Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (408 page)

The Lady Blanche exclaimed, “By the eyes of Christ!...” but her utterance was choked within her.

“And that this is according to all precedent,” the Abbess continued almost jocularly, “I will prove to you by many instances. Thus, the Abbot of St. Edmunds, being desirous to go to the aid of King Richard I in his French wars, it was answered to him that since the Bishop of Ely and the Bishop of Norwich, and most or nearly all the knights of Suffolk and Norfolk were away, the Abbot must stay in his monastery of St. Edmund’s, since there was none other but he to keep order in those two counties. And, indeed, for what else are convents and monasteries? Do you think they are for the support of lazy nuns and idle priests? Not so. They are here to keep order in the world beneath, to pray to heaven that things may be well above, and by goodly example to win the ungodly, the lecherous, the blasphemous, and the idle.”

“Mercy of God!” the Lady Blanche said. “These are the very newest fashions that you bring with you from France.”

“Far be it from me,” the Abbess said, “to cast aspersions on the holy women who have preceded me. They were so lost in prayers and visions of heaven and in fasting and vigils, that the things of this earth were sealed up for them. But being less holy, I deem it my duty to be the more vigilant.”

The Lady Blanche dug her nails into her palms so that the pain might cause to die down within her her enormous anger. “We shall see how it will fare betwixt you and me,” she said. And then she turned upon Mr. Sorrell. “Holy man!” she exclaimed, “tell us in three words what you have decided to do with this cross.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Mr. Sorrell said with a start, “tell them yourself. I’m not up to talking French before such a lot of people.”

The Lady Blanche looked round upon her assembly. “The holy man,” she exclaimed, “has decided to leave it between me and my cousin’s wife by proxy, to settle which of us shall have the custody of this cross until the return of the knights our husbands from the war!”

“Ah, but how will you settle it?” the Dean asked. “That is a very difficult question, for I think that neither the Lady Dionissia nor yourself, our dear lady, are of such a kind as to surrender this sacred and desirable emblem without a struggle.”

A malicious and haughty fire came into the eyes of the Lady Blanche, and she stared hard at the Lady Dionissia.

“Why, these are the days of chivalry,” she exclaimed, “when all things are settled by single combat and by spear and shield. Thus now I will challenge my cousin’s wife to fight this thing out with me, and the winner of us shall have the cross; or if she will not accept this my challenge, she shall be accounted what is called, I think, a recreant, and so the cross and the man who brought it shall remain in my keeping.”

Mr. Sorrell exclaimed, “Oh, I say!” and from all the other people came many exclamations, whilst from most of the ladies came a shrill sound of laughter.

The Dean looked at Lady Dionissia, whom he regarded with the fondness of a guardian for his protégée.

“This is a mere counsel of madness,” he said; “such things have never been heard of, and the lords of chivalry are the men only. For what a thing it would be if ladies should go endangering their sweet limbs in the hard knocks of fearful war.”

The Lady Dionissia said nothing at all, but sat fair and drooping as if she were in a dream. The Abbess stood with her hands on high, as if she were turned to a stone in an attitude of horror.

“Oh, you couldn’t come to fighting!” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed, looking at the Lady Dionissia. “Why can’t you toss for the thing, as I suggested in the beginning.” The Lady Blanchemain said gaily to the Ladies Amarylle and Cunigunde, “Why, if our mistresses fight as knights, we must be squires, and have a goodly mêlée.”

“Ay, that must we!” the Lady Cunigunde laughed, and these young things raised their hands on high as if they were striking with swords — and then they tickled each other under the arm and screamed with laughter so that they fell off the bed. The Lady Amoureuse was tenderly stroking Mr. Sorrell’s hand — and the Dean smiled.

“This is all very nice nonsense,” he said, “but the hour is very late. I am going to bed, for, as the Duke Virgil of Mantua says: ‘
Suadentque cadentia sidera somnum.’
The falling stars persuade us to sleep.”

And suddenly the Lady Dionissia spoke in her deep and dreamy voice:

“Why, this is a very good proposal,” she said, “and I am heartily in accord with it. I have not had until now much love of my cousin Blanche, but now I love her as if she were my own sister. I have often been minded to put upon me the harness of knights and to travel into deserts seeking dragons and adventures. And now this thing is come to my own door. Very heartily I will be a partaker in this high enterprise.”

