Grisly Grisell

'Ah! not that name,' she said; 'not a word. O Master Lambert, I came by night; none have seen me, none but good Cuthbert Ridley ken where I am. There can be no peril to you or yours if you will give shelter for a little while to a poor maid.'

'Dear lady, we will do all we can,' returned Lambert. 'Fear not. How pale you are. You have walked all night! Come and rest. None will follow. You are sore spent! Clemence shall bring you a warm drink! Condescend, dear lady,' and he made her lean on his arm, and brought her into his large living room, and placed her in the comfortable cross-legged chair with straps and cushions as a back, while he went into some back settlement to inform his wife of her visitor; and presently they brought her warm water, with some refreshing perfume, in a brass basin, and he knelt on one knee to hold it to her, while she bathed her face and hands with a sponge-a rare luxury. She started at every sound, but Lambert assured her that she was safe, as no one ever came beyond the booth. His Clemence had no gossips, and the garden could not be overlooked. While some broth was heated for her she began to explain her peril, but he exclaimed, 'Methinks I know, lady, if it was thereanent that a great strapping Hollander fellow from your Tower came to ask me for a charm against gramarie, with hints that 'twas in high places. 'Twas enough to make one laugh to see the big lubber try to whisper hints, and shiver and shake, as he showed me a knot in his matted locks and asked if it were not the enemy's tying. I told him 'twas tied by the enemy indeed, the deadly sin of sloth, and that a stout Dutchman ought to be ashamed of himself for carrying such a head within or without. But I scarce bethought me the impudent Schelm could have thought of you, lady.'

'Hush again. Forget the word! They are gone to Shields in search of the witch-finder, to pinch me, and probe me, and drown me, or burn me,' cried Grisell, clasping her hands. 'Oh! take me somewhere if you cannot safely hide me; I would not bring trouble on you!'

'You need not fear,' he answered. 'None will enter here but by my goodwill, and I will bar the garden door lest any idle lad should pry in; but they come not here. The tortoise who crawls about in the summer fills them with too much terror for them to venture, and is better than any watch-dog. Now, let me touch your pulse. Ah! I would prescribe lying down on the bed and resting for the day.'

She complied, and Clemence took her to the upper floor, where it was the pride of the Flemish housewife to keep a guest-chamber, absolutely neat, though very little furnished, and indeed seldom or never used; but she solicitously stroked the big bed, and signed to Grisell to lie down in the midst of pillows of down, above and below, taking off her hood, mantle, and shoes, and smoothing her down with nods and sweet smiles, so that she fell sound asleep.

When she awoke the sun was at the meridian, and she came down to the noontide meal. Master Groot was looking much entertained.

Wearmouth, he said, was in a commotion. The great Dutch Whitburn man-at-arms had come in full of the wonderful story. Not only had the grisly lady vanished, but a cross-bow man had shot an enormous hare on the moor, a creature with one ear torn off, and a seam on its face, and Masters Hardcastle and Ridley altogether favoured the belief that it was the sorceress herself without time to change her shape. Did Mynheer Groot hold with them?

For though Dutch and Flemings were not wholly friendly at home, yet in a strange country they held together, and remembered that they were both Netherlanders, and Hannekin would fain know what thought the wise man.

'Depend on it, there was no time for a change,' gravely said Groot. 'Have not Nostradamus, Albertus Magnus, and Rogerus Bacon' (he was heaping names together as he saw Hannekin's big gray eyes grow rounder and rounder) 'all averred that the great Diabolus can give his minions power to change themselves at will into hares, cats, or toads to transport themselves to the Sabbath on Walpurgs' night?'

'You deem it in sooth,' said the Dutchman, 'for know you that the parish priest swears, and so do the more part of the villein fisher folk, that there's no sorcery in the matter, but that she is a true and holy maid, with no powers save what the Saints had given her, and that her cures were by skill. Yet such was scarce like to a mere Jungvrow.'

It went sorely against Master Lambert's feelings, as well as somewhat against his conscience, to encourage the notion of the death of his guest as a hare, though it ensured her safety and prevented a search. He replied that her skill certainly was uncommon in a Jungvrow, beyond nature, no doubt, and if they were unholy, it was well that the arblaster had made a riddance of her.

'By the same token,' added Hannekin, 'the elf lock came out of my hair this very morn, I having, as you bade me, combed it each morn with the horse's currycomb.'

Proof positive, as Lambert was glad to allow him to believe. And the next day all Sunderland and the two Wearmouths believed that the dead hare had shrieked in a human voice on being thrown on a fire, and had actually shown the hands and feet of a woman before it was consumed.

It was all the safer for Grisell as long as she was not recognised, and of this there was little danger. She was scarcely known in Wearmouth, and could go to mass at the Abbey Church in a deep black hood and veil. Master Lambert sometimes received pilgrims from his own country on their way to English shrines, and she could easily pass for one of these if her presence were perceived, but except to mass in very early morning, she never went beyond the garden, where the spring beauty was enjoyment to her in the midst of her loneliness and entire doubt as to her future.

It was a grand old church, too, with low-browed arches, reminding her of the dear old chapel of Wilton, and with a lofty though undecorated square tower, entered by an archway adorned with curious twisted snakes with long beaks, stretching over and under one another.

The low heavy columns, the round circles, and the small windows, casting a very dim religious light, gave Grisell a sense of being in the atmosphere of that best beloved place, Wilton Abbey. She longed after Sister Avice's wisdom and tenderness, and wondered whether her lands would purchase from her knight, power to return thither with dower enough to satisfy the demands of the Proctor. It was a hope that seemed like an inlet of light in her loneliness, when no one was faithful save Cuthbert Ridley, and she felt cut to the heart above all by Thora's defection and cruel accusations, not knowing that half was owning to the intoxication of love, and the other half to a gossiping tongue.

CHAPTER XX-A BLIGHT ON THE WHITE ROSE

Witness Aire's unhappy water

Where the ruthless Clifford fell,

And when Wharfe ran red with slaughter

On the day of Towton's field.

Gathering in its guilty flood

The carnage and the ill spilt blood

That forty thousand lives could yield.

SOUTHEY, Funeral Song of Princess Charlotte.

Grisell from the first took her part in the Apothecary's household. Occupation was a boon to her, and she not only spun and made lace with Clemence, but showed her new patterns learned in old days at Wilton; and still more did she enjoy assisting the master of the house in making his compounds, learning new nostrums herself, and imparting others to him, showing a delicacy of finger which the old Fleming could not emulate. In the fabrication of perfumes for the pouncet box, and sweetmeats prepared with honey and sugar, she proved to have a dainty hand, so that Lambert, who would not touch her jewels, declared that she was fully earning her maintenance by the assistance that she gave to him.

They were not molested by the war, which was decidedly a war of battles, not of sieges, but they heard far more of tidings than were wont to reach Whitburn Tower. They knew of the advance of Edward to London; and the terrible battle of Towton begun, was fought out while the snow fell far from bloodless, on Palm Sunday; and while the choir boys had been singing their Gloria, laus et honor in the gallery over the church door, shivering a little at the untimely blast, there had been grim and awful work, when for miles around the Wharfe and Aire the snow lay mixed with blood. That the Yorkists had gained was known, and that the Queen and Prince had fled; but nothing was heard of the fate of individuals, and Master Lambert was much occupied with tidings from Bruges, whence information came, in a messenger sent by a notary that his uncle, an old miser, whose harsh displeasure at his marriage had driven him forth, was just dead, leaving him heir to a fairly prosperous business and a house in the city.

To return thither was of course Lambert's intention as soon as he could dispose of his English property. He