Part 2

There came a clanking of armed heels and the rattle of a scabbard over the stones of the court-yard, and the young lady turned sharply round. A smile of recognition and a deep flush passed together across her fair face. The next moment she glanced back at the half-open door of a turret staircase close at hand, evidently communicating with the private apartments above, and made a movement as if to flee.

But Ralph was too quick for her. In an instant he had vaulted the low fence, and gained her side, so that common courtesy, if no stronger motive, obliged her to remain. Then he caught her by both hands and made as if he would kiss her; but she shook her head.

"Aliva, my heart's darling!" he exclaimed; "I prithee tell me what is wrong this morning? You seem not glad to see me. Have I frightened you in coming on you so suddenly?" he added, half jesting.

The maiden's lips curled bewitchingly.

"A daughter of the De Pateshulles has yet to learn what fear is," she replied; "and I warrant you could not teach it me, Ralph, either in person or in practice," she added. And then the smile died away, and the grave expression stole over her face immediately.

"But, my ladye fair, I would fain have you overjoyed to see me this morning, for I bring news which will perhaps lead your father to look more favourably on my suit," continued Ralph. "But perchance that is news you would therefore be ill-pleased to hear," he added.

Aliva tossed her head with a laugh in her eyes.

"Try me, Sir Knight," she said--"say on your news," and her face lit up again with pleasure.

"One point in my fate still remains unchanged," Ralph went on. "A soldier of fortune I am, and such I must continue; there is no fresh news on that score. If you will wed me, dear heart, you will still have to wed one who must depend on his own right arm. But now I see a chance before me of exerting that right arm."

For the moment, however, the member to which he alluded had found its way round Aliva's waist, and did not appear to exert itself any further for the time being.

"Now that I have received my knightly rank," Ralph continued, "I have a hope, also, of active service. The king, as I have lately heard, meditates an expedition across the Border to punish the Scots, and a great council of the nation is to be summoned to meet at Northampton in the summer. When once the business is arranged, and the royal forces set forth for the north, methinks I am sure of a good post. My uncle's weight and interest have not been utterly lost, though he has been driven from the home of our ancestors. When he begs for a command for a De Beauchamp, the king surely cannot say him nay. And then, when the war is over, when we have taught the Scots a lesson, in a few months I shall come again, my Aliva, and come no longer penniless and unknown, but with rank, position, the promise of further employment, and perhaps, if fortune favours me--for I will do all man can dare to do--with some deed of glory, some honour not unworthy to lay at your feet as a wedding-gift. Oh say, Aliva, your father will hearken then?"

Aliva had not spoken, had not interrupted him. She stood, her eyes cast on the ground, a fierce struggle going on within her. As a daughter, she felt that she ought not to have allowed this stolen interview against her father's wishes. She ought to have fled by the turret-stair, with merely a courteous salutation for her visitor. Yet there he stood, this penniless young knight, by her side, his arm round her waist, and his large gray eyes gazing with devotion and love into her face. Moreover, he was telling her of a soldier's duties; he spoke of war and danger. What could she do? She was but a woman, warm-hearted and also of impulsive nature. The court-yard was clear, for Dicky Dumpling had hobbled off to the stables with the gray mare. For all answer she laid her head upon his shoulder and her right hand sought his left--the one, be it remembered, that was disengaged.

It was but for a moment, however, and then it was not only maidenly instinct which made her draw herself free from his embrace.

"Ugh!" she exclaimed; "where in the name of all that's marvellous have you been this morning, Ralph? You are dripping wet, or at least anything but dry!"

"Have no fear, lady; I have had no worse encounter than one with our old river this morning, and I crave your forgiveness for thus presenting myself, for time brooked no delay. But I bear evil tidings for the ears of a devout daughter of Holy Church," he continued; and he told her the story of De Breaute's impious raid upon St. Alban's Abbey.

The maiden listened horror-stricken, and when he had ended, pressed her fingers to her eyes, as if to shut out the horrible scene he had conjured up.

"O Mother of God!" she exclaimed, in a low shuddering voice, as if to herself. "And it is with one of this family of spoilers of churches and murderers of the servants of holy men that my father would have me wed!"

Ralph drew back, astonished at her words.

"Aliva! what say you? You are dreaming! Wed with a De Breaute? Never while I draw breath; by the holy Cross I swear it. Your father! he speaks in sorry jest or in madness. And besides, the scoundrel Fulke has a wife already--that ill-fated Lady Margaret de Ripariis, affianced at one time to my uncle, Sir William, and forced against her will into a marriage with Fulke by our late king. Aliva, speak, I conjure you. What mean you by such words?"

"Alas!" replied the maiden, hesitatingly and mournfully, and answering only the latter part of her lover's question, "my father knows full well the sad history of the Lady Margaret, and ofttimes hath he said, more in jest than in earnest I trust, that after all the lady has become the _chatelaine_ of Bedford Castle, and that since your noble uncle has been turned out, she did well to marry with the man who has got inside--"

"Peace, my sweetest Aliva," interrupted Ralph impetuously. "Speak not of that unfortunate Lady Margaret. But tell me, I beseech thee, what your father means by joining your name with one of the house of De Breaute."

The Lady Aliva drew herself together, as with an effort.

"Nay, I would not have spoken--the name escaped me when you spake of the outrage on the church--forget--"

She stopped short, her voice breaking. The excitement of this unexpected meeting with the man she loved, the news that he was about to leave her for war and danger, the sweet moment in which she had allowed him to clasp her in his arms, the fearful tale of slaughter he had unfolded, which brought back suddenly to her mind, with the mention of the name of De Breaute, the fate that was proposed for her, and which she had well-nigh forgotten in her happiness of finding herself by Ralph's side once more,--all these emotions proved too much for her. Bursting into a flood of tears, she made for the turret door, and, in spite of the young knight's effort to detain her, disappeared up the stairs.

Ralph, stunned and mystified, was staring at the door which had closed behind her, when he heard a wheezing at his elbow.

"Sir Knight, the pasty is done brown and the cook is ready to serve up, and from the gate-house window I see my lord herding his falcons, and preparing to return," said Dicky Dumpling's voice.

It aroused Ralph as from a dream. Pressing a piece of money into the porter's fat palm, he hastened to fetch his mare from the stable, and mounting her, rode away with a heavy heart through the gate of Bletsoe Castle.

Dicky Dumpling looked after him and shook his head.

"He comes with a jest, and he goes without a word! Things look ill, I trow. 'Laugh and grow fat' is my motto, laugh and grow fat! Plague on that lazy scullion! why lingers he so long with my dinner?"

*CHAPTER III.*

_*HOW ALIVA RECEIVED A SECOND SUITOR.*_

So fair and noble a maiden as the Lady Aliva de Pateshulle deserved a better father than she possessed. The Lord of Bletsoe was rather too inclined to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, to play a double part, waiting to see where his own interests would best be served. But we must bear in mind the condition of affairs in the time in which he lived. The old and formerly powerful county family of the De Beauchamps were fallen from their high estate; for Sir William, their head, had been ousted from his castle, and in those days a baron without castle and stronghold occupied but an inferior position. On the other hand, the house of De Breaute had come decidedly to the front; for, as the chroniclers of the time tell us, Fulke held not only the castle of Bedford, but also the castles and the shrievalties of Oxford, Northampton, Buckingham, and Cambridge. All these he had received as the reward for his services against the barons on behalf of King John, so there could be no doubt but that the De Breaute family was wealthy, and also, apparently, firmly rooted at Bedford.

It must not be supposed, however, that De Pateshulle could excuse Fulke's outrages, or that he would have gone so far as to give his daughter to one who bore so evil a name, even had he not been already married. The intended son-in-law was another member of the De Breaute family.

As the Lady Margaret de Ripariis, the unhappy wife of Fulke, had born her husband no children, the heir to his wealth was his younger brother William. Now this William de Breaute was not yet as widely known, nor as hated, as his brother, nor was it even asserted that he had taken part in any of the foul deeds committed by the latter. Soldier of fortune like his brother, he had but lately arrived from France, and taken up his residence in Bedfordshire, where perhaps he was not altogether unpopular, for he had even gone so far as to hint that, should Sir Fulke come to a violent end in one of his forays, and he, William, become the lord of Bedford Castle, the neighbourhood should have no reason to mourn the change. With regard to the De Beauchamps, however, he intimated pretty strongly that he considered his family to have sufficient title to the castle from the grant of King John, and no one, naturally, was prepared to say that the young King Henry was in a position to upset his father's arrangements.

Accordingly, when William de Breaute approached De Pateshulle with a proposal that he should give him his daughter Aliva in marriage, it was not altogether unnatural that that gentleman, being of poor estate though of good family, and not even possessing a fortified dwelling--in itself a mark of position in those days--should be willing to listen to a suit which would place his descendants at Bedford Castle, and in the position held in former days by the De Beauchamps.

It was on the afternoon of the same day on which Ralph de Beauchamp had met Aliva de Pateshulle in the garden that William de Breaute presented himself in person at the mansion of Bletsoe. Had he been aware of the stolen interview which had taken place a few hours before by the turret door, he would hardly have selected this day for pressing his suit with Aliva herself. But ignorance is bliss. De Breaute had not been sufficiently long in the neighbourhood to learn that there had been love passages between Ralph and Aliva, so he rode over to Bletsoe in a self-satisfied frame of mind, armed as he was with De Pateshulle's permission, which, in those days when ladies were often given in marriage against their will, was, he flattered himself, of considerable force. But he little knew with what a resolute maiden he had to deal. Moreover, he was still ignorant of the outrages at St. Alban's the previous evening, which were likely to bring fresh discredit on his name. He only knew that Fulke had gone off on some raid, and had not yet returned when he left Bedford.

William de Breaute was several years younger than his brother--not much senior, in fact, to Ralph de Beauchamp himself. French by title and education, he had imported something of Continental grace and manners into the Anglo-Norman society of the time in Bedfordshire. He was more careful of his dress and person than the other young men of the neighbourhood. Instead of the short curling beard and half-long hair which was the fashion in England, he wore only a small, carefully-trimmed moustache, and his dark hair was cut short all over his head. He had first met the Lady Aliva at a hunting-party held in the woods on the other side of the river, by Sir William Wake of Stevington Castle, when the maiden, no mean horsewoman nor inferior shot with the cross-bow, had greatly distinguished herself by her prowess in venery. Since then, upon every occasion, William de Breaute had attempted to ingratiate himself with the daughter of De Pateshulle, by his foreign-cultured manners, and by showing, not altogether unsuccessfully perhaps, that he was more of a lady's man than the young knights and squires of the county who flocked around her. But up till now he had not ventured to make serious love to her. Indeed, with his frothy, shallow nature, an impetuous, earnest wooing such as Ralph's would not have been easy.

There was a twofold motive in the suit De Breaute now sought to press. With his admiration for the stately beauty mingled a desire to establish himself firmly in his position by an alliance with an old family, such as that of a De Pateshulle. He was by no means totally insincere in disclaiming any part in Sir Fulke's malpractices, and was keenly alive to the precarious footing upon which he stood in Bedfordshire, both on account of the sympathy universally felt for the ejected De Beauchamps, and also by reason of his brother's lawless freebooting career.

In anything but an enviable state of mind Aliva sat at the little window of her chamber, her hands clasped convulsively round her knees, and watched the watery rays of the sunshine of a winter's afternoon piercing the fog, which slowly mounted from the river over the low-lying country around. The scene seemed to her typical of her unhappy position.

