Chapter VI: Part II: I (3)

And that night the Lady Margaret, after supper--which was late because it was the time of the haying when every man of the largest castle must be in the fields whilst daylight lasted--the Lady Margaret held a hot discussion with the Earl of Northumberland. The Lady Maud his wife was by, that was daughter to the Earl of Pembroke, and she sought to moderate at once the anger of that lord and the importunities of that hotheaded damsel. The Lady Margaret would have the Percy raise his many with cannon and siege apparatus and march against Castle Lovell to release her aunt, the Lady Rohtraut who was also that Earl's cousin. And so she exhorted him, in the light of a great fire of sea coal, for the nights were chilly enough if the days were fine.

She said many words in that sense to the Earl before he answered her. At last he spoke to a page standing behind her, that was son to the esquire, John Harbottle, and gave him a key and bade him bring a little box that he would find in an aumbry in the tower where his muniments and charters were locked up. For this Earl, according as he was at Alnwick which he did not much love, or at Warkworth where he much delighted to be, so he moved his window-glass, his muniments and his charters from the one Castle to the other, and for their greater safety they were placed in the tower called the Bail. Night and day watch was kept in the chambers that were both above them and below, with the best ancients and lieutenants that he had, keeping watch upon the men-at-arms. So high a value did his lord set upon his charters.

And when the box was brought to him he opened it with another key and took out certain old and stained papers and parchments which he bade this lady read. And she could make little of them because there was no light but the firelight, for the Earl and his wife were accustomed to go to bed after supper.

When she could not read them, the Earl took them from her and read them easily enough, for he had them nearly by heart, though the writing was cramped and nearly fourscore years of age, or more. And once, whilst he read them, the Earl looked over the edge of a parchment at the Lady Margaret and asked her if she had heard of a Percy called Hotspur. She answered, yes, indeed; so he read out lugubriously what was in that writing.

"The King to the mayor and sheriffs of York, greeting: Whereas of our special grace we have granted to our cousin Elizabeth who was the wife of Henry de Percy, Chevalier, commonly called Hotspur, the head and quarters of the same Henry to be buried: we command you that the head aforesaid, placed by our command upon the gate of the city aforesaid you deliver to the same Elizabeth, to be buried according to our grant aforesaid." And, with a droning voice the Earl followed other pieces of the body of that Henry Percy about the realm, a certain quarter of him having been placed upon the gate at Newcastle, another at Chester, another at Shrewsbury, and so on. And when he had done with Hotspur, the Earl went on to read of the fate of the father of Hotspur, Henry, the Fourth Lord Percy of Alnwick. This lord fell at Bramham Moor fighting against King Henry IV, as Hotspur had done at Hately Field, fighting against the same King four years before. This lord's head and quarters were placed upon London Bridge: one quarter upon the gate of York, another at Newcastle, and yet further pieces at King's Lynn and Berwick-on-Tweed. Lugubriously and in a level voice this Earl read out all the writs that he had collected, whether by the King's hand or Privy Seal, whether of setting up or for burial. He looked gravely upon the Lady Margaret and asked her what she learned from them. And when she said that she learned that those Percies were very gallant men, he shook his head and said that he found from them this lesson, that it is not healthy for a Percy to rebel against a King Henry that slew a Richard. For, just as Henry IV had put down King Richard II by the aid of the Percies that afterwards rose against him, so King Henry VII had put down and slain King Richard IV on Bosworth Field with the aid of that Percy that there spoke to her. And very surely it would be upon no Bramham Moor or Hately Field that that Percy would fall, for he was determined to be a very good liege man of King Henry VII and that was all he had to it.

Then the Lady Margaret said boldly that, for this present King she knew nothing of him, nor either could anybody, seeing that he had reigned but a little while. The Percy made sounds of disagreement and anger, for he was afraid of having such things said in his Castle, and moreover desired to be in his bed.

She exclaimed loudly that she regretted having seen the day when a great lord should talk of loyalty to a King not a year on the throne, where they, the great barons of this realm, had set him. For the Percies were a respectable family though they were not of the standing and worth, in those parts, of the Eures, the Dacres, or the Nevilles; they had acquired the most part of their lands by a gradual purchase of Bishop Anthony Bek, who betrayed his ward the young Vesey, so that the Veseys ever since were poor enough and some of them as they knew had taken to evil ways. Still the Percies had had some very good knights amongst them, such as that Hotspur and his father Henry, and others.

At that point the Countess Maud sought to calm her, but the Lady Margaret would not be quieted. For she said that this was what all the North part was saying, and it was better for the Earl to hear it than to sit all day surrounded by flatterers of the make of John Harbottle and his like, or than setting up tablets on the walls of towers as John Harbottle was doing at Belford, praising the credit and renown of this Earl.

