Chapter I: The Fledglings Leave the Nest (7)

"On whose soul Jesu have mercy!" broke almost mechanically from the lips of the desolate father.

"Amen!" responded Frideswide.

"Was he with her?" demanded the Duke almost fiercely. He had neither affection nor respect for "Tom Grey," as his Lancastrian instincts contemptuously termed him.

"Master Grey? No."

Frideswide did not tell the Duke, though she knew it, that the young gentleman in question was playing bowls at Lambeth.

"My Lady her mother was, I count?"

Frideswide was thankful that she could truthfully say that the Duchess had been in her daughter's apartments on the night of her death. She had just looked in for ten minutes. She would have been glad to say no more: but the Duke's queries were persistent. He put one after another till he knew all she could tell him: and then, folding his arms upon the table, he laid his head upon them, and a low moan of bitter pain broke from him.

For some minutes there was dead silence in the little chamber. At length the Duke spoke.

"If only a man might die when he would! The sun is gone down, and there be no stars for me."

"Nay, my gracious Lord, I cry you mercy!" said Frideswide gently. "The sun is but gone behind a cloud, for our Lord Jesu Christ is the sun of His people. It is the star which has set. The sun is there as aforetime."

"Then the cloud is sore thick, for I see no light."

"Not now, my Lord. It will break forth again."

"Is that so sure?" said the Duke, mournfully. "Ah, you are young and hopeful; to you the birds always chant 'To-morrow.' But I--I am a man old before his time, and hope is gone from me."

"Christ is not, my Lord."

"Mistress Frideswide," was the earnest answer, "wit you what it is to stretch forth numb hands into the darkness, and not find them taken?--to feel none other hands meeting yours?"

"So long as the numbness is but in mine hands, my Lord, I know not that it signifieth much. They may be taken, yet be too numb to feel it. Truly, I am but a poor maid and a young, and of little wit: some doctor of the Church could aid your Lordship, but not I. Yet if I might speak one word, it should be,--dear my Lord, if our Lord have gripped hold of your Lordship, will it matter whether your hands have hold of Him or no? They be safe borne, methinks, whom Christ carrieth."

"Yet if one feel not the carrying--only a sense of falling down, down, into a pit whereto is no bottom"----

"My gracious Lord, can that be if you have trusted our Lord to carry you? Shall your feeling be put in enmity to His word? Have you come to Him? for if so, you give Him the lie to say He hath cast you out."

The Duke rose. "My maid," he said, "there be times when it looks to mine eyes as though mine whole life had been but one mighty blunder, and one great sin."

"Be it so, my Lord. Is Christ strong enough to bear it?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Is He reluctant to bear it?"

"I dare not say so much."

"Then, my Lord, what wait you for?"

"I have no strength to give it to Him."

"Have you any need? If a burden lay at my feet that I could not lift, and my brother stood by, think you I should tarry to ask him to bear it for me till I could lift it up and give it to him? Is He that carried our sins away upon His cross become so weak that He cannot bear our sorrows now? If He can hold heaven and earth, verily He can hold you and me."

"Amen!" said the Duke softly. "Mistress Frideswide, we may never set eyes again each on other: and you and your sister have been true friends to me. Pray you, do me so much pleasure as to wear this gold chain for my sake. I would I had a better gift to mine hand, but a man that hath spent half his life in exile, and hath his lands proscribed, is not he that can make rich gifts."

"My Lord, a far smaller matter should be more than enough to pleasure your handmaid. I thank your good Lordship right heartily."

"And what shall I send unto Mistress Annis?" said the Duke thoughtfully, as he turned over some dozen of jewels and trinkets, which were all now left to him of his once splendid fortune. "I would not by my good-will she were had in oblivion, for she was very good unto me, more than once or twice. What say you, Mistress Frideswide, should like her best of these?"

Frideswide glanced rapidly over the articles indicated.

"I am somewhat afeared to pick and choose, under your Lordship's allowance: for that which may seem the least precious matter unto a stranger, may be the dearest thing in all the treasure-house to him that ought[#] it."

[#] Owned.

"Nay, go to," replied the Duke. "There is nought dear to me now, save a ring my Nan once gave me--and I put not that on my list of tokens."[#]

[#] Gifts.

Thus invited, Frideswide picked out a plain silver ring, set with the badge of the fiery cresset in minute rubies. "This, methinks, should like her, if your Lordship set no store thereby."

"Certes, none at all: yet this is poor matter."

"It is enough, my gracious Lord, and I thank you right heartily for my sister."

"Tell her, I pray you, Mistress Frideswide, that the last words we spake each to other be the parting message of love[#] that I shall send her,--and may God give me to find it true for myself, as I pray she may for her."

[#] Then a word used generally in the sense of friendship or kindliness.

"What were they, an' it like your Lordship?"

"They were the words I told Jack Goose to give you as token of his trustworthiness, the which I thought should bring quickly one of our doctrine. '_Alle thingis, and in all thingis, Crist_.'"

"May you so find it, my gracious Lord!"

The Duke gave her his hand at parting--an unusual condescension from his position to hers. Frideswide bent low, and kissed the hand of him whom she was no longer to call master, and whose face she would never see any more.

John Goose took her home with a lantern. As they threaded their way along St. Martin's Lane, which led from Aldersgate to St. Paul's Churchyard, he said to her,--

"Pray you, my mistress, is aught heard at this time of any ado against them of our doctrine?"

