The Young Lovell Page 7

  III

  When the Young Lovell was admitted to the inner cell, a fine smile offriendship came over the monk's hard face. He loved this young lord forhis open features, his frank voice, his deeds of arms and his greatcourage. He stretched forward his hand towards the Young Lovell, but,in his faded scarlet cloak, and with his pierced cap in his hands theyoung lord went down upon his knees and wished to confess himself.

  The monk Francis blessed him very lovingly, but said that he did notwish to hear a confession, and that the Young Lovell should seek aholier man. But he was ready to hear the Young Lovell's true story, andto take counsel with him as to how all things might be turned to thegreater glory of the Most High. He observed with concern the saddenedand blank eyes of his friend, his faded clothes, in which he appearedlike a figure in a painted missal that the dampness of a cell hadrendered dim. And he was determined, if he could, to render aid to hisfriend, for twice already he had befriended the young man, once afterthe battle of Kenchie's Burn, and he had done it since. For indeed,when he had had time, he had gone to the township of Castle Lovell, andhad talked with the lawyer Stone and with the witch called Meg of theFoul Tyke. With the Decies he had not talked, but he had heard him onthat day in the Great Hall and knew him for a false knave. He hadobserved, too, that the stories of the lawyer Stone and of the old womendid not in all things tally. One talked of the naked witch as havingblack hair and six paps; the other said she was most fair and had nodeformity. The lawyer placed the witches' fire to the left of the largerock called Bondale that was before the chapel, and the old woman saidit was to the right, with the wind from the east, so that if it had beena real fire there must be the marks of burning upon it.

  The monk had asked his questions very cunningly, rather as a religiousanxious for information as to the ways of sinners, in order that hemight the better detect and punish them, than as one desiring to sifttheir answers. But he was very certain that they were evil liars, andhe was sure that, were they brought before the Bishop's courts inDurham, he would be able to bring their perjuries to light. So he wasvery certain that the lording had been taken by Gib Elliott and held forransom, and well he knew that no one in the Castle would ransom him, sothat it was small wonder if they had heard nothing of it. The Decies andhis confederates would conceal any news they had from Elliott, andperhaps slay his messenger or keep him jailed that the outlaw might beangered and slay the Young Lovell. So that it was with a greatcheerfulness that now he offered to have brought to his friend, food andclean linen and hot, scented water, and a serving man to wash his feet;for he thought he must be come from far after having fared ill enough.

  But the Young Lovell would have none of these things, neither would hebe persuaded to rise from his knees; but, being there, he said a longprayer to Our Lord that hung from the crucifix and appeared in an agony.And the monk sat himself at the foot of the box of straw covered with arug that was his bed and again marvelled at the face of his friend. Forthe long, brown hair was blanched by the sun, the closed eyes weresunken, the lids gone bluish, the lips parched as if with desire. Andso, whilst the lording prayed, the monk sat on the bed foot. Then heheard a rustle of wings and, on the sill of the glassless window, he sawa blue dove and, in the sunlight without, a fair woman that peered in atthat window and smiled--all white and with the sunlight upon her.

  The monk got down from the bed foot, to reprove her courteously, for nowoman should be seen there between the church and the monk's cells. Butthen he considered that it might be a penitent of one of the othermonks, and when he looked towards the window again, the woman and thedove alike had vanished from the view of that window, and he judged hehad better let the matter be. And so he sat down upon the bed foot.

  The Young Lovell groaned several times in his praying, and most he hadgroaned when that fair woman had looked in at the cell. His breathingmade a heavy sound in the silent room. And then he cried out in agreat, lamentable voice:

  "I have been with a fairy woman! Three months long I have looked uponthe whiteness of a fairy woman! Who shall absolve me?"

  The monk slipped down from the bed.

  "Ah misericordia!" he cried out and: "Jesu pity us!"

  His face went pale even to the edges of his lips and, involuntarily, hemoved backwards away from that sinner until he crouched against thewall. Then they were silent a longtime and the large flies buzzed in atthe window and out.

  Then the monk took his courage to himself again.

  "But if you truly repent," he said quickly, "lording, and my friend, andsinner, you may be pardoned."

  And since the young lord still kept silence he asked many swiftquestions: What sort of woman was this? Where was her bower? How hadshe entertained him and he her? Had he eaten of fruits from her dishes?Had he done deeds of dishonesty with a willing heart? How did he knowher for a fairy woman? Had he partaken of magic rites; sprinkled theblood of newborn babies; taken gifts of gold; witnessed a black mass;gathered fernseed?