The Lady Margaret looked a very fair woman and the Earl had an eye for such, or very certainly he would have had her taken away, for he regarded himself like a second king in those North parts. Her eyes were very dark and flashed with the firelight; her black hair fell in two plaits, one over her back and one over her shoulder, and when she pointed at him her white hand, on which were many rings set with green stones and red stones, her ample sleeves of scarlet damask touched the firelit carpet. In the dark hall of that place her angry figure appeared to wave as the flames went over the logs of the sea coal, and over her shoulder looked the white face of the old lady, Bellingham, her duenna, who was much afraid. For the Lady Margaret continued her rude speeches. She was so vexed that the Percy would not go to the rescue of her aunt, the Lady Rohtraut.

"Sir Earl," she said, "this is the manner of the governance of this realm of England, that, if the great barons dislike a King they set him down. So they did, for one cause or another, with Edward II and with Richard II and with Henry VI and with Edward V and with Richard III. He, I think, was a very good King; nevertheless you and others betrayed him on Bosworth Field, God keeps the issue. And when we put down Edward II we set up Edward III; misliking his grandson we set up Henry Bolingbroke instead. And that Bolingbroke, called Henry IV, we did not well like when we had set him up. Yet I do not blame anyone either for setting him up nor yet for seeking to force him down again. For somebody must be King. He will make fair promises before we come to it, and if he break them afterwards it must be put to the issue of swords, pull devil, pull baker. So this Henry IV was too strong for Hotspur, God rest his soul... Then came Henry V that was a King after my heart and all good people's hearts, and so it went on... But that you, a Percy, should cry out before this King has sat in his saddle a year, that you are afraid of the fate of your grandsire Hotspur; that I think is a very filthy thing and so I tell you. And we of the North parts are not like to suffer it."

The Percy smiled a red smile in the firelight.

"Then you of the North parts," he said, "women and jackanapes, will do what you are held down to do... For I tell you this: this Henry Tudor sitteth so firm in his saddle by my aid that we will break all your necks or ever you raise them from the dust where you belong. And that I say to the North parts, brawling and fighting brother against brother as ye are ever doing... And this I say to you Margaret Eure and my gentle cousin: that your aunt, who has broad lands should be in prison to your cousins of Cullerford and Haltwhistle and to Bastards suits well my case and there she shall stop for me. For she has broad lands and the Lovells have broad lands and so have the Dacres, to whom she belongs, and whilst they are at each other's throats it is well for the King in London Town and for me at Alnwick. And I wish you were all at each other's throats more than you are; for the King shall have his pickings by way of fines and amercements, and so will I, and so will lawyers and bailiffs and others, and so ye are weakened the more. And it was for this reason that I gave judgment against your true love, the Young Lovell, in my Warden's court, though I knew that judgment should not stand... For I think that Young Lovell was a dangerous whelp, with his prating of this and that, and his being a very good knight and commander. And so I would be very willing to pull him down again if the Scots had not hanged him, as I hope they have. And I have written a broad letter to the King in London that these Lovells are a dangerous race with their hearts full of love for Richard Crookback. If the King do not forbid it, and, if Young Lovell shall come again to raise men and march upon Castle Lovell, I will march out with men and cannon and hot-trod and hang him upon the first gallows I come to. So say I, Henry, Earl Percy."

The Lady Margaret swallowed her hot rage and considered that she might better sting this lord with a low voice. So she spoke very clearly as follows:

"Henry Earl Percy, thou art a very filthy knave, and so thou knowest and so know all thy neighbours. Thou wast a foul traitor to Richard; thou art a foul traitor to thy kith and kin and to thy peers. For thou mightest well put down Richard Crookback. That was open to any man that could. And thou mightest well set up Henry and seek to maintain him till he has time to prove himself. But to seek to weaken thy kith and thy kin and thine order and thy kind that he may sit firm rivetted whether he deserve it or not, with the house of Percy as his flatterers, servants and pimps--that is not a pretty and gallant thing. For my cousin Lovell, I do not think ye dare set out against him, for if ye did, all the North part--and it is not yet so cast down--should rise upon you, and there should not remain, of Alnwick, nor yet of Warkworth, one stone upon another. And for this thing of my cousin and true love, I think you have a little mistaken it. For whiles my true love is away we, such as the Eures and the Dacres and the Nevilles and the Widdringtons and the Swinburns and the commoner sort, and the Elliotts and Armstrongs, go a little in doubt. For, if my true love be dead, it is his sisters that are his heirs, and to set them out of that Castle would be to set down his heirs, which is a thing not to be done. But if the Young Lovell should come again I think you should see a different thing, for there is not one of these people but should rise upon you, aye, and the Prince Palatine. I think you could not stand against us all. For that so they would do I have upon their oaths...."