"In good sooth I trust not, Master Goose," was the reply. "I have nought heard of any such matter. Eh, good lack! it should be hard for some to be staunch, if so were!"

"I count it should be hard to them that had it to do for themselves," said John Goose.

"How mean you, my master?"

"Look you, I told you afore I was a Goose by name and nature," said the youth with a merry laugh. "So being, I know well I have no wits to cope with my learned masters the doctors of the Church. Herein I must needs betake me wholly unto my Master. He will give me the endurance, if He send me the need to endure. And that which cometh down from Heaven is like to be better than aught a man hath of his own."

"Then look you for troubles, Master Goose?"

"I look for nought, Mistress. My Master doth the work for me, and I take mine ease. So merry is Christ's service."

"It should be little ease that you should take at the stake, methinks," said Frideswide with a shake of her head. "Verily, methinks it were past all endurance."

"For Him, or for me?" significantly asked John Goose.

"It were over hard for you," said Frideswide to the second question, meeting the first with a deprecatory smile.

"Nay, my Mistress. The enduring was with Him that bare the wrath of God for me: surely not with me that do but bear a few earthly pains for Him. At the least, if it should please Him to call me to that honour."

"Would you covet it, Master Goose?"

"Mistress, I am Christ's servant. Is it for the servant to admonish the Master of the work whereunto He shall set him?"

"But the suffering should be your own!"

"Nay! When I bid my journeyman get a-work, he doth it at my charges, not his own."

"Yet you must needs feel it, Master Goose?"

They had reached the gate of Coldharbour. John Goose swung the lantern into his left hand, and unlatched the outer gate for Frideswide, calling for the porter as he did so.

"Mistress, if our dear Lord list to have me to His presence without an hair of mine head singed, think you He could compass it, or no?"

"Most certainly!"

"Farewell; and God be with you!"

And the smile with which he took leave of her, she remembered later.

Early the next morning, Frideswide left Coldharbour and London: and she left them readily enough. Her sojourn in the south had been productive of any thing rather than pleasure. Now she was journeying home to all she loved; and of course hope told a flattering tale, and she expected to live happily ever after her arrival at Lovell Tower. Her journey was pleasant and prosperous: and she reached York on the evening of the eighth of June, in company with a party of whom one portion were bound for that city, and another for Beverley Minster.

As Frideswide entered the hotel at York, to her surprise she found an old friend leaning against the sidepost of the door.

"Why, Mistress Marston, is it you?" said he, starting up.

"Why, Master Strangeways! whence came you?"

"Truly, at the heels of my good Lady, that is but now out of Beverley Sanctuary, and goeth northward under convoy of Sir James Tyrell."

"Whither?"

"That shall we see when we be there," returned Mr. Strangeways, jovially, as though such a journey were the pleasantest amusement in the world.

"Is it of the King's Grace's pleasure?"

"Who is the King's Grace?" returned Mr. Strangeways, putting his hands in his pockets, with as little concern about possible spies or enemies as though he had lived in the nineteenth century.

"'When we be at Rome, we do as Rome doth,'" quoted Frideswide, with a smile. Not only had her ears become accustomed to the term as applied to Edward, but, like many Lancastrians, she considered that the regal right had now become vested in the House of York. Mr. Philip Strangeways, on the contrary, held politics of so very red a dye that the young Earl of Richmond was his King. "You know, Master Philip," concluded she.

"I know more than I profit by, mayhap. Howbeit, your question tarrieth his answer. Nay, 'tis not Merry Ned this time. 'Tis Crookback Dickon. His soul is not as straight as his body. Now I marvel," said Mr. Strangeways, reflectively, "if that companion reckoneth he is going to Heaven. I'll lay you a broad shilling he so doth."

"What did he, my Master?"

"Kicked my Lady up into Yorkshire, when she fled to that her dearworthy[#] son, and begged him of his protection. And ne'er a plack[#] in her pocket withal. I do pray the blessed saints to give him his deserts, and I rather count they will."

[#] Beloved.

[#] Coin.

"Dear heart! but sure he would not thus evil entreat his own mother-in-law?"

This innocent query seemed to cause Mr. Philip Strangeways inextinguishable amusement.

"Be men so fond of their mothers-in-law?" said he. "He is, take my word for it: for both he and his brother have set down the foot that never a penny shall my old Lady finger that their fingers can keep from her. She hath scarce more gowns than backs, nor more hoods than heads; and as to her botews,[#] I took them myself to the cobbler this morrow to be patched. Be thankful, Mistress Marston, that you have lighted on your feet like a cat, and are well out of an ill service."

[#] Boots.

"Eh, dear heart! but my poor Lady--I am sorry for her!"

"So am I," said Philip, suddenly dropping his mask of light nonchalance, and becoming another man. "So am I, Mistress Marston: and trust me, I am worser than sorry for the Lady Anne, that is wed against her will and allowing to the man she hated most. Eh, well! God be lauded in all His works!"

And Philip turned into the inn, without vouchsafing any explanation of the manner in which he meant his words to be taken.

