CHAPTER IX.

ROGER FINDS HIS MISSION.

"And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers

And the temples of his gods?"

—LORD MACAULAY.

Earl Roger found his Countess in the same room in which he had left her when he went to Fleshy. Hypocras and spices, which constituted the "void," a light meal corresponding to afternoon tea, were being served round as he entered. Roger made his way to the side of Alianora, declined the hypocras—a light, sweet wine—and sat down by her while she sipped it.

"You are early, my Lord," said the Countess, whose eyes were occupied in watching an interchange of frothy banter between a knight and a lady at a little distance.

"I had need, my Lady. Will it meet with your wishes to follow me to Ireland, whether urgent cause removeth me, and without delay?"

"Ireland! What part of Ireland?"

"Kilkenny, at the first; afterward, maybe, to Trim."

"And what moveth your Lordship to go among those savages, who should scantly wit if you ware red velvet or blue damask?"

"Those savages are my kinsfolk, under your Ladyship's leave. Moreover, savages commonly have better sight than civil[#] men."

[#] Civilised.

"Verily, your Lordship hath some sweet kinsfolk to wake your pride!" said the Countess with a light laugh.

"Therein is your Ladyship not deceived," was the dry answer. "I leave behind me some most sweet ones. Well, what saith your Ladyship to my point?"

"What, I go to Ireland? Gramercy, your Lordship is pleasant! Aye, when I have cause to wear up mine old gowns and ugsome[#] head-gear, then will I think of following you in that direction. But till it so happen, under your leave, I would as lief 'bide on Paul's Wharf or at Ludlow."

[#] Ugly.

"As your Ladyship will."

"When go you? Soon, is it?—this next week?"

"I set forth as four o'clock to-morrow morning."

"And you looked for me to go withal? Verily, what unwitty[#] fantasies have these men! Why, one might scarce fold a borel[#] cloth in the time. What moveth you to be thus foot-hot,[#] forsooth?"

[#] Silly.

[#] A very common, coarse material.

[#] In hot haste.

"There is cause, Dame," said the Earl gravely.

"Then I bid your Lordship good even," said the Countess, laughing, "for elsewise shall you ne'er have space to put on your hood. I wish you a joyous meeting with those your dear kinsfolk, and that they may not eat you ere I behold you again!"

She held out her hand, and he touched his lips to it.

"May God bless my Lady!" he said very gravely.

Then he left her, and went upstairs, to say good-bye to his children. As he slowly mounted, the thought occurred to him,—What does blessing mean? If God blessed Alianora, what would He do to her? According to the usual ideas of men, He would give her beauty, talent, wealth, luxury, and happiness. But was this what God meant by the word? Had He no better blessings than such as these? Were not His sweetest fruits wrapped often in unsightly husks—His rarest gems in crusts which concealed their brilliance? Might He not be blessing Roger himself by means of his disappointments, and not blessing Alianora through all the gifts He showered on her? Was there not something in that Book which Roger was beginning to know so well, and to apply instinctively to every thing which happened to him, about one to whom God gave corn, and wine, and oil, and silver, and gold, which she prepared for Baal? If men turned His blessings into means of sinning, was there no fear lest He should turn them into curses?

Little Anne ran to meet her father as soon as she heard his step. He stooped and took her in his arms.

"Little Nan," he said rather sadly, "what wilt thou grow to be?"

"A lady," said she readily, with brightening eyes.

"There be two sorts of women, my little maid. There be heart-comforters, and there be heart-breakers. Which wilt thou be?"

The question was beyond her in details. She replied to its scope, which was all that she understood.

"I will be what God makes me."

"Amen," answered the Earl. "Be what God makes thee,—not Satan, nor thine own foolish fantasies. Farewell, my little one. I am going a long journey, my Nannette."

"Will you be back soon?"

"Nay, I think not. Farewell, my darling—God go with thee and bless thee!"

He kissed them all and gave them his blessing. Then he went back to his own room, where he found Mr. Robesart awaiting him.

"Father, it behoveth me to set forth for Ireland with the dawn, and I would vain have taken you withal. Can you be ready?"

"A priest is always ready," was the reply. "At what hour shall I wait upon your Lordship?"

"At four of the clock I think to set out."

"You shall find me in attendance. Can I serve your Lordship in any other way?"

"Methinks not, save by taking that into your safe keeping," said the Earl, touching the large Bible. "I would have it go withal, as well as you. Nought else, I thank you."

But before Mr. Robesart had quite reached the door, his young master's voice arrested his steps.

"Father, tell me ere you go, what doth God when He blesseth us?"

"What do you, my Lord, when you bless your childre?"

"I do desire all good to hap unto them: but I may not ensure it."

"And He alway ensureth it. I see none other difference. God's blessing is God's love. Every gift of God is a loving thought of God's heart toward His childre."

"But how, toward them that are not such?"

"'He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good,'" replied Mr. Robesart. "His common, earthly blessings He gives to all alike."

"And what call you such gifts as beauty, learning, and riches? Be they blessings, or no?"

"All things that God has made are good. They are blessings when they leave His hand. If we would have them abide blessings, we must give them back to Him. If we keep them to adorn ourselves withal, they become curses to us. God's first and greatest blessing is Himself. Let us keep Him in His right place—on the throne of the heart—and all else will fall into his right place, as by the wave of a magician's wand."

"Things be sorely apt to get out of their places!" said the Earl with a sigh. "I thank you, Father."

"My Lord, when you find things out of their places, look and see if you have not given leave to somewhat else to occupy His place. God give you a good even!"

A very small suite accompanied Earl Roger to Ireland; but it included his two best friends, Mr. Robesart and Lawrence Madison. His outside friends were considerably puzzled to know why he should leave England at such a particularly awkward moment as this, when the negotiations for the King's marriage were in progress. The Earl of Kent, his late guardian—since Roger's majority he had ceased to be a practical one so far as any personal control was concerned—was specially perplexed and astonished at this step. But he knew nothing of the interview at Fleshy.

To all of them Roger gave a general and vague explanation, which had reference to the necessary care of his Irish estates. His own sole fervent desire was to put himself where Gloucester could not find him—to lose himself, as far as the conspirators were concerned. It was the only way that he could see just then to serve that God, and that King, to both of whom in his early youth he had pledged his heart's devotion.

Rarely has any journey been taken in more feverish haste than that of Roger Earl of March to Ireland in the summer of 1396. He felt as though he were not safe for a day until he had put the breadth of St. George's Channel between himself and his uncle Gloucester. His journey from London to Haverford was almost a flight. His unsuspecting suite complained bitterly of the long forced marches over the mountains of South Wales which their unreasonable master obliged them to take. Two days delay at Haverford, before the wind would serve, brought Roger's patience to the verge of distraction.

"I must go!" he said passionately to Mr. Robesart.

"My Lord," was the grave answer, "it ill suits the archer to wear the uniform of the general. There is no must but one, and it is meet but for the lips of the Lord of all."

"Yet surely He knoweth my necessity?"

"Soothly: but I pray your Lordship to remember that what is must with you may be must not with Him."

"I cannot rest till I be hence!"

"We shall rest in the life to come," quietly replied Mr. Robesart. "In the life that now is, we have but to be and do God's will."

"You take it calmly, Father! But then, for you there is no such need. 'Tis easy gear to counsel a man to lie still whose veins burn with fever, when your own pulse is as quiet as a mill-tarn." And Roger laughed, with a laugh which was not all mirth.

Mr. Robesart's answering smile was rather pathetic.

"Having lived through the fever, I may know your Lordship's feelings."

On the third day the wind changed, and they set sail from Haverford. Three weeks—a very favourable passage—landed them at Wexford; and as Roger set foot upon the shore of Ireland, he turned and looked across to the invisible mountains of Wales.

"Fair fall thou, my native land!" he said half sarcastically. "From henceforth is this land of my fathers mine own land, and thou must serve thee without me."

The autumn and winter of that year found him at Kilkenny, spending his time in an unusual manner for a noble of the fourteenth century. He summoned Irish minstrels and chroniclers around him, and went deep into Irish history. Perhaps it was a natural result that Irish history went deep into him. He became an enthusiastic admirer of the character and annals of the nation the blood of whose kings ran in his veins. His own natural impetuosity drove him along the groove which he had chosen, and ere long one passionate aspiration took possession of his soul, next after that "Un Dieu, un Roy" which had possessed and would possess it for ever. England and Ireland should be at peace, and he would be the means of it. They should live and love as sisters, happy and tranquil, under one sceptre, having but one aim, and the glory of the one should be the glory of the other. To this he would give himself as long as he should live. He would secure it—or die in the attempt.

All the Mortimers had entertained an affection for Ireland, and could never forget their Irish blood. King Richard also had a liking for that country, of which his uncle of Gloucester was pleased to speak very scornfully.

"He is a fool who thinks of conquering Ireland," said Gloucester, in his usual unwatered diction. "The Irish are a poor and wicked people, with an impoverished country; and he who should conquer it one year would lose it the next."

This affection of the young Earl for the Green Isle by no means increased his popularity with his English retainers. Saxon and Celt have always mutually looked down upon each other. The Irish saw in the English intruding strangers, none the more welcome for being conquerors; the English reckoned the Irish uncivilised barbarians with whom no person of refinement could be satisfied to associate. They were not themselves so over-refined that they need have been particular: but the half-educated man (still more woman) is usually more fastidious on the score of vulgarity than the blue-blooded noble. There were murmurs among Roger's suit that he was too accessible to the masses, and that his heart was rather Irish than English.

When the King discovered, somewhat to his surprise, that his chosen heir had so unexpectedly disappeared from the scene on the plea of looking after his Irish property, he sent him a commission of lieutenancy for Ulster, Connaught, and Meath—a most convenient arrangement for Roger, since it afforded him a full excuse for not returning to England until the state of affairs should have changed. His Majesty was not the only person who was puzzled by Roger's proceedings. But there was another person who was not puzzled at all. Of one point Roger might safely have felt assured—that, however his sudden disappearance might surprise and perplex others, his uncle Gloucester at least would not fail to understand it. But the fact that a particular material had proved unsuitable for his purpose was not likely to ruin the designs of so far-seeing and scheming a conspirator as Gloucester. Having convinced himself that his nephew of March was not the soft and malleable article that he had supposed him, Gloucester merely cast the useless thing on one side, and set his busy brain to work to evolve a fresh project. It proved a very different one from the last. His new scheme involved a partition of the kingdom into four parts, of which his brother of Lancaster was to be bought off with one (a matter somewhat easier said than done); York, who was plastic as putty in the hands of Gloucester, was to have another; Arundel was to be rewarded with the third; and the fourth fell to Gloucester himself. March was left out altogether.

How long this sagacious disposition of political affairs would have lasted, may be very reasonably questioned: certainly not, at the furthest, beyond the second generation. A quarter of England would never have contented Derby, for whose ambitious soul the world was scarcely wide enough, nor could Rutland have reigned an hour in his division without plotting against the other three.

The end was near—the end of one phase of the political tumult. On the 28th of July, Gloucester and his fellow conspirators met at Arundel, to perfect their plot. Just eight days later, in full Parliament, at Westminster, that extremely "honourable man," my Lord of Rutland, humbly presented a petition of impeachment against Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick. Five days afterwards Gloucester was arrested and sent to Calais; and on the 8th of September he died in the Castle of that town. The King had borne with him, to use his own words, "as long as he had been able"—and no other Sovereign, perhaps excepting Henry VI., would have borne with him half so long.

It was asserted by the King's enemies, long afterwards, and is now generally believed, that Gloucester was "murdered" by being smothered between two feather beds. Unfortunately for the assertion, this very report was spread, with the view of aspersing the King, while Gloucester was still alive. The subsequent elaborate account, therefore, was simply a more carefully revised version of the old slander. The truth is that Gloucester was either privately executed, or that he died of apoplexy before the execution took place. Why a man under sentence of death, approved as inevitable by his own brother, the just and humane Lancaster, should not have suffered execution, must be left to those modern writers of the "follow-my-leader" school, who persist in terming the execution a murder. How many times the penalty had been deserved it would not be easy to reckon.

Things were not now, as previously, done by halves—except in one item, and that spoiled the whole. The Earl of Arundel was beheaded on the 21st of September. The Archbishop, Norfolk, and Warwick, were banished for life. If one other execution had taken place, the rebellion would have been crushed, and King Richard's life would have been safe. It was entirely his own fault that it did not. Derby had been engaged in a multitude of plots—more than any one knew except himself—he had plotted the death of the King, and had drawn his sword upon him in the Queen's presence: he had been twice, if not three times, condemned to death by his own father. The Duke of Bretagne had said to the King on their last interview, "You will never be safe while Henry of Lancaster lives." Richard knew all this, but his heart failed him. For all the provocation received both as monarch and as man, that true and tender heart refused to condemn the old playmate, and instead of it lifted him to honour. He fancied this step would ensure the love and fidelity of a man who knew not what love and faithfulness were. He laid this adder to warm in his bosom, and like the adder that it was, it stung him to death.

While these stirring events were passing in England, Earl Roger of March maintained that distance and silence which he had evidently perceived to be the only safe course for himself. How far was he neglecting his duties in so doing? is a question which may reasonably be asked. The date at which he returned to England seems to show that he was actuated, not by a cowardly fear for his personal safety—a supposition contradicted by every other action of his life—but by a fear of his name being dragged into the contest on the wrong side, and without his own consent. As soon as he could feel sure that Gloucester had laid aside the idea of making a tool of him, and before any appearance of retribution had overtaken Gloucester, Roger returned to Usk. The little cloud which had overhung the Lollard party had been long dispersed, and during the period of that shadow Roger had sought safety not in flight, but in silence.

The Countess was still in London, and she made no attempt to join her lord in Monmouthshire. He felt so hopeless of her doing so, that he did not even ask her. But one other thing he did—he sent for his children. Beyond his natural wish for their occasional company, was his strong desire to rescue them from the contamination of the society into which, so soon as they were old enough, their mother was likely to plunge them. He was anxious to accomplish a project which had occurred to him, and which he did not expect her to oppose—to obtain his old foster-mother, Guenllian, to take the same position with respect to his children. Their mother cared too little about them to care who was with them, so long as it was some one who would take all responsibility off her shoulders. Guenllian, on her part, was ready enough to return to her sometime nursling, whom she had always loved the best of all her charges. Roger was more easy when he had secured her. With her came Beatrice, who had always been her satellite since she entered service, and was considered as an indispensable appendage.

The following Michaelmas brought a magnificent ceremony, in the creation of some dozen new peers at Westminster. The list was headed by the traitor Derby and the treacherous Rutland, who were respectively created Dukes of Hereford and Aumerle. But the heir presumptive of the Crown kept away from both politics and pageants in his seclusion at Usk, and never showed himself until the ensuing January, when he was summoned to the Parliament at Shrewsbury, to take an oath which had been administered to all the peers, and which March was the last of the peers to take. It was a particularly useless one, for a member of any party could have taken it with a clear conscience. It was sworn by the body of the peers on the shrine of St. Edward, and by March alone upon the cross of Canterbury (probably as being portable, which the shrine was not): and it bound him who took it "to hold, sustain, and maintain well and loyally, without fraud or evil intent, all statutes, etc., made in this present Parliament, without ever going contrary thereto or to any part of them, and never to revoke nor annul them, nor never to suffer their repeal, living nor dying—saving to the King his royalty and liberty, and the rights of the Crown." The last item annulled all the rest so far as the royalists were concerned; the whole was useless as directed against the traitors.

Roger did not remain at Shrewsbury. He followed the King and Parliament to Bristol, and as soon as he was released from his parliamentary duties, he came on to London. He was there for a few weeks, until signs appeared in the political world of another tumult. It is popularly said that when thieves fall out, honest men come by their own: and in this instance the thieves, who were Hereford and Norfolk, fell out most decidedly. They appeared together before the King, each of them bringing against the other a charge of that disloyalty of which both were as guilty as any man could well be. A rumour of disturbances in Ireland afforded Roger a chance of getting out of the way, before either of these most honourable men should drag him into their toils, or bring charges against him which, however untrue, he might find it difficult to refute.

Once more he offered to Alianora the choice of accompanying him. They had been separated for nearly two years, and had only met a few weeks before. But the Countess could not think of it. In fact, she declared herself quite astonished that her lord could be so unreasonable as to ask for her company. Her new dresses for Whitsuntide were in course of preparation, and had cost her a month's reflection. Did he suppose that they could be finished in a day? or if they had been finished, how could he imagine that she would be satisfied to waste their resplendency on a handful of common knights and squires, or a horde of Irish barbarians? Leave Town in the beginning of April! It was perfectly preposterous, impossible. And she was quite sure he did not want her—which last was said in a tone decidedly indicative of the companion fact that she did not want him.

He did not want her as he had once done. His wish for the company of the real woman whom he had long seen her to be, was far less than it had been erewhile for the society of the loved and loveable ideal which he was now convinced that she was not. Still the old love, though stifled, repressed, and repulsed, was yet alive, and might have been blown into a flame had Alianora cared to take the trouble. Roger sighed as he turned away.

"Be it so, Dame," he answered, speaking more lightly than he felt. "But your Ladyship will scarce look for me to rest content in being utterly bereft of the company of ladies. I shall take Nannette withal from Usk."

"Gramercy! to what end?" demanded Alianora, opening her handsome eyes in astonishment.

A smile of rather bitter amusement played round the lips of the Earl. "Choose your Ladyship the reason," said he, still lightly. "You have no grudge thereunto?"

"I? Good lack, nay! An' it like your Lordship to burden you with a maid of nine years, you be welcome of very inwitte.[#] I shall have the lesser charge."

[#] Most heartily.

Her husband might reasonably have inquired what charge she had ever taken of the children, or how it was to be lessened when they were already out of her care: but he passed it by.

"Wenteline will ease you thereof," said he. "Your Ladyship grudgeth not, methinks, that she should bide hence with the childre?"

"Not I, forsooth! Have with them whom you will," was the careless answer. "I love none of them so dear that I may not live without them."

Roger knew as well as Alianora that the pronoun included himself. He sent Anne into raptures, and Guenllian into much surprise, by an order that they should be ready to accompany him. His male friends were inclined to be exceedingly merry over this odd notion of the Earl. That he should have taken even his heir, at that early age, would have seemed to them amusing; but to choose a girl of nine for his companion struck them as a preposterous absurdity. Earl Roger paid no attention to them. Extremely sensitive to the lightest censure from lips that he loved, he was now perfectly callous alike to ridicule and to anger from others.

Of the four children, Anne was his special darling. She and her brother Roger took after himself in character, while Edmund and Alianora were their mother's children. Least attractive of them was Edmund, in whose disposition indolence and selfishness were already manifesting themselves strongly. When the children were summoned in the morning, Anne and Roger were always up in a moment, while Edmund had to be dug out of bed amid a storm of grumbles. All that Anne owed to her mother was that graceful and gracious manner, which with the mother was merely artificial polish, but in the daughter was ingrained as a part of her character. The child's affection for her father was intense: she always shrank from her mother. The instinct of her true heart discerned the utter hollowness of Alianora, and the two natures could never amalgamate.

April had almost bloomed into May when the party reached Trim Castle, where Roger meant to remain for a few weeks.