their gossips, she preferred to take her distaff or needle among the roses, sometimes tending them, sometimes beguiling Grisell to come and take the air in company with her, for they understood one another's mute language; and when Lambert Groot was with his old friends they sufficed for one another-so far as Grisell's anxious heart could find solace, and perhaps in none so much as the gentle matron who could caress but could not talk.
CHAPTER XXIII-THE CANKERED OAK GALL
That Walter was no fool, though that him list
To change his wif, for it was for the best;
For she is fairer, so they demen all,
Than his Griselde, and more tendre of age.
CHAUCER,
It was on an early autumn evening when the belfry stood out beautiful against the sunset sky, and the storks with their young fledglings were wheeling homewards to their nest on the roof, that Leonard was lying on the deep oriel window of the guest-chamber, and Grisell sat opposite to him with a lace pillow on her lap, weaving after the pattern of Wilton for a Church vestment.
'The storks fly home,' he said. 'I marvel whether we have still a home in England, or ever shall have one!'
'I heard tell that the new King of France is friendly to the Queen and her son,' said Grisell.
'He is near of kin to them, but he must keep terms with this old Duke who sheltered him so long. Still, when he is firm fixed on his throne he may yet bring home our brave young Prince and set the blessed King on his throne once more.'
'Ah! You love the King.'
'I revere him as a saint, and feel as though I drew my sword in a holy cause when I fight for him,' said Leonard, raising himself with glittering eyes.
'And the Queen?'
'Queen Margaret! Ah! by my troth she is a dame who makes swords fly out of their scabbards by her brave stirring words and her noble mien. Her bright eyes and undaunted courage fire each man's heart in her cause till there is nothing he would not do or dare, ay, or give up for her, and those she loves better than herself, her husband, and her son.'
'You have done so,' faltered Grisell.
'Ah! have I not? Mistress, I would that you bore any other name. You mind me of the bane and grief of my life.'
'Verily?' uttered Grisell with some difficulty.
'Yea! Tell me, mistress, have I ever, when my brains were astray, uttered any name?'
'By times, even so!' she confessed.
'I thought so! I deemed at times that she was here! I have never told you of the deed that marred my life.'
'Nay,' she said, letting her bobbins fall though she drooped her head, not daring to look him in the face.
'I was a mere lad, a page in the Earl of Salisbury's house. A good man was he, but the jealousies and hatreds of the nobles had begun long ago, and the good King hoped, as he ever hoped, to compose them. So he brought about a compact between my father and the Dacre of Whitburn for a marriage between their children, and caused us both to be bred up in the Lady of Salisbury's household, meaning, I trow, that we should enter into solemn contract when we were of less tender age; but there never was betrothal; and before any fit time for it had come, I had the mishap to have the maid close to me-she was ever besetting and running after me-when by some prank, unhappily of mine, a barrel of gunpowder blew up and wellnigh tore her to pieces. My father came, and her mother, an unnurtured, uncouth woman, who would have forced me to wed her on the spot, but my father would not hear of it, more especially as there were then two male heirs, so that I should not have gained her grim old Tower and bare moorlands. All held that I was not bound to her; the Queen herself owned it, and that whatever the damsel might be, the mother was a mere northern she-bear, whose child none would wish to wed, and of the White Rose besides. So the King had me to his school at Eton, and then I was a squire of my Lord of Somerset, and there I saw my fairest Eleanor Audley. The Queen and the Duke of Somerset-rest his soul-would have had us wedded. On the love day, when all walked together to St. Paul's, and the King hoped all was peace, we spoke our vows to one another in the garden of Westminster. She gave me this rook, I gave her the jewel of my cap; I read her true love in her eyes, like our limpid northern brooks. Oh! she was fair, fairer than yonder star in the sunset, but her father, the Lord Audley, was absent, and we could go no farther; and therewith came the Queen's summons to her liegemen to come and arrest Salisbury at Bloreheath. There never was rest again, as you know. My father was slain at Northampton, I yielded me to young Falconberg; but I found the Yorkists had set headsmen to work as though we had been traitors, and I was begging for a priest to hear my shrift, when who should come into the foul, wretched barn where we lay awaiting the rope, but old Dacre of Whitburn. He had craved me from the Duke of York, it seems, and gained my life on what condition he did not tell me, but he bound my feet beneath my horse, and thus bore me out of the camp for all the first day. Then, I own he let me ride as became a knight, on my word of honour not to escape; but much did I marvel whether it were revenge or ransom that he wanted; and as to ransom, all our gold had all been riding on horseback with my poor father. What he had devised I knew not nor guessed till late at night we were at his rat-hole of a Tower, where I looked for a taste of the dungeons; but no such thing. The choice that the old robber-'
Grisell could not repress a dissentient murmur of indignation.
'Ah, well, you are from Sunderland, and may know better of him. But any way the choice he left me was the halter that dangled from the roof and his grisly daughter!'
'Did you see her?' Grisell contrived to ask.
'I thank the Saints, no. To hear of her was enow. They say she has a face like a cankered oak gall or a rotten apple lying cracked on the ground among the wasps. Mayhap though you have seen her.'
Grisell could truly say, in a half-choked voice, 'Never since she was a child,' for no mirror had come in her way since she was at Warwick House. She was upborne by the thought that it would be a relief to him not to see anything like a rotten apple. He went on-
'My first answer and first thought was rather death-and of my word to my Eleanor. Ah! you marvel to see me here now. I felt as though nothing would make me a recreant to her. Her sweet smile and shining eyes rose up before me, and half the night I dreamt of them, and knew that I would rather die than be given to another and be false to them. Ah! but you will deem me a recreant. With the waking hours I thought of my King and Queen. My elder brother died with Lord Shrewsbury in Gascony, and after me the next heir is a devoted Yorkist who would turn my castle, the key of Cleveland, against the Queen. I knew the defeat would make faithful swords more than ever needful to her, and that it was my bounden duty, if it were possible, to save my life, my sword, and my lands for her. Mistress, you are a good woman. Did I act as a coward?'
'You offered up yourself,' said Grisell, looking up.
'So it was! I gave my consent, on condition that I should be free at once. We were wedded in the gloom-ere sunrise-a thunderstorm coming up, which so darkened the church that if she had been a peerless beauty, fair as Cressid herself, I could not have seen her, and even had she been beauty itself, nought can to me be such as my Eleanor. So I was free to gallop off through the storm for Wearmouth when the rite was over, and none pursued me, for old Whitburn was a man of his word. Mine uncle held the marriage as nought, but next I made for the Queen at Durham, and, if aught could comfort my spirit, it was her thanks, and assurances that it would cost nothing but the dispensation of the Pope to set me free. So said Dr. Morton, her chaplain, one of the most learned men in England. I told him all, and he declared that no wedlock was valid without the heartfelt consent of each party.'
'Said he so?' Poor Grisell could not repress the inquiry.
'Yea, and that though no actual troth had passed between me and Lord Audley's daughter, yet that the vows we had of our own free will exchanged would be quite enough to annul my forced marriage.'
'You think it evil in me, the more that it was I who had defaced that countenance. I thought of that! I would have endowed her with all I had if she would set me free. I trusted yet so to do, when, for my misfortune as well as hers, the day of Wakefield cut off her father and brother, and a groom was taken who was on his way to Sendal with tidings of the other brother's death. Then, what do the Queen and Sir Pierre de Brezé but command me
