CHAPTER VI.

IVO TAILLE-BOIS AND THE LADIE LUCIA.

Within the moated and battlemented manor-house near to the banks of the Welland, which Elfric had stopped to gaze upon as he was travelling from Crowland to Spalding, there was held a feast on the fourth day after the feast of Saint Edmund, for the said fourth day from the great Saxon festival was the feast-day of some saint of Normandie or of Anjou, and the Ladie Lucia, maugre her sorrow and affliction, had given birth to a male child a moon agone, and the child was to be baptized on this day with much rejoicing. Ivo Taille-Bois and his Norman retainers were glad, inasmuch as the birth of a son by a Saxon wife went to secure them in their possession of the estates; and the Ladie Lucia was glad of heart, as a mother cannot but rejoice at the birth of her first-born; and her Saxon servants, and all the old retainers of her father’s house, and all the Saxon serfs, were glad, because their future lord would be more than one half Saxon, being native to the country, a child of the good Ladie Lucia, the daughter of their last Saxon lord. So merry were all, that grievances seemed to be forgotten: the Normans ceased to oppress and insult; the Saxons ceased, for the time being, to complain. The feast was very bountiful, for the Ladie Lucia had been allowed the ordering of it; and the company was very numerous and much mixed, for many Saxons of name had been bidden to the feast, and pledges had been given on both sides that there should be a truce to all hostilities and animosities; that there should be what the Normans called the Truce of God until the son of Ivo Taille-Bois and Lucia, the presumptive heir to all the lands of the old lord, should be christened, and his christening celebrated in a proper manner. No less a man than the prelate Lanfranc had interfered in making this salutary arrangement. And for the first time since the death of her father, Lanfranc’s fair ward, the Ladie Alftrude, had come forth from her own manor-house to attend at the earnest invitation of her cousin the Ladie Lucia. The Saxon heiress had come attended by sundry armed men and by two aged English priests who stood high in the consideration and favour of the potent Lanfranc. When, landing from her boat (the country was now nearly everywhere under water), she walked up to the gate of the house, and entering, drew aside her wimple and showed her sweet young face and bright blue eyes, there rose a murmur of admiration from all that were assembled there: the Saxons vowed in good old English that the Ladie Alftrude was the fairest and noblest maiden in all England; and the Normans swore in Norman-French and with many a _Vive Dieu_ that they had never beheld anything equal to her either on the other side of the seas or on this! Nay, some of the Norman knights, and more than one whose beard was growing grey while he was yet in poverty or wholly unprovided with any English estate, forgot the broad lands that Alftrude inherited, to think only of her beautiful face. Yet when Alftrude kissed her fair cousin and her cousin’s child, and sat down by the side of the Lady Lucia at the top of the hall, it was hard to say which was the more lovely, the young matron, or the scarcely younger maiden.

“_Benedicite_,” said a young monk of Evreux who had come over for promotion in some English abbey, “but the daughters of this land be fair to look upon!”

“They be,” said a starch man in mail, “and they will conquer the conquerors of England, and soon cause the name and distinction of Norman to be swallowed up and forgotten in the country.”

“Had I come hither before taking my vows at Evreux, the devil might have been a monk for me, but I would have been none of it!”

Peaceably, ay, and merrily, passed off the day. The fair Ladie Alftrude stood at the font, and was one of the sponsors for her cousin’s first-born. The banquet succeeded to the baptism, and dancing and music in the hall followed on the banquet. The old times seemed to be coming back again, those peaceful days of good King Edward, _Cœli deliciæ_,[105] when every free-born Englishman enjoyed his own, and every noble thane or earl held hospitality to be one of his primary duties.

But Ivo Taille-Bois, though he boasted of being cousin to Duke William, was a greedy low-born churl, and therefore he needs must mar the happiness of his young wife (who ever since the birth of her son had been striving to forget how she had been made his wife), by talking of his unprovided brother, who had arrived in England, and was now tarrying about the Conqueror’s court in the hope of obtaining from Lanfranc the hand of his rich Saxon ward. The Ladie Lucia, knowing full well how her cousin’s heart lay toward Hereward, tried often to change the strain, but her Norman lord, forgetful even of courtesy to his guests, would still keep vexing her ear with his brother’s suit, and instead of continuing to be thankful to his saints for his own good fortune in getting so vast an heritage, and so fair a wife, and then so promising a child, he spoke as though he should feel himself a beggar until all the domains of the Ladie Alftrude were in the hands of his family. An anger that would not be concealed flashed in his eye whenever he saw any well-fa’red knight or gallant youth discoursing with Alftrude, and whether it were a Norman or a Saxon his wrath seemed equal. Desperate thoughts and dark designs flitted through his mind. At one time he thought that now that he had got the young heiress into his house he would forcibly keep her where she was until his brother should arrive and press his own suit in the ungodly manner of the first Norman conquerors; but he cowered under the dread of Lanfranc and a Norman sentence of excommunication, and he saw that the thing was not to be done without great peril and much bloodshed under his own roof, for the Saxon guests were numerous far above the Normans, and though, mayhap, several of his Norman guests would not have scrupled about the deed if it had been for their own profit, they could not be expected to concur in it, or even to allow it, when it was only for the profit of him and his brother. Vanity, thy name was Norman! There was young Guiscard[106] of Avranches, there was tall Etienne[107] of Rouen (and verily a tall and well-proportioned young man was he, and one that could talk glibly both in English and in French), there was Baldwin of the Mount, a most nimble dancer, and with a fine gilded cloak over his shoulders and not a crown in his purse (even like all the rest of them); there was old Mainfroy of La Perche, who had followed Robert Guiscard into Italie and Grecia, and had lost an eye and half of a nose in those wars before Ladie Alftrude was born; and there was old Drogo[108] from Chinon, who looked as though he had added to his own nose that half of a nose Mainfroy had lost (so hugeous and misshapen was Drogo’s nose!); and not one of these gay knights but thought that the Lady Alftrude having once seen and heard him must prefer him to all the world. In their own conceit they were, one and all of them, already Lords of Ey and husbands of Alftrude. Judge ye then whether Ivo Taille-Bois could have safely ventured to stay his fair guest against her will, or shut up his wife’s cousin in close bower for his as yet unknown and unseen brother!

But there was now in the hall a merrier eye, and one more roguish withal, than ever shone under the brows of a Norman. The drawbridge being down, and the gate of the house wide open, that all who list might enter and partake according to his degree of some of the good things that were provided, a young Saxon glee-man or menestrel came over the bridge unchallenged, and only paused under the low archway of the gate. His dress was tattered and torn, and not free from the mud and slime of the fens, but sweet and clear was his voice, and merry and right old English his song; and so all the Saxons that heard him gave him welcome, and bade him enter the hall and sing a lay in honour of the Ladie Lucia and of her first-born son, who would be good lord to all Saxon folk as his grandfather had been before him. But before going into the hall, where the feast was just over, and all the tables cleared, the glee-man went aside into the buttery to renew his strength with a good meal, and refresh his voice with a cup of good wine. When he entered the hall the old Saxon seneschal cried, “A glee-man! another glee-man come to sing an English song!” The Norman menestrels looked scornfully at him and his tattered cloak; and the Saxon menestrels asked of one another who he might be; for none of them knew him, albeit the menestrels, like the beggars and other happy vagabonds of old England, were united in league and brotherhood, in sort that every menestrel of East Anglia was thought to know every other menestrel or glee-man of that countrie. But when the new and unknown comer had played his preludium on his Saxon lyre of four strings, and had sung his downright Saxon song with a voice that was clear as a bell, and at times loud as a trumpet, the English part of the company, from the highest degree to the lowest, shouted and clapped their hands; and all the English menestrels vowed that he was worthy of their guild; while even the Norman glee-men confessed that, although the words were barbarous and not to be understood by civil men, the air was good, and the voice of the best. Whether the words were ancient as the music, or whether they were made in part or wholly for the occasion by the singer, they went deep into the hearts both of the Ladie Alftrude and the Ladie Lucia; and while the young matron of the house put a little ring into a cup, and bade her little Saxon page fill the cup with the best wine, and hand it to the Saxon menestrel, the maiden Alftrude went straight to the spot where that menestrel was standing, and asked him to sing his song again. And when the glee-man had knelt on his knee to the mistress of the house, and had drained her cup of wine until not so much as the ghost of a drop was left in it, and when he had sung his song over again, and more deftly and joyously than he had sung it before, the Lady Alftrude still kept near him, and, discoursing with him, took three or more turns across the lower part of the hall. Saxon lords and Saxon dames and maidens of high degree were ever courteous to the poor and lowly, and ever honoured those who had skill in minstrelsy. At first the Ladie Alftrude smiled and laughed as if at some witty conceit let fall by the menestrel; but then those who watched her well, and were near enough to see, saw a cloud on her brow and a blush on her cheek, and then a paleness, and a short gasping as if for breath. But all this passed away, and the maiden continued to discourse calmly with the menestrel, and whenever the menestrel raised his voice it was only to give utterance to some pleasant gibe.

