The White Rose of Langley Part 16

Wilfred's answer was in that low, tremulous voice, which would have hinted to a more experienced listener that his sympathies were deeply stirred by the story he was telling.

"She climbed up on the great wheel, lad, and sat upon the rim of it; and she did off her fur cloak, and laid it over her dying lord; and when that served not, so strong was the s.h.i.+vering which had seized him, she stripped off her gown, and spread that over him likewise. And when in his death-thirst he craved for water, she clomb down again, and drew from the well in her shoe, for she had nought else:--and there sat she, all that woeful night, giving him to drink, bathing his brows, covering his wounds, whispering holy and loving words. And when the morrow brake, there below were the throng, mocking her all they might, and calling her by every evil name their tongues might utter."

"How could she hear it, and abide?" [bear] broke forth Bertram.

"Did she hear it?" answered Wilfred in the same low voice. "Ah, child!

love is stronger than death. So, when all was over--when Count Rudolph's eyes had looked their last upon her--when his voice had whispered the last loving word--'Gertrude, thou hast been faithful until death!'--and it was not till high noon,--then she laid her hand upon his eyes, and clomb down from the wheel, and went back to her void and lonely home. Boy, I never heard of any woman greater than Gertrude von der Wart." [Note 2.]

"I marvel how she bare it!" said Bertram, under his breath.

"And to worsen her sorrow," added Wilfred, "when day brake, came the Duke's Grace of Austria, and his sister, Queen Agnes of Hungary, and all their following, to behold the scene--men and women amongst whom she had dwelt, that had touched hand or lip with her many a time--all mocking and jibing. Methinks that were not the least bitter thing for her to see--if by that time she could see anything, save Rudolph in his agony, and G.o.d in His Heaven."

"And after that--she died, of force?" said Bertram, clinging still to the proper and conventional close of the tale.

"She was alive thirty years thereafter," replied Wilfred quietly, turning his attention to a bunch of leaves which ended a bough of his tree.

Bertram privately thought this a lame and impotent conclusion. For a few minutes he sat thinking deeply, while Wilfred sketched in silence.

"Father Wilfred!" the boy broke forth at last, "why letteth G.o.d such things be?"

"If thou canst perceive the answer to that, lad, thou hast sharper sight than I. G.o.d knoweth. But what He doth, we know not now. Pa.s.sing that word, none other response cometh unto us from Him unto whose eyes alone is present the eternal future."

"Must we then never know it?" asked Bertram drearily.

"Ay--'thou shalt know hereafter.' Yet this behest [promise] is given alonely unto them that sue the Lamb whithersoever He goeth above; and they which begin not that suing through the mire of the base court, shall never end it in the golden banquet hall."

"But what is it to sue the Lamb?" replied Bertram almost impatiently.

Wilfred laid down his pen, and looked up into the boy's face, with one of his sweet smiles flitting across his lips. The sketch was finished at last.

"Dear lad!" he said lovingly, "Bertram Lyngern, ask the Lamb to show thee."

Note 1. A t.i.tle at this time restricted to the Emperor of Germany. The first English King to whom it was applied, was Richard the Second. It is often said that Henry the Eighth was the first to a.s.sume it, but this is an error.

Note 2. It is surely not the least interesting a.s.sociation with the Castle of the Wartburg, whose best-known memories are connected with Luther, to remember that it was the home of Rudolph and Gertrude von der Wart.

CHAPTER FIVE.

CHANGES AND CHANCES OF THIS MORTAL LIFE.

"Now is done thy long day's work; Fold thy palms across thy breast, Fold thine arms, turn to thy rest, Let them rave."

_Tennyson_.

The Earl and Countess were away from home, during the whole spring of the next year; but Constance stayed at Langley, and so did Alvena and Maude. There was a grand gala day in the following August, when the Lord of Langley was raised from the dignity of Earl of Cambridge to the higher t.i.tle of Duke of York: but three days later, the cloth of gold was changed for mourning serge. A royal courier, on his way from Reading to London, stayed a few hours at Langley; and he brought word that the mother of the King, "the Lady Princess," was lying dead at Wallingford.

The blow was in reality far heavier than it appeared on the surface, and to the infant Church of the Lollards the loss was irreparable. For the Princess was a Lollard; and being a woman of most able and energetic character, she had been until now the _de facto_ Queen of England. She must have been possessed of consummate tact and prudence, for she contrived to live on excellent terms with half-a-dozen people of completely incompatible tempers. When the reins dropped from her dead hand a struggle ensued among these incompatible persons, who should pick them up. The struggle was sharp, but short. The elder brothers retired from the contest, and the reins were left in the Duke of Gloucester's hand. And woe to the infant Church of the Lollards, when Gloucester held the reins!

He began his reign--for henceforward he was virtually King--by buying over his brother of York. Edmund, already the pa.s.sive servant of Gloucester, was bribed to active adherence by a grant of a thousand pounds. The Duke of Lancaster, who was not his brother's tool, was quietly disposed of for the moment, by making him so exceedingly uncomfortable, that with the miserable _laisser-aller_, which was the bane of his fine character, he went home to enjoy himself as a country gentleman, leaving politics to take care of themselves.

But an incident happened which disconcerted for a moment the plans of the Regent. The young King, without consulting his powerful uncle, declared his second cousin, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, heir presumptive of England, and--in obedience to a previous suggestion of the Princess--broke off March's engagement with a lady of the Arundel family, and married him to Richard's own niece, the Lady Alianora de Holand.