  The monk asked all these questions with a breathless speed that theymight the more quickly be affirmed or denied. And at last the younglord cried out as if in an agony:

  "All that is a child's tale! All that is a weary folly! It was notlike that...."

  And then he cried again:

  "I say I looked upon this woman, clothed in the white of foam and thegold of sun.... I looked but spoke no word.... Three months went byand I knew not of the wheeling of the stars, or the moon in her course,nor the changes of the weather.... I had seen Sathanas and Leviathan andHerod's daughter in the chapel...."

  The monk now came more near him and with a calmer eye regarded him. Hehad known of knights and poor men, too, that had had visions born offastings, vigils, hot suns and the despair of heaven. For himself he haddesired none of these visions, for to each, as he saw it, God gives hisvocation. But some that had seen such visions had been accounted holyand had taken religious habits; others, truly had been deemed accursedand burned or set in chains; and yet again others had proved later trueknights of God, had fought with Saracens and the heathen, and at theirdeaths had been accounted saints. And he looked upon his friend whom hehad loved, and he considered how tarnished and stained he was with theair and with fasting. And he remembered how, in the tents before andafter Kenchie's Burn, they had talked together. Then it had seemed tohim, from the way Young Lovell spoke, that it was as if it were morefitting that he, the monk, should be a rough soldier, and that theesquire and lord's son a churchman.

  For the Young Lovell had talked always of high, fine and stainlesschivalry, of the Mother of God as the Mystic Rose, of the Tower ofIvory, and of the dish that had the most holy blood of God. Of none ofthese things had Sir Hugh Ridley that was afterwards the monk Francis,heard tell, when he had been a knight of the world. He had consideredrather his forbear Widdrington that fought upon his stumps at ChevyChase as the very perfect Knight; and, rather than of the death of KingArthur of Bretagne, he was accustomed to sing:

  "Then they were come to Hutton Ha'! They ride that proper place about, But the Laird he was the wiser man For he had left na' geir without."

  But this young Master of Lovell, who had lain in those tents, hadtravelled far and seen our father of Rome and the courts of France andthe envoys of Mahound. Therefore, he might well have other knowledges.And certain it was that the monk Francis had never heard him speakotherwise than decorously of the lords set over him, charitably of thepoor, firmly of his vassals and bondsmen and with yearning and love forOur Lady, St. Katharine, Archangel Michael, St. Margaret and of ourblessed Lord and Saviour and St. Cuthbert.

  And, remembering all these things, the monk Francis considered that toomuch fasting and too much learning might have made this lording mad. Andhe deemed it his duty rather to bring his mind back to regaining of hislands so that he might prove a valiant soldier in the cause of theBishop Palatine and Almighty God.

  Therefore he said now:

  "Tell me truly, ah gentle lording and my son, what it was that befellyou. So I may the better judge."

  And when the monk heard first how the young man had watched his harnesswithin the chapel, that alone seemed to him a proof of a midsummermadness such as a reasonable confessor should have persuaded himagainst. And he gained in this conviction the more when he heard howBehemoth, Leviathan, Mahound, Helen of Troy, the Witch of Endor andSyrians in strange robes had visited the young man and had tempted himthere in the darkness. All these things were strange to the good andsimple monk whose knowledge of sorceries ended at crooked old women andthe White Lady of Spindleston. He knew not more than half the names ofthe Young Lovell's hobgoblins.

  Then he marked how the young man spoke of a woman's face that looked inon him in the chapel and seemed to tempt him, and the monk consideredthat that might happen to any man, for had he not, a minute gone, seen awoman, fair enough to tempt any man to follow her, looking into hiscell. For he remembered her as the fairest woman he had ever seen, withdark and serious eyes; though she smiled mockingly too, which was what,in the life of this world, this monk had asked of women. And he had yetto learn that the desire to follow after a fair woman was, in a gallantlording, any mortal sin, else Hell must be fuller than the kind LordJesus would have it Who died to save us therefrom.

  Thus all things hardened this monk in the conceit that the Young Lovellsuffered more from over fasting than from any cardinal sin, and when itcame to the story of the very fair woman sitting upon a white horseamidmost of doves and sparrows and great bright flowers, though it gavehim some pause to think that this had lasted for ninety days, yet itabashed him very little.

  Then the Young Lovell was done with his tale. The monk asked him firstof all:

  "Now tell me truly, my gentle son; how can you tell this lady from oneof the kind saints or from the angelic host?"