His news was only too true. The poor Countess of Warwick, the richest heiress in England, had been stripped of every penny of her vast inheritance by the rapacious greed of her own sons-in-law. Their cruel and wicked deed was formally sanctioned by Act of Parliament about a year later--May 9th, 1474--by which statute it was decreed that George Duke of Clarence and Isabel his wife, and Richard Duke of Gloucester and Anne his wife, were to have and hold all possessions of the said Countess "as if she were naturally dede, and the said Countess is to be barrable, barred, and excluded as well of all jointours, dower, actions, executions, right, title, and interesse, of, in, and for all honours, lordships, castles, manors, etc., as were at any time the said Earl's her husband:" and "the said dukes and their said wives may make partition of all the premisses."[#] More sweeping language could scarcely be. No notice was taken of poor Lady Warwick's piteous allegation of "noon offence by her doon," nor of her fervent assurance that she had "duly kept her fidelity and ligeance, and obeyed the King's commandments." Naboth's title to his vineyard, even though Divine, was accounted of small matter, so long as King Ahab wanted it for a garden of herbs.

[#] Patent Roll, 14 Edw. IV.

How Lady Warwick lived through the next twelve years is not recorded. We only know that she had nothing to live on. Perhaps, like Warwick's sister, his widow kept herself alive by means of her needle, deeming herself happy when she could buy a few yards of serge for a new dress, while her daughters were decked with pearls and diamonds, and trailed velvet and ermine trains over palace floors. One of the daughters at least was not to blame. The Duchess Anne of Gloucester was as helpless in her palace as her destitute mother in her northern refuge. Gloucester kept her in watch and ward as closely as if she had been his prisoner, which in fact she was: for the first three years of her hated marriage were spent in perpetual efforts to escape its cruel toils. The Act of Parliament just quoted contains the significant entry that if a divorce shall take place between Gloucester and Anne, he shall nevertheless continue to enjoy her property as if she were still his wife, so long as he "doo his effectuell diligence and continuell deuoir by all conuenient and laufull meanes to be lawfully maried to the said Anne." No words could have shown more plainly that the caged bird was constantly working at the fastenings of the cage, and that the jailer was afraid lest it should compass its end some time.

Less than this can be said for Isabel of Clarence. She was in no durance, and her influence over her husband was great. She was, in fact, the only person who was permanently able to do any thing with Clarence. It is difficult to believe that if she had chosen to exert herself, some small pension at least--which would have made all the difference between comfort and care--should not have been conferred on her lonely and destitute mother. But she did it not. Are we justified in assuming that it was by more than fortuitous coincidence or the action of sanitary laws, that her days were not long in the land?

"God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

*CHAPTER XII.*

*IDONIA UNDERSTANDS.*

"But hush! What is the utmost that I would?
To give my life to God is all I could:
And this may be the way He wills to take--
This daily death may be for God's own sake;
He gave, and took. So let my soul be still."
--ISABELLA FYVIE MAYO.

At Lovell Tower, things were going as merry as marriage-bells could make them. About six weeks after her return home, Frideswide Marston became the wife of John Combe. They were to live, for the present, with Lord Marnell, until it should be seen what would happen further. There was a pretty little estate in Devonshire, named Combe Abbas, which belonged of right to Queen Marguerite's henchman: but of course, so long as King Edward lived, no deprived Lancastrian could expect to recover his lands. What might happen in the next reign, when men's minds might be supposed to have cooled down, and the throne to be assured to the House of York, was another matter.

Frideswide had delivered the Duke's message and token to her sister. They were so quietly received by Agnes, almost in silence, that Frideswide was afraid that she felt disappointed at receiving so small a gift.

"Thou seest, dear heart," said she, apologetically, "there is so little left to his Lordship that methought it were ill done to choose any choice thing: and moreover I counted thou shouldst better love a matter whereon was his badge than something greater that had it not. That speaketh for himself, from whom he came."

"Thou hast done well, and I thank thee," was the reply, as Agnes lifted her eyes for a moment.

Could Frideswide have read the eyes, her impression would have been different. The language of her sister's inmost heart was--"Do you understand me no better than that?" From that day, the silver ring with its ruby sparks was always to be seen on Agnes Marston's hand.

The year 1473 was drawing to a close, when Walter Marston came home from London. His life had been an eventful one. From the household of Queen Marguerite he had passed to that of the Duke of Burgundy, shortly before his sister's arrival in France. Thence, returning to King Henry, he had fought at Barnet and Tewkesbury, had remained long a prisoner, had received pardon, and was now a knight in the household of the Earl of Oxford. Often very near Frideswide, he had never actually met her. Now he came home on a month's leave, and as it was six years since any of his relatives had seen him, the occasion was a festive one indeed.

"But how big thou art!--and what a beard hast thou!" exclaimed Dorathie.

"I am not by the half as much bigger as thou," laughed Walter. "Why, I left thee a little chick all over down, and here thou art a proper young damsel."

"And what news abroad, Wat?" said his father.

"No great matter, my Lord, to my knowledge. 'Tis said the Venetians have won the Isle of Cyprus, that lieth off the coast of the Holy Land: and likewise that, I know not well how, they of Genoa have lost a certain land[#] that lieth beyond the Grand Turk. Here at home, the King goeth to build a new chapel to his Castle of Windsor. You shall have heard, I reckon, of the young Lady of Clarence[#] that was born some weeks gone? I mind not aught else of any moment, without you would hear of a poor Lollard of late brent upon Tower Hill."

[#] The Crimea.

[#] Margaret Countess of Salisbury.

"The Lord may reckon that of more moment than all the rest, Wat," said the Lady Idonia, gravely.