The Countess Maud said then:

"So there you have the end of it." But the Earl was in haste to seize a point:

"Then there you are convicted by your own mouth," he said hatefully to Lady Margaret. "I hold that Young Lovell to be dead and his sisters' husbands are the heirs of that Castle. How then shall I march upon a Castle that is the lawful property of Cullerford and Haltwhistle upon an idle peasant's tale that a lady there is captive?"

The Lady Margaret made him a deep reverence, leaning back in her scarlet gown that had green undersleeves.

"Simply for this," she said, "that there are Percies that would have done it." Then she laughed; and after she was done with her curtsy that took a long time, she said:

"So, now I have what I wish, I will get me gone from this your Castle of Warkworth."

So she made her way to her room that had dark hangings all of the crowned lion of the Percies. And when she was there she called to her the old squire, John Bellingham, that had charge of her men-at-arms. He had gone to his bed and was some time in coming.

So she bade him rouse all her men because she would ride forth from the Castle. Then he said it would be very dangerous, seeing the darkness of the night and the rumours of Scots being abroad. She answered that, if the night were dark it would be as hard for the Scots to see them as for them to see the Scots. And she had chosen him, John Bellingham, to be the ancient of her men because he was said to possess much knowledge of the different ways of that country-side, that never the Scots could come to him if he had but two minutes' start by night.

In the middle of that dispute came the Countess Maud a knocking at the door. She cried out that it was not to be thought of that this lady should leave their Castle in that wise. She, the Countess, had done as best she might to make hospitality for that lady, and it would be an ill discourtesy if she left them so. This Countess Maud, daughter of Sir Herbert Stanley, Earl of Bedford, was of the South parts, and she was amazed at all these clamours. Indeed she had not well understood all that had been said, for when the Earl and the Lady Margaret had become heated they spoke in the Northern fashion of which she knew nothing. So the Countess said again that she had done all she knew to do honour to that her guest. If she had fallen short of due hospitality, very gladly she would amend it. This Countess was a large, white woman that had once been very fair. And she wrung her hands.

Then the Lady Margaret laughed and bade peremptorily John Bellingham to bid her men arm themselves and lie all together under arms, for they had been scattered about the Castle. And, at all those noises the women of the Lady Margaret awakened and came into the little room where they slept; two were in their shifts and one had her bed clothes about her. Then the Lady Margaret bade them dress themselves and lie down upon their beds; but to be ready. After that she answered the Countess Maud that her entertainment had been such as she had seldom had before, lacking nothing, but with certain dishes added, that in their rough North parts they had seldom seen before though they had heard of them. Such were the scents in the water for washing hands, the golden apples of Spain, and the fowl called a Turkey. And indeed the Countess had made her great cheer. Nevertheless, since eating these things she and the Earl had become sworn enemies, and it would be contrary to the rules of hospitality if she stayed longer in that Castle.

The Countess wrung her hands again and said, "What was this of making enemies and why could they not live amicably together as cousins did in the South?" The Lady Margaret laughed and answered that if the people of the South were better than they of the North in these matters, then they were better than God meant men to be; nevertheless she was glad of it.

Then came John Bellingham, who by now understood the danger of the matter, to say that the Lady Margaret's men were all together and armed in a room in a wall by the postern gate and at the foot of a stairway just beside that lady's chamber-room. Then the Lady Margaret bade him let her men lie down upon straw in that room; but upon any sound that the Percy's men were arming or at any movement of lights in the Castle, he should come at once to her.

Then the Countess Maud asked what was this, for she had not understood what had passed between the lady and her ancient, by reason that they spoke in the Northern tongue. Then came a knocking at the door and the dame Bellingham said that there stood the Earl Percy in his night-gown. So the Lady Margaret said that was what she feared--that the Earl should come down at night with amorous proposals; but she was jesting. The Countess did not know this and she went to the door and began to cry out upon that lord for desiring to dishonour her.

Then between the two of them came a great clamour, the Countess holding to that, and the Earl crying out that she was a fool and that this matter might lead to the deaths of them all if she would not let him come in to speak to the Lady Margaret. This the Countess did not wish to allow, for the Countess Maud had no comprehension at all of what all this trouble was about, and it seemed to her to be nonsense to say, as her lord did, that this matter might lead to the deaths of them all.

Nevertheless, when the Lady Margaret heard those words she laughed very silently but long to herself. For she knew that now, if she could come out of the Castle and get safe away, she had a power that might well drive that Earl to do all that she wished later, or some of it.

