The Betrothed

'Surely of your nephew's love and regard to your lordship,' answered Randal, 'which, not to mention his respect for the lady Eveline, must have compelled him hither, if his limbs were able to bear him.—And here the bride comes, I think, in charity, to thank him for his zeal.'

'What unhappy case is this?' said the Lady Eveline, pressing forward, much disordered with the intelligence of Damian's danger, which had been suddenly conveyed to her. 'Is there nothing in which my poor service may avail?'

'Nothing, lady,' said the Constable, rising from beside his nephew, and taking her hand; 'your kindness is here mistimed. This motley assembly, this unseeming confusion, become not your presence.'

'Unless it could be helpful, my lord,' said Eveline, eagerly. 'It is your nephew who is in danger—my deliverer—one of my deliverers, I would say.'

'He is fitly attended by his chirurgeon,' said the Constable, leading back his reluctant bride to the convent, while the medical attendant triumphantly exclaimed,

'Well judgeth my Lord Constable, to withdraw his noble Lady from the host of petticoated empirics, who, like so many Amazons, break in upon and derange the regular course of physical practice, with their petulant prognostics, their rash recipes, their mithridate, their febrifuges, their amulets, and their charms. Well speaketh the Ethnic poet,

  'Non audet, nisi qua didicit, dare quod medicorum est;
   Promittunt medici—tractant fabrilia fabri,''

As he repeated these lines with much emphasis, the doctor permitted his patient's arm to drop from his hand, that he might aid the cadence with a flourish of his own. 'There,' said he to the spectators, 'is what none of you understand—no, by Saint Luke, nor the Constable himself.'

'But he knows how to whip in a hound that babbles when he should be busy,' said Raoul; and, silenced by this hint, the chirurgeon betook himself to his proper duty, of superintending the removal of young Damian to an apartment in the neighbouring street, where the symptoms of his disorder seemed rather to increase than diminish, and speedily required all the skill and attention which the leech could bestow.

The subscription of the contract of marriage had, as already noticed, been just concluded, when the company assembled on the occasion were interrupted by the news of Damian's illness. When the Constable led his bride from the court-yard into the apartment where the company was assembled, there was discomposure and uneasiness on the countenance of both; and it was not a little increased by the bride pulling her hand hastily from the hold of the bridegroom, on observing that the latter was stained with recent blood, and had in truth left the same stamp upon her own. With a faint exclamation she showed the marks to Rose, saying at the same time, 'What bodes this?—Is this the revenge of the Bloody-finger already commencing?'

'It bodes nothing, my dearest lady,' said Rose—'it is our fears that are prophets, not those trifles which we take for augury. For God's sake, speak to my lord! He is surprised at your agitation.'

'Let him ask me the cause himself,' said Eveline; 'fitter it should be told at his bidding, than be offered by me unasked.'

The Constable, while his bride stood thus conversing with her maiden, had also observed, that in his anxiety to assist his nephew, he had transferred part of his blood from his own hands to Eveline's dress. He came forward to apologize for what at such a moment seemed almost ominous. 'Fair lady,' said he, 'the blood of a true De Lacy can never bode aught but peace and happiness to you.'

Eveline seemed as if she would have answered, but could not immediately find words. The faithful Rose, at the risk of incurring the censure of being over forward, hastened to reply to the compliment. 'Every damsel is bound to believe what you say, my noble lord,' was her answer, 'knowing how readily that blood hath ever flowed for protecting the distressed, and so lately for our own relief.'

'It is well spoken, little one,' answered the Constable; 'and the Lady Eveline is happy in a maiden who so well knows how to speak when it is her own pleasure to be silent.—Come, lady,' he added, 'let us hope this mishap of my kinsman is but like a sacrifice to fortune, which permits not the brightest hour to pass without some intervening shadow. Damian, I trust, will speedily recover; and be we mindful that the blood-drops which alarm you have been drawn by a friendly steel, and are symptoms rather of recovery than of illness.—Come, dearest lady, your silence discourages our friends, and wakes in them doubts whether we be sincere in the welcome due to them. Let me be your sewer,' he said; and, taking a silver ewer and napkin from the standing cupboard, which was loaded with plate, he presented them on his knee to his bride.

Exerting herself to shake off the alarm into which she had been thrown by some supposed coincidence of the present accident with the apparition at Baldringham, Eveline, entering into her betrothed husband's humour, was about to raise him from the ground, when she was interrupted by the arrival of a hasty messenger, who, coming into the room without ceremony, informed the Constable that his nephew was so extremely ill, that if he hoped to see him alive, it would be necessary he should come to his lodgings instantly.

The Constable started up, made a brief adieu to Eveline and to the guests, who, dismayed at this new and disastrous intelligence, were preparing to disperse themselves, when, as he advanced towards the door, he was met by a Paritor, or Summoner of the Ecclesiastical Court, whose official dress had procured him unobstructed entrance into the precincts of the abbey.

'Deus vobiscum,' said the paritor; 'I would know which of this fair company is the Constable of Chester?'

'I am he,' answered the elder De Lacy; 'but if thy business be not the more hasty, I cannot now speak with thee—I am bound on matters of life and death.'

'I take all Christian people to witness that I have discharged my duty,' said the paritor, putting into the hand of the Constable a slip of parchment.

'How is this, fellow?' said the Constable, in great indignation— 'for whom or what does your master the Archbishop take me, that he deals with me in this uncourteous fashion, citing me to compear before him more like a delinquent than a friend or a nobleman?'

'My gracious lord,' answered the paritor, haughtily, 'is accountable to no one but our Holy Father the Pope, for the exercise of the power which is intrusted to him by the canons of the Church. Your lordship's answer to my citation?'

'Is the Archbishop present in this city?' said the Constable, after a moment's reflection—'I knew not of his purpose to travel hither, still less of his purpose to exercise authority within these bounds.'

'My gracious lord the Archbishop,' said the paritor, 'is but now arrived in this city, of which he is metropolitan; and, besides, by his apostolical commission, a legate a latere hath plenary jurisdiction throughout all England, as those may find (whatsoever be their degree) who may dare to disobey his summons.'

'Hark thee, fellow,' said the Constable, regarding the paritor with a grim and angry countenance, 'were it not for certain respects, which I promise thee thy tawny hood hath little to do with, thou wert better have swallowed thy citation, seal and all, than delivered it to me with the addition of such saucy terms. Go hence, and tell your master I will see him within the space of an hour, during which time I am delayed by the necessity of attending a sick relation.'

The paritor left the apartment with more humility in his manner than when he had entered, and left the assembled guests to look upon each other in silence and dismay.

The reader cannot fail to remember how severely the yoke of the Roman supremacy pressed both on the clergy and laity of England during the reign of Henry II. Even the attempt of that wise and courageous monarch to make a stand for the independence of his throne in the memorable case of Thomas a Becket, had such an unhappy issue, that, like a suppressed rebellion, it was found to add new strength to the domination of the Church. Since the submission of the king in that ill-fated struggle, the voice of Rome had double potency whenever it was heard, and the boldest peers of England held it more wise to submit to her imperious dictates, than to provoke a spiritual censure which had so many secular consequences. Hence the slight and scornful manner in which the Constable was treated by the prelate Baldwin struck a chill of astonishment into the assembly of friends whom he