CHAPTER XI.

HOME TO USK.

"We buried him where he was wont to pray,

By the calm lake,—even here,—at eventide;

We reared this cross in token where he lay,

For on the cross, he said, his Lord had died;

Now hath he surely reached, o'er mount and wave,

That flowery land whose green turf hides no grave."

—FELICIA HEMANS.

If any further item of failure could have come into the life of Roger Mortimer, it would have been conveyed by a royal letter, dated at Westminster just one week after his death, and, being addressed to himself, before the news of the calamity at Kenles had reached the King. In this letter, Roger Earl of Ulster and March, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, is told that "as, by the advice of our Council, we have constituted our beloved nephew Thomas Duke of Surrey our Lieutenant in our said land from the first day of September next, for one year, we command that you shall not hinder the said Duke from the execution of his office, and we also exonerate you from the charge aforesaid, from the coming of the said Duke."[#]

[#] Close Roll, 22 Ric. II., Part 1.

Roger was superseded—why, there is no information. It does not necessarily mean, by any means, that the King was displeased with him, or desired to revoke his policy. It may even have been at his own desire, but there remains no evidence of this. It is more probable that his royal cousin wished to have him nearer, and considered that the presence of his heir presumptive would be of service to himself in that thorny and difficult path which it had been the lot of Richard of Bordeaux to tread from his early youth. And now all that remained of Roger Mortimer was coming home indeed, but to another home and a longer rest than those which his royal cousin had designed for him. His crown was no longer a future possibility: it had come. He should never see evil any more.

It has been left on record that King Richard's grief and indignation at the news of Roger's death were very deep and true. It was indeed, apart from the personal regard which he entertained for his young cousin, one of the saddest calamities which could have happened for himself. His heir presumptive, instead of being a man who loved and honoured him, was now his most implacable enemy—that Henry of Bolingbroke who hated him worse than any other. For according to the old law of England, Roger's reign would have been an interlude, and his claim, without some further distinct disposition of the Crown, could scarcely devolve upon his children. Before the funeral procession set forth, there was an arrival at Trim Castle. The Lord Bardolf arrived from England, accompanied by his mother, the Lady Agnes Mortimer, wife of that Sir Thomas Mortimer who had played a part in Roger's early life. He had chosen to cast in his lot with Gloucester and the Lords Appellants, and he was now a fugitive in hiding.[#]

[#] The Irish Government was charged to search for him in September, 1397, as he was supposed to be in that country; and he was executed in England, before May 27th, 1399. (Close Roll, 21 Ric. II., Part 1; Patent Roll, 23 ib.)

The Lady Agnes Mortimer, who came to conduct the little Lady Anne back to her English friends, while her son attended to the more public necessities of the case, was an elderly woman of girlish character. She was by birth a Poynings, and sister-in-law of that Lollard Lady Poynings who was the daughter of a Princess of Lancaster, and who had been ejected from King Richard's household by the Lords Appellants. But Lady Agnes was no Lollard, as she showed a few years later by making painful pilgrimage to Cologne and Rome for the good of her soul. She came forward now to meet Guenllian, answering her deliberate and modest reverence with a shower of rapid words.

"Mistress Wenteline Bevan, is it not so? Not Bevan? 'Ap Evan'! Gramercy, what matter? Ap Evan is Bevan, and Bevan is Ap Evan—'tis all one. I pray you, Mistress Wenteline, carry me whither I may dry me, for my skirts be all sore bemired this rainy day. Good lack, but it witteth how to rain in this country, by my troth! And how doth your little Lady, trow? Verily, poor child, she must have been moped well-nigh to death, with all this doole about her. Young things love gleesomeness, and should have it. Is she yet abed?"

Lady Agnes paused a second for the answer, and Guenllian managed to glide in—"No, Madam. Truly I think the child hath too much sorrowed for her father to take any grief at the doole."

"Ah, well, we will soon have that amended," said Lady Agnes cheerfully. "I will have the maid away at once, and not await for aught but the bare needful: we can amend all when we come to Usk, where my Lady her mother now abideth."

The Countess had always expressed so much dislike to Usk that it rather surprised Guenllian to hear that she was there. Lady Agnes answered her look.

