CHAPTER III

By a Burn's Side

Brother Owyn gazed dreamily into the flashing waters of the burn. His fish-basket was empty; twice he had lost his bait. But if the hunger and thirst of a man be in his soul, 't is little he recks if he have not fish for supper. Forty years past, when Brother Owyn was a young man, he had fled into the Church in the hope to escape the world. But he learned that monastery gates are as gossamer; and the world, the flesh, and the devil, all three, caper in cloister. To-day he was in disgrace with his prior--not the old dull prior, but a newer, narrower man--for defending the doctrine and opinions of Master John Wyclif, concerning sanctuary, and the possession of property, and the wrong that it is for prelates to hold secular office.

"Dost thou defend a devil's wight that is under ban of Holy Church," quoth the prior, "and yet call thyself a servant to God and the Pope?"

"Which Pope?" saith Brother Owyn; for at this time there were two popes in Christendom, the one at Avignon and the other at Rome, and they were very busy cursing each other.

"Such levity in one of thy years is unseemly, brother," the prior made answer, and turned his back.

Nevertheless, Brother Owyn was sore perplexed. Having that vision of the Holy City ever before his eyes, and his daughter awaiting him on the other side of the River of Death, he was altogether minded to keep him from heresy. He began to be an old man now; haply the time was short till he might enter into that other Kingdom. Was Master John Wyclif the Devil, who taketh the word out of the mouth of Dame Truth? Yet a many of those men, even his enemies who reviled him for his doctrine, revered him for a holy man and a scholar. Some said there was not so great a man in England, nor so good, as John Wyclif. Here, then, was the old perplexity, to know what was truth. But Brother Owyn erred in that he thought to save his soul alive by flight.

"Malvern coveteth a hermit," he mused; "but if I go apart, and sleep in a cave, and never wash me, nor cut my beard, straightway there 'll be a flocking of great folk to look on me, and to question me of their wives' honour, and of the likelihood of these French wars, for that I 'm a holy man. Alack, my Margaret, my Pearl, now lead me out of this quandary away into a quiet place to pray, for John Wyclif's word draweth. Soon I 'll be a heretic and accursed."

Hereupon Brother Owyn lifted up his eyes, and suddenly cried out aloud; for, on the other side of the burn, there stood a golden-haired maid.

"Ho! thou hast lost a fine fish, see him!--gone!" cried a merry voice, and the boy that was the King of England came a-leaping and laughing from stone to stone across the sun-flecked water. After him tiptoed the maid, but the squire with the two horses bode on the farther side.

"Nay, climb not to thy feet, good brother," said the King. "Thy fright hath shaken thee; in sooth, we meant it not."

"My lord, my lord," murmured Brother Owyn, and there were tears in his eyes; "methought 't was my young daughter come to take me home,--home where a man sinneth no more, and the walls of the city are jasper, and the gates are twelve pearls." He covered his face with his hands, and the tears trickled down his beard.

Richard knelt beside him and put his arm about the bent shoulders: "Oh, but I 'm sorry!" he said distressfully. "Don't weep! prythee, don't weep!"

"If I be not thy daughter, yet my father was as a son to thee," Calote assured him, kneeling at his other side. "'T was thou taught him to sing, and to-day he 's sent his song to thee."

Brother Owyn had lifted up his face to look on her, and now he touched her bright hair, soft, with his finger, and "Will Langland's voice was wonderly sweet," said he, "and low. 'T is nigh on thirty years since he went out from Malvern, but his was not a voice to be forgot. His daughter, thou?--He ever did the thing he had not meant to do." He looked on her with a curiosity most benevolent, staying his gaze a long while at her eyes; and:--

"Doth Will Langland sing at court?" he asked.

Calote laughed, her father's image in the threadbare gown flashing sudden in her mind.

"Nay, he hath not yet; but he shall one day, when Calote cometh again to London," declared the King. "'T is not so merry a poet as Master Chaucer; but I do love his solemnité. Whiles he jesteth, but his tongue 's a whip then,--stingeth."

Brother Owyn nodded his head, as he were hearing an old tale; and turned him again to Calote:--

"Will Langland went a-seeking Truth, his lady, thirty years past. Hath he found her?"

"She is here," Calote answered simply; and unrolled the parchment to set it open before him.

The old man looked on her keenly: "Thou hast a great trust in thy father?"

"More than in all men else," she said; and the squire on the other side of the burn thrust his foot among the fallen leaves noisily, and jingled the bridles of the horses.

"I am in sore straits to find Truth," quoth Brother Owyn, with a half-smile. "Many a man will thank Will Langland heartily, if so be he hath found her."

He turned the pages, slow, reading to himself a bit here and there.

"Give me thy rod, brother," said the King, "I 'll fish."

"There 's a-many horns blowing, sire," Stephen warned him from the other side of the burn. "No doubt they seek thee and are troubled."

"Coeur de joie! Let them seek!" replied Richard. "'T will give them a merry half-hour to think I 'm come to hurt, or slain. Then would there be one less step to the throne for mine Uncle Lancaster. Look not so sourly, Etienne! I 'll catch but one little fish. Hist!--Be still!"