The Dean looked at her with outraged perplexity.

“My child—” he was beginning.

But his chaplain, arising from the portmanteau, gaunt and fanatical, approached them with enormous and hungry eyes. It was his private conviction that all women were fiends sent for the temptation and misleading of humanity, and that any two or six of them should be soundly cuffed, thwacked with swords, or struck black and blue with the heads of lances, seemed to him very desirable, and a thing for which to praise God. And his stentorian voice filled the room.

“Let them go at it,” he exclaimed. “Let them fight; why should they not fight? It is very common among Saracens that women put on caps of steel and betake themselves to the lists. And shall Christian women be behindhand with heathens? No, let it not be said that Christian women are wanting in valour, for is it not recorded of the first Christian woman that ever was that she lingered last by the cross, thus showing that she feared not the Roman soldiery, and came first to the grave where the stone was rolled away?”

“Many ladies have put on armour and fought,” the Lady Dionissia continued. “Thus was Arabella of the Red Hand, who went to seek her lover, a good knight that was cast into the prisons of the King of Bohemia, and there was Eunice of the Lions, who slew seven of these beasts in the sands of Africa. And there was Thecla of the Blue Mountain, who fought with Sir Bors of Troy for the life of her husband, and overcame him.”

She arose from the hutch and went suddenly close up to the Lady Blanche.

“Cousin,” she said, “let us go apart into a private place and discuss at more length how this shall be done, whether in the lists or in the open field; whether we two alone, or whether with our ladies as squires.”

The Lady Blanche, on her part, was not ill-pleased, for she very much desired to do this thing at once, in order to mar her cousin’s beauty with sword-strokes, and to render her husband ridiculous by the reports of an excess so outrageous. Nevertheless, in places she was a little disappointed; she disliked to have pleased the Lady Dionissia by any means at all, and she had some vain hopes that the Lady Dionissia, by refusing the combat, would give her a colourable claim to the custody of the cross. For he who is ready to take a thing by the sword is obviously a fitter guardian than he who fears. Nevertheless, their way was barred by the Lady Abbess.

“Impious females!” she exclaimed. “Have my ears lived long enough to hear such speeches? Ay, they have lived long enough. But never whilst I myself do live shall such a thing take place in a country where I have any say. Will you defile the bodies that God has given you by sweating under heavy armour? Will you harden hands that God has made soft upon the iron hilts of swords? No, by my faith you shall not, whilst I have a voice to upraise against these things.”

“By the eyes of Christ!” the Lady Blanche said, “this woman talks!”

“Aye,” the Abbess continued, “are ‘not these things lamentable enough, and is not this a lamentable house? Into it is come a pilgrim bearing a holy symbol, and lo! what is fallen upon him? Here was a man that, simply clad, endured the hot burning sun at noonday, and the dews and frosts at night. Simple, pious, and bearing those hardships that conduce to sanctity, he travelled through the wilderness, and by the protection of the dear angels escaped many and fell perils. Now, being come into this accursed house, he lies upon a luxurious bed, tricked out with silks and velvets and pearls and silver and gold. Gorged with food and heavy with wine, he is hung over by immoral damsels and kissed and stroked, so that it is an abomination of desolation. How is holiness fallen, how is piety come down!”

“Say you so?” the Lady Blanche exclaimed indifferently. “Insolent prelatess that has found a tongue at last! — for I have not heard you speak so many words in all the year together that you have molested this soil. Get you gone out of this room, and go yelp to the sheep in the darkness.”

And setting her hand upon the Abbess’ black shoulder, she pushed her without more words out of the doorway, and followed with the Lady Dionissia. Mr. Sorrell had sprung off the bed and approached the Dean.

“I say,” he exclaimed, “have I been behaving in an improper way?”

The Churchman looked at him, at once friendly, astonished, and humorous.

“Man of sanctity,” he exclaimed, “if, as seems true, you have been nourished with the bread of dear angels, assuredly our finenesses here are very little things by comparison. Or if, on the other hand, you have endured perils and hardships, it is very fitting that now you should rest and take your ease, and I have not observed that you have in any way transgressed against the rules of decorum that are such and such in one country, and such and such in another. For my Lady Abbess I would have you take little notice of her. She is a woman of great piety and shrewd common sense, as she has given evidence by coming to me rather than to the Chancellor or my Lord Bishop. Yet she has not been long enough in harness to learn that in the Church, as in the life of everyday, first we fare hard and then by hard faring we earn the results of toil. And so day leads on to day. But before very long she will have learnt that lesson, and will no longer speak words so fanatical and foolish.” And at this point the comfortable Dean yawned very loud, and very long.

“Man of sanctity,” he said, “the hour has approached for sleeping. You have brought to us a very holy relic, and we have seen pleasant things of the high spirits of young damsels and great ladies, but, as Holy Writ says, there is a time to sleep, and to-morrow we shall discourse of these things with heads much more clear.” The Ladies Blanchemain, Amarylle, and Cunigunde had drunk in the words of the comfortable Dean with evidences of the highest satisfaction. They surrounded him, and made him say that the Abbess of St. Radigund’s was a horrid old woman, who had shamefully miscalled them. And he bustled them out of the room, his amiable countenance relaxed into happy smiles. Last of all went Mr. Sorrell and the Lady Amoureuse, being followed by the little page Jehan, who took the torch from the ring outside the door and led them to their respective apartments.

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

THE young Knight of Egerton was seated in his bath, therefore there was a fire in the room. It was nevertheless July, and his leman, a young girl whom he had purchased of her mother, a peasant’s widow of Derby, was oppressed by the heat. She had taken off her coif, her upper dress and skirt, and, her neck and arms bare and white, she was blowing the brands in the great stone fireplace. Her hair, which was usually confined by her coif, had fallen into disorder, and a strand hung down on her bare shoulders. This afforded the young Knight of Egerton a great deal of curious entertainment.

“Now, I have never seen a woman’s hair before,” he repeated. “Do thou not fasten it up.”

The young girl flushed so that it went down over her neck, but mutely and sulkily she took her hands down from her head. The hair continued slowly to uncoil itself, and the young knight, with an air of malice, hummed between his teeth a tune of three notes. He began to upbraid the girl because she showed no signs of being about to become a mother, but kneeling on the hearth, her hands on the ground before her and with distended cheeks, she continued to blow the fire.

“It is my fault then?” the young knight grumbled. “Say it is my fault if you will. I am a very unfortunate man. I have eaten salmagundi and the powdered bone of unicorn, and ginger and costly spices. I am a very unfortunate man!”

Gertrude, the leman, took no notice of his complaints. A flame had started beneath the black crock on the fire and, sitting back, her hands folded in her lap, she gazed at the flame and at the bevies of little sparks that began to run here and there over the sooty surface of the crock. She was hoping that her next purchaser would prove younger, richer, and more generous, so that she might have finer dresses than any other woman in the camp.

Though she had three dresses, two pairs of gloves, a necklace of peridots that the young knight had taken from a dead woman’s body in Scotland, though she possessed even a dried orange in a pomander of silver, which was a rarity possessed by no other woman lying then at Newcastle, and though she had run about naked till she was fourteen, which was the year before, and only half clothed till the day she was taken to the young knight; though she slept now in sheets of silk beneath furs that were sack from the Castle of Kirking across the border, and she had before then only laid in the straw with the pig; though before then she had never had but cuffs and kicks from a man so that her body had been all grey with dirt and blue with bruises, whereas now it was all white and washed with soap, and from the young knight she had had nothing but clumsy caresses, even when her sulky air made him curse with rage; though she had been a very beggar and was now apparelled and fed better than any middling knight’s wife, yet she looked sulkily at the fire.

She desired to have velvet gloves set with stones of price; she desired a hawk from Norway; a white horse of her own with trappings of silver; a monkey, two collars of pearls, five pounds of sugar a week, a ring of silver, three rings of gold, and quite a young lover who would beat her, or else to be such a rich, free courtesan of a fabulous great city as the other women talked of having seen. By some of these she had been told that she was worthy of a younger and more sprightly companion than the young knight who was turned of thirty-five, had already grey hairs in his brown head, and was stiff and clumsy with rheumatism.

The young Knight of Egerton had been called by that name for so long, his elder brother neglecting to die, that he was now long past the middle age of most knights of his day, who died mostly old men at forty-two. He was rather a small man with brownish features, very large in the bone, with knitted joints, a foxy and good-humoured expression, and brown hair, which he wore long in the French fashion, and which his leman curled when he went banqueting.

He was subject to great changes of humour, so that at the one moment he would swear great oaths as to what he would do with the spoils of the palace and the wives of Mahound, promising to dress Gertrude, his leman, in pearls from head to foot, and to give her three hundred women slaves, each one a princess, as well as one of the stones of the birthplace of the Redeemer when he had taken and sacked Palestine. For this was his high and devout intent, now that he was come to be the true knight of Egerton and had the real disposal of all the goods, gear and land of Egerton of Tamworth, and all its villainies and dependencies.

At other times he would sit for hours in his bath with Gertrude pouring hot water over him, or over his wine at the board of the public room of the inn where all the knights that lodged there dined. After his thirteenth cup he would throw his arms round Gertrude, who sat at his side, and would burst into tears before all the people there, declaring that he was an old and a ruined man. And, with his head upon her shoulder, whilst before them the courteous and fat hostess commiserated him, he would declare that Goldenface, the Jew, and the other Jews of Harnham-by-Sarum would have all his substance; that he would never ride plundering again along the Loire; that he would never see Palestine, the land of his Redeemer, but that he and Gertrude, from whom he would never part, would be cast out to lie in the straw like rotten and decayed horse, that have done their work.

And most bitterly of all he would weep when, with his fifteenth cup of French wine, there would come to him the thought that he would never have children by the Lady Dionissia, his wife, so that he would lose all her dowry and a forfeit as well. And lugubriously, whilst Gertrude, supporting him, looked straight ahead and said nothing, the young knight would describe his doubts to the kindly hostess.

The hostess, broad and comfortable, in her brown worsted gown, with an enormous white coif, larger than any nun’s, would sigh: “Ah, gentle knight!” many times, for she too had no children by her husband. And the knight, being carried to bed by his two little squires and two men-at-arms, the hostess would chide Gertrude for her heartlessness. She would bid her support the knight’s head carefully that it might not come to cruel knocks against the stone of the winding stairway. She would bid Gertrude in all ways strive to remove the doubts of the knight and so to comfort him, and she would bid her remember that the knight had raised her from the straw.

This, however, would in no way placate the leman, who desired velvet gloves, a hawk from Norway, and a white horse of her own, with velvet and silver trappings. And for long after the young knight was by turns groaning and snoring between the silk sheets, she would remain brooding out of the window, returning the jests of street boys below, calling back ribald answers to the ribald proposals of men-at-arms, or yawning when the Wiltshire archers of the two Knights of Egerton and Coucy would come tumultuously down the streets, driving before them the Flemings of Sir John of Hainault, with whom they carried on a perpetual feud.

And what Gertrude revolved always in her mind was whether the young knight was really rich or whether he was poor. She never had the means of being certain. On the one hand, he would vow the most desirable vows as to what he would do in Palestine, and she heard him often described as the most famous, gentle knight of all chivalry. But then, during all the time they had been in the town of the New Castle, from all the six forays and rides that he had been upon, he had brought back no spoils, except the necklace of peridots that he had given her and the sheets of silk and the furs that covered their bed. It was very little to her that he might be the most famous, gentle knight of chivalry. Other knights, not so famous, would have given her the velvet gloves, the falcon from Norway, and the sugar that she desired to crunch beneath her sharp white teeth. When he had given her her first dress, coif, and stockings of fine silk at Derby, she had cast her arms round his neck, and had kissed him as if he had been a doll that she passionately desired. But it had not gone on as it had begun, and she was filled with doubts that to be the mirror of chivalry might mean that he would never give her a silver mirror in which her ugly little face, her pretty teeth, and her white body might be reflected.