"Ah, my Lady loveth not doole, no more than other folk. She hath held fair court at Usk, trust me, with a merry lot of knights and dames: and in especial—mark you, Mistress Wenteline—in especial—my good Lord Charlton of Powys. Marry, but when the news came, she was aggrieved!"

Guenllian was glad to hear it. The thought had lain heavy at her heart, that Alianora would not sorrow. Yet to think of her "holding fair court" with gay company, while that terrible scene was enacting at Kenles, went sorely against her.

"She might well," continued the garrulous lady. "Gramercy, but I would have done the like in the same case! 'Twas but two days—nay, methinks, but one—sithence all her Michaelmas gowns were home from the tailor, new fashioned and right fair—and now but to think of putting all away for a lot of dreary doole! Dear heart, but it were enough to aggrieve one! If there had not been at hand my Lord Charlton to divert her withal, methinks she should well-nigh have gone distraught! We shall hear of a wedding there, Mistress Wenteline, by my troth, so soon as this weary, dreary doole be but got o'er."

Guenllian's tongue required some hard discipline to keep it quiet. Could he hear it through his coffin-lid,—that still sleeper in the hall beneath? Would he not almost stir upon his satin pillow, if this tale reached him of the utter apathy and heartlessness of the woman to whom he had given his heart's best love, and to whom the news of his loss brought bitter regret—for the deferred wearing of her Michaelmas wardrobe? Guenllian severely schooled her heart down, and then said—as calmly as was in her warm Welsh nature—and as soon as a hiatus occurred in Lady Agnes's persistent rattle—

"Would it like your Ladyship to tell me what manner of man is this Lord Charlton? Shall he be one that should deal gently with the childre, or no?"

For Guenllian's heart yearned over her darlings, and especially over Anne.

"Eh, good lack!" laughed Lady Agnes, "he shall neither make nor mell with them. My Lord Charlton is not he that should befool him a-laking with childre. 'Tis the mother he loveth, not them. And in good sooth, he is scantly the man for one of her high estate: but—there! you wit, Mistress Wenteline, love is a leveller."

"Love?" said Guenllian inquiringly to her own heart—not to Lady Agnes. Ay, she knew, better than her companion could tell her, of what material Alianora was made. She was likely enough to

"Crawl to the next shrub or bramble vile,

Though from the cedar's stately arm she fell."

"And look you," pursued Lady Agnes, breaking in upon Guenllian's sorrowful thoughts, "truly it hath been a great trouble unto my Lady, the coming down. She looked to be one day Queen of England, and should have been, had my sometime Lord (whom God pardon) been more wary and witful. Do but think, to aventure himself afore his army in an Irish habit—was it not thus he did? Any man with his wits in his head should have wist he might as well have writ his death-warrant. And now all that lost! Dear, dear, what a misaventure! Verily, I do think my Lady of March sore to pity, I warrant you. To lose a crown, and spoil an whole wardrobe, all of a blow—well, as to the losing her baron, the world holdeth more than one man—" Lady Agnes had found it so—"but in very deed it should sorrowfully grudge me to be in like case."

Guenllian made no answer. She only threw open the door of the Lady Anne's apartments, and motioned to the new disposer of the child's destiny to enter. If she thought that both the Countess and the Lady Agnes Mortimer mistook their pearls for pebbles, and their pebbles for pearls, she gave no hint of doing so.

The funeral procession set forth, and the lonely and sorrowful child who had been one of his dearest treasures, followed the coffin of the dead father. Lady Agnes Mortimer had taken Anne's future into her own hands, and being Guenllian's nominal superior, the latter was bound to obey. She was about to deliver the child into the yet more nominal care of the Countess, to be plunged, when she grew a little older, into all those pomps and vanities of this wicked world which her father had foreseen and feared for her. So sorrowfully reckoned Guenllian ap Evan: but the God of Roger Mortimer reckoned very differently. The lot He had prepared for Anne was far away from pomp and vanity,—a long, eventless, monotonous imprisonment in Windsor Castle, with her sister and brothers,—the bitter disappointment of an attempted and almost successful rescue, for the lot of Roger Mortimer seemed to pursue his children—an imprisonment straiter and sadder than before, until that one of them whom the usurper had really cause to fear, Roger's bright little namesake, his own true son, fervent and energetic like himself, died in his weary prison; till a greater King than Henry of Bolingbroke undrew the bolts, and set the prisoner free. Then the other three were allowed to come forth. The King was not afraid of Edmund,—dreamy, indolent, ease-loving Edmund—nor of Alianora, who shared his character. He gave to Edmund, to ensure his safe keeping, a wife of a different type from himself, a daughter of the Romish House of Stafford, and a grand-daughter of Gloucester. Alianora was handed over to the care of the heir of Courtenay, ever a Lancastrian House. The most wary and cautious men sometimes blunder. And surely it was in a moment of blunder that that wariest and coldest-hearted of English kings and statesmen permitted Anne Mortimer,—the heir of Duke Lionel of Clarence if her brother should die issueless, as he did—to wed the loyal and true-hearted Richard of Conisborough, a Prince of the Blood, in whose eyes Richard of Bordeaux, whose godson he was, was the King, and Henry of Bolingbroke a usurper. Richard of Conisborough was the one love of Anne Mortimer's true heart. Every fibre of that sterling character—silent, shy, undemonstrative, but deep and loyal to the heart's core,—wound itself around him by whose side she dwelt in a dream of bliss for three short years, and then God called her away from the evil to come. He lies—murdered, or rather martyred—in the precincts of "God's House" at Southampton, she in the Abbey Church of King's Langley. They have met in the Garden of God. And if a text were to be engraven on the tomb of Anne Mortimer, it might well be this,—"I will be a God to thee, and to thy seed after thee."

She was the mother of all our kings. When one grand climacteric of years had rolled round from the death of Roger Mortimer at Kenles, the Lancastrian episode was over, and the grandson of Anne Mortimer sat upon the throne of England. The cup of success, dashed so frequently from Roger, came to his children's lips at last. But the one point in which success would have been dearest to his heart has never come. Is it yet in reserve for some descendant of his blood?—or shall the rival sister nations only see eye to eye, when He shall come who is the Desire of all nations—when the Lord shall bring again Zion? One event happened, of a different character, before Lord Bardolf and Lady Mortimer set forth, which greatly astonished every body in Trim Castle, and the person most concerned more than any other.

Lawrence Madison was slowly creeping back to ordinary life, and was now able to sit up most of the day, propped with pillows; and with some difficulty, and a helping arm, to walk the length of the chamber. Lord Bardolf had shown a particular wish to see him, and to hear the story of the Earl's death from his lips, and had pressed Mr. Robesart to allow the prudence of his doing so before the physician was quite ready to admit it. The latter, however, was overruled by his superior, and Lord Bardolf had his wish. The tale was told, at what cost to Lawrence he best knew.

"And now," said Lord Bardolf, when he paused, exhausted, and Guenllian held a cup of wine to his white weary lips, "methinks, Master Madison, you have scantly yet told all. We heard of a young squire that, in the thickest of the fight, stood o'er his Lord's body, and well-nigh gave his own life that the foe should not touch the same. Was it thus, pray you, or no?"

There was a moment's flash of fiery light in the weak sunken eyes.

"What looked you for?" said Lawrence Madison. "Had he loved me, and freed me, and grown with me, child and boy and man, and set me, so far as meetness might, as his very self, and should I reckon my poor worthless life as aught beside his? Had a thousand lives been mine, I would have given them for his life: and when nought but his dust was left to give them for, they were at his service for that!"

Lord Bardolf evidently liked the spirit of the reply.

"So heard the King's grace," said he. "And it liked him to issue a command to me, which I must obey ere I go hence. Can you rise and stand a moment, Master Madison?"

Mr. Robesart stepped forward and lent his aid.

"Can you kneel?" said Lord Bardolf.

Lawrence, with some difficulty, contrived to do so. What was going to be done to him he did not realise. He was simply obeying, through his messenger, the command of his King. He was the most astonished person in that chamber, when he felt the light touch of the accolade upon his shoulder, and heard Lord Bardolf say authoritatively,—

"Rise up, Sir Lawrence Madison!"

"Well, verily, this passeth!" said Guenllian, an hour later, to her subordinate Beatrice, who was busy packing the few absolute necessaries which were to go with the little Lady Anne. "Beattie, heardest the news? Lawrence is made a knight!"

Guenllian received no answer except a slight sound which she failed to comprehend. She looked round, and saw that Beatrice was in tears.

"Beattie, doth aught ail thee, mine heart?"

"Oh, nothing—not—Mistress Wenteline, would you have my Lady's furred mantle, or no?"

"Fur mantle! in August!" exclaimed Guenllian. "Why Beattie, where be thy wits, dear maid? The gear shall all be sent after my little Lady, long ere she lack her furred mantle."

"Oh! aye," said Beatrice confusedly. "I only thought—and I have not yet put up her Ladyship's head-gear."

Guenllian looked after her as Beatrice hastily ran upstairs, with a soft laugh such as had never come to her lips since the death of the Earl.

"Aye, I conceive you, Mistress Beattie!" said she. "You 'only thought' that Sir Lawrence Madison had climbed up above Blumond's Beattie, and was not like to reach forth an hand to help her to a seat at his side. Well, we shall see what we shall see. But if Lolly be he that shall forget the old friends in the hovel for the new at the castle, then is Guenllian ap Evan no prophetess."

The packing was all done, and the preparations made for the long journey to Wigmore Abbey. It had been arranged that the ladies should go no further than Usk, for the Countess had intimated that her deep despondency would not permit her to attend the funeral. Her heart was so nearly broken that another ounce-weight of grief would complete the catastrophe. Lady Agnes repeated the statement to Guenllian with grave lips, but with a twinkle of fun in her eyes which sufficiently indicated that the real character and private intentions of this disconsolate widow were no secret to her. To Lady Agnes this was pure amusement: to Guenllian it resulted in a mixture of contempt and sorrow. Lord Bardolf of course, would attend the funeral, having now resigned all official duties to the new Viceroy: and Lawrence Madison had intimated that no power short of a royal command should keep him from it. He would follow the friend and master whom he had loved so dearly, to the last step where man can go with man. His new honours had rendered Lawrence his own master, free to take service where he would, or to refrain from it at his pleasure: and to sink into the idle attitude of a hanger on the train of the Lady Alianora was far from Lawrence's conception either of happiness or duty.

He had now recovered his health in all senses except that physical strength was still lacking. Even a short walk, or a slight exertion, fatigued him considerably. How the coming journey was to be borne he hardly knew. But he said to himself that he would go through with it: and in very many cases, where a man will do a thing, he finds that he can.

It was the evening before the journey, and in Lawrence's chamber he and Mr. Robesart sat in the oriel window enjoying the quiet of the summer evening. The preceding events had drawn very closely together these two friends, who alone of all the male members of the household had much in common with each other.

"Lawrence," said Mr. Robesart—he had attempted to address the new knight by his title, and had been instantly entreated never to do so again—"Lawrence, what think you to make of your life, now that it lieth in your own hands to make or mar it as you will?"

"If it lay in mine hands, Father, it should surely be to mar," said Lawrence with much feeling. "I am thankful it is in God's hands, to whom I have given it, and He shall make thereof whatsoever He will."

"But you must needs have desires and wishes thereunto, my son."

"Aye, I have so," and a slight sigh accompanied the words. "Whether they shall ever behold their fulfilment I think greatly to doubt."

"Think you to abide with my Lady Countess?"

"Not so, if our Lord be served[#] otherwise."

[#] If it be His will.

"Then what mean you? To enter other service, or to go to the wars, or what so?"

"So far as mine own liking goeth, methinks, neither."

"I have alway counted you a man of peace, Lawrence," said Mr. Robesart, with a smile which betrayed rather more amusement than was indicated by his words.

"Aye so, to mine own pleasure," was the reply. "But they which best love peace be not alway suffered to pursue it."

"And I had thought that, by your good-will, some quiet home far away from strife, amid the green fields and the calm old hills, should have been that which should have served you, my son."

"Ah, if it had been possible!" And another sigh followed the wish.

"There be times, howbeit, when man may mistake his vocation," said Mr. Robesart in a musing tone. "I am something feared that is thus with one friend of ours—I fear it much."

"Whom point you at?" asked Lawrence, but not in any tone of particular interest.

"Our friend Beatrice, that hath been speaking with me of her desire to enter the cloister."

The "Beatrice!" which answered the communication, was in a very different tone from the last, and ended in a gasp.

"Aye so," replied Mr. Robesart, calmly, paying no apparent attention to the tone, and bestowing all his ostensible regard upon the planet Venus, which he was reconnoitring through an impromptu telescope made of his right hand. "I am greatly to doubt if the maid have any true vocation, and be not rather inclined unto the veil by some other reason thereto provoking her. Howbeit, each knoweth best his own mind. But we were speaking of thyself."

Mr. Robesart might try to lead the conversation back to the previous subject, but Lawrence's interest in himself and his own future seemed suddenly extinguished. He answered all further queries in a short, dreamy manner which showed that his thoughts had been borne elsewhere, and were likely to remain there. Whereby, though he was not aware of it, he confirmed certain impressions on the priest's mind, which had been formed into distinct convictions by a hint from Guenllian. All that Mr. Robesart could learn from what followed was that Lawrence was possessed of considerable savings, which he meant, on his approaching return to Usk, to devote to the comfort of his own relatives.

"What other use have I for it?" he asked sadly, and with a faint return of his former interest to his tone. "They are poor, and need it: and I never needed it, nor wist what to do withal. My Lord furnished me with food and raiment, and what other needs hath a man? I never spent penny of my wage, save by nows and thens in a gift to some friend, and in the writing of the holy Evangel that I bear ever about me. I shall part the same betwixt my mother and sisters, which shall wot far better than I how to lay it out to profit."

"'If any man hath not cure of his own, he hath denied the faith,'" quoted Mr. Robesart. "Yet bethink thee, my son, that very charity biddeth not that a man part with every penny of his having, nor for the needs of his kinsfolk in the present, empoverish his own future."

"The Lord will have a care of my future. I lack but a cake and a cruse of water, and He can send them by His angels when my need asketh them of Him."

"Verily: a man may reasonably pack his own needs in small compass. But dost thou mean to remain single all thy life, Lawrence? My Lady Madison may scarce be as content as thou with the cruse and the cake, and in all cases, two lack more provision than one."

Mr. Robesart had dropped almost unconsciously into the familiar thou, always used to the little Lawrence of old. His hearer liked it far better than the ceremonious you, which he had taken up since Lawrence became a man.

"I think that is not in my future," was the low-voiced answer.

"Be not too sure," said the priest. "Some of our Father's best gifts are they which we count too good to look for. Yet soothly, Lawrence, I would not wish thee a wife like—like some women be."

Lawrence leaned forward with a glow in his eyes, and spoke in a whisper.

"Wala wa! Father, it lieth sore and heavy at mine heart that the friends he had to mourn him have been only the men and women of his meynie. The one whom he loved better than all the world hath not shed one true tear for his loss!"

"My son!" said Mr. Robesart tenderly,—with a tenderness which was not all for Lawrence,—"he hath seen the Face of God, and he is satisfied with it."

"We loved him dear enough, at least," said Lawrence in a choked voice.

"Lawrence, canst thou not forgive her?—and that man that shot the arrow, hast thou forgiven him? Dost thou know who it was?"

"I am right thankful to answer No to that last. I saw not from what bow the cursed shaft came. But to think that I may be speaking to that man as a friend, not knowing——"

Lawrence left his sentence unfinished.

"Maybe it were meant for another," said Mr. Robesart quietly. "But if no—mind thou, my son, how God dealeth with thee and me, whose sins slew the Son of His love, and He knoweth it."

They set out for Usk the next day, taking the same route which Roger had traversed in life only four months before. His coffin was borne upon a bier drawn by six horses, through the green valleys of Kildare and Carlow and Wexford, and at Wexford Haven was transferred to a boat, the Chanty, which bore it across in the calm August sunlight to Haverford. Two days' journey took them to Caermarthen, where the travellers were housed in the Castle, and the corpse in the Church of St. Peter, watched all night by monks and four squires, and sprinkled frequently with holy water. Three days more took them to Merthyr Tydvil, a fourth to Pontypool, and on the afternoon of the fifth, which was the first of September, they marched in slow and solemn procession into Usk.

Before entering the town a fresh arrangement of the procession was made. First came the body of archers, carrying their bows unstrung in sign of mourning; then two knights of the household of the deceased Earl, the one bearing his pennon, the other his helmet with its crest. Then came his war-horse, led by a squire bare-headed, and caparisoned with all its ceremonial trappings—the saddle-cloth of blue velvet, broidered with silver ostrich-feathers (gold ones were peculiar to the monarch), a saddle-cloth which covered the horse from ears to hoofs, leaving only an outlet for the nose and the eyes—the bridle being of gilded leather, and the stirrup of gilt copper. After the horse walked Mr. Robesart, in full canonicals, bearing aloft a silver cross. Then came the bier, borne by ten spearmen specially selected from the corps—men whose qualifications for the office were good character and much physical strength. Immediately following, clad in white, then the colour of deepest mourning, came the little Lady Anne, on a white horse—truly the chief mourner for that father who had been her best friend in all the world. Her horse was led by a bare-headed squire. A little behind her, on the right, rode Lord Bardolf, and on the left the Lady Agnes. The remainder of the household, which included Guenllian, Beatrice, and Lawrence, rode after, and the company of spearmen closed the funeral procession.

Thus they bore him dead into the Castle of Usk, which he had entered living, an infant gift from God, on that very morning, twenty-five years before.

A trumpeter had been sent forward to announce the coming of the procession; and when they crossed the drawbridge, and filed slowly in beneath the portcullis into the court-yard, they were met by a group of black monks from the neighbouring Benedictine Abbey, the foremost swinging a censer, and two others sprinkling holy water. The bier was set down immediately under the portcullis, and there it rested while the De Profundis was chanted, in presence of the garrison and of many members of the household. The entire procession was meantime arrested.

With an irrepressible sob, Guenllian whispered to Lawrence, "'They that bare him stood still.' Here is the city, and there is the bier: but where is He that can say, 'Arise'?"

Lawrence answered by a quotation from the same book. "'I am again rising and life; ... he that believeth in Me shall not die withouten end. Believest thou this?'"

"It is hard to believe where man seeth not."

"Therefore the more 'Blessed is she which hath believed.' 'Nyl ye fere: only believe.'"

"Believe what?" said Beatrice, with a dreary sigh, suppressed when half drawn.

"Believe nothing, Mistress Beatrice," replied Lawrence with a soft intonation which Guenllian had noticed to come into his voice only when he spoke to Beatrice. "'Believe in God, and believe in Me.' It is not what we must believe; it is whom. And whom is far easier than what. To believe a thing or a doctrine taketh the head only; but to believe a man, and that the Man that died for you, this methinks taketh the heart belike. Trust and love be right near akin. And hearts be soft, while heads be hard to deal withal. Matters be apt to steal into the heart ere you shall wit it, which should take many a weary hour to beat into the head."

"Neither come they so easy out when they be once lodged therein," added Guenllian.

"You speak soothly, Mistress Wenteline," answered Lawrence.

But now the procession moved on again, and they with it. Into the great hall of the Castle they slowly filed, and there found a most effective dramatic scene prepared to meet them.

The Countess Alianora sat on the daïs, robed in pure white, the earliest garb of widowhood, which covered so much of the face that only the features were left visible in the midst. But she had chosen to hide everything by an embroidered handkerchief, in which her eyes were concealed. There she sat, the image of inconsolable woe and utter desolation, while Consolation, in the person of the Lord Charlton of Powys leaned over her chair and tried to gain a hearing. Terrible sobs were rending her breast, and she seemed quite unable to speak. When at last she managed to rise and approach the coffin,—leaning on the arm of Lord Powys, which appeared absolutely necessary for her support,—she had scarcely taken the sprinkler from the hand of her chaplain when she dropped it and sank down in a faint. Of course Lord Powys caught her: could he as a knight or a person of any humanity have permitted a lady to drop to the floor? But Guenllian was so misguided as to allow herself to see that her mistress took care in fainting not to entangle herself in her train, and that she dropped the sprinkler in such a position that it should not damage her new velvet.

"She hath swooned right away!" exclaimed Beatrice in a pitying tone. She did not see through the stained glass of Alianora's beautiful and becoming attitudes.

"It is not ill played," was Guenllian's answer, in a rather constrained tone.

That evening, when Guenllian and Beatrice attended the coucher of the afflicted widow, it fell to the lot of the latter to remove the used handkerchief from the pocket of her lady's dress, and place it in the buck-basket which contained the articles ready for the wash.

"My Lady must have some whither another sudary," observed she to Guenllian. "This is full dry, and she wept sore."

"Lay it in the basket, Beattie," was Guenllian's quiet reply. "I misdoubt if thou shalt find any other."