Henry, Earl Percy, had indeed said much and so much to his kinswoman in his anger. For it was indeed his intention, secret but resolute, to break the power of all the barons and great nobles in the North, so that King Henry VII should be almighty and himself the King's viceregent. When the day came there would be indeed no end to his power in those parts, for the King would be very distant and there would be no one to oppose him. So he fomented all the quarrels that he could amongst these people, and he had seen with joy the troubles that were afoot about the Castle Lovell.

But as yet he was not ready; for all these people were still very strong in armed men, wealth and lands, and, if they joined together they might well overset both himself and King Henry VII with him. Thus he wished he had bitten his tongue out before ever, in his anger, he had revealed what was his secret design to his cousin. For the Lady Margaret was a great gadabout and, if he could not come to her, either to modify what he had said or to bind her to secrecy, there would not be a Dacre or a Eure or a Widdrington that would not soon know the worst of his design.

He had sought his bed, but his pillow had seemed to be of nettles, and since he had discerned that it might be her design to ride away early, he had sought her chamber door to have speech with her. He did not in truth know what to do. He was very willing to have laid her by the heels and to keep her a prisoner in that tower. But he was afraid that that might bring about his ears a hornet's nest of his cousins, and even it might bring him reproof from the King. The King was not at all willing or ready to have the whole of Northumberland rise upon him at that time. Nay, Henry VII had bidden him to be very careful that, whilst he weakened these troublesome people as much as he could, he should rouse their anger as little as he might.

All this, laughing behind the door, the Lady Margaret knew very well, even to the fact that the Lord Percy might come to shutting her up in prison. But she knew that, whilst the silly Countess kept him crying at the door, he could not bid his men to arm against her, and whilst her men were armed and his not, he could do little or nothing at all. They could all go out at the postern gate and so into the trackless sedges of the sea and the marches. Moreover, the Percy and his Countess were such married people that, upon any occasion they quarrelled furiously and at great length and so they did now.

For the Countess was well begun upon her grievances such as, as how the Earl had dealt with his lands of her dowry, as to the little attention he paid her as his wife, as to the fact that she had no more than four damask dresses and, very particularly, as to the store he set by one of her ladies called Isabel. And at the last she pushed the door to against his resistance and set the bar across it.

The Earl thundered upon it very violently but in the end he went away. The Lady Margaret did as best she might to comfort the Countess Maud until at last John Bellingham came to tell her that people were astir in the Castle with some lights, though whether they were about arming themselves or getting ready for the day and the hay harvest, he could not well say. But indeed the Earl Percy had twice ordered his men to arm and seize the lady and twice he ordered them to desist, during that night; for he was in a very great quandary.

So the Lady Margaret went down the little stairway, after she had roused her women, and found her men by the postern gate. The keeper of the gate did not dare to withhold the keys for he knew that they, being thirty to one, could slay him very peacefully.

When they had walked from the walls of that Castle over the bridge and two good gunshots beyond and the day was beginning to break, they all stood together upon a little mound, and the Lady Margaret sent a little boy called Piers, that was her kinsman and page, back to the Castle to ask for their horses. For they could not have taken horses out by the postern way which went narrowly down twisting steps. She did not think that the Earl would dare to come and take her there. It would have been too great an outrage, to set upon a lady of her quality in the open; besides, being thirty and more, they would be able to give account of themselves and no doubt get away by tracks that John Bellingham knew very well. So the ladies sat down upon shields of the men-at-arms, for the grass was wet with the night's dew, and they watched the dawn come up over the sea and across the wide stretches of the Coquet river. The Lady Margaret and her handmaidens made merry and played a game with white stones that they picked up; but the old lady Bellingham moaned and grumbled a great deal, for she was weary with having watched and stiff with the rawness of the air.

So, after a time, when it was quite light, the page called Piers came back. He reported that at first the Earl had been in a great rage and had threatened to hamstring all the Lady Margaret's horses; but, afterwards, he had seemed to change his mind and had given orders that all the horses should be sent out to her. Moreover, he sent her word that, if she would come back into the Castle he would give her news of the Young Lovell, for his receiver, John Harbottle, had sent him, through the night a messenger from Alnwick with very certain tidings, and these she should have and might make a treaty with the Earl if she would go back.

But she believed this to be more lying in order to get her back into his power; so she sent ten of her men to fetch the horses from the Castle gate and very soon they perceived all the horses come round the Castle wall, to the number of thirty-two with eleven mules. The Lady Margaret rode a tall horse called Christopher, a brown, that she loved, and John Bellingham had another tall horse. But the old lady and the three maids had mules, and there were seven pack mules that carried the Lady Margaret's hangings, furnishings for her room if she slept in an inn, her dresses and much things of value as she would not willingly leave in the Tower of Glororem. The men-at-arms rode little, nimble horses, such as the false Scots had, very fit for picking their way amongst springs, heather and the stones of hillsides. This lady could not bring herself to believe that her true love was not dead, so that, although she laughed and jested to keep up the hearts of her maids, as her plain duty was, within herself she was a very sad woman.

When the sun was off the horizon they broke their fast with small beer and cheese that they got from a husbandman's tower near Acklington, for they were sticking inland. This husbandman advised them to go by way of Eshot Hill and Helm, for, by reason of the dry weather, the road from this latter place to Morpeth was very good travelling, and it ran straight. The Lady Margaret was minded to sleep that night at Newcastle, which would be twenty-four miles more or less, for she had no haste to be in one place more than another. She had little pleasure in life; although she wished to rescue the Lady Rohtraut she thought this could only be done by means of the Lady Dacre, her mother, that had been a Princess of Croy. And, from the news she had, it was very unlikely that that ancient lady would reach her house in the city of Durham before that night or the next day.

So, as they rode between the fields, the sun rose up--its rays poured down fiercely and smote on them. It was marvellously hot weather, so that those ladies must at first lay off their gray cloaks and then open their shifts at the neck and fan themselves with their neckerchers. A great langour descended upon the Lady Margaret; her head ached sorely and her sadness grew unbearable.

And all, even to the men-at-arms and the page Piers, complained of the great heat and because they had had little sleep the night before, and the ladies yawned and half slept upon their mules. So, when they came to a little green hill where ash trees climbed to the top, the Lady Margaret said, out of compassion to them, that when they were at the top of the hill, so that they could see the flat country all round, they might get down from their horses and mules and sleep the noontide away in the shade. And so they did.

The men-at-arms got down from the sumpter mules mattresses that the ladies might lie upon them, and there, in a shady grove, they lay and slept. The men set their backs against trees and let their heads fall forward between their knees. One or two were set to walk as sentries outside that wood, to watch the flat country below, so that no sound was heard in that little wood save the light noises of steel and of buckles clinking as the watchmen walked. And so they lay a long time, all recumbent, some covering their faces with their arms, some casting them abroad.

The Lady Margaret awakened from a slumber, and the sun had climbed far round in the heaven. Then she perceived a lady watching her through the trees and smiling. So beautiful and smiling a lady she had never seen. She stood between the stems of two white birch trees and leaned upon one, with her arm over her head in an attitude of great leisure. The Lady Margaret rose from her mattress and went towards that lady; she had never felt so humble, nor had her eyes ever so gladdened her at the sight of the handiwork of God.

Then that lady walked through the wood, very light of foot, so that the long grass was hardly trampled at all, and no briars caught at her gown. Yet the Lady Margaret could not overtake her. So that lady came to the edge of the wood and the hill to the west, looking over the tower called Helm, where the white road ran southward and the green lands swung up towards the distant hilts. And here there was a white charger and a great company of ladies-in-waiting, all very beautiful, in gowns of sea-blue silk with girdles of silver and gold. The Lady Margaret had never seen so fair a company, though she had seen the Queen of Richard Crookback with all her court. Then it seemed to her that that lady pointed down into the plain as if she wanted to show her lover and her lord. On the road that came from the North, the Lady Margaret perceived one that she knew for a knight, by the sun upon his armour, and a monk that walked beside him. And a mile behind, by the cloud of dust that rose, she knew there were men-at-arms, and perceived their spears above the dust. The Lady Margaret knew that this must be the other lady's husband, for certainly such a troop of fair women would never ride abroad in that dangerous country without men to guard them.

Then she saw that lady riding down the hill, with all her many, towards the little figures in the plain; but they went so quickly that it was like a flight of blue doves in the sunlight below her. Then the Lady Margaret wondered who that lady must be, for she knew of none in that neighbourhood that could keep up so fair a state, except it were the King of Scots, and not even he, and that could not be the Queen of Scots, for she was a stout, black lady, whereas this one had been a tall woman with red-gold hair, such a one as she could have loved if she had been a man. And, at the thought that that woman was going to her lover and her lord, the Lady Margaret wept three or four tears, for that she would never do herself, and going back to her guards, she upbraided them for that they had let that lady pass unchallenged. But they said they haD seen no one.

V

The Princess Rohtraut of Croy, Tuillinghem and Sluijs, Duchess of Muijden and Lady Dacre, dowager of the North, was a vociferous old German woman who passed for being ill to deal with. She would cry at the top of her voice orders that it was very difficult to understand, and, when her servants did not swiftly carry these out, she would strike at them with the black stick that she leaned upon when she hobbled from place to place. This she did so swiftly that it was a marvel; for she was short and stout. She could not move without groans and wheezing and catching at the corners of tables and the backs of chairs. Nevertheless she would so strike with her stick at her servants, her stewards, the gentlemen attendant upon her son, the Lord Dacre, or even at knights, lawyers, or lords that frequented her son. She had told the King, Richard III, that he would come to no good end; she had told the Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, that she was an idle fool, and King Henry VII that his face was as sour as his wine. For that King, being a niggard, served very sour wine to his guests. Richard III had laughed at her; the Queen Elizabeth Woodville had gone crying with rage to King Edward IV. King Henry VII had affected not to hear her, which was the more prudent way. For her father, the Duke of Croy, who still lived, though a very ancient man of more than ninety, was yet a very potent and sovereign lord in Flanders, Almain, and towards Burgundy. Seventy thousand troops of all arms he could put into the field either against or for the French King, and eighty armed vessels upon the sea. The Emperor of Rome was afraid of him, for he was very malicious and had great weight with all the Electors from Westphalia to Brunswick and the Rhine. Moreover, though he himself rode no longer afield, his son, the brother of the Princess Rohtraut, was a very cunning, determined, and hardy commander. And that was to say nothing of the powers of the Dacres in England.

So those Kings and Queens did what they could least to mark the outrageous demeanour of this Princess. They did no more than as if she had been a court jester, and affected to wonder that she had once been a beautiful and young Princess, for love of whom her husband, then a simple esquire, had languished longer than need be in prison in Almain. Yet so it was.

This Princess spent the winter of most years, latterly, in London for the benefit of the climate. The summers until lately she had been accustomed to spend in Bothal Castle or Cockley Park Tower, which she hired of Sir Robert Ogle, who had lately been made Lord Ogle of Ogle. Upon the death of her husband she had inherited much land near Morpeth and she considered that she would have had much more had not the Lord Lovell, lately dead, seized so much of it by reason of his marriage with the Lady Rohtraut, the Princess's daughter. The lawsuits about these lands were not yet concluded, and it was these that the knights of Cullerford and Haltwhistle were seeking to force from the Lady Rohtraut by keeping her imprisoned. The Princess had, however, by no means abandoned her claim to these lands and it was to prosecute her lawsuits that, each summer, she came to the North. She was otherwise a very rich woman, having many coronets, chains with great pearls, rubies, ferezets, silks, hangings, furniture and much gold. Moreover, she was for ever trafficking in parcels of land with the Ogles, the Bartrams, the Mitfords and other families round the town of Morpeth. In that way she had both occupation and profit, and she harried the leisure of the several receivers of her son, the Lord Dacre whom the King kept in London.

Now, upon a day, being the second day in July of the year 1486, this lady sat upon a chair resembling a high throne upon three stone steps covered with a carpet. She had behind her yet another carpet that mounted the wall and came forward over her head in the manner of a dais. This old lady inclined always to the oldest fashions.

Thus, upon her round, old head she had an immense structure that bent her face forward as if it had been that of our Father at Rome beneath the triple tiara. It was made of two pillows of scarlet velvet, covered with a net of fine gold chains uniting large pearls. Such a thing had not been seen in England for two or three score years, but the ladies at her father's court had worn them when she had been a girl. For the rest of her, she was dressed in black wool with a girdle, from which there hung ten or a dozen keys of silver, steel, or gold inlaid with steel.

The room was fair in size, but all of stone and very dark because of the smallness of the windows. The roof went up into a peak. All painted the stone walls were, with woods and leaves, with fowlers among trees setting their nets, and maidens shaking down fruits, and men and women bathing in pools, and the vaults of the ceiling showed the history of the coffin of St. Cuthbert. Each history was divided from the other by ribs of stone painted fairly in scarlet with green scrolls. There you might see how the good monks set out from Holy Island, or how the coffin floated of itself, or how the women called one to the other about the Dun Cow. This room without doubt had formerly been some council chamber or judgment room of the Prince Bishop's in old days. But its purpose was by now forgotten, and the Lord Dacre had bought the house lately, for he considered the practice of living always in castles to be barbarous and uncomfortable. It was his purpose to pull down this old stone house and build there a fair palace where he might dwell in comfort. But, for the time being, it suited his mother well enough to dwell there.

She was sitting in the chair like a throne, leaning forward and perusing a great book of accounts held up to her by an old fellow who knelt before her in black cloths with the badge of the Dacres upon one shoulder and the silver portcullis of Croy upon the other. The old lady puzzled over this tale of capons, pence, eggs, bolls of wheat, oats and the rest that her tenants owed her. She thought it was not enough. And consequently messengers came in from the Prince Bishop, from the Dean, from the Chapter, down to the sacristan, to ask how it was with her health after her long journey from London city to Durham. She had come there the night before. And one brought her the offering of a deer, another of two fat geese, a third a salmon, a fourth a basket of strawberries grown beneath a southern wall. And, as each of these things was brought before her, she would lean forward and look upon it, and so she would lose her place in the book of accounts and scold perpetually at the old man that held it up for her.

In one of the deep, narrow window spaces stood a notable man of forty, stout and grave, with a brown beard cut squarely, and wearing a very rich blue cloak and blue round hat with a great white plume. He said nothing at all, but pared his finger-nails with a little knife. He looked between whiles out upon the high, wooded banks of the Wear that confronted his gaze across the river, and were all ablaze with the sunlight: once the Princess Rohtraut turned her head stiffly to have sight of him. But he was standing too far in the depth of the window, her chair being between one window and the other. So she cried out in a rough voice that was at once insulting and indulgent:

"This is very easy spying for King Henry." Then she chuckled and added, "Do you hear me, Sir Bertram of Lyonesse? This is very easy spying for King Henry."

He made no answer to this gibe, but instead he pushed open the window and carefully surveyed the deep gorge beneath him, for this place was new to him. The night before they had come in by torch-light, over a steep bridge above a black river. The gate into the tower had been opened for them only after long parleying, but he had perceived walls well planned and formidable, great heights in the blackness, and steep, up-and-down streets amongst which they went between strong, stone houses. But he had been aware that this city of Durham was a very strong place.

He had been set to sleep that night in a room that faced inwards, and rising in the morning he had seen that just before his face were the great stones of the wall surrounding and fortifying the cathedral. Beneath his gaze were two great towers, pierced with meurtrieres, which are slits through which arrows may be shot. Between these two towers was a gateway which he doubted not had a double portcullis, devices for dropping huge stones and rafters upon any enemy that should break through the first portcullis and be captured by the second, so that they would be like rats in a trap. By craning his head out of his window he could see, further along, both to his right and to his left, tall towers in this inner wall, each tower having the appearance of an arch let into its face. But this Sir Bertram was an engineer well skilled in the plans of fortresses, and he knew that what appeared to be arches led up to two slanting holes in each tower, and that the slant of each hole was directed with a fell and cunning purpose. For, to each tower foot a steep and narrow street of the town came up. So, if any enemy should have won the town itself and should come up those streets, then those in the tower would set running down these slanting holes balls of stone weighing two, three or four hundred pounds. By the direction of the slantings, those balls of stone would run bounding down those narrow streets and cause dreadful manglings, maimings and death, principally by the breaking of legs.

By those and other signs, this Sir Bertram knew that here, even within the walled town was a fortress almost impregnable and dreadful to assault. This Bishop might well be a proud and disdainful prelate. He was safe, not only from foreign foes, but from his own townsmen, which was not so often the way with Bishops. For it is the habit of townsmen to be at perpetual strife with their Bishops, seeking to break in on them by armed force and to make the Bishops give up their rights and rents and fees in the towns, which if the Bishops could not prevent was apt to render them much the poorer. But at this Prince Bishop the townsmen could never come, so strong was this citadel within the town.

So he would become ever richer, not only for that reason but because of the great shrines of St. Cuthbert and of the Venerable Bede. To these, year in, year out, at all seasons and in all weathers, thousands resorted with offerings and tolls and tributes.

So this Sir Bertram perceived it would be no easy thing to humble this Palatine Prince even though the Percy had reported to King Henry VII that he could smoke out Bishop Sherwood at very little cost.

It was true that, as the Percy thought, King Henry VII heartily desired the downfall of this Bishop Sherwood. He had supported Richard Crookback and loved little King Henry. And indeed, Sir Bertram knew, for he had the King's private thoughts, that the King would very willingly see the downfall not only of the Bishop Sherwood but of this whole see of Durham. For it was contrary to that Prince's idea of kingship to have within his realm a Palatine county with a Bishop there having such sovereign powers that it was as if there was no King at all in the realm. But, to be rid of the bishopric, even King Henry thought would be impossible since it would raise against him all the Church and get him called heretic and interdicted as King John had been. So that the King would very willingly have had the Percy to act as his catspaw and make civil war upon Bishop Sherwood and so drive him out of the land. That might impoverish and weaken the see a little, but not much. For a Bishop is not like a temporal baron; though Sherwood be cast out another must succeed him and have all his rights and grow as strong or stronger.

It was upon these things that this Sir Bertram--a cool and quiet knight, loving King Henry and beloved by him above most men--meditated whilst that old lady cast up her accounts, and he trimmed his finger nails. So, when he leaned out of that bright window, he perceived how steeply perched was the house in which he was. Sheer down to the river ran rocky paths with here and there a tree. At the bottom was a high wall well battlemented and slit for archers to hold it. The river ran very swiftly. On it there was a fisherman casting his nets from an anchored boat. The boat tugged and tore so at its chain that even the practised fisherman had difficulty to stand. So the river must be very swift, and there would be no mining there.

