Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (405 page)

At such seasons it had become his habit to go for diversion rather to the Castle of Tamworth, where they made him welcome, than to his own country house which was above Winterbourne Gunner, on the windy plain. The Dean loved a good hawk and a good hound, and had many of these, of which he would make presents to kings and to such people as could be of service to the Deanery of Salisbury. And these hounds and hawks he would have set in motion before him upon wide expanses of open country, so that he could see them well. But the Dean himself had never been seen either to ride hawking or to the chase. For although he did not enjoin this abstention upon his inferior clergy, he considered that it made his office more dignified if he were not seen to do these things; though occasionally when they were alone he would force his chaplain to ride a race with him.

His chaplain, a very bald, lean old man, had been one of the Regulars, a Canon of the Order of St. Dominic. But having made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the fiftieth year of his age, and having borne a double - headed mace and chain mail in a fight against the Saracens, this Father Giraldus had lost all taste for the confined life of a priory, so that at the intervention of the Dean, who loved him for the good and holy stories of travel, miracle, and feats of arms that he could tell, he had been absolved of his Monastic Vows and had become the chaplain to the Dean. This Father Giraldus sat between the Ladies Amarylle and Amoureuse to the right. The Ladies Blanchemain and Cunigunde, who were upon the left, had no man to them at all, and they grumbled that the Lady Blanche might just as well have set the holy pilgrim on their side of her so that they might have some share in the conversation, instead of between herself and the Lady Dionissia, who had the Dean for her own comfort. There were thus but three men, two of whom were priests, against six ladies, all of them young, lively, handsome, and clean. They were served by the four eldest pages, who stood on the other side of the table and carved before them. Two of these were the Lady Blanche’s, and one the Lady Dionissia’s. He was called Gilleblois, and he was very dark and mischievous. The fourth page was the Dean’s, a redheaded boy of sixteen, who was soon to be made a squire of the Chapter’s Military Knights, and would in turn become one of the knights whom the Chapter kept to do service when the king demanded it. In twenty minutes he had become exceedingly enamoured of the Lady Amoureuse, she being seven years his senior, and he carved for her all the best bits of the meats, so that the Lady Amarylle protested laughingly from time to time.

The little Jehan carved very carefully, kneeling upon one knee and putting only the first two fingers and the thumb of his left hand upon the meat that he carved. But his fellow page of the Lady Blanche’s was too little to kneel, and the other two pages had not been bred in this custom, so that they could not do it, though the Lady Dionissia and the Dean chided them majestically from time to time, and held up to their admiration the little Jehan, who was indeed the perfection of pages. There was thus a great deal of laughter at the table, for all these people had different habits, the Churchmen being Churchmen, the pilgrim being from Constantinople, three of the ladies from Wales, and three from the southwest of England.

Being upon the Lady Blanche’s right hand, Mr. Sorrell had his own right, from which the cross dangled, towards the Lady Dionissia. But except that the Dean and his chaplain both upon their entry lightly kissed this sacred emblem, no mention was made of it at all, whilst they ate meals which to Mr. Sorrell appeared truly terrible, and drank wines which were remarkably good. But he had never conceived such eating.

It was quite true that the first course consisted of fourteen dishes, the dishes themselves being mostly turned wood, though one was of gold and two of silver. The golden dish held a gilt structure of pastry, shaped like a castle, and from this the Dean and Mr. Sorrell and the two ladies were first plenteously served, having only two plates of silver between the four of them. But such a taste as distinguished the fragments of meat, and force-meat balls that came out of this gilt erection, Mr. Sorrell could never have imagined. Encouraged by the Lady Blanche — and, indeed, he was so hungry as to need little encouragement — Mr. Sorrell took with his fingers a piece of dark-looking meat. It was sweet, it was salt, it tasted overpoweringly of nutmegs and of cinnamon, and it was of the consistency of soft jelly.

