Grisly Grisell; Or, The Laidly Lady of Whitburn: A Tale of the Wars of the Roses by - (best adventure books to read .TXT) 📖

free from the grosser faults of his father, would never win and keep hearts in the same manner, and that a sad, tumultuous, troubled career and piteous, untimely end lay before him?

His mother, Grisell’s Duchess, according to the rule of the Court, lay in bed for six weeks—at least she was bound to lie there whenever she was not in entire privacy.  The room and bed were hung with black, but a white covering was over her, and she was fully dressed in the black and white weeds of royal widowhood.  The light of day was excluded, and hosts of wax candles burnt around.

Grisell did not see her during this first period of stately mourning, but she heard that the good lady had spent her time in weeping and praying for her husband, all the more earnestly that she had little cause personally to mourn him.

p. 268CHAPTER XXVII
FORGET ME NOT

   And added, of her wit,
A border fantasy of branch and flower,
And yellow-throated nestling in the nest.

Tennyson, Elaine.

The Duchess Isabel sent for Grisell as soon as the rules of etiquette permitted, and her own mind was free, to attend to the suite of lace hangings, with which much progress had been made in the interval.  She was in the palace now, greatly honoured, for her son loved her with devoted affection, and Grisell had to pass through tapestry-hung halls and chambers, one after another, with persons in mourning, all filled with men-at-arms first, then servants still in black dresses.  Next pages and squires, knights of the lady, and lastly ladies in black velvet, who sat at their work, with a chaplain reading to them.  One of these, the Countess of Poitiers, whom Grisell had known at the Grey Sisters’ convent, rose, graciously received her obeisance, and conducted her into the great State bedroom, likewise very sombre, with black hangings worked and edged, however, with white, and the window was permitted to let in the light of day.  The bed was raised on steps in an alcove, and was splendidly draped and covered with black embroidered with white, but the Duchess did not occupy it.  A curtain was lifted, and she came forward in her deepest robes of widowhood, leading her little granddaughter Mary, a child of eight or nine years old.  Grisell knelt to kiss the hands of each, and the Duchess said—

“Good Griselda, it is long since I have seen you.  Have you finished the border?”

“Yes, your Highness; and I have begun the edging of the corporal.”

The Duchess looked at the work with admiration, and bade the little Mary, the damsel of Burgundy, look on and see how the dainty web was woven, while she signed the maker to seat herself on a step of the alcove.

When the child’s questions and interest were exhausted, and she began to be somewhat perilously curious about the carved weights of the bobbins, her grandmother sent her to play with the ladies in the ante-room, desiring Grisell to continue the work.  After a few kindly words the Duchess said, “The poor child is to have a stepdame so soon as the year of mourning is passed.  May she be good to her!  Hath the rumour thereof reached you in the city, Maid Griselda, that my son is in treaty with your English King, though he loves not the house of York?  But princely alliances must be looked for in marriage.”

“Madge!” exclaimed Grisell; then colouring, “I should say the Lady Margaret of York.”

“You knew her?”

“Oh!  I knew her.  We loved each other well in the Lord of Salisbury’s house!  There never was a maid whom I knew or loved like her!”

“In the Count of Salisbury’s house,” repeated the Duchess.  “Were you there as the Lady Margaret’s fellow-pupil?” she said, as though perceiving that her lace maker must be of higher quality than she had supposed.

“It was while my father was alive, madame, and before her father had fixed his eyes on the throne, your Highness.”

“And your father was, you said, the knight De—De—D’Acor.”

“So please you, madame,” said Grisell kneeling, “not to mention my poor name to the lady.”

“We are a good way from speech of her,” said the Duchess smiling.  “Our year of doole must pass, and mayhap the treaty will not hold in the meantime.  The King of France would fain hinder it.  But if the Demoiselle loved you of old would she not give you preferment in her train if she knew?”

“Oh! madame, I pray you name me not till she be here!  There is much that hangs on it, more than I can tell at present, without doing harm; but I have a petition to prefer to her.”

“An affair of true love,” said the Duchess smiling.

“I know not.  Oh! ask me not, madame!”

When Grisell was dismissed, she began designing a pattern, in which in spray after spray of rich point, she displayed in the pure frostwork-like web, the Daisy of Margaret, the Rose of York, and moreover, combined therewith, the saltire of Nevil and the three scallops of Dacre, and each connected with ramifications of the forget-me-not flower shaped like the turquoises of her pouncet box, and with the letter G to be traced by ingenious eyes, though the uninitiated might observe nothing.

She had plenty of time, though the treaty soon made it as much of a certainty as royal betrothals ever were, but it was not till July came round again that Bruges was in a crisis of the fever of preparation to receive the bride.  Sculptors, painters, carvers were desperately at work at the Duke’s palace.  Weavers, tapestry-workers, embroiderers, sempstresses were toiling day and night, armourers and jewellers had no rest, and the bright July sunshine lay glittering on the canals, graceful skiffs, and gorgeous barges, and bringing out in full detail the glories of the architecture above, the tapestry-hung windows in the midst, the gaily-clad Vrows beneath, while the bells rang out their merriest carillons from every steeple, whence fluttered the banners of the guilds.

The bride, escorted by Sir Antony Wydville, was to land at Sluys, and Duchess Isabel, with little Mary, went to receive her.

“Will you go with me as one of my maids, or as a tirewoman perchance?” asked the Duchess kindly.

Grisell fell on her knee and thanked her, but begged to be permitted to remain where she was until the bride should have some leisure.  And indeed her doubts and suspense grew more overwhelming.  As she freshly trimmed and broidered Leonard’s surcoat and sword-belt, she heard one of the many gossips who delighted to recount the members of the English suite as picked up from the subordinates of the heralds and pursuivants who had to marshal the procession and order the banquet.  “Fair ladies too,” he said, “from England.  There is the Lord Audley’s daughter with her father.  They say she is the very pearl of beauties.  We shall see whether our fair dames do not surpass her.”

“The Lord Audley’s daughter did you say?” asked Grisell.

“His daughter, yea; but she is a widow, bearing in her lozenge, per pale with Audley, gules three herrings haurient argent, for Heringham.  She is one of the Duchess Margaret’s dames-of-honour.”

To Grisell it sounded like her doom on one side, the crisis of her self-sacrifice, and the opening of Leonard’s happiness on the other.

p. 274CHAPTER XXVIII
THE PAGEANT

When I may read of tilts in days of old,
   And tourneys graced by chieftains of renown,
Fair dames, grave citoyens, and warriors bold—
   If fancy would pourtray some stately town,
Which for such pomp fit theatre would be,
Fair Bruges, I shall then remember thee.

Southey, Pilgrimage to Waterloo.

Leonard Copeland was in close attendance on the Duke, and could not give a moment to visit his friends at the Green Serpent, so that there was no knowing how the presence of the Lady of Heringham affected him.  Duke Charles rode out to meet his bride at the little town of Damme, and here the more important portions of the betrothal ceremony took place, after which he rode back alone to the Cour des Princes, leaving to the bride all the splendour of the entrance.

The monastic orders were to be represented in the procession.  The Grey Sisters thought they had an especial claim, and devised the presenting a crown of white roses at the gates, and with great pleasure Grisell contributed the best of Master Lambert’s lovely white Provence roses to complete the garland, which was carried by the youngest novice, a fair white rosebud herself.

Every one all along the line of the tall old houses was hanging from window to window rich tapestries of many dyes, often with gold and silver thread.  The trades and guilds had renewed their signs, banners and pennons hung from every abode entitled to their use, garlands of bright flowers stretched here and there and everywhere.  All had been in a frenzy of preparation for many days past, and the final touches began with the first hours of light in the long, summer morning.  To Grisell’s great delight, Cuthbert Ridley plodded in at the hospitable door of the Green Serpent the night before.  “Ah! my ladybird,” said he, “in good health as ever.”

“All the better for seeing you, mine old friend,” she cried.  “I thought you were far away at Compostella.”

“So verily I was.  Here’s St. James’s cockle to wit—Santiago as they call him there, and show the stone coffin he steered across the sea.  No small miracle that!  And I’ve crossed France, and looked at many a field of battle of the good old times, and thought and said a prayer for the brave knights who broke lances there.  But as I was making for St. Martha’s cave in Provence, I met a friar, who told me of the goodly gathering there was like to be here; and I would fain see whether I could hap upon old friends, or at any rate hear a smack of our kindly English tongue, so I made the best of my way hither.”

“In good time,” said Lambert.  “You will take the lady and the housewife to the stoop at Master Caxton’s house, where he has promised them seats whence they may view the entrance.  I myself am bound to walk with my fellows of the Apothecaries’ Society, and it will be well for them to have another guard in the throng, besides old Anton.”

“Nay, but my garb scarce befits the raree show,” said Ridley, looking at his russet gown.

“We will see to that anon,” said Lambert; and ere supper was over, old Anton had purveyed a loose blue gown from the neighbouring merchants, with gold lace seams and girdle, peaked boots, and the hideous brimless hat which was then highly fashionable.  Ridley’s trusty sword he had always worn under his pilgrim’s gown, and with the dagger always used as a knife, he made his appearance once more as a squire of degree, still putting the scallop into his hat, in honour of Dacre as well as of St. James.

The party had to set forth very early in the morning, slowly gliding along several streets in a barge, watching the motley crowds thronging banks and bridges—a far more brilliant crowd than in these later centuries, since both sexes were alike gay in plumage.  From every house, even those out of the line of the procession, hung tapestry, or coloured cloths, and the garlands of flowers, of all bright lines, with their fresh greenery, were still unfaded by the clear morning sun, while joyous carillons echoed and re-echoed from the belfry and all the steeples.  Ridley owned that he had never seen the like since King Harry rode home from Agincourt—perhaps hardly even then, for Bruges was at the height of its splendour, as were the Burgundian Dukes at the very climax of their magnificence.

After landing from the barge Ridley, with Grisell on his arm, and Anton with his mistress, had a severe struggle with the crowd before they gained the ascent of the stoop, where the upper steps had been railed in, and seats arranged under the shelter of the projecting roof.

Master Caxton was a gray-eyed, thin-cheeked, neatly-made Kentishman, who had lived long abroad, and was always ready to make an Englishman welcome.  He listened politely to Grisell’s introduction of Master Ridley, exchanged silent greetings with Vrow Clemence, and insisted on their coming into the chamber within, where a repast of cold pasty, marchpane, strawberries, and wine, awaited them—to be eaten while as yet there was nothing to see save the expectant multitudes.

Moreover, he wanted to show Mistress Grisell, as one of the few who cared for it, the manuscripts he had collected on the history of Troy town, and likewise the strange machine on which he was experimenting for multiplying copies of the translation he had in hand, with blocks for the woodcuts which Grisell could not in conscience say would be as beautiful as the gorgeous illuminations of his books.

Acclamations summoned them to the front, of course at first to see only scattered bodies of the persons on the way to meet the bride at the gate of St.