  "In truth I could not tell you that," the young lording said, "it isonly that I know it."

  "And if you spake no word with her," the monk asked further, "how mayyou know that her thoughts were wicked? Had you not fasted long? Hadyou dwelt especially upon lewd thoughts before that time? Should younot have been, if any poor mortal may be, in a degree of as much graceas we may attain to?"

  "It is true," the Young Lovell said, "that I had done my best, but weare all so black with sin as against any true and perfect knights...."

  The monk would not let him finish this speech.

  "Hear now me, Young Lovell," he said, "and what my reading of thesematters is. I am not thy confessor, but until a better shall come Iorder you to believe what I say and that is your duty as a Christianman. And I bid you believe that this lady was from heaven itself, andif not one of the saints then one of the blessed angels of God. And howI read that is this: Firstly, is it not written that the hosts of heavenshall be clad in white raiment, with the glory of the sun about them andthe light of the dawnstar upon their faces? And as for the doves, is itnot written that those fowls of the air are the symbol of innocence, itbeing said: 'Be ye wise as the serpent and free of guile as the dove'?For the sparrows we have the words of our Lord God His well-loved Son,that the Almighty had them in His especial keeping, and many such maywell flutter about the fair courts of heaven. So that if you had seenserpents that are horrible monsters you need not have been abashed, yetyou saw only doves and sparrows. And for the white horse, it was uponsuch a beast that the blessed Katharine, the spouse of Our Lord, rode tothe confrontation of the forty thousand doctors. It may well have beenthat most happy and gracious Lady; though if you did not mark that shehad a wheel, which as I think is the symbol of that saint, perhaps itwas not she. Or again it may have been. For without doubt the blessedsaints in heaven are relieved of the labours of bearing what were theirsymbols here on earth. And indeed that is most likely. And for thegreat flowers, what should they be but the blessed flowers of paradiseitself. And that they should be in that place is in nowise wonderful.Are we to think that, having been once set around by those blossoms likethe jewels of Our Lady's diadem, any one of the hosts of heaven wouldwillingly go without them? Not so, but assuredly our Lord God will letthem have the company and stay of such flowers, Who hath promised tothose bright beings an eternity of such bliss as shall surpass mortalimaginations....'

  The monk had spoken these words with a tone nearly minatory and full ofexhortation. But now he approached the Young Lovell and set his armsaround his shoulder and spoke soft and in a loving fashion.

  "My beloved son in religion whom I should hold as a brother if I were ofthis world," he said, "I cannot say if you were pure in heart at thatseason, yet I hope you were. If you were you may take great pride andbe very thankful. If you were in a state of sin then consider this fora warning and amend very much your ways. And it may well be that thehosts of heaven who are all round us and watch very attentively thatwhich we do on earth--that they are and have been concerned to see howthat you regard too little the needs of the Church that is militant herein earth, forgetting it in the too frequent contemplation of the ChurchTriumphant that is in heaven. For I think that your tales of chasteknights of Brittany and the pursuers of the Holy Grail are ratherglimpses vouchsafed to us of how it shall be with the Church Triumphantthan of anything that can be until that day. In these North parts thetimes are very evil and we have more need of a great lord and one readyto be a strong protector than of ten Sir Galahads seeking mysteries,though that too may be a very excellent thing in its time and place.Yet I would rather see you Warden of these Marches, since the one thatwe have, though an earl pious and generous enough, turns rather histhoughts in fear to the King in London Town than in love and homage tothe Prince Bishop that is set above us. And I make no doubt that it wasto exhort you to this that that angel or that saint came down. And, intoken, you have, for the time being, lost your lands to very godlesspeople who have sought to dispossess you by having recourse to thecourts temporal upon a false charge. You say to me that ever since yousaw that lady's face this world has seemed as a mirror and an unrealityto you so that you cannot cease from sighing and longing. I will tellyou that those very same words were written of Gudruna, Saint, Queen andMartyr of these parts. Being an evil and lascivious queen she had insleep a vision of the joys of paradise and so she said that she neverceased from sighing for them all the days of her life. Yet neverthelessthat did not hinder her from waging war against the heathen and winninga great part of this kingdom from Heathenesse, so that she convertedforty thousand souls. And, for the fact that three months have passed,I will have you remember the case of the founder of thismonastery--blessed Wulfric. For walking in the fields here, Our Ladycame to him and so he remained upon his knees by the space of forty andnine days in a swoon or trance, being fed by such as passed by or asgradually flocked there to see that wonder. And so, being restored tohimself, he said that Our Lady had but just gone from him, having staid,as he thought, but a very short while. And that is explained by this,that to the dwellers in heaven and in the sight of God, even as marriageis not, so time is not, it being written that in His courts one day isas a thousand years. So it may well be that that angel--and by that Ithink it may have been rather an angel than a saint--having no knowledgeof time and none either of the necessity of mankind for shelter orfood--for the heavenly host have no need of either--so this fair, prettyangel in staying ninety days before you may have thought it was but thespace of a minute, for it is only God that is all-wise. Yet may God,observing these things from where He sate in Heaven, and desiringneither to abash the angel nor to starve and slay you, have conveyednourishment to you by the hands of other angels and have rendered mildthe winds. And now I think of it, in these last ninety days, there hasbeen very little or no rain at all so that the hay harvest and fenaisonis a month before its time and all men have marked this for a marvel.So I read these wonders, and so I command you to regard them until youcome upon a man more holy, to interpret them otherwise. And for that, ifI be wrong, we shall very soon know it, for I will have you go withme--as soon as I shall have arranged certain matters of thismonastery--to the Prince Bishop himself in Durham. And there, if he donot find me at fault, we will devise with him how best you may again beset in your inheritance. For I will tell you this. A fortnight gone Ihad speech with that gracious prince for a space of two days touchingthe affairs of the diocese, and he said that he would very well that youshould be set back in your lands. And I ask you this: If such a mightyprince and wise and reverend servant of God shall say that, commendingyou, what would it be in you but a very stiff-necked perseverance inhumility and the conviction of sin to gainsay him, a prince palatinethat hath spent many years in the city of Rome before the face of thepope himself?"

  The Young Lovell sighed deeply. In all those long speeches he had heardrather the voice of a friend that sought to enhearten him than that of aghostly pastor and comforter. And at last he said:

  "For what you say, father, of my retaking my Castle I will do it verywillingly, and so I will administer my lands that, with the grace ofGod, it shall be to His greater glory, if so I may. And for what youhave bidden me believe I will seek to believe it, but strong within meis the thought of what before was in my mind that I may not change itall of a piece. Nevertheless, by prayer and fasting I may come to it."

  The monk, who had observed his penitent's face to light up at themention of his Castle, said quickly:

  "Why, I think you have fasted enough," and so he bade the lay brother tobring there quickly wine and meat, and hot water to wash with, and cleanlinen if they had any good enough. And so he bade the young lord layoff the heavier of his garments and unbrace his clothes, for it was hotweather. And so food and a table were brought and the lay brotherwashed the feet of the lord, whilst he reclined upon the bed-foot.Whilst he ate, little by little the religious brought the Young Lovellto talk of how he should have arms and money for his men-at-arms andother costs.

  And the Young Lovell saw that he had still in his cap his string ofgreat pearls and this he pledged to the monk Francis for the sum of twohundred pounds.

  Of this sum, one hundred pounds the monk Francis had of the funds of themonastery, and he could just make it with the twenty-eight pounds thatJohn Harbottle had paid him. This hundred pounds the Young Lovellshould take with him upon his adventure to Durham and the other hundredshould remain with the good monk. And this should pay for the keep ofthirty men for a fortnight, at the rate of fourpence a man, and thatwould be seven pounds. And the men should have arms from the armourer ofthe monastery and from the men-at-arms there until they came to arms oftheir own. And if they should return those arms unbroken and unharmedthe Lord Lovell should pay for their hire at the rate of one shillingthe man per week, and all that should be matter of account out of thehundred pounds that remained.

  So the monk Francis bargained for the good of his monastery, for he heldit against his conscience to give these things for less. Moreover, heperceived that in talking of these things the Young Lovell appeared tocome back to life. Then the Young Lovell told this news to hismen-at-arms who stood before the door.

  Afterwards the Young Lovell bought of the knight of the monastery, SirNicholas Ewelme, some light armour for his horse; and for himself hebought a light helmet, a breastpiece and an axe, which were not veryfair, but sufficient to make the journey to Durham. And all thesethings having taken many hours, it was decided that they should put offtheir departure until the next day at dawn when the Young Lovell shouldtake with him ten of his men-at-arms. By that evening, the news of hisbeing at the monastery having spread, more than twenty more of his men,with an esquire called Armstrong, came there and entered his employment.