Emily Sarah Holt

“ His face has never been handsome; there are deep furrows in the forehead, and something more than time has turned the brown hair grey, and given to the strongly-marked features that pensive, weary look, which his countenance always wears when in repose. Ask his name of his gaolers, and they will say it is “Sir Henry of Lancaster, the usurper;” but ask it of himself, and a momentary flash lights up the sunken eyes as he answers, “I am the King.”
Neither Pharisee nor Sadducee is Henry the Sixth. He is not a Lollard, simply because he never knew what Lollardism was. ”

“ I tell thee, Nib, Harry of Bolingbroke may swear an’ it like him by every saint in the calendar from Aaron to Zachary; and when he is through, my faith in his oaths will go by the eye of a needle. Why, what need of oath if a man be but true? If I would know somewhat of Maude yonder, I shall never set her to swear by Saint Nicholas; I can crede her word. And if a man’s word be not trustworthy, how much more worth is his oath?”
“But, Custance! the King’s Grace and my Lord Archbishop—”
“How thou clarifiest (glorifiest) the King’s Grace! ”

“ You remember my Lord of Kent, trow?—though methinks you have scarce met together sithence we were all childre.”
Constance lifted up her eyes, and offered her hand to Kent’s kiss of homage. Ay, to her utter misery and undoing, like Elaine—
—“she lifted up her eyes,
And loved him, with that love which was her doom.”
Not worth such love as that, Constance! Not worth one beat of that true heart which was stilled at Bristol, and which now lies, dust to dust, in Tewkesbury Abbey. This man will not love you as he did, to the end. ”

“ But no Mistress Hawise saw I never.”
“I thank you much, Master Bertram, and will not stay you longer.”
But another shadow fell upon Maude’s life. Poor, pretty, gentle, timid Cousin Hawise! What had become of her? The next opportunity she had, Maude inquired from Bertram, “What like dame were my Lady of Buckingham’s greathood?”
Bertram shrugged his shoulders, as if the question took him out of his depth.
“Marry, she is a woman!” said he; “and all women be alike. There is not one but will screech an’ she see a spider.” ”

“ Custance dashed down the quill, and springing up, took her little Alianora to her bosom.
“Sign away thy birthright, my star, my dove! Wretched mother that I am, to dream thereof! How could I ever meet thine innocent eyes again? I will not sign it!”
“As it like you, fair Cousin,” was the quiet response of that voice gifted with such inexplicable power. “For us, we have striven but to avance you unto your better estate. ’Tis nought to us whether ye sign or no.”
She hesitated; she wavered; she held out the child to Maude. ”

“ If I may not sign ‘Custance Kent,’ content you with ‘Custance.’ Never ‘Custance Le Despenser!’ My Lord was true to his heart’s core; and never sign I his name to a dishonour and a lie!—O my Dickon, my pretty, pretty Dickon! thou little knowest the price thine hapless mother hath paid for thee this day!”
Henry the Fourth was not a man who loved cruelty for its own sake: he was simply a calculating, politic one. He never wasted power on unnecessary torture. When his purpose was served, he let his victim go.
“Fully enough, fair Cousin!” ”

“ One was a fair-complexioned woman of forty years,—stern-looking, spare, haggard-faced,—in whose cold blue eyes there might be intelligence, but there was no warmth of human kindness. The other was a comfortable-looking girl of eighteen, rosy-cheeked, with dark eyes and hair.
“Christ save you, holy sisters!” said Constance as they approached her. “Ye be of these parts, trow?”
“Nay,” answered the younger nun, “we be of the House of Minoresses beyond Aldgate; and though thine eyes have not told thee so much, Custance, I am Isabel of Pleshy.” ”

“ Maude was listening entranced, with parted lips; Constance carelessly, as if she knew all about it beforehand, and were chiefly amusing herself by watching the rapt face of her fellow-listener.
“Long years thereafter,” resumed Dame Agnes, “ay, and even now, men said and say, that at times ye may yet hear the sound and see the sight of the drowned cities of the Lyonesse. Ever sithence that tempestuous night, the deep green sea lies heavy on the bosom of the lost land; and no man of unpure heart, nor of evil life, ne unbaptised, ne unshriven, may see nor hear. ”

“ In the second place, both Constance and Maude were no longer children, but women. The Princess was now eighteen years of age, while her bower-maiden had reached twenty.
And in the third place, over the calm horizon of Langley had appeared a little cloud, as yet no more than “a man’s hand,” which was destined in its effects to change the whole current of life there. No one about her had in the least realised it as yet; but the Duchess Isabel was dying.
Very gently and slowly, at a rate which alarmed not even her physician, the Lollard Infanta descended to the portals of the grave. ”

“ It was a new idea to Bertram, and he had found no answer, when the sharp voice of Ursula Drew summoned Maude away.
“Haste, child!” cried Ursula. “Thou art as long of coming as Advent Sunday at Christmas. Now, by the time I be back, lay thou out for me on the table four bundles of herbs from the dry herb closet—an handful of knot-grass, and the like of shepherd’s pouch, and of bramble-seeds, and of plantain. Now, mark thou, the top leaves of the plantain only! Leave me not find thee idling; but have yonder row of pans as bright as a new tester when I come, and the herbs ready.” ”

“ He was half-brother of the King, uncle of Surrey, and husband of the royal songstress who sat and smiled in crimson velvet. He had stepped out of the family ranks; for instead of being tall, fair, and good-looking, like the rest of his house, he was a little dark-haired man, whom no artist would have selected as a model of beauty. A strong anti-Lollard was this nobleman, a good hater, a prejudiced, violent, unprincipled man; possessed of two virtues only—honesty and loyalty. He had been cajoled for a time by Gloucester, but his brother knew him too well to doubt his sincerity or affection. ”

“ And when at last the great, grim, square towers of the Castle of Cardiff, which was to be her new home, rose before her eyes, she thought them absolutely lovely—because they were terra firma. It can only be ascribed to her unusual haste on the one hand, or to her usual caprice on the other, that it had not pleased the Lady of Cardiff to give any notice of her approach. Of course nobody expected her; and when her trumpeter sounded his blast outside the moat, the warder looked forth in some surprise. It was late in the evening for a guest to arrive.
“Who goeth yonder?”
“The Lady and her train.” ”

“ O Lady mine! ’tis great and blessed matter when a man hath God to his friend!”
“Thy words sound well,” said the low voice from the bed. “Very well, like the sound of sweet waters far away.”
“Far away, dear my Lady?”
“Ay, far away, Maude,—without (outside) my life and me.”
“Sweet Lady, if ye will but lift the portcullis, our Lord is ready and willing to come within. And whereinsoever He entereth, He bringeth withal rest and peace.”
“Rest! Peace!—Ay so. I guess there be such like gear some whither—for some folks.” ”

“ It was not his own fault that his purse was light: his godfather, King Richard, had left him a sufficient competence; but the grants of Richard of Bordeaux were not held always to bind Henry of Bolingbroke. But when the Earl of Cambridge returned to Elsinore, he was rewarded for his labours, not with money nor lands, but by a grant of the only thing for which he cared—the gift of Anne Mortimer. He was penniless, and so was she. But though poverty was an habitual resident within the doors, love did not fly out at the window. ”

“ It was always the lot of the hapless buds of the White Rose to be scattered in death.
There was only one person at Cardiff who did not mourn bitterly for its young Lord. To his sister Isabel, the inheritance to which she now became sole heiress—the change of her title from “Lady Isabel de Beauchamp” to “The Lady Le Despenser”—were amply sufficient compensation to outweigh the loss of a brother. But little Alianora wept bitterly.
“Ay me! what a break is this in our Lady’s line!” lamented Maude to Bertram. “God grant it the last, if His will is!” ”

“ For a few steps from the busy gates and the crowded market is Southampton Green, and there, draped in mourning, stands the scaffold, and beside it the state headsman.
All the Court are gathered here. It is a break in the monotony of existence—the tiresome dead level of waiting for the wind to change.
The first victim is brought out. Trembling and timidly he comes—Henry Le Scrope of Upsal, the luckless husband of the Duchess Dowager of York, Treasurer of the Household, only a few days since in the highest favour. ”

“ Perhaps men will know some day how little he deserved it. At any rate, God knows. And whatever shameful end be decreed for the servant, it can never surpass that of the Master. The utmost that any child of God can suffer for Christ, can never equal what Christ has suffered for him.
And so, calm in mien, willing in heart, Richard of Conisborough went through the dark passage, to the Garden of God. But if ever a judicial murder were committed in this world, it was done that day on Southampton Green, when the blood of the Lollard Prince dyed the dust of the scaffold. ”

“ Evidently the illuminator did not mean to commit himself.
“Is he a great man or a small?”
“God wot,” said the monk.
“Hugh Calverley saith he is the greatest man that ever lived,” said Bertram.
“Greater than Saint John Baptist?”
“His work is of the like sort,” pursued Bertram meditatively. “’Tis preaching and reproving men of their sins.”
“God speed all His work!” said the monk.
“Father, what didst after thy turning back from Holy Land?”
“What all men do once a life. What thou wilt do.”
“Marry, what so?”
“Why, I became a fool.”
“Father Wilfred! I counted thee alway a wise man.” ”

“ Dona Juana condescended to smile at the child’s simplicity.
“My name is Juana Fernandez,” she said. “Thou canst call me Dame Joan.”
At this point the hangings were suddenly lifted, and something which seemed to Maude the very Queen of the Fairies crept out and stood before them. Juana stopped and courtesied, an act which Maude was too fascinated to imitate.
“Whither go you, Doña Juana?” asked the vision. “In good sooth, this is the very little maid I saw a-washing the pans. Art come to sit under the cloth of estate in my stead?” ”

“ Fair Cousin, you do but utterly mistake. The matter is done and over; nor shall your ’knowledgment thereof make but little difference. ’Tis neither for our own sake, neither for our cousin of Kent, but for yours, that we would fain sway you unto a better mind. Nor need you count, fair Cousin, that your denial should let by so much as one day our cousin of Kent his bridal with the Lady Lucy. We do you to wit that you stand but in your own light. Your marriage is annulled. ”

“ Constance journeyed in the royal train for a distance, and turned off towards Cardiff, when their ways parted.
Her manner when she arrived at home was particularly affectionate, both to the Dowager and her children, of whom little Richard was now eight years old, while Isabel had just reached four. The keen eyes of the old lady—much sharper mentally than physically—soon discerned the presence of some new element in her daughter-in-law’s mind. She closely questioned Maude as to what had happened, or was about to happen; and after a minute’s hesitation, Maude told her all she knew and feared. ”

“ But nobody ever asked that of little Maude. She was alone in all the world—the great, bare, hard, practical world.
For this was the side of the world presented to Maude.
The world is many-sided, and it presents various sides and corners to various people. The side which Maude saw was hard and bare. Hard bed, hard fare, hard work, hard words sometimes. Had she any opportunity of thinking the world a soft, comfortable, cushioned place, as some of her sisters find it?
This had been the child’s life up to the moment when Ursula Drew made her appearance on the scene. ”

“ Bertram dared only whisper the name of the horrible crime of which alone poor Calverley stood accused. “He was a Lollard—a Gospeller.”
“Be they such ill fawtors?” asked Maude in a shocked tone.
“Judge for yourself what manner of men they be,” said Bertram indignantly, “when the King’s Highness and the Queen, and our own Lady’s Grace, and the Lady Princess that was, and the Duke of Lancaster, be of them. Ay, and many another could I name beyond these.” ”

“ Not to fight, good friend; not to resist nor contend with any man; only to do God’s will. And is that not worth dying for?”
Bertram made no reply. But his memory ran far back to the olden days at Langley—to a scriptorius who had laid down his pen to speak of two lads, both of whom he looked to see great men, but he deemed him the greater who was not ashamed of his deed. And Bertram’s heart whispered to him that, knight as he was, while Hugh remained only a simple squire, yet now as ever, Hugh was the greater hero. ”

“ He will only give you what love he can spare from himself, for he is his own most cherished treasure. And it will be—as, a few hours later, you whisper to yourself, pulling the petals from a white daisy—“un peu—beaucoup—point du tout:”—a little yesterday, intense to-day, and none at all to-morrow.
Constance and Kent saw a good deal of each other during her visit to Westminster. Her brother of York evidently furthered his suit to the utmost of his power. Maude, who had learned utterly to distrust the Duke of York, set herself to consider what his reason could be. ”

“ Their apartments were inaccessible fairy-land, and themselves beings scarcely to be gazed on with undazzled eyes.
Very monotonous was Maude’s new life:—cleaning pans, washing jars, sorting herbs, scouring pails, running numberless infinitesimal errands, doing everything that nobody else liked, hard-worked from morning to night, and called up from her hard pallet to recommence her toil before she had realised that she was asleep. Ursula’s temper, too, did not improve with time; and Parnel, the associate and contemporary of Maude, was by no means to be mistaken for an angel. ”