"Truly so, Madam."

"Was he of any note, lad?"

"In no wise, my Lord: a parchment-maker, as I heard, that dwelt without the City."

"Of what name?" asked Frideswide, quickly.

"Why, 'twas a queer name," said her brother. "One John Goose, they told me. A young man, I heard--scarce elder than I."

"Aye me! Had he it to do for himself?" murmured Frideswide in an unsteady voice.

"What sayest, sweeting?"

"Prithee, Wat, tell me all thou wist of the inwards[#] thereof."

[#] Details.

"Well, that is not much. He was delivered afore dinner to Master Sheriff, to put in execution the same afternoon; who had him home to his house, and gave him great exhortation that he should reny[#] his false errors, quoth he: but--as I heard from one that was by--all that Goose would say was to desire that he might have meat, for he was sore hungered. Then Master Sheriff commanded him meat, whereof he ate as though he had ailed nothing: and quo' he, 'I eat now a good and competent dinner, for I shall pass a little sharp shower ere I go to supper.' Then, when he had dined, he required to be shortly led to execution; and so, as I heard it, merrily and with good cheer took his death."

[#] Recant.

"Then his Lord gave him the endurance,--laud be to His name!" said Frideswide. "I knew him, Walter, though I talked with him but once. He did at that time lodge my gracious Lord of Exeter, and his house was that whereat I last spake with my Lord."

"Thou hast well said, good sister: for thou shalt speak with my Lord of Exeter no more."

"Walter!--Woe is me! is my Lord dead?"

It was from Frideswide the cry came. There was no sound from Agnes. Only the Lady Idonia, who happened to be looking at her, saw her needlework stand suddenly still.

"'Tis a few weeks gone, Frid," said Walter, kindly. "Dear heart, I am sorry if I started thee. I thought he had been little more than a name to either of you."

"How died he, and where? Do tell me all."

"Nay, good sister, for how he died must we remit to God. But for where, it was in the waves of the sea--the British Channel, betwixt Calais and Dover. His body was washed up on the sands of Dover, and was there found by the fishers, a dead corpse, stripped of all."

"But was he drowned, Wat? My poor master!"

"The Lord wot, dear heart. The matter had the look of a shipwreck, but no boat was found. If he so were wrecked, or fell from the cliff of misadventure, or--well, whatso it were--who shall tell thee? The sea hath given up her dead, but blabbeth none of their secrets."

This is all that was ever known of the death of Henry Duke of Exeter. The days of his mourning were ended: but how they closed--whether by accident, or shipwreck, or by the worse violence which Walter would not suggest openly--only his God and Father knows.

A few tears stole from Frideswide's eyes. She had felt for her noble master very deep compassion.

"On whose soul God have mercy!" she said with an accent of tender regret. "He hath his little Nan at the last.--Annis! art thou not sorry at all?"

The last words were spoken rather reproachfully.

"I am sorry," said Agnes. But she said it in tones that sounded even and hard: and leaving her work on the settle where she had been sitting, she rose and quitted the room.

"Well!" said Frideswide, looking after her. "Verily, I am astonied. I had thought Annis should be well-nigh as sorry as I for our poor master."

"Folks can be sorry, Frideswide, though they say it not," quietly answered the Lady Idonia.

But in her heart she was saying,--"O blind eyes, that can see no further than that! Agnes is an hundred times more sorry than Frideswide--so sorry that she can speak of it to none but God."

In the early winter of this year, the baby Prince of Wales, just three years old, was placed under the care of governors spiritual and temporal. His uncle Lord Rivers was the latter, and the Bishop of Rochester the former. King Edward's language, in the decrees which record these appointments, is worth quoting, not only as a specimen of the English of his day, but on account of its inherent singularity. The one entry commences thus:--

"How be it euery child in his yong age ought to be brought vp in vertue and cunnyng,[#] to then-tent that he might delite therin and contynue in the same, and soo consequently deserue the merites of euerlasting blisse, and in this world to be therfore the more eureux[#] and fortunat, yit nathelesse such persoones as god hath called to the pre-eminent astate of princes, and to succede thair progenitours in thestate of Regalte ought more singulerly and more diligently to be enfourmed and instructed in cunnyng and vertu," etc.

[#] Knowledge.

[#] Heureux=happy.

The second decree asserts that--

"We, considering the great bounte of our lord god, whom it hath pleased to send unto us our first begoten son, hole[#] and furnysshed in nature, to succeed us in our Realmes of England and France, and lordship of Ireland, for the which we thank most humbly his infynyte magnificens, purpose by his grace so to purvey for his precieux sonde[#] and yefte[#] and our most desired tresour our seid first begoten son, that he shall be so virtuously, cunningly, and knyghtly brought up, for to serue Almighty God cristenly and deuoutly, as accordeth to his dute, and to leue and precede in the world honourably, after his estate and dignite."[#]

[#] Whole.

[#] The lost noun of the verb to send.

[#] Gift.

[#] Patent Roll. 13 Edw. IV.

The child thus belauded with a flourish of court trumpets was of utterly different character to both parents. He had neither his father's ease-loving selfishness, nor his mother's sly cajolery. The shadow of the sanctuary wherein his eyes first saw the light seemed to lie upon his soul for ever. Grave and shrewd far beyond his years, yet at the same time of child-like transparency, his character was one that might have become a rare blessing to England. He lived in the constant, calm expectation of early death. When his little brother, who was "joyous and witty, nimble, and ever ready for dances and games"--true son of Edward IV.--besought the elder to learn to dance, the young Prince's grave reply was, "It would be better for us to learn to die." It seems as though in him, perhaps alone of all his family, there was some good thing found towards the Lord God of Israel. "His soul pleased the Lord: therefore He hasted to take him away from among the wicked."