On the other side of the river the banks rose as steeply and were clothed with trees. There cannon might be set against the town. But to shoot so far they must be great guns and the Percy had none of these, nor were there any large enough nearer than Windsor. If the Percy had them, it was difficult to think that he could drag them there into position, and all that would take a year or two years. So, this Sir Bertram, who had been sent there by the King to advise him, considered, as his first thoughts, that if the Earl of Northumberland attacked this Bishop Palatine he might take the city, but hardly the inner citadel, and never at all the castle within. Or, if the King lent him cannon, he might break the wall of the citadel.

On the other hand, having the Bishop shut up in the castle the Earl might starve him out--but this he could not do unless all the country round were friendly to the Earl and hated the Bishop. Without that there would be no doing it. And the same might be said of any project for dragging cannon on to those heights. For the cannon must be brought up narrow valleys where ambushes very easily could lie, and that could not be thought of in a hostile country.

The Percy had reported himself to King Henry as being cock of all the North parts; if that were true, he might very well be loosed upon the Bishop. But from conversations that he had had with the Lords Dacre and Ogle, as well as with the Abbot of Alnwick and lesser men, this Sir Bertram thought it was possible that the Earl Percy was not so strong nor yet so beloved in those parts as he would have the King believe. In that case, if he relied upon this Earl and this Earl's faith, the King might get great discredit and no profit either in those parts or elsewhere. It was in order to study and inquire into these things that this cautious Sir Bertram was come into those parts. So he leaned upon the sill of the window and looked down upon the river that appeared two hundred feet below.

After he had watched the river and reflected a long time, for he was a slow thinker, adding point to point in his mind, to have as it were a strong platform on which to build, he heard a woman's voice say highly:

"I tell you, ah, gentle Princess, that there is no man more hated in these North parts, and if you will lend your sanction and your wealth we may speedily have down not only these robbers that hold your daughter imprisoned by his encouragement but also that flail of the North himself."

Sir Bertram turned slowly on his elbow, leaning upon the sill and looked into the room. There he saw a monstrous beautiful young lady that kneeled with her voluminous rich gown all about her and held out her two hands towards the Princess whom he could not see. The Princess did not speak, and that lady held her peace, so that knight moved softly and deliberately forward, and when he was near the younger lady he asked her:

"Even who is this man who is so hated in the North parts?"

That young lady looked at him with astonished lowering and resentful eyes, as much as to say, who was he that he should ask her such a question? The Princess had been leaning back in her chair with both elbows upon the arms and a hand caressing her chin, for all the world as if she had been an old man considering a knotty point. But, when she saw Sir Bertram and heard his voice, she said hastily and harshly:

"Get up, child and your ladyship. It is not decent that a lady of high rank and my kinswoman should be spoken to kneeling by a Cornish knight of nowhere and yesterday, God help me, if he be ten times a King's spy!" And so she bade the lady, who was the Lady Margaret of Glororem, to fetch a stool from a corner of the room and set it by her throne on the step. And there she had the Lady Margaret sit beside her and that Sir Bertram fetch off his hat with the large feather and so stand before them. "For," said she to that knight, "you may well be the King's companion, but in this place the King's writ does not run and I am a royal Princess and this is my cousin and niece."

It was nonsense and a tyranny, but Sir Bertram did it with calmness. He cared little about forms when there was news to be had that could help him and only one old woman and one very beautiful and proud one before whom to abase himself. So he made an apology, saying that he had not known that lady to be of such high rank, she being in the dim room and not over plain to his eyes which had been gazing on the sunlight. He bent one knee and stood there composedly with his hat in his hands before him.

Then that old Princess, who had affected anger affected now a complaisance towards that gentleman. She spoke as follows, formally to the Lady Margaret:

"This Sir Bertram of Lyonesse," she said,--"though God knows where Lyonesse is; I have heard it is some poor islands in Scilly or Cornwall or where you will,--so this Sir Bertram of Lyonesse is the King's commissioner to inquire into the state of these North parts. And if you will ask me what make of a thing a commissioner is, I will answer you that he is what you and I and other simple folk do call a spy. But the King calls him his commissioner and that is very well."

She looked upon Sir Bertram maliciously to see if he winced. But that knight turned his face composedly to the Lady Margaret.

"Ah, gentle lady," said he, "you may count that for truth. I am here to find out what I can."

The old Princess liked this Sir Bertram, in truth, very well. She counted him so low, on account of his obscure and distant birth and his former poverty, that she could jest with him as if he had been a peasant boy. She considered English lords as of so low a rank against her own that she thought not much about them, one with another, except may be it was the Dacres and their kin. So she was very glad to keep this Sir Bertram, if she could do it without trouble or expense, and have some amusement from it.

She turned upon the Lady Margaret and said again: