Chapter VI: Part 6

"That may you with little trouble, good Father, since I count it happeth every hour at the furthest."

Mr. Robesart sat down and waited. He had no need to wait long. Before the hour was over, poor Lawrence was once more pouring out his fervid and dreadful tale, as though he were relating it to a listener, broken constantly by disjointed words, yet ever coming back to the one subject.

"Then he rade to the top of the mount--primroses grow there--no, not primroses--what call you them?--he rade up, in his Irish habit--habit--Mistress Wenteline, can you amend this rent in mine habit? The Irish have torn it--he called to them in the Irish tongue--nay, I cannot tell you; I wis not the Irish--they be wild folk. They talk alway; they talked then. And two of them came riding forward at after--Master Byterre, look to your saddle-girth; methinks there is somewhat awry--my Lord bent to his saddle-bow when he answered them. Then one of them laid his spear in rest--rest! Oh for rest! Mine head burneth--'I will give you rest'--aye, only He can give it--but methought the man were not hostile, he seemed as though he held forth his hand--O wala, wala wa! Help, my God!"

And with this cry, not sharply and loudly delivered, but in a low voice of intense anguish, poor Lawrence sank back upon his pillow, and a cold perspiration broke out over his face.

"Lo' you, right this doth he alway!" whispered Guenllian.

Mr. Robesart shook his head. He laid his soft, cool, quieting hand upon the patient's brow.

"My son Lawrence, dost thou hear me?"

A lucid interval seemed to occur, for Lawrence looked up into his old friend's face, with calm weak eyes.

"I see thou dost. What came then to pass? Try to tell me."

"When, Father?" answered the faint voice. He had evidently no recollection of what had just happened.

"When the Irish leader came up to thy Lord with his spear in rest, and held forth his hand, or seemed as though he should do it."

A look of unutterable pain came into the sick man's eyes, and his tongue appeared to refuse its office.

"Tell me, my son," urged Mr. Robesart with gentle firmness. "Was it then the Irish shot him?"

Lawrence tried to lift himself, and looked round uneasily. Mr. Robesart helped him into a more elevated position, and with a look to Guenllian sent her behind the curtain.

"Under _benedicite_, if I must!" whispered the patient.

"Be it so," answered the priest, and signed to Guenllian to quit the chamber. "Now, my son, here be no ears save mine--and His that knoweth all things. Speak on."

"Father!" continued the low but fervent tone, "the Irish never shot him. That shot came _from our own side_."

"Never!" broke from the amazed priest. "Lawrence, my son, calm thee! Thou art speaking----"

"I am speaking the heavy truth," answered the sufferer. "Nay Father, I am in good wit now, whatso I may have been. I tell you again, the Irish did it not. It was his own men that slew him."

"Christ pardon him that did it!"

"I will say Amen so soon as I can," answered Lawrence Madison with a sob. "That is not yet."

The priest did not reprove him. Perhaps he was too shocked to say anything: or perhaps he felt that in a case like this, nature must have its way at first, and even grace could hardly overcome it in the opening bitterness of love's agony.

Guenllian had felt much afraid of Mr. Robesart's making Lawrence thus speak out the point which in his delirium he seemed unable to utter, like a nervous horse refusing to pass a special object. But the event proved the physician's judgment right. From the hour that the burden was shared with another, the patient began to amend.

Who was it that slew Roger Mortimer, and why? God knoweth, and men never knew. The chroniclers plainly enough assert the fact of his death; but they content themselves with the vaguest possible hints at the further facts--that his own men slew him, and that they did it out of jealousy on account of what they deemed his Irish proclivities. Just enough to make us guess it they suggest: they were evidently afraid to say more.

The old bard had spoken truly, for the dust of Roger Mortimer was not left to repose in Ireland. Amid solemn pomp and glittering funeral gloom, the coffin of the heir of England was borne over St. George's Channel to his ancestral home at Wigmore. There they laid him with the elder Mortimers, and not, like his father, with his Montacute ancestors, at Bisham. There, by the side of the valiant and wise Edmund Mortimer and his royally descended Margaret, who may be termed the founders of the house, by the first Earl of darkened memory, by the young and royal mother whom he could barely remember, sleeps Roger Mortimer, heir presumptive of England, first and last Lollard of the House of March.

England has forgotten him long ago, her own chosen heir to whom her faith was sworn, and from whose lips, time after time, the cup of success seemed snatched, just as he was about to drink the sweet wine. But should Ireland utterly forget that scion of her ancient kings, the young, warm-hearted, gallant Prince who, prudently of imprudently, gave his life for her, and did not achieve the end in the hope of which he gave it?

*CHAPTER XI.*

*HOME TO USK.*

"We buried him where he was wont to pray,
By the calm lake,--even here,--at eventide;
We reared this cross in token where he lay,
For on the cross, he said, his Lord had died;
Now hath he surely reached, o'er mount and wave,
That flowery land whose green turf hides no grave."
--FELICIA HEMANS.

If any further item of failure could have come into the life of Roger Mortimer, it would have been conveyed by a royal letter, dated at Westminster just one week after his death, and, being addressed to himself, before the news of the calamity at Kenles had reached the King. In this letter, Roger Earl of Ulster and March, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, is told that "as, by the advice of our Council, we have constituted our beloved nephew Thomas Duke of Surrey our Lieutenant in our said land from the first day of September next, for one year, we command that you shall not hinder the said Duke from the execution of his office, and we also exonerate you from the charge aforesaid, from the coming of the said Duke."[#]

[#] Close Roll, 22 Ric. II., Part 1.

Roger was superseded--why, there is no information. It does not necessarily mean, by any means, that the King was displeased with him, or desired to revoke his policy. It may even have been at his own desire, but there remains no evidence of this. It is more probable that his royal cousin wished to have him nearer, and considered that the presence of his heir presumptive would be of service to himself in that thorny and difficult path which it had been the lot of Richard of Bordeaux to tread from his early youth. And now all that remained of Roger Mortimer was coming home indeed, but to another home and a longer rest than those which his royal cousin had designed for him. His crown was no longer a future possibility: it had come. He should never see evil any more.

It has been left on record that King Richard's grief and indignation at the news of Roger's death were very deep and true. It was indeed, apart from the personal regard which he entertained for his young cousin, one of the saddest calamities which could have happened for himself. His heir presumptive, instead of being a man who loved and honoured him, was now his most implacable enemy--that Henry of Bolingbroke who hated him worse than any other. For according to the old law of England, Roger's reign would have been an interlude, and his claim, without some further distinct disposition of the Crown, could scarcely devolve upon his children. Before the funeral procession set forth, there was an arrival at Trim Castle. The Lord Bardolf arrived from England, accompanied by his mother, the Lady Agnes Mortimer, wife of that Sir Thomas Mortimer who had played a part in Roger's early life. He had chosen to cast in his lot with Gloucester and the Lords Appellants, and he was now a fugitive in hiding.[#]

[#] The Irish Government was charged to search for him in September, 1397, as he was supposed to be in that country; and he was executed in England, before May 27th, 1399. (Close Roll, 21 Ric. II., Part 1; Patent Roll, 23 ib.)

The Lady Agnes Mortimer, who came to conduct the little Lady Anne back to her English friends, while her son attended to the more public necessities of the case, was an elderly woman of girlish character. She was by birth a Poynings, and sister-in-law of that Lollard Lady Poynings who was the daughter of a Princess of Lancaster, and who had been ejected from King Richard's household by the Lords Appellants. But Lady Agnes was no Lollard, as she showed a few years later by making painful pilgrimage to Cologne and Rome for the good of her soul. She came forward now to meet Guenllian, answering her deliberate and modest reverence with a shower of rapid words.

"Mistress Wenteline Bevan, is it not so? Not Bevan? 'Ap Evan'! Gramercy, what matter? Ap Evan is Bevan, and Bevan is Ap Evan--'tis all one. I pray you, Mistress Wenteline, carry me whither I may dry me, for my skirts be all sore bemired this rainy day. Good lack, but it witteth how to rain in this country, by my troth! And how doth your little Lady, trow? Verily, poor child, she must have been moped well-nigh to death, with all this doole about her. Young things love gleesomeness, and should have it. Is she yet abed?"

Lady Agnes paused a second for the answer, and Guenllian managed to glide in--"No, Madam. Truly I think the child hath too much sorrowed for her father to take any grief at the doole."

"Ah, well, we will soon have that amended," said Lady Agnes cheerfully. "I will have the maid away at once, and not await for aught but the bare needful: we can amend all when we come to Usk, where my Lady her mother now abideth."

The Countess had always expressed so much dislike to Usk that it rather surprised Guenllian to hear that she was there. Lady Agnes answered her look.

"Ah, my Lady loveth not doole, no more than other folk. She hath held fair court at Usk, trust me, with a merry lot of knights and dames: and in especial--mark you, Mistress Wenteline--_in especial_--my good Lord Charlton of Powys. Marry, but when the news came, she _was_ aggrieved!"

Guenllian was glad to hear it. The thought had lain heavy at her heart, that Alianora would not sorrow. Yet to think of her "holding fair court" with gay company, while that terrible scene was enacting at Kenles, went sorely against her.

"She might well," continued the garrulous lady. "Gramercy, but I would have done the like in the same case! 'Twas but two days--nay, methinks, but one--sithence all her Michaelmas gowns were home from the tailor, new fashioned and right fair--and now but to think of putting all away for a lot of dreary doole! Dear heart, but it were enough to aggrieve one! If there had not been at hand my Lord Charlton to divert her withal, methinks she should well-nigh have gone distraught! We shall hear of a wedding there, Mistress Wenteline, by my troth, so soon as this weary, dreary doole be but got o'er."

Guenllian's tongue required some hard discipline to keep it quiet. Could _he_ hear it through his coffin-lid,--that still sleeper in the hall beneath? Would he not almost stir upon his satin pillow, if this tale reached him of the utter apathy and heartlessness of the woman to whom he had given his heart's best love, and to whom the news of his loss brought bitter regret--for the deferred wearing of her Michaelmas wardrobe? Guenllian severely schooled her heart down, and then said--as calmly as was in her warm Welsh nature--and as soon as a hiatus occurred in Lady Agnes's persistent rattle--

"Would it like your Ladyship to tell me what manner of man is this Lord Charlton? Shall he be one that should deal gently with the childre, or no?"

For Guenllian's heart yearned over her darlings, and especially over Anne.

"Eh, good lack!" laughed Lady Agnes, "he shall neither make nor mell with them. My Lord Charlton is not he that should befool him a-laking with childre. 'Tis the mother he loveth, not them. And in good sooth, he is scantly the man for one of her high estate: but--there! you wit, Mistress Wenteline, love is a leveller."

"Love?" said Guenllian inquiringly to her own heart--not to Lady Agnes. Ay, she knew, better than her companion could tell her, of what material Alianora was made. She was likely enough to

"Crawl to the next shrub or bramble vile,
Though from the cedar's stately arm she fell."

"And look you," pursued Lady Agnes, breaking in upon Guenllian's sorrowful thoughts, "truly it hath been a great trouble unto my Lady, the coming down. She looked to be one day Queen of England, and should have been, had my sometime Lord (whom God pardon) been more wary and witful. Do but think, to aventure himself afore his army in an Irish habit--was it not thus he did? Any man with his wits in his head should have wist he might as well have writ his death-warrant. And now all that lost! Dear, dear, what a misaventure! Verily, I do think my Lady of March sore to pity, I warrant you. To lose a crown, and spoil an whole wardrobe, all of a blow--well, as to the losing her baron, the world holdeth more than one man--" Lady Agnes had found it so--"but in very deed it should sorrowfully grudge me to be in like case."

Guenllian made no answer. She only threw open the door of the Lady Anne's apartments, and motioned to the new disposer of the child's destiny to enter. If she thought that both the Countess and the Lady Agnes Mortimer mistook their pearls for pebbles, and their pebbles for pearls, she gave no hint of doing so.

The funeral procession set forth, and the lonely and sorrowful child who had been one of his dearest treasures, followed the coffin of the dead father. Lady Agnes Mortimer had taken Anne's future into her own hands, and being Guenllian's nominal superior, the latter was bound to obey. She was about to deliver the child into the yet more nominal care of the Countess, to be plunged, when she grew a little older, into all those pomps and vanities of this wicked world which her father had foreseen and feared for her. So sorrowfully reckoned Guenllian ap Evan: but the God of Roger Mortimer reckoned very differently. The lot He had prepared for Anne was far away from pomp and vanity,--a long, eventless, monotonous imprisonment in Windsor Castle, with her sister and brothers,--the bitter disappointment of an attempted and almost successful rescue, for the lot of Roger Mortimer seemed to pursue his children--an imprisonment straiter and sadder than before, until that one of them whom the usurper had really cause to fear, Roger's bright little namesake, his own true son, fervent and energetic like himself, died in his weary prison; till a greater King than Henry of Bolingbroke undrew the bolts, and set the prisoner free. Then the other three were allowed to come forth. The King was not afraid of Edmund,--dreamy, indolent, ease-loving Edmund--nor of Alianora, who shared his character. He gave to Edmund, to ensure his safe keeping, a wife of a different type from himself, a daughter of the Romish House of Stafford, and a grand-daughter of Gloucester. Alianora was handed over to the care of the heir of Courtenay, ever a Lancastrian House. The most wary and cautious men sometimes blunder. And surely it was in a moment of blunder that that wariest and coldest-hearted of English kings and statesmen permitted Anne Mortimer,--the heir of Duke Lionel of Clarence if her brother should die issueless, as he did--to wed the loyal and true-hearted Richard of Conisborough, a Prince of the Blood, in whose eyes Richard of Bordeaux, whose godson he was, was the King, and Henry of Bolingbroke a usurper. Richard of Conisborough was the one love of Anne Mortimer's true heart. Every fibre of that sterling character--silent, shy, undemonstrative, but deep and loyal to the heart's core,--wound itself around him by whose side she dwelt in a dream of bliss for three short years, and then God called her away from the evil to come. He lies--murdered, or rather martyred--in the precincts of "God's House" at Southampton, she in the Abbey Church of King's Langley. They have met in the Garden of God. And if a text were to be engraven on the tomb of Anne Mortimer, it might well be this,--"I will be a God to thee, and to thy seed after thee."

She was the mother of all our kings. When one grand climacteric of years had rolled round from the death of Roger Mortimer at Kenles, the Lancastrian episode was over, and the grandson of Anne Mortimer sat upon the throne of England. The cup of success, dashed so frequently from Roger, came to his children's lips at last. But the one point in which success would have been dearest to his heart has never come. Is it yet in reserve for some descendant of his blood?--or shall the rival sister nations only see eye to eye, when He shall come who is the Desire of all nations--when the Lord shall bring again Zion? One event happened, of a different character, before Lord Bardolf and Lady Mortimer set forth, which greatly astonished every body in Trim Castle, and the person most concerned more than any other.

Lawrence Madison was slowly creeping back to ordinary life, and was now able to sit up most of the day, propped with pillows; and with some difficulty, and a helping arm, to walk the length of the chamber. Lord Bardolf had shown a particular wish to see him, and to hear the story of the Earl's death from his lips, and had pressed Mr. Robesart to allow the prudence of his doing so before the physician was quite ready to admit it. The latter, however, was overruled by his superior, and Lord Bardolf had his wish. The tale was told, at what cost to Lawrence he best knew.

"And now," said Lord Bardolf, when he paused, exhausted, and Guenllian held a cup of wine to his white weary lips, "methinks, Master Madison, you have scantly yet told all. We heard of a young squire that, in the thickest of the fight, stood o'er his Lord's body, and well-nigh gave his own life that the foe should not touch the same. Was it thus, pray you, or no?"

There was a moment's flash of fiery light in the weak sunken eyes.

"What looked you for?" said Lawrence Madison. "Had he loved me, and freed me, and grown with me, child and boy and man, and set me, so far as meetness might, as his very self, and should I reckon my poor worthless life as aught beside his? Had a thousand lives been mine, I would have given them for his life: and when nought but his dust was left to give them for, they were at his service for that!"

Lord Bardolf evidently liked the spirit of the reply.

"So heard the King's grace," said he. "And it liked him to issue a command to me, which I must obey ere I go hence. Can you rise and stand a moment, Master Madison?"

Mr. Robesart stepped forward and lent his aid.

"Can you kneel?" said Lord Bardolf.

Lawrence, with some difficulty, contrived to do so. What was going to be done to him he did not realise. He was simply obeying, through his messenger, the command of his King. He was the most astonished person in that chamber, when he felt the light touch of the accolade upon his shoulder, and heard Lord Bardolf say authoritatively,--

"Rise up, Sir Lawrence Madison!"

"Well, verily, this passeth!" said Guenllian, an hour later, to her subordinate Beatrice, who was busy packing the few absolute necessaries which were to go with the little Lady Anne. "Beattie, heardest the news? Lawrence is made a knight!"

Guenllian received no answer except a slight sound which she failed to comprehend. She looked round, and saw that Beatrice was in tears.

"Beattie, doth aught ail thee, mine heart?"

"Oh, nothing--not--Mistress Wenteline, would you have my Lady's furred mantle, or no?"

"Fur mantle! in August!" exclaimed Guenllian. "Why Beattie, where be thy wits, dear maid? The gear shall all be sent after my little Lady, long ere she lack her furred mantle."

"Oh! aye," said Beatrice confusedly. "I only thought--and I have not yet put up her Ladyship's head-gear."

Guenllian looked after her as Beatrice hastily ran upstairs, with a soft laugh such as had never come to her lips since the death of the Earl.

"Aye, I conceive you, Mistress Beattie!" said she. "You 'only thought' that Sir Lawrence Madison had climbed up above Blumond's Beattie, and was not like to reach forth an hand to help her to a seat at his side. Well, we shall see what we shall see. But if Lolly be he that shall forget the old friends in the hovel for the new at the castle, then is Guenllian ap Evan no prophetess."

The packing was all done, and the preparations made for the long journey to Wigmore Abbey. It had been arranged that the ladies should go no further than Usk, for the Countess had intimated that her deep despondency would not permit her to attend the funeral. Her heart was so nearly broken that another ounce-weight of grief would complete the catastrophe. Lady Agnes repeated the statement to Guenllian with grave lips, but with a twinkle of fun in her eyes which sufficiently indicated that the real character and private intentions of this disconsolate widow were no secret to her. To Lady Agnes this was pure amusement: to Guenllian it resulted in a mixture of contempt and sorrow. Lord Bardolf of course, would attend the funeral, having now resigned all official duties to the new Viceroy: and Lawrence Madison had intimated that no power short of a royal command should keep him from it. He would follow the friend and master whom he had loved so dearly, to the last step where man can go with man. His new honours had rendered Lawrence his own master, free to take service where he would, or to refrain from it at his pleasure: and to sink into the idle attitude of a hanger on the train of the Lady Alianora was far from Lawrence's conception either of happiness or duty.

He had now recovered his health in all senses except that physical strength was still lacking. Even a short walk, or a slight exertion, fatigued him considerably. How the coming journey was to be borne he hardly knew. But he said to himself that he would go through with it: and in very many cases, where a man _will_ do a thing, he finds that he can.

It was the evening before the journey, and in Lawrence's chamber he and Mr. Robesart sat in the oriel window enjoying the quiet of the summer evening. The preceding events had drawn very closely together these two friends, who alone of all the male members of the household had much in common with each other.

"Lawrence," said Mr. Robesart--he had attempted to address the new knight by his title, and had been instantly entreated never to do so again--"Lawrence, what think you to make of your life, now that it lieth in your own hands to make or mar it as you will?"

"If it lay in mine hands, Father, it should surely be to mar," said Lawrence with much feeling. "I am thankful it is in God's hands, to whom I have given it, and He shall make thereof whatsoever He will."

"But you must needs have desires and wishes thereunto, my son."

"Aye, I have so," and a slight sigh accompanied the words. "Whether they shall ever behold their fulfilment I think greatly to doubt."

"Think you to abide with my Lady Countess?"

"Not so, if our Lord be served[#] otherwise."

[#] If it be His will.

"Then what mean you? To enter other service, or to go to the wars, or what so?"

"So far as mine own liking goeth, methinks, neither."

"I have alway counted you a man of peace, Lawrence," said Mr. Robesart, with a smile which betrayed rather more amusement than was indicated by his words.

"Aye so, to mine own pleasure," was the reply. "But they which best love peace be not alway suffered to pursue it."

"And I had thought that, by your good-will, some quiet home far away from strife, amid the green fields and the calm old hills, should have been that which should have served you, my son."

"Ah, if it had been possible!" And another sigh followed the wish.

"There be times, howbeit, when man may mistake his vocation," said Mr. Robesart in a musing tone. "I am something feared that is thus with one friend of ours--I fear it much."

"Whom point you at?" asked Lawrence, but not in any tone of particular interest.

"Our friend Beatrice, that hath been speaking with me of her desire to enter the cloister."