The King was still supremely blind concerning the matrimonial intentions of his sister of Exeter, and continued to lavish favours on St. Leger. He and the Queen were at this time interested in the approaching second marriage of Thomas Grey, with Cicely Bonvile, which took place immediately on the expiration of the year of mourning for his dead wife. In the same month, on a summer evening, and in the private chapel at Coldharbour, with only two or three witnesses, the Princess Anne, Duchess of Exeter, bestowed her hand upon Mr. St. Leger, and--the deed irrevocably done--sent information of it to her royal brother. It was characteristically received. Edward did not see the slightest occasion to put himself out. Anne could do as she liked, he said, as he lounged on his sofa. She liked to please herself, and so did he. After all, Sellenger was not a bad fellow, nor an ill-looking one. "What ho! Bid the minstrels strike up there!" And settling himself comfortably among his cushions, His Majesty prepared to listen to the music.

But there was one person at Coldharbour who received the information very differently.

The news that her suitor was married to her mistress came upon Jane Grisacres like a thunderbolt. Her love had been so blind that the bare possibility of such a thing had never occurred to her for an instant. She heard the terrible tidings suddenly, with nothing to soften the blow: and with a sharp cry of astounded anguish, she fell into Marion Rothwell's arms in a dead swoon. The Duchess, who was herself present, merely glanced at the white face, and in a tone which was calmly contemptuous, commanded that somebody should carry yon poor dolt to her bed. Tamzine, silent for once, came forward and helped Marion to lift the dead weight of poor Jane, and to bear her away from the sight of the mistress to whom her stricken face was a reproach. But the reproach was felt by the Duchess only as she might have regarded a dead fly in her pot of scented ointment. Pick out the intrusive nuisance, throw it away, and then all would be well again. What did a smothered fly, or a broken heart, signify to the royal bride who had obtained her own wishes?

Not long after that event, Master Rotherham, who had been the fellow-traveller of Agnes on her journey home, paid a visit at Lovell Tower, and at his own request was closeted with Lord Marnell for some time. For so much time, indeed, that Lady Margery became rather impatient, and expressed it as she sat and span.

"Dear heart! what would yonder man with my Lord? I had so much to ask him! I want to know when he will have the calf killed, and how much lime we shall take in for the meadow. Will he ne'er have done? What can the companion be after, trow?"

"Thou alway wert a bat, Madge," said her mother, calmly. "He is after Annis."

"Eh, good lack!" returned the daughter. "I marvel where he dwelleth, and if it be far away."

"Shall my Lord covenant with him, I marvel?" said Frideswide, looking up from her embroidery-frame.

Agnes was not in the room.

"Not ere he ask our counsel, methinks," replied Lady Idonia. "At the least I hope not."

"I will read him a lecture an' he do!" said Lady Margery, laughing.

"Hush!" was her mother's quick check. "Hold your peace afore the maid."

For Agnes was just entering, and she came and sat down to her sewing. Another half-hour passed almost in silence. At its close, Lord Marnell came to the door and called out John Combe, who was seated with a book in the recess of the window. With a few low-toned words he sent him off somewhere, and came forward into the hall himself.

"Well, my Lady," said he, rubbing his hands with the air of a man very well satisfied with his morning's work, "and what think you is Master Rotherham come about?"

"You were best tell us, my Lord," answered his wife, prudently declining to commit herself.

"Of a truth I am well pleased," returned he. "I have heard much good of the young gentleman: and he hath a fair estate, and spendeth well-nigh two hundred pound by the year; and true to the Red is he, and a good fellow belike, as I do believe. He would make his wife jointure of sixty pound by the year, and an house--not so ill, eh?"

"Has he a wife?" demanded Lady Margery rather slily.

"Nay, for that he came hither," said her husband, laughing complacently.

"Dear heart, but Doll is o'er young to be wed yet--think you not so, my Lord?" responded she, with an affectation of innocent simplicity.

"Doll!" cried Lord Marnell. "Gramercy, what would the woman be at? Doll! she is but a babe in the cradle. 'Tis Annis he would have--where be thine eyes, Madge?"

Lady Margery's laugh revealed her joke.

"Oh! good heart, thou wert but a-mocking, I see.--Well, my maid, how likest the matter?" And he turned to Agnes.

He expected to see a blush, a smile, and to hear a few faltered words of satisfaction with his arrangement. But no one of them answered him. Instead of these, what he did hear was perhaps the last speech he ever expected from the lips of Agnes Marston.

"Good my Lord, I thank you for your care. But if it may stand with your pleasure, pray you, give me leave to be a nun."

"A what!" came in accents of astonished dismay from her father, and the expression of satisfaction died out of his face in an instant.

"Annis!" exclaimed her stepmother.

"Gramercy!" said Frideswide.

Lady Idonia said nothing. She sat and watched the quiet, pale face, with its set lips, and the far-away look in the eyes which were gazing from the window.

"If you please, my Lord," repeated Agnes calmly. "That is my desire."

