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

By and by, however, came the “gang,” as Ridley called it, in earnest.  Every body of ecclesiastics was there: monks and friars, black, white, and gray; nuns, black, white, and blue; the clergy in their richest robes, with costly crucifixes of gold, silver, and ivory held aloft, and reliquaries of the most exquisite workmanship, sparkling with precious jewels, diamond, ruby, emerald, and sapphire flashing in the sun; the fifty-two guilds in gowns, each headed by their Master and their banner, gorgeous in tint, but with homely devices, such as stockings, saw and compasses, weavers’ shuttles, and the like.  Master Lambert looked up and nodded a smile from beneath a banner with Apollo and the Python, which Ridley might be excused for taking for St. Michael and the Dragon.  The Mayor in scarlet, white fur and with gold collar, surrounded by his burgomasters in almost equally radiant garments, marched on.

Next followed the ducal household, trumpets and all sorts of instruments before them, making the most festive din, through which came bursts of the joy bells.  Violet and black arrayed the inferiors, setting off the crimson satin pourpoints of the higher officers, on whose brimless hats each waved with a single ostrich plume in a shining brooch.

Then came more instruments, and a body of gay green archers; next heralds and pursuivants, one for each of the Duke’s domains, glittering back and front in the tabard of his county’s armorial bearings, and with its banner borne beside him.  Then a division of the Duke’s bodyguard, all like himself in burnished armour with scarves across them.  The nobles of Burgundy, Flanders, Hainault, Holland, and Alsace, the most splendid body then existing, came in endless numbers, their horses, feather-crested as well as themselves, with every bridle tinkling with silver bells, and the animals invisible all but their heads and tails under their magnificent housings, while the knights seemed to be pillars of radiance.  Yet even more gorgeous were the knights of the Golden Fleece, who left between them a lane in which moved six white horses, caparisoned in cloth of gold, drawing an open litter in which sat, as on a throne, herself dazzling in cloth of silver, the brown-eyed Margaret of old, her dark hair bride fashion flowing on her shoulders, and around it a marvellously-glancing diamond coronet, above it, however, the wreath of white roses, which her own hands had placed there when presented by the novice.  Clemence squeezed Grisell’s hand with delight as she recognised her own white rose, the finest of the garland.

Immediately after the car came Margaret’s English attendants, the stately, handsome Antony Wydville riding nearest to her, and then a bevy of dames and damsels on horseback, but moving so slowly that Grisell had full time to discover the silver herrings on the caparisons of one of the palfreys, and then to raise her eyes to the face of the tall stately lady whose long veil, flowing down from her towered head-gear, by no means concealed a beautiful complexion and fair perfect features, such as her own could never have rivalled even if they had never been defaced.  Her heart sank within her, everything swam before her eyes, she scarcely saw the white doves let loose from the triumphant arch beyond to greet the royal lady, and was first roused by Ridley’s exclamation as the knights with their attendants began to pass.

“Ha! the lad kens me!  ’Tis Harry Featherstone as I live.”

Much more altered in these seven years than was Cuthbert Ridley, there rode as a fully-equipped squire in the rear of a splendid knight, Harry Featherstone, the survivor of the dismal Bridge of Wakefield.  He was lowering his lance in greeting, but there was no knowing whether it was to Ridley or to Grisell, or whether he recognised her, as she wore her veil far over her face.

This to Grisell closed the whole.  She did not see the figure which was more to her than all the rest, for he was among the knights and guards waiting at the Cour des Princes to receive the bride when the final ceremonies of the marriage were to be performed.

Ridley declared his intention of seeking out young Featherstone, but Grisell impressed on him that she wished to remain unknown for the present, above all to Sir Leonard Copeland, and he had been quite sufficiently alarmed by the accusations of sorcery to believe in the danger of her becoming known among the English.

“More by token,” said he, “that the house of this Master Caxton as you call him seems to me no canny haunt.  Tell me what you will of making manifold good books or bad, I’ll never believe but that Dr. Faustus and the Devil hatched the notion between them for the bewilderment of men’s brains and the slackening of their hands.”

Thus Ridley made little more attempt to persuade his young lady to come forth to the spectacles of the next fortnight to which he rushed, through crowds and jostling, to behold, with the ardour of an old warrior, the various tilts and tourneys, though he grumbled that they were nothing but child’s play and vain show, no earnest in them fit for a man.

Clemence, however, was all eyes, and revelled in the sight of the wonders, the view of the Tree of Gold, and the champion thereof in the lists of the Hôtel de Ville, and again, some days later, of the banquet, when the table decorations were mosaic gardens with silver trees, laden with enamelled fruit, and where, as an interlude, a whale sixty feet long made its entrance and emitted from its jaws a troop of Moorish youths and maidens, who danced a saraband to the sound of tambourines and cymbals!  Such scenes were bliss to the deaf housewife, and would enliven the silent world of her memory all the rest of her life.

The Duchess Isabel had retired to the Grey Sisters, such scenes being inappropriate to her mourning, and besides her apartments being needed for the influx of guests.  There, in early morning, before the revels began, Grisell ventured to ask for an audience, and was permitted to follow the Duchess when she returned from mass to her own apartments.

“Ah! my lace weaver.  Have you had your share in the revels and pageantries?”

“I saw the procession, so please your Grace.”

“And your old playmate in her glory?”

“Yea, madame.  It almost forestalled the glories of Heaven!”

“Ah! child, may the aping of such glory beforehand not unfit us for the veritable everlasting glories, when all these things shall be no more.”

The Duchess clasped her hands, almost as a foreboding of the day when her son’s corpse should lie, forsaken, gashed, and stripped, beside the marsh.

But she turned to Grisell asking if she had come with any petition.

“Only, madame, that it would please your Highness to put into the hands of the new Duchess herself, this offering, without naming me.”

She produced her exquisite fabric, which was tied with ribbons of blue and silver in an outer case, worked with the White Rose.

The Dowager-Duchess exclaimed, “Nay, but this is more beauteous than all you have wrought before.  Ah! here is your own device!  I see there is purpose in these patterns of your web.  And am I not to name you?”

“I pray your Highness to be silent, unless the Duchess should divine the worker.  Nay, it is scarce to be thought that she will.”

“Yet you have put the flower that my English mother called ‘Forget-me-not.’  Ah, maiden, has it a purpose?”

“Madame, madame, ask me no questions.  Only remember in your prayers to ask that I may do the right,” said Grisell, with clasped hands and weeping eyes.

I beheld the pageants splendid, that adorned those days of old;
Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of Gold.

Longfellow, The Belfry of Bruges.

In another week the festivities were over, and she waited anxiously, dreading each day more and more that her gift had been forgotten or misunderstood, or that her old companion disdained or refused to take notice of her; then trying to console herself by remembering the manifold engagements and distractions of the bride.

Happily, Grisell thought, Ridley was absent when Leonard Copeland came one evening to supper.  He was lodged among the guards of the Duke in the palace, and had much less time at his disposal than formerly, for Duke Charles insisted on the most strict order and discipline among all his attendants.  Moreover, there were tokens of enmity on the part of the French on the border of the Somme, and Leonard expected to be despatched to the camp which was being formed there.  He was out of spirits.  The sight and speech of so many of his countrymen had increased the longing for home.

“I loathe the mincing French and the fat Flemish tongues,” he owned, when Master Lambert was out of hearing.  “I should feel at home if I could but hear an honest carter shout ‘Woa’ to his horses.”

“Did you have any speech with the ladies?” asked Grisell.

“I?  No!  What reck they of a poor knight adventurer?”

“Methought all the chivalry were peers, and that a belted knight was a comrade for a king,” said Grisell.

“Ay, in the days of the Round Table; but when Dukes and Counts, and great Marquesses and Barons swarm like mayflies by a trout stream, what chance is there that a poor, landless exile will have a word or a glance?”

Did this mean that the fair Eleanor had scorned him?  Grisell longed to know, but for that very reason she faltered when about to ask, and turned her query into one whether he had heard any news of his English relations.

“My good uncle at Wearmouth hath been dead these four years—so far as I can gather.  Amply must he have supplied Master Groot.  I must account with him.  For mine inheritance I can gather nothing clearly.  I fancy the truth is that George Copeland, who holds it, is little better than a reiver on either side, and that King Edward might grant it back to me if I paid my homage, save that he is sworn never to pardon any who had a share in the death of his brother of Rutland.”

“You had not!  I know you had not!”

“Hurt Ned?  I’d as soon have hurt my own brother!  Nay, I got this blow from Clifford for coming between,” said he, pushing back his hair so as to show a mark near his temple.  “But how did you know?”

“Harry Featherstone told me.”  She had all but said, “My father’s squire.”

“You knew Featherstone?  Belike when he was at Whitburn.  He is here now; a good man of his hands,” muttered Leonard.  “Anyway the King believes I had a hand in that cruel business of Wakefield Bridge, and nought but his witness would save my neck if once I ventured into England—if that would.  So I may resign myself to be the Duke’s captain of archers for the rest of my days.  Heigh ho!  And a lonely man; I fear me in debt to good Master Lambert, or may be to Mistress Grisell, to whom I owe more than coin will pay.  Ha! was that—” interrupting himself, for a trumpet blast was ringing out at intervals, the signal of summons to the men-at-arms.  Leonard started up, waved farewell, and rushed off.

The summons proved to be a call to the men-at-arms to attend the Duke early the next morning on an expedition to visit his fortresses in Picardy, and as the household of the Green Serpent returned from mass, they heard the tramp and clatter, and saw the armour flash in the sun as the troop passed along the main street, and became visible at the opening of that up which they walked.

The next day came a summons from the convent of the Grey Sisters that Mistress Griselda was to attend the Duchess Isabel.

She longed to fly through the air, but her limbs trembled.  Indeed, she shook so that she could not stand still nor walk slowly.  She hurried on so that the lay sister who had been sent for her was quite out of breath, and panted after her within gasps of “Stay! stay, mistress!  No bear is after us!  She runs as though a mad ox had got loose!”

Her heart was wild enough for anything!  She might have to hear from her kind Duchess that all was vain and unnoticed.

Up the stair she went, to the accustomed chamber, where an additional chair was on the dais under the canopy, the half circle of ladies as usual, but before she had seen more with her dazzled, swimming eyes, even as she rose from her first genuflection, she found herself in a pair of soft arms, kisses rained on her cheeks and brow, and there was a tender cry in her own tongue of “My Grisell! my dear old Grisell!  I have found you at last!  Oh! that was good in you.  I knew the forget-me-nots, and all your little devices.  Ah!” as Grisell, unable to speak for tears of joy, held up the pouncet box, the childish gift.

The soft pink velvet bodice girdled