Young Lovell

“ When he began upon his Paters, a rat that had crept into his harness of proof overset his helmet and the prayer went out of his head. When he would have crossed himself, suddenly his foster-brother and cousin, Decies of the South, that should have watched in the chapel porchway, began to snore and cried out in his sleep the name "Margaret." Three times Decies of the South cried "Margaret."
Then Young Lovell knew that the spirits having power between cockcrow and dawn, in the period when men die and life ebbs down the sands—that these spirits were casting their spells upon him. ”

“ This padlock a man with a hammer knocked off, and a chain went down into that well, the well being dry. So they pulled up that chain, and at the end of it was the muniment-box of the Lady Rohtraut that the Young Lovell well knew. So when he had had the iron lid prised open with a lance-head—for without doubt the Lady Isopel wore the little gold key of it round her neck—the Young Lovell recognised that the deeds were there, for, though he had no time to read them, he knew them by their seals. ”

“ When he came to the high uplands where there was some heather, he saw a man with a grey coat with a hood, and as soon as that man was aware of him, he went away with great bounds like a hare, but casting his arms on high as he sprang. The Young Lovell was well accustomed to that stretch of land. It was full of soft, boggy places and he knew therefore that that man had some money in his poke and desired to betake himself where no horse could follow. ”

“ And to him there had resorted from time to time certain strong fellows that were still faithful to their master, creeping in the night along the narrow bridge into the tower ... such as Richard Raket, the Young Lovell's groom that had lost his teeth at the fight of Kenchie's Burn. There might be a matter of twenty-five of them that held it and victualled it by boats from the sea at night.
"Old woman," the Young Lovell said, "ye keep the best wine for the last, but ye have our Lord's warrant for that." ”

“ He cried out:
"Body of God, Master Furred Cat, where be's thy gown?"
And the little man span round, spitting and screaming, with his spade raised on high. But his tone changed to fawning and then to a complacence that would have done well between two rogues over a booty.
"Worshipful Knight," he brought out, and his voice was between the creak of a door and the snarl of a dog fox, though his thin knees knocked together for fear. "A man must live, I in my garret as thou in thy castle bower with the pretty, fair dames."
"Ay, a man mun live," the Young Lovell answered. ”

“ They had with them seventeen men, and four women that had served in Castle Lovell, and all were well fed and found, so what they had done in the meantime it was better not to inquire, though they swore that all they had came from the Scots' side of the border. The Young Lovell was well heartened by the sight of all these men, and they rode onward, to the number of sixty-five men and two esquires; twenty-two men having no horses and holding by the stirrups of them that had.
They made a circuit round Alnwick, for the monk Francis doubted the friendship of the Earl of Northumberland. ”

“ And these bondsmen promised that for six months they would supply all that should be needed for the support of such men as the Lord Lovell should see fit to leave in that Castle, the price being left in account between that lord and them, and the men-at-arms to be ready to defend them against raiders if any should come.
So the Young Lovell began to be of better spirits for, with all these preparations for warfare, he had thought less of the lady of the doves. And the monk Francis encouraged him in this, though once or twice he sighed. ”

“ He perceived then the large gate of the Castle on top of the mound roughly burst open and there came running out thirty men in russet who ranged themselves in a fan-shape on the slope. Last came a man in his shirt and shoes—Limousin of Haltwhistle. The men in russet held bows in their hands and the man in his shirt waved his hands downwards. The archers began to come down, but not very fast and with caution. The Young Lovell knew they thought that very belike he had already raised the country against them and had men posted in ambush behind the outer walls. ”

“ This Frenchman the old Lord Lovell had brought from France to see to the building of the White Tower, which he wished to make a citadel, as it were, of Castle Lovell. And this esquire had learned much of his father; the Young Lovell could trust him very well. So the Young Lovell sent that La Rougerie into the countryside to find masons and stone workers, and he found some, though not many, for most men of that class worked in the fisheries in summertime, coming back to building only when the storms drove them off the seas. ”

“ And, ever as he rode along—and he went slowly for that purpose—came men-at-arms and bowmen hastening out of the hay-fields, where they had taken service, to come under the banner of the Young Lovell, until he had forty men and more. And at a cross in the hill-paths, ten miles below Belford, there were awaiting them Cressingham and La Rougerie, esquires that had been in service at Castle Lovell. They were well armed, upon little Scots horses, and came out of the hills where there was a deserted tower. ”

“ They heard that there was a great gathering of Eures, Ridleys, Widdringtons and others at Glororem, and at the neighbouring Castle of Bamborough where the King's captain gave them shelter. But of where the Young Lovell might be they could get no news; only they heard that he had left Cramlin, having with him nearly a hundred men.
Of when he would come against them they could not tell at all; they could not even tell whether their own men would fight for them. Only they thought they might ”

“ The young monk had however protested so strongly that the Young Lovell was not dead, but had in his face the presage of great and strange deeds, whether of arms or other things—so hotly had the young monk made a clamour, that the old lord was shamed and had for the time desisted. ”

“ The Young Lovell had with him fifty rievers mounted on little horses and fifty men-at-arms that he had taken from Cramlin, where he had left one hundred men under the command of the esquire La Rougerie, and that bleating of lambs aided those rievers to creep up to that tower door. ”

“ As near as she might to the black line in the floor—beyond this no woman may go in the cathedral of Durham and even Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine had been beaten with rods by the monks when she passed it to join King Edward—beyond this line knelt the Lady Margaret of Glororem in the darkness, and behind a pillar was the lawyer Stone who would fain speak some words with the Young Lovell. For he wished to have sold the people of Castle Lovell to him if the Young Lovell would pay him a small price. ”

“ The better to have a sight of this Castle of his—for the great courtyard was occupied with many hovels, so that even from on high it was difficult to see who there was moving—the Young Lovell mounted upon the parapet of the battlements and stood looking down. He was all in his light armour, for it would fall to him to be very active that day, so that he had steel only upon his chest, his arms, and the forepart of his thighs, shins, and feet. ”

“ Then the Young Lovell took Adam Hogarth down to a little grove of trees that was near the ford and asked that blear-eyed old man where his master, Cullerford, had hidden the charters and muniments of his mother the Lady Rohtraut; for he knew that there they were. Adam Hogarth said that he did not know and set his teeth. Without more words the Young Lovell had a rope brought and a slip-noose made. He sent a man up a great elm to drop the noose over a stout branch and Adam Hogarth watched him dumbly. ”

“ The Lord Lovell of the Castle agreed with him, but said that the women would so have it. He was an immense, gross man, the rolls of fat behind his head, growing black curly hair that ran into his black and curly beard, mantled high up on his neck. His eyes were keen, peeble-blue, sagacious and mocking. The Lady Rohtraut, his wife, a fair, thin woman of forty-three, one of the Dacres of the North, leaned across the Bishop Palatine to disagree with the Warden. Thin as she was she wore an immense gown of red damask worked with leaves, birds and pomegranates. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus there might be as many as three hundred stout fellows there, and that might make the adventure a difficult one, for the Young Lovell had not gathered any more men himself, though what he had were mostly very proved fighting men, there being five knights that were his friends, twenty-seven esquires, one hundred and twenty of his own men, and those the best, and one hundred and seventy that were the picked men of his friends and of the Lady Margaret of Glororem.
So he had gone up to the battlements to see how many men he could observe in that Castle. ”

“ In the meantime the Young Lovell had dwelt at Cramlin. There was nothing that had not prospered with him, or that by diligence, cunning or swiftness he had not made to prosper. Daily men resorted to him and sought his service, coming in from the hills and moors and Debateable Lands, all strong and hardy men so that it was difficult to make a choice. ”

“ Then he knew that the Young Lovell must be aware of secret ways in that none of them had heard of, and before that fray was two minutes gone he knew that they were lost. Therefore he made ready to get himself gone by the postern.
But when that most dreadful cry was heard all those people stood still; the men with bows, balks, and levers, the men running in with swords; Sir Henry whispering; the Lady Isopel calling from her window; the Decies turning in his bed, and Sir Symonde running along the battlements. ”

“ But the people from the Castle never came again; without doubt they thought they were not strong enough; the bondsmen of Castle Lovell were all very notable reivers and fighting men.
Thus, if Sir Walter and Limousin and the Decies came out with such forces as they had, it was very likely—nay it was certain—that the men who were in the White Tower and still faithful to the Young Lovell would issue behind them into the Castle with their cannons, and so, if they might not take the Castle they might at least set free the Lady Rohtraut, and have her away by sea ”

“ He preferred to rob upon the roads. And he counselled them very strongly to make a peace with the Young Lovell who was gathering many men, all the countryside being his friends, and had sworn to hang every man of them that was a leader from the White Tower, and to put his sisters into nunneries. And he said that John of Rokehope and James Cra'ster the younger, as well as Haggerston and Lame Cresswell, who desired to make their peace with King Henry, were all of like mind with him. ”

“ But until he stood there many things had gone before; there were so many people active about his affairs. There were the Bishop Palatine, Sir Bertram of Lyonesse, the old Princess of Croy, the Lady Margaret, the Earl of Northumberland, the bondsman Hugh Raket, and the people in the Castle themselves. And all these ran up and down that county of Northumberland upon the Young Lovell's affairs. ”

“ Or it may have been that he was too cunning and just left the honours to the Young Lovell who was haughty and avid of the first place. For the Lady Rohtraut took very unkindly to the Decies and made him suffer what insults she could; only the lower sort of the castle-folk willingly had his company, and the old lord was growing so monstrous heavy that it was considered that his skin could not much longer contain him. ”

“ But, in between the keep and the battlements, there had gradually grown up a congeries of hovels like a dirty thatched town. The Young Lovell had never liked this in his father's day, but then he had been the son and had had no say in these matters.
This state of things had arisen, although the tenure of the lands appertaining to the Lovells was as follows: that is to say, that in time of war each of the outer towers should be manned by able-bodied fellows from the one hundred and twenty-seven hamlets, villages, townships, and parishes that the Lovells owned. ”

“ Else the Young Lovell, coming again, might have it all of them a second time, and that, being poor men, they could not well abide.
Then the bailiff went back to the Castle—he was not the old bailiff of the Lord Lovell who had been cast out of his dwelling in the King's Tower and had gone to live at Beal—but it was a new bailiff that Sir Walter Vesey had brought from Haltwhistle, where he had been a surveyor's clerk. ”

“ A knight should go forward, a horse face war-cries and hard blows rather than the waving of silken scarves.
But they got the horse forward into the middle of the hall, where it stood, a mass of steel, as if sullenly, on the great carpet of buff and rose and greens. This marvel that covered all the clear space hung usually on the wall to form a dais, and the Young Lovell had bought it in Venice with one half of the booty that he had made in the little war against the Duchess of Escia. ”

“ Cuthbert, the finger of St. Bartholomew and the girdle of Blessed Margaret.... And all these things being under your very eyes or at a short day's journey, you will question the glory and the strangeness of God and you will set yourself up—oh, stiffnecked generation! ..."
A gentle knocking came at the cell door and the old and dirty lay-brother who was in the outer room pushed it ajar. They heard immediately a great outcry from beyond and the lay brother whispered that, at the outer door stood the Young Lovell asking for admittance with all his men-at-arms around him. ”