Thurstan disappeared, and Alvena threw herself down on the settle while she waited for her messenger.
“Ay me! I am sore aweary of all this gear—snipping, and sewing, and fitting. If I would not as lief as forty shillings have done with broidery and peltry, then the moon is made of green cheese. Is that strange unto thee, child?”
“Verily, Mistress Alvena, methinks you be aweary of Fairy Land,” said little Maude in surprise.
“Callest this Fairy Land?” laughed Alvena. “If so be, child, I were fain to dwell a season on middle earth.”
“In good sooth, so count I it,” answered Maude, allowing her eyes to rove delightedly among all the marvels of the ante-chamber, “and the Lady Custance the very Queen of Faery.”
“The Lady Custance is made of flesh and blood, trust me. An’ thou hadst had need to bear her to her bed, kicking and striving all the way, when she was somewhat lesser than now, thou shouldst be little tempted to count her immortal.”
“An’ it like you, Mistress Alvena—”
“Marry, Master Thurstan, it liketh me right well to see thee back without the peltry wherefor I sent thee! Where hast loitered, thou knave?”
“Master Adam saith he is unfurnished at this time of the peltry you would have, Mistress, and without fox will serve your turn—”
“Fox me no fox, as thou set store by thy golden locks!” said Alvena, advancing towards the luckless Thurstan in a threatening attitude, with the scissors open in her hand. “I’ll fox him, and thee likewise. Go and bring me the four ells of peltry of beasts ermines, and that of the best, or thou shalt wake up to-morrow to find thy poll as clean as the end of thine ugsome (ugly) nose.”
Poor Thurstan, who was only a child of about ten years old, mistook Alvena’s jesting for earnest, and began to sob.
“But what can I, Mistress?” urged the terrified urchin. “Master Adam saith he hath never a nail thereof, never name an ell.”
“Alvena, trouble not the child,” interposed Sybil.
But Sybil’s gentle intercession would have availed little if it had not been seconded by the unexpected appearance of the only person whom Alvena feared.
“What is this?” inquired Doña Juana, in a tone of authority.
Thurstan, with a relieved air, subsided into his recess, and Alvena, with a rather abashed one, began to explain that no ermine could be had for the trimming of the blue satin dress.
“Then let it wait,” decided the Mistress—for this was Juana’s official title. “Alvena, set the child a-work, and watch that she goeth rightly thereabout. Sybil, sue thou me.”
The departure of Juana and Sybil, for which Maude was privately rather sorry, set Alvena’s tongue again at liberty. She set Maude at work, on a long hem, which was not particularly interesting; and herself began to pin some trimming on a tunic of scarlet cloth.
“Pray you, Mistress Alvena,” asked Maude at length—wedging her question in among a quantity of small-talk—“hath the Lady Custance brethren or sustren?”
“Sustren, not one; and trust me, child, an’ thou knewest her as I do, thou shouldst say one of her were enough. But she hath brethren twain—the Lord Edward, which is her elder, and the Lord Richard, her younger. The little Lord Richard is a sweet child as may lightly be seen; and dearly the Lady Custance loveth him. But as for the Lord Edward—an’ he can do an ill turn, trust him for it.”
“And what like is my Lord our master?” asked Maude.
Alvena laughed. “Sawest ever Ursula Drew bake bread, child?”
“Oh ay!” sighed the ex-scullery-maid.
“And hast marked how the dough, ere he be set in the oven, should take any pattern thou list to set him on?”
“Ay.”
“Then thou hast seen what the Lord Earl is like.”
“But who setteth pattern on the Lord Earl?” inquired Maude, looking up in some surprise.
“All the world, saving my Lady his wife, and likewise in his wrath. Hast ever seen one of our Princes in a passion of ire?”
“Never had I luck yet to see one of their Graces,” said Maude reverently.
“Then thou wist not what a man can be like when he is angered.”
“But not, I ensure me, the Lady Custance!” objected Maude, loth to surrender her Fairy Queen.
“Wait awhile and see!” was the ominous answer.
“Methought she were sweet and fair as my Lady her mother,” said Maude in a disappointed tone.
“ ‘Sweet and fair’!—and soft, is my Lady Countess. Why, child, she should hardly say this kirtle were red, an’ Dame Joan told her it were green. Thou mayest do aught with her, an’ thou wist how to take her.”
“How take you her?” demanded Maude gravely.
“By ’r Lady! have yonder fond (foolish) books of the Lutterworth parson at thy tongue’s end, and make up a sad face, and talk of faith and grace and forgiving of sins and the like, and mine head to yon shred of tinsel an’ she give thee not a gown within the se’nnight.”
“But, Mistress Alvena! that were to be an hypocrite, an’ you felt it not.”
“Hu-te-tu! We be all hypocrites. Some of us feign for one matter, and some for other. I wis somewhat thereabout, child; for ere I came hither was I maid unto the Lady Julian (a fictitious person), recluse of Tamworth Priory. By our dear Lady her girdle! saw I nothing of hypocrisy there!”
“You never signify, Mistress, that the blessed recluse was an hypocrite?”
“The blessed recluse was mighty fond of sweetbreads,” said Alvena, taking a pin out of her mouth, “and many an one smuggled I in to her under my cloak, when Father Luke thought she was a-fasting on bread and water. And one clereful (glorious) night had we, she and I, when one that I knew had shot me a brace of curlews, and coming over moorland by the church, he dropped them—all by chance, thou wist!—by the door of the cell. And I, oping the door—to see if it rained, trow!—found these birds a-lying there. Had we no supper that night!—and ’twas a vigil even. The blessed martyr or apostle (for I mind me not what day it were) forgive us!”
“But how dressed you them?” said Maude.
Alvena stopped in her fitting and pinning to laugh.
“Thou sely maid! The sacristan was my mother’s brother.”
Maude looked up as if she did not see the inference.
“I roasted them in the sacristy, child. The priests were all gone home to bed; and so soon as the ground were clear, mine uncle rapped of the door; and the Lady Julian came after me to the sacristy, close lapped in my cloak—”
How long Alvena might have proceeded to shock Maude’s susceptibilities and outrage her preconceived opinions, it is impossible