“You told me, Lord Earl, the mischievous, murderous fellow was in safe hold,” said the lady, bending her dark brows.
“While the maid was in peril,” hastily answered Salisbury. “Pardon me, madam, my Countess will attend you.”
The Countess’s high rank and great power were impressive to the Baroness of Whitburn, who bent in salutation, but almost her first words were, “Madam, you at least will not let the murderous traitors of Somerset and the Queen prevail over the loyal friends of York and the nation.”
“There is happily no murder in the case. Praise be to the saints,” said Countess Alice, “your little maid—”
“Aye, that’s what they said as to the poor good Duke Humfrey,” returned the irate lady; “but that you, madam, the good-sister of the noble York, should stand up for the enemies of him, and the friends of France, is more than a plain North Country woman like me can understand. And there—there, turning round upon the steep steps, there is my Lord Earl hand and glove with that minion fellow of Somerset, who was no doubt at the bottom of the plot! None would believe it at Raby.”
“None at Raby would believe that my lord could be lacking in courtesy to a guest,” returned Lady Salisbury with dignity, “nor that a North Country dame could expect it of him. Those who are under his roof must respect it by fitting demeanour towards one another.”
The Lady of Whitburn was quenched for the time, and the Countess asked whether she did not wish to see her daughter, leading the way to a chamber hung with tapestry, and with a great curtained bed nearly filling it up, for the patient had been installed in one of the best guest-chambers of the Castle. Lady Whitburn was surprised, but was too proud to show herself gratified by what she thought was the due of the dignity of the Dacres. An old woman in a hood sat by the bed, where there was a heap of clothes, and a dark-haired little girl stood by the window, whence she had been describing the arrivals in the Castle court.
“Here is your mother, my poor child,” began the Lady of Salisbury, but there was no token of joy. Grisell gave a little gasp, and tried to say “Lady Mother, pardon—” but the Lady of Whitburn, at sight of the reddened half of the face which alone was as yet visible, gave a cry, “She will be a fright! You evil little baggage, thus to get yourself scarred and made hideous! Running where you ought not, I warrant!” and she put out her hand as if to shake the patient, but the Countess interposed, and her niece Margaret gave a little cry. “Grisell is still very weak and feeble! She cannot bear much; we have only just by Heaven’s grace brought her round.”
“As well she were dead as like this,” cried this untender parent. “Who is to find her a husband now? and as to a nunnery, where is one to take her without a dower such as is hard to find, with two sons to be fitly provided? I looked that in a household like this, better rule should be kept.”
“None can mourn it more than myself and the Earl,” said the gentle Countess; “but young folks can scarce be watched hour by hour.”
“The rod is all that is good for them, and I trusted to you to give it them, madam,” said Lady Whitburn. “Now, the least that can be done is to force yonder malapert lad and his father into keeping his contract to her, since he has spoilt the market for any other.”
“Is he contracted to her?” asked the Countess.
“Not fully; but as you know yourself, lady, your lord, and the King, and all the rest, thought to heal the breach between the houses by planning a contract between their son and my daughter. He shall keep it now, at his peril.”
Grisell was cowering among her pillows, and no one knew how much she heard or understood. The Countess was glad to get Lady Whitburn out of the room, but both she and her Earl had a very trying evening, in trying to keep the peace between the two parents. Sir William Copeland was devoted to the Somerset family, of whom he held his manor; and had had a furious quarrel with the Baron of Whitburn, when both were serving in France.
The gentle King had tried to bring about a reconciliation, and had induced the two fathers to consent to a contract for the future marriage of Leonard, Copeland’s second son, to Grisell Dacre, then the only child of the Lord of Whitburn. He had also obtained that the two children should be bred up in the household of the Earl of Salisbury, by way of letting them grow up together. On the same principle the Lady of Whitburn had been made one of the attendants of Queen Margaret—but neither arrangement had been more successful than most of those of poor King Henry.
Grisell indeed considered Leonard as a sort of property of hers, but she beset him in the manner that boys are apt to resent from younger girls, and when he was thirteen, and she ten years old, there was very little affection on his side. Moreover, the birth of two brothers had rendered Grisell’s hand a far less desirable prize in the eyes of the Copelands.
To attend on the Court was penance to the North Country dame, used to a hardy rough life in her sea-side tower, with absolute rule, and no hand over her save her husband’s; while the young and outspoken Queen, bred up in the graceful, poetical Court of Aix or Nancy, looked on her as no better than a barbarian, and if she did not show this openly, reporters were not wanting to tell her that the Queen called her the great northern hag, or that her rugged unwilling curtsey was said to look as if she were stooping to draw water at a well. Her husband had kept her in some restraint, but when be had gone to Ireland with the Duke of York, offences seemed to multiply upon her. The last had been that when she had tripped on her train, dropped the salver wherewith she was serving the Queen, and broken out with a loud “Lawk a daisy!” all the ladies, and Margaret herself, had gone into fits of uncontrollable laughter, and the Queen had begged her to render her exclamation into good French for her benefit.
“Madam,” she had exclaimed, “if a plain woman’s plain English be not good enough for you, she can have no call here!” And without further ceremony she had flown out of the royal presence.
Margaret of Anjou, naturally offended, and never politic, had sent her a message, that her attendance was no longer required. So here she was going out of her way to make a casual inquiry, from the Court at Winchester, whether that very unimportant article, her only daughter, were dead or alive.
The Earl absolutely prohibited all conversation on affairs in debate during the supper which was spread in the hall, with quite as much state as, and even greater profusion and splendour, than was to be found at Windsor, Winchester, or Westminster. All the high born sat on the dais, raised on two steps with gorgeous tapestry behind, and a canopy overhead; the Earl and Countess on chairs in the centre of the long narrow table. Lady Whitburn sat beside the Earl, Sir William Copeland by the Countess, watching with pleasure how deftly his son ran about among the pages, carrying the trenchers of food, and the cups. He entered on a conversation with the Countess, telling her of the King’s interest and delight in his beautiful freshly-founded Colleges at Eton and Cambridge, how the King rode down whenever he could to see the boys, listen to them at their tasks in the cloisters, watch them at their sports in the playing fields, and join in their devotions in the Chapel—a most holy example for them.
“Ay, for such as seek to be monks and shavelings,” broke in the North Country voice sarcastically.
“There are others—sons of gentlemen and esquires—lodged in houses around,” said Sir William, “who are not meant for cowl or for mass-priests.”
“Yea, forsooth,” called Lady Whitburn across the Earl and the Countess, “what for but to make them as feckless as the priests, unfit to handle lance or sword!”
“So, lady, you think that the same hand cannot wield pen and lance,” said the Earl.
“I should like to see one of your clerks on a Border foray,” laughed the Dame of Dacre. “’Tis all a device of the Frenchwoman!”
“Verily?” said the Earl, in an interrogative tone.
“Ay,