For a little while there was no voice but the brook's voice, and no other sound but the slow turning of parchment pages. The monk busied him with the poem and Richard looked into the water. Meanwhile, Calote's gaze strayed to the squire and found his eyes awaiting her. Straightway he plucked his dagger from his belt, flashed it in the sun that she might see, and kissed it; after, he took it by the point and held it out, arm's length, as he would give it to her; and so he stood till she might rede his riddle. Presently, her eyes frowning a question, she put forth her hand, palm upward, uncertain. The squire smiled and nodded, and because their two hands might not meet across the brook, he thrust the dagger in the trunk of a tree and wedged the sheath betwixt the bark and the slant of the blade. All this very silently.

Brother Owyn pursed his lips, or shook his head, or turned the pages backward to read again. The King wagged his fishing-line up and down in the water, impatiently. The distant horns blew more frequent.

"My lord," Stephen ventured once again.

Richard got to his feet and threw away the rod. "Eh, well; let 's be going, since thou wilt have it so," he agreed. "The holiday is over. On the morrow Gloucester again, and to say whether Urban or Clement is true Pope."

Brother Owyn's face was grave; rebuke and displeasure trembled in his voice:--

"My lord, and dost thou think 't is England maketh the Pope?"

Richard was halfway across the burn; he laughed, and looked over his shoulder:--

"Ma foy, but I 'm very sure 't is not France!" said he.

After, when he was in the saddle, he felt for his horn, and, remembering, called:--

"Prythee, Calote, blow thrice, that they may know whence I come. Now, give thee good day, sweet maid, and success to thine adventure. I 'll watch for thee in London."

And Calote had not blown the third blast when king and squire were off and away; and she turned to meet Brother Owyn's disapproving eye.

"'T would seem that thou art well acquaint at court, though thy father is not," he said.

She opened her lips to speak, then hung her head and answered nothing.

"Now, thanks be to Christ Jesus, the Lamb and the Bridegroom, that my little daughter is dead, and safe away from this world of sin," said Brother Owyn. "She dwelleth as a Bride in the house of the Bridegroom,--in the Holy City that John the beloved and I have seen in a vision. Thou art so fair that I could wish thou mightst dwell therein likewise."

"Yea, after I 'm dead, and my devoir is done," Calote assented to him. "Beseech thee, judge me not, good brother! I carry a message of comfort to all these poor English folk that sweat beneath the burden of wrong. Haply, thy daughter, were she quick, would go along with me this day."

"Is this thy message?" he asked, pointing to the parchment.

"This, and more. I may not tell all to thee, for thou 'rt a monk."

"A strange reason," he averred. "'T must be a most unholy message. Have a care of thy soul, maiden; the pure only shall see the Bridegroom. Here am I sheltered in monastery, yet have I much ado to withstand the Devil, that I may keep me clean and a true believer, and so see Christ and my daughter at the last."

"I cannot forever take keep of mine own soul, brother, when there be so many other in peril to be thought on. Wilt thou that I hide my head in monastery and sing plain-song, and watch perpetual at the altar lest the lamp go out; and, all the while, without the gate, the poor till the fields that I may have leisure to pray? The poor likewise be anhungered after truth. They cry, 'Wherefore did God make us to be starved of the fat prelates!'"

"So did thy father rail in years gone by," answered the monk, "and Master John Wyclif would have more preaching. But monasteries are holy; they are ordained of God and the--the Pope. They shall endure."

"Brother, what wilt thou do, thou and thy monastery, when the villeins all are free, when they need no longer grind at the abbot's mill, nor plough the abbey's fields, nay, nor even pay quit-rent to rid them of service?"

"Free!" cried Brother Owyn, "and who shall set them free?"

"Themselves, and Piers Ploughman, and Christ the King's Son of Heaven, which cureth all ills by love."

The old man drew away from her: "Surely, thou hast a devil," he said.

"Then an thou lov'st me, call it forth," quoth she; and smiled, and spread her arms wide, waiting.

But he cried, "Woe, woe!" and cast up his hands to heaven; and after, "Lord, I 'm content my daughter died at two years old."

"Had she lived, she might have saved souls other than her own."

"She hath saved mine, mine most sinful," the monk interrupted her sternly; "and dost thou think I 'll lose it now to thee? Get thee gone, with thy strange beliefs and blasphemies!"

She got to her feet very slow, and stepped down the bank to the edge of the burn; so, standing close at his knee, she spoke once again:--

"In the city where the wall is jasper and the gates are twelve pearls, will there be any villeins to labour while other men feast?"

Her face was very near to his, her hand was on his arm.

"Nay, but I trow we 'll all be villeins there," he answered gently; "villeins of one Lord, and bound to the soil; and the streets of that city are as pure gold." So saying, he made the sign of the cross upon her brow.

She trod the stepping-stones in silence, but on the other bank she turned:--

"Natheless, though bond, yet we 'll be free!" she cried; and, catching up the squire's dagger, was quickly gone.