And it seemed to her ridiculous that he should sit in his bath whilst she poured hot water over him from time to time. The young king had gone on a foray into Scotland. Who knew whether this time at last, they might not bring back some plunder worth the name? Yet here the young knight sat in a long, wooden tub. He had round his neck his mantle of devise that he wore at State ceremonies, of chequers of red velvet and white. It spread from his neck and covered in the oblong tub, whilst his face, hot and perspiring, looked from the top of it as if out of an inverted funnel. He had explained to her that the hot vapour gave him ease from the pains in his limbs, and that in this way they sat in the castles of France before the fire, whilst the dependants stood round and the minstrels chanted romances and lays. Nay, more, he had said that, along a river called the Loire in France, there were places where hot water gushed out of the earth, and here were sheds erected, and ladies and knights sat in them to bathe all day, and practised the gentle rites of love and had their healths and pleasures. There was thus a long lay of a gentle lady called Biangobin and a knight called Lois, and of how they met at such a bath to fool a jealous husband. But this seemed to her a fabulous, foolish, and disagreeable story; for how could water ever come out of the earth but cold?

Whilst she sat, looking at the fire, she was aware that the young knight was telling his beads beneath the cloak; there was a little clicking; the folds of red and white chequers moved slightly and with regularity, and from his lips there came little whispers of sound. His piety was the thing about him that pleased her most, for she was deeply religious and went to Mass every morning at five. The gilding and the scarlets and greens with which the church there was painted pleased to the bottom of her heart her being that was avid of colour, and she was determined that when she was a courtesan her bower should be painted all scarlet and crimson and green, with the ceiling gilded like a church.

In the room in which she had to live in this hostel, the walls were all of bare stone, and the young knight, who was exceedingly jealous of her, was accustomed to lock her in there for days at a time so that she knew every stone and every patch of damp. There was a long green mark in shape like a cluster of circles beneath the window, where the rain entered; there was a large dull purple stain beneath one of the grey beams of the ceiling. And, indeed, nearly all the walls were greenish with damp. One of the corbels that supported this great beam was carved like a leering devil with high cheek-bones, and one like a placid queen, her head erect and crowned, with a cloth that flowed back over her hair. The bed was of walnut wood gone black and very huge, so that it would hold four persons; the hutch at its foot was of a rough oak gone grey. The lock on the painted oaken door was as huge as a cuirass, and bright red with rust.

In the door itself was a trap-hatch through which her food was passed to her by the hostess when she was locked in. At these times she was allowed a brachet for her company, but when the young knight was there he would not suffer this dog to be near them, for it disturbed him with its affection.

The young knight continued to tell his beads; Gertrude continued to gaze at the fire. By intermittent and vicious spurts in the wood she knew that it must be raining, but she did not turn her head to look out of the window. A young page entered, dressed all in black velvet, with a strap of red and white leather about his waist and a little badge of red and white chequers upon his shoulder. He was the elder brother of Little Jehan and had long golden hair, but his face was ugly. He bore in his hands a shoulder-plate of shining steel with fluted ampicas, and he grinned maliciously when he saw Gertrude’s disordered hair. With a sulky mutiny she caught her cloth which lay on the hutch and tied it over her head and beneath her chin.

The young knight continued his prayer, though his eyes were upon the piece of armour. At last he said:

“Hum!” and then gradually he scowled.

The young page meanwhile reported that the body of the Knight of Coucy’s Wiltshire archers who were in advance of the army were returned almost starved, having been wandering for three days in the bottomless valleys of the Tyne.

“Well, that is the old tale,” the young knight said. “Turn the harness askew! What booty have they brought?” All the while his keen little eyes scrutinised the shining steel. Sir John of Hainault, being come from Flanders, had brought with him a harness that was of the latest fashion of the King of France’s knights. This had the round bolt that protected the shoulder-joint, not spiked like a unicorn’s horn, but beaten flat like the petals of a dog-rose, and inlaid with gold. And the young knight, taking advantage of his holiday, had bidden his armourer exactly to imitate this new fashion of rondelet. But his scowl deepened, for he saw before him rondelets that were an inch broader than Sir John’s and very clumsily inlaid. —

To his inattentive ears the young page said that he had heard that the Knight of Coucy’s men had brought back nothing but some of the iron plates upon which the Scots baked their bread, and a quantity of the new-flayed skins of beasts that they had found in a deserted camp of the Scots.