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, _The Clerke’s Tale_.

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 to ride off instantly to claim Whitburn Tower! In vain did I refuse; in vain did I plead that if I were about to renounce the lady it were unknightly to seize on her inheritance. They would not hear me. They said it would serve as a door to England, and that it must be secured for the King, or the Dacres would hold it for York. They bade me on my allegiance, and commanded me to take it in King Henry’s name, as though it were a mere stranger’s castle, and gave me a crew of hired men-at-arms, as I verily believe to watch over what I did. But ere I started I made a vow in Dr. Morton’s hands, to take it only for the King, and so soon as the troubles be ended to restore it to the lady, when our marriage is dissolved. As it fell out, I never saw the lady. Her mother lay a-dying, and there was no summoning her. I bade them show her all due honour, hoisted my pennon, rode on to my uncle at Wearmouth, and thence to mine own lands, whence I joined the Queen on her way to London. As you well know, all was over with our cause at Towton Moor; and it was on my way northward after the deadly fight that half a dozen of the men-at-arms brought me tidings, not only that the Gilsland Dacres had, as had been feared, claimed the castle, but that this same so-called lady of mine had been shown to deal in sorcery and magic. They sent for a wise man from Shields, but she found by her arts what they were doing, fled, and was slain by an arquebuss in the form of a hare!

“Do you believe it was herself in sooth?” asked Grisell.

“Ah! you are bred by Master Lambert, who, like his kind, hath little faith in sorcery, but verily, old women do change into hares. All have known them.”

“She was scarce old,” Grisell trusted herself to say.

“That skills not. They said she made strange cures by no rules of art. Ay, and said her prayers backward, and had unknown books.”

“Did your squire tell this, or was it only the men?”

“My squire! Poor Pierce, I never saw him. He was made captive by a White Rose party, so far as I could hear, and St. Peter knows where he may be. But look you, the lady, for all her foul looks, had cast her spell over him, and held him as bound and entranced as by a true love, so that he was ready to defend her beauty—her beauty! look you!—against all the world in the lists. He was neither to have nor to hold if any man durst utter a word against her! And it was the same with her tirewoman and her own old squire.”

“Then, sir, you deem that in slaying the hare, the arquebusier rid you of your witch wife?” There was a little bitterness, even scorn, in the tone.

“I say not so, mistress. I know men-at-arms too well to credit all they say, and I was on my way to inquire into the matter and learn the truth when these same Dacres fell on me; and that I lie here is due to you and good Master Lambert. Many a woman whose face is ill favoured has learnt to keep up her power by unhallowed arts, and if it be so with her whom in my boyish prank I have marred, Heaven forgive her and me. If I can ever return I shall strive to trace her life or death, without which mayhap I could scarce win my true bride.”

Grisell could bear no more of this crushing of her hopes. She crept away murmuring something about the vesper bell at the convent chapel near, for it was there that she could best kneel, while thoughts and strength and resolution came to her.

The one thing clear to her was that Sir Leonard did not view her, or rather the creature at Whitburn Tower, as his wife, but as a hag, mayhap a sorceress from whom he desired to be released, and that his love to Eleanor Audley was as strong as ever.

Should she make herself known and set him free? Nay, but then what would become of him? He still needed her care, which he accepted as that of a nurse, and while he believed himself to be living on the means supplied by his uncle at Wearmouth to the Apothecary, this had soon been exhausted, and Grisell had partly supplied what was wanting from Ridley’s bag, partly from what the old squire had sent her as the fishermen’s dues; and she was perceiving how to supplement this, or replace it by her own skill, by her assistance to Lambert in his concoctions, and likewise by her lace-work, which was of a device learnt at Wilton and not known at Bruges. There was something strangely delightful to her in thus supporting Leonard even though he knew it not, and she determined to persist in her present course till there was some change. Suppose he heard of Eleanor’s marriage to some one else! Then? But, ah, the cracked apple face. She must find a glass, or even a pail of water, and judge! Or the Lancastrian fortunes might revive, he might go home in triumph, and then would she give him her ring and her renunciation, and either earn enough to obtain entrance to a convent or perhaps be accepted for the sake of her handiwork!

Any way the prospect was dreary, and the affection which grew upon her as Leonard recovered only made it sadder. To reveal herself would only be misery to him, and in his present state of mind would deprive him of all he needed, since he would never be base enough to let her toil for him and then cast her off.

She thought it best, or rather she yearned so much for counsel, that at night, over the fire in the stove, she told what Leonard had said, to which her host listened with the fatherly sympathy that had grown up towards her. He was quite determined against her making herself known. The accusation of sorcery really alarmed him. He said that to be known as the fugitive heiress of Whitburn who had bewitched the young squire and many more might bring both her and himself into imminent danger; and there were Lancastrian exiles who might take up the report. Her only safety was in being known, to the few who did meet her, as the convent-bred maiden whose home had been destroyed, and who was content to gain a livelihood as the assistant whom his wife’s infirmity made needful. As to Sir Leonard, the knight’s own grace and gratitude had endeared him, as well as the professional pleasure of curing him, and for the lady’s sake he should still be made welcome.

So matters subsided. No one knew Grisell’s story except Master Lambert and her Father Confessor, and whether he really knew it, through the medium of her imperfect French, might be doubted. Even Clemence, though of course aware of her identity, did not know all the details, since no one who could communicate with her had thought it well to distress her with the witchcraft story.

Few came beyond the open booth, which served as shop, though sometimes there would be admitted to walk in the garden and converse with Master Groot, a young Englishman who wanted his counsel on giving permanence and clearness to the ink he was using in that new art of printing which he was trying to perfect, but which there were some who averred to be a work of the Evil One, imparted to the magician Dr. Faustus.