"And what in all this world hath moved thee to desire the same?"

"I have so done of some time," was the reply, in the same quiet tone.

"Lack-a-day, maid! How long time?"

A faint flush rose to the white brow, and dying away, left it whiter than ever. But she was spared an answer.

"Give the maid her way, Jack," said a voice hitherto silent. "She hath well spoken."

"Truly, fair Mother, but I thought it ill spoken," said Lord Marnell, in a puzzled tone, turning to face the Lady Idonia. "I never looked to see one of my little maids in cloister--not by my good-will."

"Then thou hadst best bring thy good-will thereto, Jack.--Frideswide and Annis, give us leave, dear hearts."

The young ladies retired obediently. No sooner had the door closed on them than Lady Margery said, with a mixture of perplexity and eagerness,--

"Pray you, sweet Madam, give us to wit your meaning. It seems me you see further into this matter than either my Lord or I."

"'Tis little enough I see," added her husband. "Verily, I counted it rare good fortune for the lass. Here is a good man, that loveth her, and offers her jointure of sixty pound by the year--"

"For thee, Madge," resumed her mother calmly, "thou always wert a bat, as I have aforetime told thee. As to Jack here, men be rarely aught else where women be concerned. Let the maid be, dear hearts. I tell you, she has well said."

"But what doth it all mean?" asked Lord Marnell, impatiently.

"I go not about to tell Annis' secrets--more in especial when she hath not confided them to me," replied the Lady Idonia drily. "Only this I say to you both--withered hearts make the best nuns, and the worst wives. God, not you, hath made a nun of Annis. Let her obey His voice."

"Dear heart, I would ne'er think to hinder it!" returned her father, in a voice of much regret. "But what means your Ladyship? How gat she her heart withered, poor wretch?"

"The babe that shall cry for the moon is commonly disappointed, Jack. I do but tell thee, Agnes Marston will never wed with any--and it were to his hurt an' she so did. Aye, and to her own belike. Enough said."

Nor was another word on that subject to be extracted from the Dowager. But Master Rotherham received a kindly dismissal, and it was generally understood from that hour that Agnes was to be a nun. Should this strike the reader as a strange thing, it must be remembered that the Lollard views on the subject of monasticism were scarcely at all in advance of the Roman, and that the time had not come when any woman who did not wish to be a wife could be otherwise than a nun. There did exist the rare phenomenon of an old bachelor; but an old maid, out of the cloister, was unknown before the Reformation.

The same evening, when she came up to her chamber, which Agnes shared with her, Lady Idonia sat down by the window, and remained there for a time, looking out upon the summer night. Agnes, who usually helped her to undress, was bidden to "hie her abed, and tarry not." She obeyed; but the old lady sat still, long after Agnes was asleep, or at any rate seemed to be so. Each of the two was under the impression that she knew the other's train of thought, and had kept her own a profound secret. In truth, the thoughts of Agnes were much better understood by the Dowager than the reverse. Quarter after quarter of an hour dripped heavily from the water-clock in the corner, yet the Lady Idonia sat still in the carved oaken chair. And,

"Her great heart through all the faultful past
Went sorrowing."

At last she turned her head towards the sleeper. Agnes lay with her cheek pillowed on one hand, and from that hand, close by the cheek, the ruby cresset of the Duke's ring sparkled in the lamp-light.

"Poor child!" said the heart of the Lady Idonia, though her lips were silent. "I can guess what that ruby cresset is to thee. To him, of course, it was nothing, beyond a kindly wish to give pleasure to an inferior who had shown a kindly feeling towards him. But out of thy life all possibility of wedlock died upon Dover sands, fifteen months ago. Not that _that_ was ever possible--poor child! Didst thou fancy, babe, that thou wert about to touch the stars? God grant, for thy sake, that it was not so!"

It was not so. Never, for one moment, had Agnes Marston dreamed of that impossible thing. Her love had never calculated on a return. It had only grown out of the necessity of love to give itself; and her heart had passed out of her keeping before she had known that it was gone.

Idonia was right, also, in guessing that the Duke had never entertained the faintest suspicion of the deep wealth of self-sacrificing love hidden under that quiet manner and silent face. His one venture in the matrimonial lottery had been so utter a blank that the very idea of trying another had never occurred to him, and, had it been suggested, would probably have been dismissed with a shudder.

"And so--" the thoughts of the watcher went on--"'so He leadeth them unto the haven of their desire.' _So_! Ah, how many devious, winding paths there are, which lead up to the door of life! One He leads through pain, another through sorrow: one by loneliness and absence of human love, another by the happiness of a satisfied heart, a third through the shards of broken idols. Not often the second of those three: much oftener the first or the last. But through all the paths He brings us to the one Gate--through all the wilderness journeying, to the one City. He who has paid for us the price of His own life cannot afford to lose us. And then, 'when we have forded the Jordan, with the ark of the Lord borne before us, we eat of the fruit of the Land of Canaan that year.'"

Far back into the past years ran the "inner eye,"--back to a stately woman in robes of white, with long black hair flowing behind her. The years seemed obliterated, and Idonia Marnell stood in a turret-chamber of the Palace of Holyrood, with the mournful music of Marjory Douglas' voice sounding in her ears.

"It cannot be much longer for me now," she said to herself in conclusion. "She has been comforted these thirty years; and I am nigh fourscore. But for thee, poor little Agnes!--the wilderness may be long yet: and unless I mistake, for thee also it will be 'the wilderness all the way.' So the ark of the Lord go before thee, it is well. He will lead thee no whither but into the Holy Land."

