Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (553 page)

So down the ladder came thirty or forty poor people with ten or a dozen children. Their eyes were red and wept grimy tears, and they were all in rags of grey homespun, such as the poor wear, for Sir Walter Limousin and his wife were very bad paymasters, and such a collection of clouts the Young Lovell thought he had never seen in the grey of the morning. Nay, he was moved to pity at the thought that this dishonoured his kin, and to each of those poor people he gave a shilling that they might have wherewithal to live till they found other masters, and to women that had children he gave four groats. Some carried pots, some pans, and all of that ragged company filed away over the moorlands beneath the Wall, making mostly for Haltwhistle, and showing no curiosity at all, except two or three old women that had to do with Adam Hogarth.

Then the Young Lovell took Adam Hogarth down to a little grove of trees that was near the ford and asked that blear-eyed old man where his master, Cullerford, had hidden the charters and muniments of his mother the Lady Rohtraut; for he knew that there they were. Adam Hogarth said that he did not know and set his teeth. Without more words the Young Lovell had a rope brought and a slip-noose made. He sent a man up a great elm to drop the noose over a stout branch and Adam Hogarth watched him dumbly. Then the Young Lovell had that noose set round Adam Hogarth, beneath the arm-pits and three men hauled him up till he hung thirty feet high, looking down with the tears dripping out of his red eyes. So when the Young Lovell had watched him for a minute or two and he spoke no word, the lording walked away to where the women-kind of that pendard were, and asked which of them were his kinswomen. One red-eyed crone was his sister, another his wife. So the Young Lovell took that sister to where Adam Hogarth hung and pointed him out. He bade her tell him where those charters were, but she would not. Then he had Adam Hogarth let down. The rope was set about his neck and the Young Lovell bade his men haul slowly. Adam Hogarth choked in his throat and rose up to his tip-toes, but he would make no sign with his hand and his sister would not speak. Then that man was let down again and the Young Lovell said it was the greater pity, for he must bring the wife. So the other old woman was brought, and when Adam Hogarth swung the height of a man’s thigh with his feet off the ground, and his legs were working like those of a frog and his face purple with the hempen collar round his neck and the knot beneath his ear so that he should not die very quickly, that old woman fell on her knees and cried out that she would tell the Young Lovell that news. So the Young Lovell cut through that rope with his sword to do Adam Hogarth greater honour, and he fell to the ground very little the worse for wear.

The old woman took the Young Lovell to a haystack where, beneath the trampled hay around it, there was a well-head locked with a great padlock. This padlock a man with a hammer knocked off, and a chain went down into that well, the well being dry. So they pulled up that chain, and at the end of it was the muniment-box of the Lady Rohtraut that the Young Lovell well knew. So when he had had the iron lid prised open with a lance-head — for without doubt the Lady Isopel wore the little gold key of it round her neck — the Young Lovell recognised that the deeds were there, for, though he had no time to read them, he knew them by their seals. Then he was well content for his mother’s sake, for, though it is a good thing to have lands in actual possession, it is twice as well to have the muniments appertaining to them.

Then he bade his men get together what balks of timber and wood they could find and cast them into the hay that still burned in that lower story so that the fire might spring up, and also to take torches and cast them through the upper windows so that that tower might well burn in all parts where it was wooden. After that he called before him that Adam Hogarth and commended him for his faith to his master and commended his sister as well. And he said that that man and his sister might have for their own, to divide between them, such steers as had escaped during the stampede of the night before, as well as three bulls that were upon the upper pastures with several sheep, and some pigs and hens that were in a barn by the river and had escaped observation. And he said that Adam and his sister might dwell in that tower, after the fire had well burned it so that it could not be held as a fortress, but it would shelter them very well until he should decide ‘whether he would hold that tower himself or till the heirs of Sir Walter Limousin should compound with him for his sister’s dower. For Sir Walter, he said, was as good as a dead man. As for Adam Hogarth’s wife, they might do what they liked for her, but he would give her nothing, for he held that she had not done well in betraying her master’s secret, to keep which should be the first duty of a servant, man or woman. And as for his reward to Adam Hogarth, he gave him those things which would make him richer than he had ever been in his life before in order to encourage such faith as he had shown. And if he husbanded those cattle well they would increase and multiply. But Adam Hogarth said no more than “Least said is soonest mended,” for he was a crabbed old man of few words.

Then the Young Lovell and his men made a breakfast of some small beer and bread that they found in that tower, and so they rode away northwards through the Wall, for it was five o’clock with the sun high and they had far to go, but their little horses would carry them well. He left two or three men to see that Adam Hogarth and his wife and sister did not seek to quench that burning. But he did not think they would, for when he looked back he could see against the pale sky the pale flames rise over the hill.”

But as soon as he was gone that Adam Hogarth fell upon his wife and beat her very furiously. He said that he knew very well that that Young Lovell would never have hung him, for there was no priest there to confess him, and that never would he have betrayed that secret until after the Young Lovell had let him be shriven. So the Young Lovell must have paid him much money. Besides, he could have borne with hanging for a quarter of an hour longer and come to no harm. So he beat that woman and she screamed out, and the men that the Young Lovell had left behind roared with laughter and the tower burned.

So, when those men caught up with the Young Lovell, which they did near Fontoreen, west of Morpeth, they told him of the cunning of that husbandman. So the Young Lovell did not know whether to be more vexed with that peasant, because it was not so much love for his master as greed that made him be half-hanged, or whether to marvel that such a low fellow should have read his mind so well, for surely he would never have hanged him unshriven.

They rode on all that day until they came to Sea Houses by North Sunderland, having covered nearly sixty miles of rough country, for they went by the South Forest and past Rothbury and the high moors so that they might not be observed. Four miles from Sea Houses, it being then ten o’clock at night, the Young Lovell sent his men forward towards Castle Lovell, and in a fisherman’s hut on the sounding pebbles of the sea he found the monk Francis, who was very glad to see him and glad of his news. The monk had been that day in the village of Castle Lovell and had found that the hermit was indeed dead. So he had appointed the day following at six in the evening for skilled masons to come and disinter that holy man to give him holy burial. For he thought that by that hour the Young Lovell would be well established in his Castle.

So when they had exchanged their news the lord and the monk lay down to sleep a little on a pile of nets that the fisherman heaped up for them in a corner of his hut, he himself lying outside upon seaweed with his wife. At a quarter to three he waked them and they set out upon their voyage to the White Tower. There was a good following breeze from the due south, so that they might well come to Castle Lovell in an hour or a little under. But the dancing motion of that little boat made that monk Francis very ill, which was great pity for the Young Lovell. With fasting, prayer and vigil that good monk was become very weak, though he had once been a very strong knight. He lay on the bottom-boards of that boat, and so deeply had he fainted that when they had come to the little harbourage beneath the White Tower he was insensible and they could not tell that he was not dead. So there was no getting him up the ladder of iron spikes that was all the way there was into that tower from the sea. The Young Lovell would not trust those spikes to bear the two of them or he would have carried the monk up. So he climbed up alone, and Richard Bek and the others were awaiting. But the fisherman rowed that monk straight to the shore and carried him over the sand to the township. Here in a hut he found the Lady Margaret of Glororem, who had ridden all that day and night before to come there. So she tended that monk and in about an hour he could stand again. But then there was no way of coming into that tower.

Therefore the monk Francis and the Lady Margaret went up to the little mound on which was the chapel the Young Lovell had first watched his harness in. This was so near the Castle that half of the bowmen under Sir Matthew Grey had been appointed to spend the night in it so that they might come out when the gun fired and shoot their arrows against the battlements between de Insula and Wanshot Towers. So that monk and that lady knelt in that porch, and between their prayers for the success of their dear lording they watched the dawn pointing over the sea, which came with the grey forms of waterspouts. These moved silently, here and there upon the horizon. So they saw the sun come up white and fiercely shining between those monstrous appearances. The monk Francis said that that pale sunrise was a certain sign that the weather was breaking, and he thanked God that all their hay was in. Then they saw the Young Lovell spring up on to the coping of the White Tower. So clear the weather and the light were that they could mark the little lion’s head that was carved on the peak of his helmet like the handle of a curling stone.

So he went down out of sight again and they prayed very fiercely, holding each other’s hands for comfort. The bowmen whispered from the door behind to know if it were not near time. White smoke flew out from the top of that tower, and the monk cried out so loudly that they never heard the sound of the shot, for he knew that the great gateway was taken. Out ran the archers with their bows bent and stood on the green sward. They shot arrows high so that they fell over the battlements — long arrows with great feathers of the grey goose that journeyed intently through the air. So that gun sounded again and again, and they saw the Young Lovell once more upon that coping. The bowmen in the Castle were sending arrows up against him, but they glanced off his armour because of their slanting flight. He stood there looking down and behind him were the grey waterspouts.

Now as for such as dwelt within the Castle:

A little before the exact minute of sunrise such of them that slept were awakened by the firing of cannon shot, two following. A stone ball came into the window of the Lady Douce and broke a chest, Then from many quarters there came cries, sharp but short like gun shots. And then one scream so high and dreadful that all men stood deaf and amazed. Such a cry had never before been heard in all Northumberland amidst the rain of arrows. There were men bursting in at the great gate of the Castle and others with their swords high coming from the men’s kitchen that was between the tower called Constance and that called Wanshot. The men upon the battlements had their bows bent or held up beams and bolts of iron, or were setting iron poles under great stones to roll them down through the machicolations.

And the Knight of Wallhouses was whispering to the Lady Douce, who had run down into the great hall, that there were no men coming against the little postern nearest the sea, and that he and she and his men would make their way out of the Castle by the gate.

That tide of dreadful war had come upon them so quickly that it seemed as if, before Henry Vesey’s eyes could see, men were bursting in at the great gate and from other places in the Castle. Then he knew that the Young Lovell must be aware of secret ways in that none of them had heard of, and before that fray was two minutes gone he knew that they were lost. Therefore he made ready to get himself gone by the postern.

But when that most dreadful cry was heard all those people stood still; the men with bows, balks, and levers, the men running in with swords; Sir Henry whispering; the Lady Isopel calling from her window; the Decies turning in his bed, and Sir Symonde running along the battlements. That cry deprived them of the powers of motion and made their bones quiver within their flesh like shaken reeds. Some that then heard it said afterwards that it was no more than the voice of the elements.

The monk Francis deemed to the end of his life that he had heard the cry of fear of a false goddess, for, when he went, a broken man, to commune of these things with the Bishop Palatine, that Bishop told him that so that false goddess whom they most dreaded and who is the bane of all Christendom, since in quiet hearts she setteth carnal desire — so that false goddess had cried out when, in the form of a cloud of mist or may be of a rainspout, she had hastened to the rescue of the hero Paris. That had been at the siege of a strong Castle called Troy. That Paris of Troy she had carried away to the top of a high hill near the town, as it might have been Spindleston Crags, and there she had kept him till that battle was done. And part of the cry had been for fear, and partly it was from pain because an arrow had struck her, she being vulnerable, though her blood would turn to jewels.