Mr. Sorrell exclaimed: “Oh, my God!” and drank quickly from a cup of silver. But even the wine was spiced with cloves. He ate a piece of very coarse bread, and then he hesitated. The Lady Blanche was so occupied with observing how much meat was served out at the lower tables, and how much metheglin poured into the leather cups — for she was of opinion that there was a mighty waste in the cellar, the kitchens, and the pantries — she was so much occupied with indignantly observing these things, that she did not perceive that Mr. Sorrell of the first course ate little or nothing at all. But then she gently chided him. Mr. Sorrell replied that he was used to something much simpler, something old-fashioned like a sirloin of beef or a loin chop, something really old English. The Lady Blanche said that, of course, as an Anchorite or a holy man, Mr. Sorrell must have fared very simply. But his travels were at an end, and he might very well pay more attention to the pleasures of the table. The first dish of the first course was, she said, very excellent, being compounded of the tongues of rabbits, hedgehogs, deer, geese, and wild boars, together with the breasts of partridges and the livers of pheasants. It contained, moreover, forcemeat balls made of honey, cinnamon, and flour boiled in wine, and the sauce was made likewise of honey, nutmegs, cloves, garlic, and mint, and all these things had been stewed together so that there could not be found anywhere a dish more savoury.

But Mr. Sorrell still said, that as a foreigner and a new man he desired something less costly and more simple. Thus, for the next dish the Lady Blanche must be content to share with him a panade of herring boiled in white wine whey and covered with a sweet sauce compounded out of cherries. This appeared to the Lady Blanche to be unreasonably homely and tasteless fare, so that she regretted almost having shared her platter with the holy man. Mr. Sorrell, on the other hand, could not get his mouth to receive more than one taste of what, since he did not know its contents, he regarded as a mixture of strawberry jam and oysters. But since he was very hungry indeed, of the first course he managed to eat some of the breast of a bird which had been pickled in fermented honey, and was laid over with a paste of almonds and cheese. And he regarded with envy the hinds of the lowest part of the low table, who were gnawing half-cooked flesh from great bones. He indicated this to the Lady Blanche. She said:

“Holy man, in the days of our great-grandfathers and our great-grandmothers, when life was very active and forays and strifes abounded, it was very well for men to eat such dull food. For their minds were very full of other things. But in these degenerate days, when all life is dullness, we must have our foods highly spiced and seasoned according to the precepts and the science of cookery.”

The pages carried away the plates and emptied them into a great tub with two handles which served for the broken meat of the poor waiting outside the castle gates. This was done to the sound of trumpets. And whilst the second course was being brought, a man came in with a bear that danced in the sort of horseshoe formed by the two tables along the wall and the small table on the dais. This man had with him, a girl, who danced upon her hands with her feet in the air, and shouted answers in this posture to the exclamations that were shouted to her from the tables. The talk at the high table was, for a time, mostly of journeying to the Holy Land, and of the places that one passed on the way, and of the perils from the pirate ships of the Saracens, whom with difficulty the ships of the Emperor of Byzantium chased off from galleys bearing pilgrims. This conversation was mostly monopolised by the chaplain of the Dean. Bald, lean, and old, and with fiery eyes, this Brother Ording had the voice of Stentor, so that he could make himself heard above all the din of the hall, and he told them of many strange things that happened in the Adriatic, and of what churches in the town had pictures and of which were kept in a slovenly way, and of the sloth of the Greek monks and of the miraculous islands of Greece and the strange things that happened there. Thus near Corfu there was a small island whose inhabitants were protected by St. Nicocias. So efficient was the miraculous protection of this saint, who decreed that no stolen thing could be taken from the island, that once when pirates landed there and slew a sheep and devoured it, contrary to the habits of pirates, they vomited forth all that they had eaten. This was known to all men of these parts. And the Brother Ording appealed to the pilgrim for confirmation of these things, but in the din of all these people — for with the servers and the occupants of the lower table there must have been ninety of them, of whom by far the larger part were below the great pewter salt-cellars — with all this din of knives, teeth, crying out for more wine, more ale, and more metheglin, Mr. Sorrell was unable either to hear or to make himself heard. And because Mr. Sorrell mentioned this to the Lady Blanche, she spoke at once to a man who stood below the table armed with a long stick like a hop pole. Immediately he ran down the tables striking with his stick here and there at hands and heads, upsetting drinking vessels and sending platters of meat skimming on to the rushes, where they were devoured by the many and large dogs that lay beneath all the tables.