*CHAPTER XIII.*

*THE LAST OF THE SILVER RING.*

"Past the pearl-gates, through the golden--
When we meet His face who died,
Each want full filled, new and olden,
We, too, shall be satisfied."

King Edward quitted England on the twentieth of June, 1475, for a personal interview with the King of France. At this interview an agreement was entered into between the monarchs for the ransom of the royal widow who for four years had been pining out her life in English prisons. What moved that inscrutable mortal, King Louis, to lay down twenty thousand crowns in hard cash for the ransom of Marguerite, is one of those puzzles in psychology which must ever remain perplexities. It is true that her father, King Rene, was pressing him hard--as hard as it lay in his dreamy artist nature: and it is also true that Louis was urged--or at any rate professed to be so--by considerations of the outraged dignity of his own family, to which Marguerite belonged, through her continued imprisonment--a statement which might be true--and by feelings of compassion for a helpless woman--an assertion which hardly can be so. One of the last men to be moved by sentiments of pity, particularly towards a woman, was surely Louis XI.

King Edward was more consistent with himself. He took care to have the money in his pocket before he permitted Marguerite to escape his fingers. And, with that intense smallness of soul which--with the exception of King John--was most remarkable in him of all the Plantagenet monarchs, he refused, in his diplomatic negotiations, to bestow upon Marguerite the regal title. Judging from his diction, he was puzzled what to call her. He hit at last upon her title as a Neapolitan Princess, less than which it might seem impossible to give her. On the thirteenth of November, 1475, Thomas Thwaytes, knight, received the royal command to deliver "the most serene Lady Margaret, daughter of the illustrious Prince King Rene," to Sir Thomas Montgomery; and the latter was ordered to convey the said lady to "the most serene Prince, Louis of France, our dearest cousin." The ingenious way in which King Louis is very civilly described, without admitting his title to the crown of France, is worth notice. But when the actual delivery came, it was found that a lower indignity yet was possible for poor Marguerite. She was required to sign a formal renunciation of all rights and privileges in England which her marriage-settlements had secured to her. In this document no title whatever was given to her. She was not even recognised as a foreign Princess. The opening words described her as "Margaret, sometime in England married." The words would have truly described every cottager's wife in the kingdom who bore the name of Margaret--then one of the commonest names in England. But when the insulting document was laid down before the Queen, she calmly took up the pen and signed it. What did titles signify to her now? There was no husband, there was no son, whose rights could be invaded, and whose feelings could be outraged, by any renunciation of name or dignity on her part. She felt with Valentina of Orleans--"Rien ne m' est plus: plus ne m' est rien!" So she quietly signed her regal "Marguerite,"[#] and by her own act laid down that queenly title which had been so heavy and blood-stained a burden.

[#] In signing English documents, the Queen spelt her name "Margarete."

Queen Marguerite survived this action six years, which she spent, so long as her father lived, with him at the Castle of Reculee, near Angers, and afterwards at Chateau Dampierre, near Saumur. Her last years were burdened with the horrible disease of leprosy,[#] supposed to have been caused by intense grief. It was on the twenty-fifth of August, 1482, at Chateau Dampierre, that she laid down the weary weight of life, and as we would fain believe and surely may be allowed to hope, went to keep eternal holiday.

[#] What was meant by leprosy in the Middle Ages is an unsettled question. It was evidently a cutaneous disease of some kind, but is generally supposed not to have been identical with the oriental leprosy of which we read in Scripture.

Perhaps, for her, there was no other way into the Garden of God than through that great and howling wilderness. If it were so, how glad a sight must the lights of home have been to that storm-wearied voyager!

This interview between the two Kings had a further pecuniary result--the payment during some time of an annual sum of L11,000 by France to England--a sum which the King of France was careful to term a pension, and which the King of England took equal care to call a tribute. Edward also made a further effort to obtain the young Earl of Richmond, who was the fly in his ointment: but that wary youth, learning the fact, took instant sanctuary, and the effort was in vain.

The winter of 1475-6 opened with rejoicings for the birth of the Princess Anne--perhaps the best of the daughters of Edward IV. She certainly possessed two qualities enjoyed by few of the others--lowliness and modesty. The rejoicings were increased a week after New Year's Day, when a second royal Anne was born--the only child of the Duchess of Exeter and Sir Thomas St. Leger. She lived to become the stock of the Dukes of Rutland: and she transmitted to them, not only the property of her mother, but also lands on which she had no equitable claim--those of the hapless Duke of Exeter. Had there been any right feeling in the heart of his wretched widow, she would have bequeathed those estates to the last of the Holands of Exeter, his sister Anne, Lady Douglas, and they would have descended to her posterity, the Nevilles of Raby. She did it not: and she had little time to do it. The baby daughter had scarcely more than entered this troublesome world, ere the soul was required of the Princess Anne of Exeter. She died on the twelfth or fourteenth of January, 1476. For her an awful account waited at the judgment bar.

In the last month of that year, Isabel Duchess of Clarence was summoned before the same Divine tribunal. Her death was a signal misfortune to her husband. Her influence had not been altogether for good, by any means, yet such good as had been in it was sorely missed. Clarence had loved her, and it is doubtful if he ever loved any other creature. After her death he became reckless even beyond his former unscrupulous condition. Gloucester kept his sinister eyes upon him, ready to take advantage of the first political slip which he might make. It came two years after Isabel's death. Clarence, who had previously quarrelled with his brother Edward, was present at a trial of some old women on the charge of witchcraft, and took the liberty of remonstrating with the judges on too much haste in condemning the prisoners, as it seemed to him, without sufficient evidence. Gloucester took advantage of this circumstance. He adroitly represented to the King that Clarence had interfered with the course of justice, thus taking upon himself a prerogative of the Crown: that there was strong reason to think that he contemplated a journey to Burgundy, with the view of assisting the Duke, then in hostility to King Edward: that he had many times tried to supplant his brother. The intensely superstitious Edward was reminded of an old prediction that "G. shall reign after E.,"--and did not George begin with the fated letter? So did Gloucester, but of course my Lord Duke omitted that suggestion. He succeeded in frightening Edward into a panic. Clarence was arrested, placed before the Council, and condemned unheard. He was sentenced to be hanged: but at the intercession of the Duchess Cicely, mother alike of the King and of the criminal, the sentence was commuted to imprisonment in the Tower. Ten days later, in his dungeon, Clarence was found dead, his head hanging over an open butt of his favourite liquor, malvoisie. Hence arose the popular tradition that he had been allowed to choose the manner of his death, and that he had elected to be drowned in a butt of malmsey. In all probability the open butt had been placed in his cell by order of the brother who so well knew Clarence's weakness, and hoped by this means to get rid of him without any legal responsibility as to his end. So perished the false and faithless Clarence,--destroyed, like many another, on a mere technical pretext, when on other counts he had previously merited execution a hundred times over.

The years went on, and after a very short illness, Edward IV. passed to his own account. After him came the deluge. Events succeeded one another with startling rapidity. Only for two months was that grave and gentle boy styled King Edward V. Then came the sudden _coup d' etat_, prepared for during many years, by which Gloucester seized the crown, and shut up the boy-King in prison. The Queen and Princesses once more fled to sanctuary; the old friends and adherents of Edward, some of whom had sold their very souls for the White Rose, were sacrificed on the most trifling pretexts: and among them, the best of them all, the upright and honourable Rivers. The boy-King and his brother were put quietly out of the way. The new King made a progress throughout the country, from Windsor to York, joined by the Queen at Warwick. One of those strange gleams of tenderness which now and then flit across the conduct of Richard III., as though for an instant he paused to listen to the whispers of his better angel, induced him to spare Anne Neville a royal progress which would have led her through Tewkesbury. At the close of the year King Richard was at Westminster, firmly seated on his blood-stained throne. He might well think, like the Spanish Regent, that he had not a single enemy: for he had shot them all. But he forgot one, yet left on earth: and he forgot one Other, who remaineth for ever in Heaven.

And then his Nemesis began to come upon him. His one cherished child died "an unhappy death" at Middleham Castle. His wife, once if selfishly, yet so passionately loved, faded away and died by inches, surviving her boy just twelve months. The terrors of God overwhelmed him. He was tormented by perpetual apprehensions of conspiracy, and distracted by nightly visions of horror. And then Richmond landed at Milford Haven, and the climax came. With that personal courage which was the best item of his bad character, Richard rushed into the field of Bosworth, "and, foremost fighting, fell."

So ended the male line of the White Rose. The Red was uppermost at last. The struggle, with all its untold agony, which had lasted through thirty years, was over at length, and for ever.

Some tardy justice was done now. To the poor old Countess of Warwick, starving in the north, her lands were given back, the iniquitous decree which had deprived her of them being stigmatised, as it deserved, as "against all reason, conscience, and course of nature, and contrary to the law of God and man." But not only the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, but also all covetous desires of the same, had long ago faded from that lonely and weary heart. All whom she had loved were in the grave, and her heirs were grandchildren whom she had never known, whose father had been her worst enemy, and who were abundantly provided for without a rood of any land of hers. Just a few pounds while she lived, just a shelter to cover her hoary head, was all that Anne Beauchamp craved for the little rest of life. She resigned all her property the same year to the Crown, receiving in exchange the manor of Sutton, in Warwickshire. It was probably there that she died, full of years and sorrows, in or shortly before 1493.

To "Dame Bessy Grey" the Nemesis came too. It is customary to bestow great pity on the widow of Edward IV.; and it is true that few women have known more crushing sorrow than she. But I think it is too commonly forgotten how much she had deserved it. She was a most designing woman--the truth was not in her: and she was pitiless to the sorrows of others. In her last years she retired to Bermondsey Convent--of her own motion; not, as has been represented, through coercion from her son-in-law--and there she died, on the 7th or 8th of June, 1493.

Except in the form of witnessing sorrows borne by his friends, no Nemesis ever came to Thomas Grey, now[#] Marquis of Dorset. That form is, to some natures, one of the very bitterest which pain can take: to others it is absolutely painless. Judging from what is known of his character, it may be surmised that the misfortunes of his friends would be a sorrow borne very philosophically by him. Two years' exile, during the short reign of King Richard, was the worst he had to bear for himself--that is, in this life.

[#] Created Apr. 18th, 1475. He is said to have been previously made Earl of Huntingdon, Aug. 4, 1471--the second title of the Duke of Exeter: but I never found one instance when he was so termed on the Rolls.