a kind old man, but of peasant birth, and entirely subservient to the Dacres, proceeded to ask each of the pair when they had been assoiled, namely, absolved. Grisell, as he well knew, had been shriven only last Friday; Leonard muttered, “Three days since, when I was dubbed knight, ere the battle.”

“That suffices,” put in the Baron impatiently. “On with you, Sir Lucas.”

The thoroughly personal parts of the service were in English, and Grisell could not but look up anxiously when the solemn charge was given to mention whether there was any lawful “letting” to their marriage. Her heart bounded as it were to her throat when Leonard made no answer.

But then what lay before him if he pleaded his promise!

It went on—those betrothal vows, dictated while the two cold hands were linked, his with a kind of limp passiveness, hers, quaking, especially as, in the old use of York, he took her “for laither for fairer”—laith being equivalent to loathly—“till death us do part.” And with failing heart, but still resolute heart, she faltered out her vow to cleave to him “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness or health, and to be bonner (debonair or cheerful) and boughsome (obedient) till that final parting.”

The troth was plighted, and the silver mark—poor Leonard’s sole available property at the moment—laid on the priest’s book, as the words were said, “with worldly cathel I thee endow,” and the ring, an old one of her mother’s, was held on Grisell’s finger. It was done, though, alas! the bridegroom could hardly say with truth, “with my body I thee worship.”

Then followed the procession to the altar, the chilly hands barely touching one another, and the mass was celebrated, when Latin did not come home to the pair like English, though both fairly understood it. Grisell’s feeling was by this time concentrated in the one hope that she should be dutiful to the poor, unwilling bridegroom, far more to be pitied than herself, and that she should be guarded by God whatever befell.

It was over. Signing of registers was not in those days, but there was some delay, for the darkness was more dense than ever, the rush of furious hail was heard without, a great blue flash of intense light filled every corner of the church, the thunder pealed so sharply and vehemently overhead that the small company looked at one another and at the church, to ascertain that no stroke had fallen. Then the Lord of Whitburn, first recovering himself, cried, “Come, sir knight, kiss your bride. Ha! where is he? Sir Leonard—here. Who hath seen him? Not vanished in yon flash! Eh?”

No, but the men without, cowering under the wall, deposed that Sir Leonard Copeland had rushed out, shouted to them that he had fulfilled the conditions and was a free man, taken his horse, and galloped away through the storm.

CHAPTER XIV
THE LONELY BRIDE

Grace for the callant
If he marries our muckle-mouth Meg.

Browning.

“The recreant! Shall we follow him?” was the cry of Lord Whitburn’s younger squire, Harry Featherstone, with his hand on his horse’s neck, in spite of the torrents of rain and the fresh flash that set the horses quivering.

“No! no!” roared the Baron. “I tell you no! He has fulfilled his promise; I fulfil mine. He has his freedom. Let him go! For the rest, we will find the way to make him good husband to you, my wench,” and as Harry murmured something, “There’s work enow in hand without spending our horses’ breath and our own in chasing after a runaway groom. A brief space we will wait till the storm be over.”

Grisell shrank back to pray at a little side altar, telling her beads, and repeating the Latin formula, but in her heart all the time giving thanks that she was going back to Bernard and her mother, whose needs had been pressing strongly on her, yet that she might do right by this newly-espoused husband, whose downcast, dejected look had filled her, not with indignation at the slight to her—she was far past that—but with yearning compassion for one thus severed from his true love.

When the storm had subsided enough for these hardy northlanders to ride home, and Grisell was again perched behind old Cuthbert Ridley, he asked, “Well, my Dame of Copeland, dost peak and pine for thy runaway bridegroom?”

“Nay, I had far rather be going home to my little Bernard than be away with yonder stranger I ken not whither.”

“Thou art in the right, my wench. If the lad can break the marriage by pleading precontract, you may lay your reckoning on it that so he will.”

When they came home to the attempt at a marriage-feast which Lady Whitburn had improvised, they found that this was much her opinion.

“He will get the knot untied,” she said. “So thick as the King and his crew are with the Pope, it will cost him nothing, but we may, for very shame, force a dowry out of his young knighthood to get the wench into Whitby withal!”

“So he even proffered on his way,” said the Baron. “He is a fair and knightly youth. ’Tis pity of him that he holds with the Frenchwoman. Ha, Bernard, ’tis for thy good.”

For the boy was clinging tight to his sister, and declaring that his Grisly should never leave him again, not for twenty vile runaway husbands.

Grisell returned to all her old habits, and there was no difference in her position, excepting that she was scrupulously called Dame Grisell Copeland. Her father was soon called away by the summons to Parliament, sent forth in the name of King Henry, who was then in the hands of the Earl of Warwick in London. The Sheriff’s messenger who brought him the summons plainly said that all the friends of York, Salisbury, and Warwick were needed for a great change that would dash the hopes of the Frenchwoman and her son.

He went with all his train, leaving the defence of the castle to Ridley and the ladies, and assuring Grisell that she need not be downhearted. He would yet bring her fine husband, Sir Leonard, to his marrow bones before her.

Grisell had not much time to think of Sir Leonard, for as the summer waned, both her mother and Bernard sickened with low fever. In the lady’s case it was intermittent, and she spent only the third day in her bed, the others in crouching over the fire or hanging over the child’s bed, where he lay constantly tossing and fevered all night, sometimes craving to be on his sister’s lap, but too restless long to lie there. Both manifestly became weaker, in spite of all Grisell’s simple treatment, and at last she wrung from the lady permission to send Ridley to Wearmouth to try if it was possible to bring out Master Lambert Groot to give his advice, or if not, to obtain medicaments and counsel from him.

The good little man actually came, riding a mule. “Ay, ay,” quoth Ridley, “I brought him, though he vowed at first it might never be, but when he heard it concerned you, mistress—I mean Dame Grisell—he was ready to come to your aid.”

Good little man, standing trim and neat in his burgher’s dress and little frill-like ruff, he looked quite out of place in the dark old hall.

Lady Whitburn seemed to think him a sort of magician, though inferior enough to be under her orders. “Ha! Is that your Poticary?” she demanded, when Grisell brought him up to the solar. “Look at my bairn, Master Dutchman; see to healing him,” she continued imperiously.

Lambert was too well used to incivility from nobles to heed her manner, though in point of fact a Flemish noble was far more civilised than this North Country dame. He looked anxiously at Bernard, who moaned a little and turned his head away. “Nay, now, Bernard,” entreated his sister; “look up at the good man, he that sent you the sugar-balls. He is come to try to make you well.”

Bernard let her coax him to give his poor little wasted hand to the leech, and looked with wonder in his heavy eyes at the stranger, who felt his pulse, and asked to have him lifted up for better examination. There was at first a dismal little whine at being touched and moved, but when a pleasantly acid drop was put into his little parched mouth, he smiled with brief content. His mother evidently expected that both he and she herself would be relieved on the spot, but the Apothecary durst not be hopeful, though he gave the child a draught which he called a febrifuge, and which put him to sleep, and bade the lady take another of the like if she wished for a good night’s rest.

He added, however, that the best remedy would be a pilgrimage to Lindisfarne, which, be it observed, really meant absence from the foul, close, feverish air of the castle, and all the evil odours of the court. To the lady he thought it would really be healing, but he doubted whether the poor little boy was not too far gone for such revival; indeed, he made no secret that he believed the child was stricken for death.

“Then what boots all your vaunted chirurgery!” cried the mother passionately. “You outlandish cheat! you! What did you come here for? You have not even let him blood!”

“Let him blood! good madame,” exclaimed Master Lambert. “In his state, to take away his blood would be to kill him outright!”

“False fool and pretender,” cried Lady Whitburn; “as if all did not ken that the first duty of a leech is to take away the infected humours of the blood! Demented as I was to send for you. Had you been worth but a pinch of salt, you would have shown me how to lay hands on Nan the witch-wife, the cause of all the scathe to my poor bairn.”

Master Lambert could only protest that he laid no claim to the skill of a witch-finder, whereupon the lady stormed at him as having come on false pretences, and at her daughter for having brought him, and finally fell into a paroxysm of violent weeping, during which Grisell was thankful to convey her guest out of the chamber, and place him under the care of Ridley, who would take care he had food and rest, and safe convoy back to Wearmouth when his mule had been rested and baited.

“Oh, Master Lambert,” she said, “it grieves me that you should have been thus treated.”

“Heed not that, sweet lady. It oft falls to our share to brook the like, and I fear me that yours is a weary lot.”

“But my brother! my little brother!” she asked. “It is all out of my mother’s love for him.”

“Alack, lady, what can I say? The child is sickly, and little enough is there of peace or joy in this world for such, be he high or low born. Were it not better that the Saints should take him to their keeping, while yet a sackless babe?”

Grisell wrung her hands together. “Ah! he hath been all my joy or bliss through these years; but I will strive to say it is well, and yield my will.”

The crying of the poor little sufferer for his Grisly called her back before she could say or hear more. Her mother lay still utterly exhausted on her bed, and hardly noticed her; but all that evening, and all the ensuing night, Grisell held the boy, sometimes on her lap, sometimes on the bed, while all the time his moans grew more and more feeble, his words more indistinct. By and by, as she sat on the bed, holding him on her breast, he dropped asleep, and perhaps, outwearied as she was, she slept too. At any rate all was still, till she was roused by a cry from Thora, “Holy St. Hilda! the bairn has passed!”

And indeed when Grisell started, the little head and hand that had been clasped to her fell utterly prone, and there was a strange cold at her breast.

Her mother woke with a loud wail. “My bairn! My bairn!” snatching him to her arms. “This is none other than your Dutchman’s doings, girl. Have him to the dungeon! Where are the stocks? Oh, my pretty boy! He breathed, he is living. Give me the wine!” Then as there was no opening of the pale lips, she fell into another tempest of tears, during which Grisell rushed to the stair, where on the lowest step she met Lambert and Ridley.

“Have him away! Have him away, Cuthbert,” she cried. “Out of the castle instantly. My mother is distraught with grief; I know not what she may do to him. O go! Not a word!”

They could but obey, riding away in the early morning, and leaving the castle to its sorrow.

So, tenderly and sadly was little Bernard carried to the vault in the church, while Grisell knelt as his chief mourner, for her mother, after her burst of passion subsided, lay still and listless, hardly noticing anything, as if there had fallen on her some stroke that affected her brain. Tidings of the Baron were slow to come, and though Grisell sent a letter by a wandering friar to York, with information of the child’s death and the mother’s illness, it was very doubtful when or whether they would ever reach him.