Ivo Taille-Bois, albeit he had seen him often under another hood, might not know him, and all the English glee-men might continue to wonder who he was; but we know full well that the menestrel was none other than Elfric the novice. He had found his way unscathed to Ey, and not finding the Ladie Alftrude there, he had followed her to the manor-house of her fair cousin, well pleased that such a celebration and feast would make easy his entrance into the house. A maiden of Alftrude’s degree could not travel and visit without a featy handmaiden attendant upon her. Rough men that bend bows and wield swords and spears, and make themselves horny fists, are not fit to dress a ladie’s hair or tie her sandals; and well we ween it becometh not priests with shaven crowns to be lacing a maiden’s bodice; and so, besides the armed men and the two churchmen, the Ladie Alftrude had brought with her Mildred of Hadenham, that maiden well-behaved and well-favoured and pious withal, whom Elfric was wont to entertain with talk about my Lord Hereward, as well as of other matters. Now Mildred of Hadenham was there at the lower end of the hall, seated among other handmaidens; and as soon as Elfric entered, or, at the latest, as soon as he finished the first verse of his song, she knew who the menestrel was as well as we do. While the Ladie Alftrude was before their eyes, few of the noble company cared to look that way or upon any other than her; but if a sharp eye had watched it would have seen that Mildred several times blushed a much deeper red than her mistress, and that the young glee-man’s eyes were rather frequently seeking her out. And at last, when the Ladie Alftrude returned to her cousin at the head of the hall, and the floor of the hall was cleared for an exhibition of dancers, the glee-man, after some gyrations, found his way to the side of Mildred of Hadenham, and kept whispering to her, and making her blush even redder than before, all the other handmaidens wondering the while, and much envying Mildred, for, albeit his cloak was tattered and his hose soiled, the young menestrel, besides having the sweetest voice, was surpassingly well-favoured in form and face, and had the happiest-looking eye that ever was seen.

The Ladie Alftrude talked long in a corner with her cousin the Ladie Lucia, and then there was a calling and consulting with Mildred of Hadenham, as though her mistress’s head-gear needed some rearrangement. And after this the two cousins and the waiting-woman quitted the hall, and went into an upper and inner chamber, and tarried there for a short while, or for about the time it takes to say a score of _Aves_. Then they come back to the hall, and the Ladie Lucia and the Ladie Alftrude sit down together where the company is most thronged. But where is the curiously delicate little ring that was glittering on Ladie Alftrude’s finger?... Ha! Ha! we wot well that Elfric hath got it, and other love-tokens besides, that he may carry them beyond seas, and bring back Hereward to his ladie-love and to England that cannot do without him. But where is that merriest of glee-men?... Many in the hall were asking the question, for they wanted to hear him again. But Elfric was gone, and none seemed to know how or when he went. Mayhap, maid Mildred knew something about it, for when the English part of the company began to call for the glee-man with the tattered cloak, that he might sing another merry song, she turned her face to the wall and wept.

Well, I ween, had our simple dull Saxons outwitted the nimble-witted Normans! Well had the menestrel and the ladies and the waiting-maid played their several parts! Could Ivo Taille-Bois but have known his errand, or have guessed at the mischief that he was brewing for him, either Elfric would never have entered those walls, or he would never have left them alive.