The "Beatrice!" which answered the communication, was in a very different tone from the last, and ended in a gasp.

"Aye so," replied Mr. Robesart, calmly, paying no apparent attention to the tone, and bestowing all his ostensible regard upon the planet Venus, which he was reconnoitring through an impromptu telescope made of his right hand. "I am greatly to doubt if the maid have any true vocation, and be not rather inclined unto the veil by some other reason thereto provoking her. Howbeit, each knoweth best his own mind. But we were speaking of thyself."

Mr. Robesart might try to lead the conversation back to the previous subject, but Lawrence's interest in himself and his own future seemed suddenly extinguished. He answered all further queries in a short, dreamy manner which showed that his thoughts had been borne elsewhere, and were likely to remain there. Whereby, though he was not aware of it, he confirmed certain impressions on the priest's mind, which had been formed into distinct convictions by a hint from Guenllian. All that Mr. Robesart could learn from what followed was that Lawrence was possessed of considerable savings, which he meant, on his approaching return to Usk, to devote to the comfort of his own relatives.

"What other use have I for it?" he asked sadly, and with a faint return of his former interest to his tone. "They are poor, and need it: and I never needed it, nor wist what to do withal. My Lord furnished me with food and raiment, and what other needs hath a man? I never spent penny of my wage, save by nows and thens in a gift to some friend, and in the writing of the holy Evangel that I bear ever about me. I shall part the same betwixt my mother and sisters, which shall wot far better than I how to lay it out to profit."

"'If any man hath not cure of his own, he hath denied the faith,'" quoted Mr. Robesart. "Yet bethink thee, my son, that very charity biddeth not that a man part with every penny of his having, nor for the needs of his kinsfolk in the present, empoverish his own future."

"The Lord will have a care of my future. I lack but a cake and a cruse of water, and He can send them by His angels when my need asketh them of Him."

"Verily: a man may reasonably pack his own needs in small compass. But dost thou mean to remain single all thy life, Lawrence? My Lady Madison may scarce be as content as thou with the cruse and the cake, and in all cases, two lack more provision than one."

Mr. Robesart had dropped almost unconsciously into the familiar _thou_, always used to the little Lawrence of old. His hearer liked it far better than the ceremonious _you_, which he had taken up since Lawrence became a man.

"I think that is not in my future," was the low-voiced answer.

"Be not too sure," said the priest. "Some of our Father's best gifts are they which we count too good to look for. Yet soothly, Lawrence, I would not wish thee a wife like--like some women be."

Lawrence leaned forward with a glow in his eyes, and spoke in a whisper.

"Wala wa! Father, it lieth sore and heavy at mine heart that the friends _he_ had to mourn him have been only the men and women of his meynie. The one whom he loved better than all the world hath not shed one true tear for his loss!"

"My son!" said Mr. Robesart tenderly,--with a tenderness which was not all for Lawrence,--"he hath seen the Face of God, and he is satisfied with it."

"We loved him dear enough, at least," said Lawrence in a choked voice.

"Lawrence, canst thou not forgive her?--and that man that shot the arrow, hast thou forgiven him? Dost thou know who it was?"

"I am right thankful to answer No to that last. I saw not from what bow the cursed shaft came. But to think that I may be speaking to that man as a friend, _not_ knowing----"

Lawrence left his sentence unfinished.

"Maybe it were meant for another," said Mr. Robesart quietly. "But if no--mind thou, my son, how God dealeth with thee and me, whose sins slew the Son of His love, and He knoweth it."

They set out for Usk the next day, taking the same route which Roger had traversed in life only four months before. His coffin was borne upon a bier drawn by six horses, through the green valleys of Kildare and Carlow and Wexford, and at Wexford Haven was transferred to a boat, the Chanty, which bore it across in the calm August sunlight to Haverford. Two days' journey took them to Caermarthen, where the travellers were housed in the Castle, and the corpse in the Church of St. Peter, watched all night by monks and four squires, and sprinkled frequently with holy water. Three days more took them to Merthyr Tydvil, a fourth to Pontypool, and on the afternoon of the fifth, which was the first of September, they marched in slow and solemn procession into Usk.

Before entering the town a fresh arrangement of the procession was made. First came the body of archers, carrying their bows unstrung in sign of mourning; then two knights of the household of the deceased Earl, the one bearing his pennon, the other his helmet with its crest. Then came his war-horse, led by a squire bare-headed, and caparisoned with all its ceremonial trappings--the saddle-cloth of blue velvet, broidered with silver ostrich-feathers (gold ones were peculiar to the monarch), a saddle-cloth which covered the horse from ears to hoofs, leaving only an outlet for the nose and the eyes--the bridle being of gilded leather, and the stirrup of gilt copper. After the horse walked Mr. Robesart, in full canonicals, bearing aloft a silver cross. Then came the bier, borne by ten spearmen specially selected from the corps--men whose qualifications for the office were good character and much physical strength. Immediately following, clad in white, then the colour of deepest mourning, came the little Lady Anne, on a white horse--truly the chief mourner for that father who had been her best friend in all the world. Her horse was led by a bare-headed squire. A little behind her, on the right, rode Lord Bardolf, and on the left the Lady Agnes. The remainder of the household, which included Guenllian, Beatrice, and Lawrence, rode after, and the company of spearmen closed the funeral procession.

Thus they bore him dead into the Castle of Usk, which he had entered living, an infant gift from God, on that very morning, twenty-five years before.

A trumpeter had been sent forward to announce the coming of the procession; and when they crossed the drawbridge, and filed slowly in beneath the portcullis into the court-yard, they were met by a group of black monks from the neighbouring Benedictine Abbey, the foremost swinging a censer, and two others sprinkling holy water. The bier was set down immediately under the portcullis, and there it rested while the _De Profundis_ was chanted, in presence of the garrison and of many members of the household. The entire procession was meantime arrested.

With an irrepressible sob, Guenllian whispered to Lawrence, "'They that bare him stood still.' Here is the city, and there is the bier: but where is He that can say, 'Arise'?"

Lawrence answered by a quotation from the same book. "'I am again rising and life; ... he that believeth in Me shall not die withouten end. Believest thou this?'"

"It is hard to believe where man seeth not."

"Therefore the more 'Blessed is she which hath believed.' 'Nyl ye fere: only believe.'"

"Believe _what_?" said Beatrice, with a dreary sigh, suppressed when half drawn.

"Believe nothing, Mistress Beatrice," replied Lawrence with a soft intonation which Guenllian had noticed to come into his voice only when he spoke to Beatrice. "'Believe in God, and believe in Me.' It is not _what_ we must believe; it is _whom_. And whom is far easier than what. To believe a thing or a doctrine taketh the head only; but to believe a man, and that the Man that died for you, this methinks taketh the heart belike. Trust and love be right near akin. And hearts be soft, while heads be hard to deal withal. Matters be apt to steal into the heart ere you shall wit it, which should take many a weary hour to beat into the head."

"Neither come they so easy out when they be once lodged therein," added Guenllian.

"You speak soothly, Mistress Wenteline," answered Lawrence.

But now the procession moved on again, and they with it. Into the great hall of the Castle they slowly filed, and there found a most effective dramatic scene prepared to meet them.

The Countess Alianora sat on the dais, robed in pure white, the earliest garb of widowhood, which covered so much of the face that only the features were left visible in the midst. But she had chosen to hide everything by an embroidered handkerchief, in which her eyes were concealed. There she sat, the image of inconsolable woe and utter desolation, while Consolation, in the person of the Lord Charlton of Powys leaned over her chair and tried to gain a hearing. Terrible sobs were rending her breast, and she seemed quite unable to speak. When at last she managed to rise and approach the coffin,--leaning on the arm of Lord Powys, which appeared absolutely necessary for her support,--she had scarcely taken the sprinkler from the hand of her chaplain when she dropped it and sank down in a faint. Of course Lord Powys caught her: could he as a knight or a person of any humanity have permitted a lady to drop to the floor? But Guenllian was so misguided as to allow herself to see that her mistress took care in fainting not to entangle herself in her train, and that she dropped the sprinkler in such a position that it should not damage her new velvet.

"She hath swooned right away!" exclaimed Beatrice in a pitying tone. She did not see through the stained glass of Alianora's beautiful and becoming attitudes.

"It is not ill played," was Guenllian's answer, in a rather constrained tone.

That evening, when Guenllian and Beatrice attended the _coucher_ of the afflicted widow, it fell to the lot of the latter to remove the used handkerchief from the pocket of her lady's dress, and place it in the buck-basket which contained the articles ready for the wash.

"My Lady must have some whither another sudary," observed she to Guenllian. "This is full dry, and she wept sore."

"Lay it in the basket, Beattie," was Guenllian's quiet reply. "I misdoubt if thou shalt find any other."

*CHAPTER XII.*

*LAWRENCE'S REWARD.*

"Walking together o'er the restless earth
With faces set to the eternal hills."
--REV. HORATIUS BONAR.

Lawrence Madison had time given him to recover, for it was November before the funeral cortege left Usk for Wigmore. Earl Roger was found to have died intestate. It was no wonder, for how could he have anticipated that his life would end as or when it had done? This fact left all the details of his burial, usually so carefully provided for in the will of the deceased, to the decision of the survivors. The Countess, when appealed to, replied that her unspeakable affliction could not concern itself with matters of that kind; she would be obliged to Lord Bardolf to see that all was done properly, and to leave her alone with her life-long sorrow. Having said which, she called for a backgammon board, and was soon smilingly interested in a game with my Lord Powys.

Lord Powys, however, perceived that notwithstanding the distraction of backgammon, something was really annoying the lady of his heart: and after a sufficient administration of flattery and coaxing, he succeeded in inducing her to confess what it was. She was seriously distressed at the discovery that her husband had left no will, for what that meant was that her only claim on his property was a third share in the estate. Had he attended properly to his conjugal duties, he ought to have made a much better provision for her. Now, when her eldest son came of age, and his wardship ceased, two-thirds of the estate would go to him, and she would be left in a position which it pleased her to regard as equivalent to destitution. Considering that this lamentable descent from affluence to poverty would leave her Ladyship with a small balance of about a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, according to the value of money at the present day, it may be supposed that there was a slight twinkle in the eyes of Lord Powys while he condoled in a grave voice with the calamitous widow. He thought her still quite sufficiently golden to be worth the trouble of wooing, and she knew it. He was moreover aware that a very large casket of jewels lay at her disposal, and that dexterous management might squeeze a further grant out of the Crown. Alianora was troubled by no fear of losing Lord Powys, and had she been so, would readily have comforted herself with anybody else who possessed good looks, gentlemanly manners, and a flattering tongue. But before this little arrangement with Lord Powys could come to pass, a licence was required from the Crown, and this in Alianora's case would be an awkward and delicate business. The King might not approve--probably would not approve--of the widow of his heir presumptive throwing herself away on an obscure Welsh baron. And Alianora was determined to marry Lord Powys, who suited her taste much better than Roger had done. He was not a handsomer man, but he was good-looking, and he possessed a tongue of that silvery description which, to use the Irishman's expression, "would wile a bird off a tree." His tastes accorded with hers; he knew how to please her--an art in which Roger, with all his desire to do it, had been much less of an adept--he was an exquisite hand at that airy small-talk which Alianora loved better than she loved her children, and his supply of flattery equalled the demand, which implies that it was deep and extensive indeed. Alianora, therefore, set what she called her heart--namely, an obstinate unreasoning will--upon Edward Charlton, and was determined to marry him, obstacles or no obstacles. In order to do this, a licence to marry whom she would must be procured from the Crown,--no hint being given of whom it was to be: and this could not in decency be asked for until some months had elapsed after Roger's death. She obtained it, however, before twelve months were over: and having done so, she instantly gave her hand to Lord Powys in the Castle chapel, to the annoyance of all her own relations, and the decided displeasure of the King. That did not matter to her: once secure of her prize, she could snap her fingers at them all.

She had, in fact, though it may be doubted if King Richard knew it, done the one thing which her licence bound her not to do, and married one of the King's enemies. Lord Powys was an adherent of Henry of Lancaster, and one of the bitterest anti-Lollards in the kingdom.[#] They both knew that they could reasonably expect no extraordinary favours at the hands of the reigning King, and they contrived to bear existence on that poor pittance of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, until, only four months after the granting of the licence, which was one of the last acts of King Richard, Henry of Lancaster, Earl of Derby, unseated his cousin and occupied his throne. He might be expected to have friendly intentions towards Powys and Alianora. She accordingly, in due time and form, represented to the new King "the charge she was at in maintenance of her two daughters," Anne and Alianora; "the devastation of all her dowry in Wales, and the spoil of her late husband's lands by the Welsh," and prayed for relief from the Crown. Henry answered her characteristically, and in a manner which arouses an idea that his clear cold eyes saw through her dramatic craft. He granted her, to the value of a hundred guineas per annum, all annuities, forfeitures, and reversions which Earl Roger had assigned during his life:--a clever mode of making provision in name, with very little solid advantage to accrue. It was not for long that Alianora survived this episode. She died at the birth of Joyce Charlton, the second child of her second marriage, leaving her elder children in prison, and going to her own place--the place she was fit for, and the place she had chosen.

[#] It is doubtful if he were not also to some extent an adherent of Gloucester, for in the previous November he had suffered eleven days imprisonment in the Tower, evidently on some such suspicion. (Close Roll, 21 Ric. II., Part 1.)

But this is an anticipation, and we must return to that November morning on which the funeral procession quitted Usk for Wigmore.

The bier was placed on a charette, and covered with a pall of black cloth, surmounted by the waxen image then always carried outside the coffin, the face of which was a mask taken from that of the corpse beneath. Two horses drew the charette until about a mile from Wigmore, when four more were added in order to form a more imposing spectacle. Lord Bardolf rode behind the coffin, on the right hand of the young Earl, who was chief mourner, and whose horse was led, at the leader's special request, by Sir Lawrence Madison. It was usual to depute a squire to this work: and it was paying the highest honour in his power to the dead and the living, that Lawrence should demean himself to do it.

The little Earl, seven years old, behaved extremely well, as was admitted and admired by everybody. He really behaved so well, because he felt so little. The true son of Alianora, it was not in his nature to love any creature but Edmund Mortimer, nor even for his own ultimate benefit was he ready to take much trouble. He took the loss of a father at seven years of age, as he afterwards took the loss of a crown at fourteen, with the most philosophical placidity.

At the door of the Abbey Church of St. James at Wigmore, the Benedictine Abbot and his canons met the coffin of the Lord of the Marches of Wales. Over the coffin was a pall of cloth of gold, edged with blue, the colours of the house of Mortimer. It was borne by six squires on each side, but once more Sir Lawrence Madison stepped forward, and took the place of the foremost squire. His hand should be among those which performed the last offices to the brother of his love,--"More than his brothers were to him."

When the bier was set down before the high altar, twenty-five poor men clad in white, according to the number of the years of the dead, came forward to receive the thick wax tapers which they were to hold during the service, standing about the coffin.

Then came the solemn mass, accompanied as it always is, by that grandest of all funeral hymns which, like the inspired hymnal of King David, seems to be inimitable in translated metre:--

"Recordare, Jesu pie,
Quod sum causa taae viae;
Ne me perdas ilia die!

"Quaerens me sedisti lassus,
Redemisti crucem passus;
Tantus labor non sit cassus."

When the coffin had been lowered into the vault,--to which again, the last office, Lawrence lent his hand--the mourners slowly filed out of the church, each as he passed the vault receiving the sprinkler from the hand of a priest in attendance, and sprinkling the coffin with holy water. They returned to Usk not as they had come, in ceremonial procession, but in a quiet and orderly group.

Considerable time elapsed, and much investigation was necessary, before Lawrence could discover what had become of the relatives whom he had left in the hut at the foot of the castle, eighteen years before. The parents of Beatrice (his old friends Blumond and Philippa) were dead; and having been an only child, she had no near relatives whose assistance could be lent in the matter. For a long while, all that he could ascertain with any certainty was that the present inhabitants of the hut knew nothing of the late ones, and that an old woman, the only person left of those who had dwelt there in Lawrence's childhood, could tell him that his mother was dead, two of his sisters married and gone, and that his father and his brother Simon had been removed to some other estate of their feudal owner--"down yonder," said she, with a nod of her head towards the north, which might take in a large tract of country. What had befallen the younger brother and sister she appeared to have no idea. All to whom Lawrence applied gave him an answer, half awe-struck, half kindly, excepting those whose brains and hearts seemed dulled by hard usage. Most promised to bear the matter in mind, and to make such inquiries as they had opportunity.

Lawrence had never realised the immensity of the change in himself, until he attempted thus to resume the old familiar relations with that stratum of society into which he was born. Through constant association with educated gentlemen, he had become one of them in thought and feeling; but he was never aware how thoroughly, until he tried to be once more that which he had ceased to be. His first thought was that the people of Usk had changed--they were more cold-hearted, and less homely and pleasant, than they had been in his boyhood. He discovered in time that the alteration was not in them, but in himself, and that all they were guilty of was the unavoidable and intuitive recognition that he belonged to the group of masters, and no more to that of serfs. But the discovery was not perfected until one evening, when a dirty, slatternly woman of about thirty years of age presented herself at the porter's lodge of Usk Castle, and demanded in a whining tone to see one Lawrence Madison.

"'Lawrence Madison,' forsooth!" returned the scandalised porter. "Is it thus thou wouldst speak of one of the most gallant knights in England? Mend thy ways, woman, and say Sir Lawrence, and then maybe I can find the time to answer thee."

"Eh, lo' you now!" exclaimed the woman, resting a dirty hand against the stone wall. "Is't so fine as that, trow? Well, Master Porter, or Sir Porter, or my Lord Porter, as it shall like your Bigness, I would see _Sir_ Lawrence Madison, if it should like you demean you to go and tell him so much, and him to come hither and behold his sister."

"His what?" inquired the porter in an indescribable tone, reviewing the querist in a style which was scarcely flattering.

"His sister," coolly returned the unabashed young woman. "His father's daughter, and his mother's belike, byname Emmot, and wife unto Will Sumpterman, that keepeth my Lord Le Despenser his baggage mules, and hath trapesed many a weary mile to speak with my said worshipful knight. Canst carry so much, thinkest?"

The disgusted porter turned away without deigning a reply; but his wife, who had overheard the colloquy, came forward and in politic wise invited Emmot to enter the lodge. There Lawrence found her when the porter returned with him. His first idea had been one of great pleasure. But when he saw the dirty, untidy, miserable-looking creature who called him Brother, a mixed feeling of compassion and disgust took its place.

To him she was another woman, and was very far from braving him as she had done the porter.

"Give you good den, Sir Lawrence," said she, louting low: "Metrusteth you shall not have forgat your sister Emmot, that is your own flesh and blood, and right ill off, with eight childre that have scarce a rag to their backs, nor an handful of meal to put in their mouths, I do ensure you. We have heard you be come back a knight, worshipful Sir, with a fortune in broad gold pieces, and sure you would never forget your own flesh and blood. Mariot hath but five childre, and her man was better off than mine; and Joan hath but two. So you shall see, sweet Sir, I cast no doubt, that 'tis I have the most need of your bountifulness, good Sir Lawrence."

Lawrence's awakened pity was rapidly passing into unspeakable disgust. He had come home prepared to divide his savings among these relatives, as being his own flesh and blood: but he was not prepared to find them throwing themselves upon him like a pack of wolves, intent upon nothing but the horrible emulation which of them could bite the largest piece out of him, and each utterly unconcerned whether the rest got any thing at all. It cost him something to say "Sister" to this wretched creature--not because she was poor,--Lawrence would never have felt that--but because she was vulgar and slovenly, disgusting alike in mind and body. He controlled himself, however, and passing by the too evident spirit of her speech, asked what she could tell him of the other members of the family. Emmot's communicativeness cooled manifestly. She professed that she knew nothing of the others, and Lawrence had to remind her what she had just said. After a little fencing she admitted that she knew where nearly all of them were. Mariot was living about two miles from Usk, and her husband had been a miner; he was dead, and she made a living by plaiting straw. One of her sons was quite old enough to work--a fact on which Emmot laid great stress; her husband had been a freeman, and none of the family were serfs except herself, which was an enormous advantage: and Joan's husband was a serf, so that she and her family were kept at their master's cost, and needed nothing whatever,--another enormous advantage; and she had only two children. And once more the eight children of the illogical Emmot were paraded rhetorically before Lawrence.

He gave her a handsome donation, over which she grumbled sorely, and he turned away sick at heart.

Lawrence's next work was to visit his father, who lived a day's journey away, with his son Simon and his family. Nicholas showed some interest in his youngest son, and some slight affection for him; and he did not ask for money--an omission fully made up by Simon's wife. Simon himself proved the least changed of any of the family. Grim and surly as far back as Lawrence could recollect him, he was grim and surly still. Lawrence left another donation here, and coming back, went a little out of his way to call upon his sister Joan.