Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 349
“Ah! sir,” the little page said, “we do not have schools for such things, though, without doubt, they are many and excellent in the land from which your pilgrimship comes. But I have been taught by Brother Squerry, so that I can write my name fairly, and can read a passage in the Book of Hours, if I know beforehand what that passage is. And this much I have learned, in order to have benefit of clergy in case I should fall into any crime.”
Mr. Sorrell laughed so loudly that the sounds echoed up and down the darkness of the stairway.
“You commit a crime!” he said. “Why, I don’t believe you’d whip a cat.”
“Ah! sir,” the page said, “I don’t know why I should desire to whip a cat, nor do I know that it would be a crime to do it. But this I know, it is my desire to be a great and gallant knight, such as have been written of in the Chronicles and in Holy Writ. A great knight, being a man of hot blood, will come sometimes to commit crimes against the law, or, by taking arms for one King when another deposes him, he is discovered to be guilty of treason. And this was seen very clearly in the case of our late King, that was put away and murdered with a horn in Berkeley Castle this very year, and many knights and great lords that were of the late King’s party have been put to death very cruelly — though without doubt they deserved it — by the Queen Mother of the present King, who is a little boy not much older than I, but much more worshipful. And for those poor dead knights and lords, it would have been very well if they could have pleaded benefit of the clergy.”
Mr. Sorrell laughed again.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose your mother and father know their business best, but it seems a droll way to bring up a child to have such ideas.”
“These matters,” the little Jehan said gravely, “are above my head. It is for me to do what my parents command and to make no bones about it.”
“Why, so it is, sonny,” Mr. Sorrell said; “but I should think a year or two upon the modern side of a good public school without any classical tomfoolery would be a great deal better for you.”
The little boy was too respectful to offer any further comments, and they began once more to climb the dark stairs.
In spite of the dampness and the chill, Mr. Sorrell became intolerably warm. He brushed against the rough stones of the wall, he stumbled and hurt his feet against the hard stairs. After an immensely long time, they came into a room which Mr. Sorrell, whilst once more he paused to take breath, considered must be a servant’s bedroom. There was a large chest at the bottom of the bed, and across the bed itself a great covering of the red fur of foxes.
“This,” the little Jehan said, “is my lady’s bower.”
“Now is it?” Mr. Sorrell asked. “I always thought a bower was a summer-house. I suppose your Lady Blanche is going in for an open-air cure, because there’s no glass in the windows. The air must be very good up here.”
“I do not fully understand what you say,” the little Jehan said; “but this is my lady’s bower.”
“Well, you said that before,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “and I was only uttering my observations.”
When they came to the tiny little stairway that ascended from the room, Mr. Sorrell exclaimed:
“I do wish your architect had made some allowance for persons of my figure.”
But the little page did not hear him.
The Lady Blanche was leaning out of the battlements, watching the approach of the Lady Dionissia and her train that, very far below, wound slowly along beside the River Wiley.
“It is natural,” she grumbled to herself with an air of vexation, “that to-night she comes with more armed men than usual.”
She counted carefully, and could perceive the Lady Dionissia in yellow and green, two ladies in scarlet that attended upon her, all these three being upon white horses. And there were two priests and thirteen men-at-arms, as well as five pages that ran beside the horses. This gave the Lady Dionissia eighteen armed retainers as against the Lady Blanche’s thirty; but, on the other hand, the Lady Dionissia had ten very able-bodied Welsh pikemen amongst her eleven men-at-arms, and these ten alone, once they were inside, would be sufficient to take the whole castle from the Lady Blanche’s retainers, so weakened were these by dysentery and summer coughs. The Lady Dionissia had this good fortune, because these ten Welshmen had been part of the guard that had come down with her in her bridal tour from the Welsh Marches. Without doubt, had her contracted husband Egerton of Tamworth not already set out for the Scotch wars, he would have taken the Lady Dionissia’s men to fight under his banner. But as it was, the Lady Dionissia had come a full three weeks too late, having been impeded by the great floods of the River Severn. So that she had never even seen her husband to whom she had been married by proxy already three months. She had in exchange what was at the moment more valuable, these ten able-bodied fighting-men, who were reported to be extraordinarily ferocious and devoted to their mistress.
The Lady Blanche had in her mind a problem of how to retain in her own keeping alike the holy cross of St. Joseph of Arimathea and the holy and mysterious personage who had brought it to her. Her first impulse had been to close the castle gates against the Lady Dionissia. and to repel even with arms any attempt that she and her men might make to enter.
But, on the one hand, she had to consider the ferocity of her Welsh men-at-arms, who were said to be able to run up precipices, sticking to them like flies. She had, besides, to consider the probable return from the war of her husband and of Egerton of Tamworth. Her husband and his cousin loved each other with the deep love of boon companions, so that if upon their return they should find their respective castles warring the one upon the other, she would certainly have to face her husband’s anger. For that she cared very little, but it had to be further considered that Egerton of Tamworth would probably desire to espouse the quarrel of his wife, the Lady Dionissia.
On the other hand, her own husband, who was exceedingly hot-headed, would probably take up her own quarrel, if only because he too would desire to retain possession of the golden cross, if not of the holy man. There would thus arise almost certainly a private war between the two castles. And this would be a very costly and extravagant affair, lasting perhaps for a couple of years, during which, since they would not be able to get any crops in, both combatants would have to have continual recourse to the Jew Goldenface of Salisbury. Force, therefore,’ was almost out of the question, though she would dearly have loved to use force, which was more in her character than any kind of guile.
That it should ever occur to her not to attempt to obtain possession of this relic, which was plainly not her own but the property of her cousin of Tamworth, was out of the question. In the hardier old times of which she had heard her grandfather and father speak, and to which she felt herself to belong — in those times she would calmly have killed the bearer of the cross, and have hidden the cross itself in the stones of the wall of her bower for two or three years. But nowadays that sort of thing was growing too troublesome, if not too dangerous, for it would signify endless lawsuits, the expense of which she dreaded almost more than anything in the world. But if she could get possession of the cross, she certainly meant to do it.
In the first place, it was of gold, so that it was desirable; in the second place, it was miraculous, so that to possess it would make her very much looked up to throughout the whole of England, or, for the matter of that, throughout the whole of Christendom: and to render herself notorious along economical lines was the chief desire of this lady’s life.
Thus it was with great eagerness that, hearing the sound of voices behind her, she turned upon Mr. Sorrell. He was putting on his shoes, and the little page Jehan was explaining to him that although getting upstairs was impossible in these garments, descending was perfectly easy, as Mr. Sorrell could reason out for himself. She sent the little page immediately downstairs to wait for them in her bower, and at once she tackled Mr. Sorrell.
“It is about this cross,” she said. “It is a very valuable and holy cross.”
Mr. Sorrell replied that he believed that it was both these things, and very ancient to boot.
“Has it not occurred to you,” the lady asked, “to think that you might be very easily killed, and the cross stolen from you by robbers?”
“Why, my lady,” Mr. Sorrell said, “I suppose you have not any robbers knocking about in the castle, and I am quite determined to send it by registered post to Mrs. Lee-Egerton as soon as we have done dinner. I suppose there is a post office somewhere near the castle?”
The Lady Blanche said that she did not know what sort of thing a bureau de poste was, but she thought that, after having witnessed the way the nuns had attempted to take the cross, the pilgrim would be an exceedingly foolish man to let it out of his possession at all.
“Well, there’s something in that,” Mr. Sorrell said; “but how in the world do you send letters and parcels if you haven’t got a post office?”
“My friend,” the lady said, “we send letters by trusted messengers if they are of importance, or if they are about trifling matters we send them by means of the chapmen that travel hither and thither selling merchandise. So that if you desire to send the cross to any destination you had better give it to me, and I will send it by a messenger that I can trust better than myself.”
“Why, my lady,” Mr. Sorrell said, “I think I won’t send it at all on second thoughts. I’ll keep it till I get up to town, and give it to Mrs. Egerton myself.”
“Then you had better,” the Lady Blanche said, “give it into my keeping, and I will have one of the stones from the wall of my bower taken out, and I will have a little cavity made behind; and I will lay the cross in there, and I will have the stone put back again, and it shall all be done up fair with mortar, so that no one shall know in what place it is.”
“Oh, I don’t think you need take so much trouble,” Mr. Sorrell said; “I suppose I shall be moving on this evening.”
“This evening!” the Lady Blanche exclaimed highly; “would you adventure yourself with that thing of great price into the mists and perils of the night that is all darkness, and where many robbers abound?”
“Dear lady,” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed humorously, “I have been very well protected so far, it seems, and I do not know what I have done that this protection should now cease.”
And this argument struck the lady as having great weight, for she asked:
“And have the angels of God indeed protected you? In what shape do they appear?”
“Oh, really, I can’t tell you that,” Mr. Sorrell said. “It’s all very mysterious. No doubt it will come out some day, but it’s a great deal more that I should care to explain.”
“Oh, holy man,” the Lady Blanche exclaimed, and her voice had in it a great deal more of reverence, “there must be no talk of your leaving this place. For here you shall stay for a long time, for many months and years. And you shall be treated like a prince, or like the Pope himself if he should come among us.”
“But my dear lady,” Mr. Sorrell argued, “I couldn’t possibly stop here more than a day. Let alone that I want to give this up to its owner, hasn’t it occurred to you that I’ve got work to do.”
“But oh, holy man,” the Lady Blanche said, “if you have angelic work to do, if you desire to spread enlightenment and knowledge, and to do such things as befit the holy, where could you do it better than here, which is a very evil place, and one where many stiff-necked and ignorant people much need teaching how to behave themselves in this world?”
“But really, madam,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “I don’t see how I could be expected to do a publisher’s work from this part of the earth. It’s perfectly true that I do, as far as I can, afford people the means of instruction and so, to the limit of my powers, improve the world, but I do it in the wholesale way with encyclopaedias and serious books. I don’t believe in novels and nonsense of that sort, unless I can be absolutely certain they’ll have a huge sale — so that I don’t publish more than four novels in a year, if so many. But you can see for yourself that I couldn’t possibly do that sort of thing here.”
The Lady Blanche was not listening to him, but was making in her mind a rapid calculation as to what was the value of the golden cross, whether as money or as a social asset.
“Oh, holy man,” she exclaimed, “if you will stay here you shall have a bower tricked out like the bower of the King of France. And assuredly, here you shall fare much better than you should with my cousin’s half-wife, for never at dinner shall there be fewer courses than four, each course of fourteen dishes; and never at supper less than three courses, each of nine dishes; and the least of your drinks shall be mead and nearly always the best wine from Romney and Bordeaux. And you shall have such garments as my lord wears, and four horses to ride abroad on; and you shall have hawks from Norway and of everything the best, such as my cousin’s half-wife could not possibly afford. And has she in her castle a bath, such as to-day you have tasted the merits of?”
“Of course, it’s a most excellent bath,” Mr. Sorrell said, “and I don’t in the least doubt your splendid hospitality, but I can’t possibly stay here. It’s out of the question.”
“Then if you cannot yourself stay,” the Lady Blanche said, “leave at least your cross here in safe keeping, for it must be obvious to you that I, who am the Lord of Egerton’s cousin and not his foolish and frivolous halfwife, am the proper keeper of the sacred emblem.”
“I’m really not going, you know,” Mr. Sorrell said with the most bland obstinacy in the world, “to give the cross up to anybody but Mrs. Egerton. I’m perfectly able to take care of it myself, and I’m just going to keep it hanging from my finger until the proper time comes.”
“Then are you not afraid,” the Lady Blanche said, “that I shall slay you and keep the cross for myself?”
“Oh, come,” Mr. Sorrell answered amiably, “people don’t do that sort of thing nowadays. Besides,” and he smiled as at a hidden witticism, “the protection that I spoke of will operate just as freely now as it has hitherto.”
And immediately she recognised the appropriateness of this contention. There seemed to remain nothing for it but an appeal to the reasonableness of her cousin’s half-wife, and from her she anticipated very little reasonableness at all. For the Lady Dionissia was young, of great levity, and of the most headstrong obstinacy, so that hitherto she had accepted none of the Lady Blanche’s suggestions, though the Lady Blanche, as the cousin of her husband by proxy, stood surely in the position of a feudal over-lord to a ward. And neglecting to talk any longer to Mr. Sorrell, the Lady Blanche remained plunged in a fit of abstraction.
On his part Mr. Sorrell had new food for reflection. The dark earnestness of the Lady Blanche seemed to him to remove at once all idea that she was playing a part; no actress could possibly have kept it up so well. And although she had submitted him to nothing but a personal gentleness, he could not help thinking that his cross, if not his person, was in very exceptional peril.
And suddenly he felt himself rather alone and rather lonely in this immense place, that spread its great grim walls far below and far around him, filled with unfamiliar men, speaking an unfamiliar tongue, the servants of this woman with the ferocious eyes and the hard voice. Mr. Sorrell was a man so modern that he could not get it into him to feel any sense of physical danger: he felt rather as he had felt on several occasions, when in rather questionable company, that he might be about to become the victim of some exceedingly skilful pocket-picking. But he did not see how, if he kept the ring carefully all the time upon his finger, they were going to get the cross out of his possession without offering him physical violence.
And to his moment of vague fear there succeeded a sort of elated amusement. After all, if they wanted to get the cross, they could not possibly get it off his finger without his consent during the day time, and at night he was quite capable of putting a chest of drawers or something of the sort in front of his bedroom door.
A great many sounds of trumpets came from the castle below to proclaim that supper was about to be set on the boards. The sun was just down below the hills, for at that harvest time of the year, when all men and women were wont to be in the fields helping to get in the oat -crop and the last of the hay, supper, which was usually at four, was not partaken of till after sunset.
It was not really dark, but blue shadows had fallen all over the long valley of the Wiley, mists were arising amongst the heavy foliage of the trees. The castle of Tamworth farther down the valley, showed enormous and purple, as if it blocked up all the passage way, and the houses of the little town of Wishford, which was beyond the bridge, being visible from that high place, showed their white mud sides all pink in the light reflected from the sky. From the top of the Portmanmote Hall, the gilded effigy of the Dragon of Wiley turned slowly in the capricious air of the evening, sending forth now a stream of light, and again being obscured. The cavalcade of the Lady Dionissia had reached the foot of the green knoll, and her trumpeter blew a turn of notes to demand admission to the castle of Coucy.
“So that you are determined,” the Lady Blanche said at last, “neither to stay here, nor to leave here the cross that you have brought?”
“My lady,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “this demands a great deal of attention. If this really is England of the year 1327, it is quite obvious that I can’t behave exactly as if it were 483 years later. But upon the whole, the lines of my action must be pretty well the same, and if I cannot put the cross into the hands of Mrs. Lee-Egerton, I certainly ought to keep it until I can put into the hands of some Egerton of Tamworth.”
“But you will not give it to the Lady Dionissia?” the Lady Blanche said eagerly.
“I think,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “that I probably shall not until all parties together are agreed as to whom I should confide it to.”
He considered once more, and then he continued:
