“now is done thy long day’s work;
fold thy palms across thy breast,
fold thine arms, turn to thy rest,
let them rave.”
tennyson.
the earl and countess were away from home, during the whole spring of the next year; but constance stayed at langley, and so did alvena and maude. there was a grand gala day in the following august, when the lord of langley was raised from the dignity of earl of cambridge to the higher title of duke of york: but three days later, the cloth of gold was changed for mourning serge. a royal courier, on his way from reading to london, stayed a few hours at langley; and he brought word that the mother of the king, “the lady princess,” was lying dead at wallingford.
the blow was in reality far heavier than it appeared on the surface, and to the infant church of the lollards the loss was irreparable. for the princess was a lollard; and being a woman of most able and energetic character, she had been until now the de facto queen of england. she must have been possessed of consummate tact and prudence, for she contrived to live on excellent terms with half-a-dozen people of completely incompatible tempers. when the reins dropped from her dead hand a struggle ensued among these incompatible persons, who should pick them up. the struggle was sharp, but short. the elder brothers retired from the contest, and the reins were left in the duke of gloucester’s hand. and woe to the infant church of the lollards, when gloucester held the reins!
he began his reign—for henceforward he was virtually king—by buying over his brother of york. edmund, already the passive servant of gloucester, was bribed to active adherence by a grant of a thousand pounds. the duke of lancaster, who was not his brother’s tool, was quietly disposed of for the moment, by making him so exceedingly uncomfortable, that with the miserable laisser-aller, which was the bane of his fine character, he went home to enjoy himself as a country gentleman, leaving politics to take care of themselves.
but an incident happened which disconcerted for a moment the plans of the regent. the young king, without consulting his powerful uncle, declared his second cousin, roger mortimer, earl of march, heir presumptive of england, and—in obedience to a previous suggestion of the princess—broke off march’s engagement with a lady of the arundel family, and married him to richard’s own niece, the lady alianora de holand.
the annoyance to gloucester, consisted in two points: first, that it recognised female inheritance and representation, which put him a good deal further from the throne; and secondly, that roger mortimer, owing to the education received from his montacute grandmother, had stepped out of his family ranks, and was the sole lollard ever known in the house of march.
gloucester carried his trouble to his confessor. the appointed heir to the throne a lollard!—nor only that, but married to a grand-daughter of the lollard princess, a niece of the semi-lollard king! what was to be done to save england to catholicism?
sir thomas de arundel laughed a low, quiet laugh in answer.
“what matters all that, my lord? is not alianora my sister’s daughter? the lad is young, yielding, lazy, and lusty (self-indulgent, pleasure-loving.) leave all to me.”
arundel saw further than the princess had done.
and gloucester was arundel’s slave. item by item he worked the will of his master, and no one suspected for a moment whither those acts were tending. the obnoxious, politically-lollard duke of lancaster was shunted out of the way, by being induced to undertake a voyage to castilla for the recovery of the inheritance of his wife constanca and her sister isabel; a statute was passed conferring plenipotentiary powers on “our dearest uncle of gloucester;” all vacant offices under the crown were filled with orthodox nominees of the regent; the lollard earl of suffolk was impeached; a secret meeting was held at huntingdon, when gloucester and four other nobles solemnly renounced their allegiance to the king, and declared themselves at liberty to do what was right in their own eyes. the other four (of whom we shall hear again) were henry earl of derby, son of the duke of lancaster; richard earl of arundel, brother of gloucester’s confessor; thomas earl of nottingham his brother-in-law; and thomas earl of warwick, a weak waverer, the least guilty of the evil five. the conspirators conferred upon themselves the grand title of “the lords appellants;” and to divert from themselves and their doings the public mind, they amused that innocent, unsuspecting creature by a splendid tournament in smithfield.
of one fact, as we follow their track, we must never lose sight:—that behind these visible five, securely hidden, stood the invisible one, sir thomas de arundel, setting all these puppets in motion according to his pleasure, and for “the good of the church;” working on the insufferable pride of gloucester, the baffled ambition of derby, the arrogant rashness of arundel, the vain, time-serving nature of nottingham, and the weak fears of warwick. did he think he was doing god service? did he ever care to think of god at all?
the further career of the lords appellants must be told as shortly as possible, but without some account of it much of the remainder of my story will be unintelligible. they drew a cordon of forty thousand men round london, capturing the king like a bird taken in a net; granted to themselves, for their own purposes, twenty thousand pounds out of the royal revenues; met and utterly routed a little band raised by the duke of ireland with the object of rescuing the sovereign from their power; impeached those members of the council who were loyalists and lollards; plotted to murder the king and the whole council, which included near blood relations of their own; prohibited the possession of any of wycliffe’s books under severe penalties; murdered three, and banished two, of the five faithful friends of the king left in the council. the church stood to them above all human ties; and sir thomas de arundel was ready to say “absolvo te” to every one of them.
this reign of terror is known as the session of the merciless parliament, and it closed with the cruel mockery of a renewal of the oath of allegiance to the hapless and helpless king. then gloucester proceeded to distribute his rewards. the archbishopric of york was conferred on sir thomas de arundel, and gloucester appropriated as his own share of the rich spoil, the vast estates of the banished duke of ireland.
and then the traitor, robber, and murderer, knelt down at the feet of archbishop arundel, and heard—from man’s lips—“thy sins are forgiven thee”—but not “go, and sin no more.”
“master calverley, you? god have mercy! what aileth you?”
for hugh calverley stood at one of the hall windows of langley palace, on the brightest of may mornings, in the year 1388, his face hidden in his hands, and his whole mien and aspect bearing the traces of sudden and intense anguish.
“god had no mercy, mistress maude!” he wailed under his voice. “we had no friend save him, and he was silent to us. he cared nought for us—he left us alone in the uttermost hour of our woe.”
“nay, sweet hugh! it was men, not god!” said bertram’s voice soothingly behind them.
“he gave them leave,” replied hugh in an agonised tone.
it was the old reproachful cry, “lord, carest thou not that we perish?” but maude could not understand it at all. that cry, when it rises within the fold, is sometimes a triumph, and always a mystery, to those that are without. “you believe yourselves even now as safe as the angels, and shortly to be as happy, and you complain thus!” true; but we are not angels yet. poor weak, suffering humanity is always rebellious, without an accompanying unction from the holy one. but it is not good for us to forget that such moods are rebellion, and that they often cause the enemies of the lord to blaspheme.
bertram quietly drew maude aside into the next window.
“let the poor fellow be!” he said compassionately. “alack, ’tis no marvel. these traitor loons have hanged his father. and never, methinks, did son love father more.”
“master calverley’s father!—the queen’s squire?”
“he. and look you, maude,—heard man ever the like! the queen’s own grace was on her knees three hours unto my lord of arundel, praying him to spare master calverley’s life. think of it, maude!—caesar’s daughter!”
“mercy, jesu!”—maude could imagine nothing more frightful. it seemed to her equivalent to the whole world tumbling into chaos. what was to become of “slender folk,” such as bertram and herself, when men breathed who could hear unmoved the pleadings of “caesar’s daughter?”
“but what said he?”
“who—my lord of arundel? the unpiteous, traitorous, hang-dog lither oaf!” bertram would apparently have chosen more opprobrious words if they would kindly have occurred to him. “why, he said—‘pray for yourself and your lord, lady, and let this be; it were the better for you.’ the great devil, to whom he ’longeth, be his aid in the like case!”
“truly, he may be in the like case one day,” said maude.
“and that were at undern (eleven o’clock a.m.) this morrow, an’ i were king!” cried bertram wrathfully.
“but what had master calverley done?” bertram dared only whisper the name of the horrible crime of which alone poor calverley stood accused. “he was a lollard—a gospeller.”
“be they such ill fawtors?” asked maude in a shocked tone.
“judge for yourself what manner of men they be,” said bertram indignantly, “when the king’s highness and the queen, and our own lady’s grace, and the lady princess that was, and the duke of lancaster, be of them. ay, and many another could i name beyond these.”
“i will never crede any ill of our lady’s grace!” said maude warmly.
“good morrow, bertram, my son,” said a voice behind them—a voice strange to maude, but familiar to bertram.
“father wilfred! christ save you, right heartily! you be here in the nick of time. you are come—”
“i am come, by ordainment of the lord prior, to receive certain commands of my lord duke touching a book that he desireth to have written and ourned (ornamented) with painting in the priory,” said wilfred in his quiet manner. “but what aileth yonder young master?—for he seemeth me in trouble.”
what ailed poor hugh was soon told; and wilfred, after a critical look at him, went up and spoke to him.
“so thou hast a quarrel with god, my son?”
“nay! who may quarrel with god?” answered hugh drearily.
“only men and devils,” said wilfred. “such as be god’s enemies be alway quarrelling with him; but such as be his own dear children—should they so?”
“dealeth he thus with his children?” was the bitter answer.
“ay, oftentimes; so oft, that he aredeth (tells) us, that they which be alway out of chastising be no sons of his.”
hugh could take no comfort. “you know not what it is!” he said, with the impatience of pain.
“know i not?” said wilfred, very tenderly, laying his hand upon hugh’s shoulder. “youngling, my father fell in fight with the saracens, and my mother—my blessed mother—was brent for christ’s sake at cologne.”
hugh looked up at last. the words, the tone, the fellowship of suffering, touched the wrung heart through its own sorrow.
“you know, then!” he said, his voice softer and less bitter.
“‘bithenke ghe on him that suffride such aghenseiynge of synful men aghens himsilff, that ghe be not maad weri, failynge in ghoure soulis.’ bethink ye: the which signifieth, meditate on him, arm ye with his patience. look on him, and look to him.”
bertram stared in astonishment. the cautious scriptorius, who never broke bread with wycliffe, and declined to decide upon his great or small position, was quoting his bible word for word.
hugh looked up in wilfred’s face, with the expression of one who had at last found somebody to understand him.
“father,” he said, “did you ever doubt of every thing?”
“ay,” said wilfred, quietly.
“even of god’s love? yea, even of god?”
“ay.”
bertram was horrified to hear such words. and from hugh, of all people! but wilfred, to his surprise, took them as quietly as if hugh had been repeating the creed.
“and what was your remedy?”
“i know but one remedy for all manner of doubt, and travail, and sorrow, master; and that is to take them unto christ.”
“yet how so,” asked hugh, heaving a deep sigh, “when we cannot see christ to take them to him?”
“i know not that your seeing matters, master, so that he seeth. and when your doubts come in and vex you, do you but call upon him with a true heart, desiring to find him, and he will soon show you that he is. ah!” and wilfred’s eyes lighted up, “the solving of all riddles touching christ’s being, is only to talk with christ.”
bertram could not see that wilfred had offered hugh the faintest shadow of comfort; but in some manner inexplicable to him, hugh seemed comforted thenceforward.
there was a great stir at langley in the april of 1389; for the king and queen stayed there a night on their way to westminster. maude was in the highest excitement: she had never seen a live king before, and she expected a formidable creature of the lion-rampant type, who would order every body about in the most tyrannical manner, and command master warine to be instantly hanged if dinner were not punctual. she saw a very handsome young man of three and twenty years of age, dressed in a much quieter style than any of his suite; of the gentlest manners, a model of courtesy even to the meanest, delicately considerate of every one but himself, and especially and tenderly careful of that darling wife who was the only true friend he had left. ever after that day, the faintest disparagement of her king would have met with no reception from maude short of burning indignation.
king richard recovered his power by a coup d’état, on the 3rd of may, 1389. he suddenly dissolved and reconstituted his council, leaving out the traitor lords appellants. it was done at the first moment when he had the power to do it. but a year and a half later, gloucester crept in again, a professedly reformed penitent; and from the hour that he did so, richard was king no longer.
during all this struggle the duke of york had kept extremely quiet. the king marked his sense of his uncle’s allegiance by creating his son edward earl of rutland. perhaps, after all, isabel had more power over her husband than he cared to allow; for when her gentle influence was removed, his conduct altered for the worse. but a stronger influence was at work on him; for his brother of lancaster had come home; and though gloucester moulded york at his will when lancaster was absent, yet in his presence he was powerless. so peace reigned for a time.
and meanwhile, what was passing in the domestic circle at langley?
in the first place, maude had once more changed her position. from the lower-place of tire-woman, or dresser, to the duchess, she was now promoted to be bower-maiden to the lady constance. this meant that she was henceforth to be her young mistress’s constant companion and habitual confidant. she was to sleep on a pallet in her room, to go wherever she went, to be entrusted with the care alike of her jewels and her secrets, and to do everything for her which required the highest responsibility and caution.
in the second place, both constance and maude were no longer children, but women. the princess was now eighteen years of age, while her bower-maiden had reached twenty.
and in the third place, over the calm horizon of langley had appeared a little cloud, as yet no more than “a man’s hand,” which was destined in its effects to change the whole current of life there. no one about her had in the least realised it as yet; but the duchess isabel was dying.
very gently and slowly, at a rate which alarmed not even her physician, the lollard infanta descended to the portals of the grave. she knew herself whither she was going before any other eyes perceived it; and noiselessly she set her house in order. she executed her last will in terms which show that she died a gospeller, as distinctly as if she had written it at the outset; she left bequests to her friends—“a fret of pearls to her dear daughter, constance le despenser;” she named two of the most eminent lollards living (sir lewis clifford and sir richard stury) as her executors; she showed that she retained, like the majority of the lollards, a belief in purgatory, by one bequest for masses to be sung for her soul; and lastly—a very protestant item when considered with the rest—she desired to be interred, not by the shrine of any saint or martyr, but “whithersoever her lord should appoint.”
the priests said that she died “very penitent.” but for what? for her early follies and sins, no doubt she did. but of course they wished it to be understood that it was for her wycliffite heresies.
it was about the beginning of february, 1393, that the duchess died. her husband never awoke fully to his irreparable loss until long after he had lost her. but he held her memory in honour at her burial, with a gentle respect which showed some faint sense of it. the cemetery which he selected for her resting-place was that nearest her home—the priory church of langley. there the dust slept quietly; and the soul which had never nestled down on earth, found its first and final home in heaven.
it might not unreasonably have been expected that constance, now left the only woman of her family, would have remembered that there was another family to which she also belonged, and a far-off individual who stood to her in the nominal relation of husband. but it did not please her ladyship to remember any such thing. she liked queening it in her father’s palace; and she did not like the prospect of yielding precedence to her mother-in-law, which would have been a necessity of her married life. as to the lord le despenser, she was absolutely indifferent to him. her childish feeling of contempt had not been replaced by any kindlier one. it was not that she disliked him: she cared too little about him even to hate him. when the thought of going to cardiff crossed her mind, which was not often, it was always associated with the old lady le despenser, not at all with the young lord.
now and then the husband and wife met for a few minutes. the lord le despenser had grown into a handsome and most graceful gentleman, of accomplished manners and noble bearing. when they thus met, they greeted each other with formal reverences; the baron kissed the hand of the princess; each hoped the other was well; they exchanged a few remarks on the prominent topics of the day, and then took leave with equal ceremony, and saw no more of one another for some months.
the lady le despenser, it must be admitted, was not the woman calculated to attract such a nature as that of constance. she was a lollard, by birth no less than by marriage; but in her creed she was an ascetic of the sternest and most unbending type. in her judgment a laugh was indecorum, and smelling a rose was indulgence of the flesh. her behaviour to her royal daughter-in-law was marked by the utmost outward deference, yet she never failed to leave the impression on constance’s mind that she regarded her as an outsider and a reprobate. moreover, the lady le despenser had some singular notions on the subject of love. fortunately for her children, her heart was larger than her creed, and often overstepped the bounds assigned; but her theory was that human affections should be kept made up in labelled parcels, so much and no more to be allowed in each case. favouritism was idolatry affectionate words were foolish condescensions to the flesh; while loving caresses savoured altogether of the evil one.
now constance liked dearly both to pet and to be petted. she loved, as she hated, intensely. the calm, sedate personal regard, in consideration of the meritorious qualities of the individual in question, which the lady le despenser termed love, was not love at all in the eyes of constance. the dowager, moreover, was cool and deliberate; she objected to impulses, and after her calm fashion disliked impulsive people, whom she thought were not to be trusted. and constance was all impulse. the squeaking of a mouse would have called forth gestures and ejaculations from the one, which the other would have deemed too extreme to be appropriate to an earthquake.
the lord le despenser was the last of his mother’s three sons—the youngest-born, and the only survivor; and she loved him in reality far more than she would have been willing to allow, and to an extent which she would have deemed iniquitous idolatry in any other woman. in character he resembled her but slightly. the narrow-mindedness and obstinacy inherent in her family—for no burghersh was ever known to see more than one side of any thing—was softened and modified in him into firmness and fidelity. his heart was large enough to hold a deep reservoir of love, but not so wide at its exit as to allow the stream to flow forth in all directions at once. if this be narrow-mindedness, then he was narrow-minded. but he was loyal to the heart’s core, faithful unto death, true in every fibre of his being. “he loved one only, and he clave to her,” and there was room in his heart for none other.
the dowager had several times hinted to the duke of york that she considered it high time that constance should take up her residence at cardiff, for she was a firm believer in “the eternal fitness of things,” and while too much love was in her eyes deeply reprehensible, a proper quantity of matrimony, at a suitable age, was a highly respectable thing, and a state into which every man and woman ought to enter, with due prudence and decorum. and as a wife married in childhood was usually resigned to her husband at an age some years earlier than constance had now attained, the dowager was scandalised by her persistent absence. the duke, who recognised in his daughter a more self-reliant character than his own, and was therefore afraid of her, had passed over the intimation, accompanied with a request that she would do as she liked about it. that constance would do as she liked her father well knew; and she did it. she stayed at home, the queen of langley, where no oppressive pseudo-maternal atmosphere interfered with her perfect freedom.
but in the october following the death of her mother, a thunderbolt fell at constance’s feet, which eventually drove her to cardiff.
the duke was from home, and, as everybody supposed, at court. he was really in mischief; for mischief it proved, to himself and all his family. late one evening a courier reached langley, where in her bower constance was disrobing for the night, and maude was combing out her mistress’s long light hair. a sudden application for admission, in itself an unusual event at that hour, brought maude to the door, where dona juana, pale and excited, besought immediate audience of her señorita.
the princess, without looking back, desired her to come forward.
“señorita, my lord’s courier, rodrigo, is arrived hither from brockenhurst, and he bringeth his lord’s bidding that we make ready his grace’s chamber for to-morrow.”
“from brockenhurst! well, what further?”
“and likewise her grace’s chamber—whom jesu pardon!—for the lady newly-espoused that cometh with my lord.”
“mary mother!” exclaimed maude, dropping the silver comb in her sudden surprise.
constance had sprung up from her seat with such quick abruptness that the chair, though no light one, fell to the ground behind her.
“say that again!” she commanded, in a hard, steel-like voice; and, in a more excited tone than ever, dona juana repeated her unwelcome tidings.
“so i must needs have a mistress over me! who is she?”
“from all that rodrigo heard, señorita, he counteth that it should be the lady joan de holand, sister unto my lord of kent and my lady of march. she is, saith he, of a rare beauty, and of most royal presence.”
“royal presence, quotha!—and a small child of ten years!” cried the indignant girl of nineteen. “marry, i guess wherefore he told me not aforetime. he was afeard of me.”
she pressed her lips together till they looked like a crimson thread, and a bright spot of anger burned on either cheek. but all at once her usual expression returned, and she resumed her seat quietly enough on the chair which maude had mechanically restored to its place.
“go, dona juana, and bid the chambers be prepared, as is meet. but no garnishing of the chambers of my heart shall be for this wedding. make an end, maude. ‘a thing done cannot be undone.’ i will abide and see this small damsel’s conditions (disposition); but my heart misgiveth me if it were not better dwelling with my lord le despenser than with her.”
maude obeyed, feeling rather sorry for the lord le despenser, whose loving spouse seemed to regard him as the less of two evils.
the new duchess proved to be, like most of the holands, very tall and extremely fair. no one would have supposed her to be only ten years old, and her proud, demure, unbashful bearing helped to make her look older than she was. the whole current of life at langley changed with her coming. from morning to night every day was filled with feasts, junkets, hawking parties, picnics, joustings, and dances. the duke was devoted to her, und fulfilled, if he did not anticipate, her every wish. her youthful grace was entirely devoid of shyness, and she made a point of letting constance feel her inferiority by addressing her on every occasion as “fair daughter.” she also ordered a much stricter observance of etiquette than had been usual during the life of the infanta, whose rule, spaniard though she was, had been rather lax in this particular. the stiff manners commonly expected from girls towards their mothers had only hitherto been exacted from constance upon state occasions. but the new duchess quickly let it be understood that she required them to the smallest detail. she was particular that her step-daughter’s chair should not be set one inch further under the canopy than was precisely proper; her fur trimmings must be carefully regulated, so as not to equal those of the duchess in breadth; instead of the old home name of “the lady custance,” she must be styled “the lady le despenser;” and the duchess strongly objected to her using such vulgar nicknames as “ned” and “dickon,” desiring that she would in future address her brothers properly as “my lord.” angrily the royal lioness chafed against this tyranny. many a time maude noticed the flush of annoyance which rose to her lady’s cheek, and the tremor of her lip, as if she could with difficulty restrain herself from wrathful words. it evidently vexed her to be given her married name; but the interference with the pet name of the pet brother was what she felt most bitterly of all. and maude began to wonder how long it would last.
it was a calm, mild evening in january, 1394, and in the princess’s bower, or bedroom, stood maude, re-arranging a portion of her lady’s wardrobe. the duchess had been that day more than usually exacting and precise, much to the amusement of bertram lyngern, at present at langley in the train of his master. the door of constance’s bower was suddenly opened and dashed to again, and the princess herself entered, and began pacing up and down the room like a chafed lioness—a habit of all the plantagenets when in a passion. she stopped a minute opposite maude, and said in a determined voice:
“make ready for cardiff!”
and she resumed her angry march.
in this manner the lady le despenser intimated her condescending intention of fulfilling her matrimonial duties at last. maude knew her too well to reply by anything beyond a respectful indication of obedience. constance only gave her one day to prepare. the next morning but one the whole train of the lady le despenser set forth on their eventful journey.