"The sunshine of my life is past and gone," she exclaimed to herself, with the acute bitterness of sorrowing youth. "My sun has vanished, and the mists creep on apace! They threaten to enshroud me. I know not which way to turn!" she added, with the reaction of despair common to all proud, high-spirited natures. "O my father, my father! the burden you have laid upon me is too heavy to bear! Since you first told of your wishes--nay, your commands--I have been torn hither and thither. Had I a mother, had that dear parent not been taken so early from me, she would have known, have felt, that this is no idle fancy, no passing friendship for Ralph! O be merciful! do not force me to take another!"

Those were the days when a dutiful and reverential spirit of obedience to parents, of which we find now, unhappily, not so much trace, was looked upon as a sacred duty. Daughters were given in marriage by their parents with but little regard for their own wishes, and rich heiresses--though indeed poor Aliva was not one of these latter--were even disposed of by royal authority for political purposes. In the hapless Margaret de Ripariis, the wife of Fulke, Aliva had herself seen an instance of such a forced marriage. No wonder that she was in despair, and had torn herself away from Ralph in confusion and distress, when her miserable position was suddenly recalled to her.

Even as she thus moaned to herself, the sun sank behind a bank of mist, and a raw, gray gloom fell over the landscape, while home-coming rooks settled in the tall elms round the house, cawing mournfully.

"My father said he might come this very day," Aliva thought to herself. "But surely the vesper-bell will soon be ringing from the church, and then, thanks to our blessed St. Margaret, I shall be safe for yet another day!"

But even as she spoke she heard the sound of a horseman riding in under the gateway, and of Dicky Dumpling's voice bawling to a serving-man; for after his visit to the lay-brother's cottage, and the news he had there heard, the fat porter felt in no mood to hold the bridle of a De Breaute.

But Aliva did not peep from her window as she had done when Ralph rode off, for she guessed who had come, and her heart sank within her.

Quickly there came a knock at the door, and the old serving-woman entered.

"My lady, my lord thy father desires you attend him in the great hall."

"Tell him I come," answered Aliva, and she rose.

A daughter's obedience she owed, and she would indeed obey an order to confront this unwelcome suitor. But even as she smoothed her flowing hair, and, with the natural vanity of a girl about to meet an admirer, arranged it beneath the fillet, and settled the sweeping lines of her tight-fitting robe, the exigency of the crisis raised the maiden's spirit. For she was of Anglo-Norman blood. Her sires had fought at Hastings, and from each line of ancestors she inherited totally distinct qualities of bravery, dogged resolution, intrepid pride, and tenacity of purpose, which, blended together, have produced the finest race the world has ever seen.

As she entered the hall door opening into the dais or upper end, her father and William de Breaute, standing together in the oriel, thought they had never seen her look so "divinely tall, and most divinely fair."

With one glance at the latter she swept straight up to her parent, and spoke slowly and clearly, though it needed all her strong self-will to suppress her agitation.

"Father," she said, "I saw Sir Ralph de Beauchamp here this morning."

A complete silence followed as she ceased and stepped quietly to the deep oriel window, passing her father on the other side to that on which De Breaute stood. There was silence as she gazed fixedly out into the distant winter landscape, over which the dusk was already gathering, her teeth set, her lips firmly closed, and her clasped hands so tightly clinched that the nails cut into her flesh. She moved not a muscle, but stood rigid as a statue.

De Pateshulle shifted uneasily on his feet, and sought his guest's face with restless eyes and troubled expression, giving an apologetic cough.

The large log burning in the open fireplace half-way down the hall fell with a sudden crash from the fire-dogs, as one charred end gave way.

De Breaute started. He had been cowed for a moment by the flashing glance Aliva had given him as she entered the hall. He had been stabbed by a maddening pang of jealousy at the few words she had spoken. But in the silence which followed he regained courage, and plunged vehemently into the set speech he had prepared,--

"Most beauteous Lady Aliva, fairest daisy of an English meadow, witching Diana of the woods, behold in me a poor suppliant from _outre mer_, falling at your fair feet, wounded to death by the glance of your bright een, the victim of Venus _venerie_! I pray thee, proud damoiselle, to deign to look upon me with favour, and to fan with words of comfort the fire ardent your beauty hath enkindled!"

He paused for lack of breath, and then launched out again into Continental flowers of compliment and gallantry.

As he spoke he advanced gradually towards Aliva, bowing, his hand upon his heart.

The two were only about six paces apart. Slowly and deliberately Aliva took those six paces, with an expression of indignation and scorn. Her right fist was tightly clinched. She raised her arm, and (we must remember this was the thirteenth and not the nineteenth century) she struck the dark little Frenchman full in the face.

*CHAPTER IV.*

_*IN BEDFORD CASTLE.*_

A few weeks after William de Breaute, his face smarting and disfigured by a blow from a woman's hand, had ridden off from Bletsoe, his elder brother Fulke--"that disgrace to knighthood," as Ralph de Beauchamp had termed him--sat one morning in his wife's apartment in his castle of Bedford.

The lady's bower, as the private room of the _chatelaine_ was called, was at Bedford pleasantly situated in the upper part of the great keep reared by Pain de Beauchamp. The interior arrangement of a Norman castle was usually as follows:--

The ground-floor, to which there was no entrance from without, was called the _dungeon_, and was used as a storehouse for the provisions which were necessary to enable the castle to stand a siege. Here, also, was the well, another necessity, and prisoners were also sometimes confined in the ground-floor, hence the application of the name to prisons in general. The greater part of the first floor was occupied by the large apartment called the hall. This was approached by steps outside the building, and was entered through a portal which was often highly ornamented. The great hall was common ground to all who had any right to enter the keep, but above it were the private rooms for the lord and his family, which were usually approached by a staircase built at one corner of the keep. The windows were very small: in the lower portion of the building were long narrow tunnels pierced through the thickness of the wall; but in the upper stories, where the walls were safe from attack by battering-rams or such engines, they were often splayed within at a wide angle. In the recess thus formed seats could be placed commanding a view through the narrow window, covered only by a wooden shutter, which could be hooked back when the weather permitted.

In such a nook, in her own private room, sat Margaret de Ripariis, the lady of Bedford Castle. The view from out of the open window was a pleasant one. Immediately at her feet was the strong wall surrounding the keep itself; its exact position can even now be determined, as we stand on the flat bowling-green which occupies the summit of the mound where the keep once stood. Beyond, the broad stream of the Ouse protected the castle along the whole of the southern front. Across the river, to the right, the Micklegate, or southern portion of the town, clustered round the two churches of St. Mary and St. Peter, Dunstable; and the view from the upper stories of the keep embraced the abbey of Elstow, with its great Norman church, some two miles further to the south, and was only bounded by the blue line of the Ampthill hills.

But charming as was the prospect, the Lady Margaret was not regarding it with any expression of satisfaction. In fact, her thoughts were quite otherwise occupied. A controversy was going on at that moment between herself and her lord and master, and she merely gazed out of the window in order to turn away her eyes from him, for they were full of tears. An unfortunate contrast to the scene within were the calm river and the bright spring sunshine without.

The Lady Margaret had barely reached middle age, but sorrow and care had worn weary lines on a face which, some twenty years before, must have been one of exceeding beauty. When a young girl, she had betrothed herself to William de Beauchamp, Ralph's uncle; but by an overstraining of that feudal law which allowed the king, or any other chief, the power to give his ward in marriage, she had been forced by King John into a distasteful match with Fulke de Breaute. It would have been possible, but difficult, for a strong-willed woman to resist the will and the command of a feudal superior. But in the case of an heiress, such as was Margaret de Ripariis, great pressure was exercised, and many women in those days had to yield against their will and inclination. Fulke de Breaute himself was at that time a young man in the height of favour with King John, who was then engaged in his desperate struggle with his barons, and who eventually rewarded his supporter with the governorship of Bedford, and the hand of the rich heiress.