There fell a deep silence which was broken only by the deep grunts of the bear, the panting of the girl who danced on her hands, the low shrill sounds of the bear-ward’s pipe, and the light crackle of the torches of pine-wood that, stuck into iron rings on the stone walls, were beginning to be lit, for it was growing very dusk. And in the comparative quiet Mr. Sorrell heard the Dean, who was leaning back in the chair with his hands clasped across his stomach, amiably remonstrating with the Lady Dionissia for riding so large, fierce, young, and half-trained a destrier. He had remonstrated for a long time, pointing out that this beast might not only be of danger to the valuable life of the lady herself, but that it might very seriously put in jeopardy the limbs of those who rode with her, as well as the lives of the beasts they rode on. For it was true that this destrier was being trained for the use of the Knight Egerton her husband, so that it would attack his enemies like a fury with teeth and with hoofs. But it was but a half-trained thing, and how could they tell that it might not one day mistake her friends for her enemies and, getting out of hold, worry them in the terrible manner that stallions have. Such animals, he said, were fit only for male control, and this beast was as large as an elephant and as cruel and treacherous as a tiger, having slain in its stall already two men. And the Dean appealed to Mr. Sorrell as to whether fierce horses were fit to be ridden by gentle women.

The Lady Dionissia turned her deep and bewildered glance upon Mr. Sorrell, who for the first time really saw her curiously fair features, and the run of her limbs beneath her dress, which was of scarlet velvet with white sleeves laced with silver cord. The forehead cloth of white lawn, which beneath her steeple hat of red velvet and gold descended over her forehead, was edged also with silver wire, which, being heavy, held the forehead cloth down, so that hitherto it had hidden her face from his sight. She looked at him for a long time, and he could not find any words in which to reply to the Dean. For the effort to be comprehensible to these people was a little tiring to him, and he always felt a difficulty in speaking foreign languages when he was at all fatigued. Suddenly the Lady Dionissia spoke in a very deep and abstracted voice, as if she were coming up out of a dream:

“Why, I am as good as any man,” she said, “and I do not know what fear is.”

“That is very well,” the Dean replied; “but there are things that are the province of men, and things that are the province of women.”

“Assuredly,” the Lady Blanche exclaimed, “you shall not ride my cousin’s charger, lest, running away and being impaled upon a post or stave, it should be imperilled in its life or even killed.”

The Lady Dionissia uttered nothing at all, but continued to gaze into Mr. Sorrell’s eyes. Mr. Sorrell was trying to think how he should say that of course there were limits, but for his part he had always thought that in the hunting-field a woman with a perfect seat was a better rider than the best of men. He himself was pretty keen over the hurdles, but in the mid-Shropshire, which was a pretty stiffish country, there had been a Mrs. Nicolls who could give him a lead all the time. And in his travels he had ridden pretty well any kind of horse you could find, no matter how tough a customer it was.

But whilst these thoughts went through his mind, Mr. Sorrell found that his tongue was tied and he continued gazing back at the Lady Dionissia as if the sight of her had struck him with a disease of muteness.

The four pages were walking up between the tables with towels, basins, and ewers, so that the suppers at the high table might wash their hands between the courses. The servers behind them were marching with their dishes held on high over their heads; the two trumpeters at the door had their horns to their lips all ready to blow as soon as the dishes were set upon the table. And suddenly from amongst the poor who were waiting for the broken meat outside, there rose a shrill clamour like many shrieks of surprise and joy. And there ran into the hall a brown-grey object, filthy and hideous, leaping up in the rushes so that it resembled the bear itself, and having upon its elbows and its knees two pairs of clogs such as women wear out of doors in wet weather.