The annoyance to Gloucester, consisted in two points: first, that it recognised female inheritance and representation, which put him a good deal further from the throne; and secondly, that Roger Mortimer, owing to the education received from his Montacute grandmother, had stepped out of his family ranks, and was the sole Lollard ever known in the House of March.

Gloucester carried his trouble to his confessor. The appointed heir to the throne a Lollard!--nor only that, but married to a grand-daughter of the Lollard Princess, a niece of the semi-Lollard King! What was to be done to save England to Catholicism?

Sir Thomas de Arundel laughed a low, quiet laugh in answer.

"What matters all that, my Lord? Is not Alianora my sister's daughter?

The lad is young, yielding, lazy, and l.u.s.ty [self-indulgent, pleasure-loving.] Leave all to me."

Arundel saw further than the Princess had done.

And Gloucester was Arundel's slave. Item by item he worked the will of his master, and no one suspected for a moment whither those acts were tending. The obnoxious, politically-Lollard Duke of Lancaster was shunted out of the way, by being induced to undertake a voyage to Castilla for the recovery of the inheritance of his wife Constanca and her sister Isabel; a statute was pa.s.sed conferring plenipotentiary powers on "our dearest uncle of Gloucester;" all vacant offices under the Crown were filled with orthodox nominees of the Regent; the Lollard Earl of Suffolk was impeached; a secret meeting was held at Huntingdon, when Gloucester and four other n.o.bles solemnly renounced their allegiance to the King, and declared themselves at liberty to do what was right in their own eyes. The other four (of whom we shall hear again) were Henry Earl of Derby, son of the Duke of Lancaster; Richard Earl of Arundel, brother of Gloucester's confessor; Thomas Earl of Nottingham his brother-in-law; and Thomas Earl of Warwick, a weak waverer, the least guilty of the evil five. The conspirators conferred upon themselves the grand t.i.tle of "the Lords Appellants;" and to divert from themselves and their doings the public mind, they amused that innocent, unsuspecting creature by a splendid tournament in Smithfield.

Of one fact, as we follow their track, we must never lose sight:--that behind these visible five, securely hidden, stood the invisible one, Sir Thomas de Arundel, setting all these puppets in motion according to his pleasure, and for "the good of the Church;" working on the insufferable pride of Gloucester, the baffled ambition of Derby, the arrogant rashness of Arundel, the vain, time-serving nature of Nottingham, and the weak fears of Warwick. Did he think he was doing G.o.d service? Did he ever care to think of G.o.d at all?

The further career of the Lords Appellants must be told as shortly as possible, but without some account of it much of the remainder of my story will be unintelligible. They drew a cordon of forty thousand men round London, capturing the King like a bird taken in a net; granted to themselves, for their own purposes, twenty thousand pounds out of the royal revenues; met and utterly routed a little band raised by the Duke of Ireland with the object of rescuing the sovereign from their power; impeached those members of the Council who were loyalists and Lollards; plotted to murder the King and the whole Council, which included near blood relations of their own; prohibited the possession of any of Wycliffe's books under severe penalties; murdered three, and banished two, of the five faithful friends of the King left in the Council. The Church stood to them above all human ties; and Sir Thomas de Arundel was ready to say "_Absolvo te_" to every one of them.

This reign of terror is known as the session of the Merciless Parliament, and it closed with the cruel mockery of a renewal of the oath of allegiance to the hapless and helpless King. Then Gloucester proceeded to distribute his rewards. The archbishopric of York was conferred on Sir Thomas de Arundel, and Gloucester appropriated as his own share of the rich spoil, the vast estates of the banished Duke of Ireland.

And then the traitor, robber, and murderer, knelt down at the feet of Archbishop Arundel, and heard--from man's lips--"Thy sins are forgiven thee"--but not "Go, and sin no more."

"Master Calverley, you? G.o.d have mercy! what aileth you?"

For Hugh Calverley stood at one of the hall windows of Langley Palace, on the brightest of May mornings, in the year 1388, his face hidden in his hands, and his whole mien and aspect bearing the traces of sudden and intense anguish.

"G.o.d had no mercy, Mistress Maude!" he wailed under his voice. "We had no friend save Him, and He was silent to us. He cared nought for us--He left us alone in the uttermost hour of our woe."

"Nay, sweet Hugh! it was men, not G.o.d!" said Bertram's voice soothingly behind them.

"He gave them leave," replied Hugh in an agonised tone.

It was the old reproachful cry, "Lord, carest thou not that we perish?"

but Maude could not understand it at all. That cry, when it rises within the fold, is sometimes a triumph, and always a mystery, to those that are without. "You believe yourselves even now as safe as the angels, and shortly to be as happy, and you complain thus!" True; but we are not angels yet. Poor weak, suffering humanity is always rebellious, without an accompanying unction from the Holy One. But it is not good for us to forget that such moods are rebellion, and that they often cause the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.

Bertram quietly drew Maude aside into the next window.

"Let the poor fellow be!" he said compa.s.sionately. "Alack, 'tis no marvel. These traitor loons have hanged his father. And never, methinks, did son love father more."

"Master Calverley's father!--the Queen's squire?"

"He. And look you, Maude,--heard man ever the like! the Queen's own Grace was on her knees three hours unto my Lord of Arundel, praying him to spare Master Calverley's life. Think of it, Maude!--Caesar's daughter!"

"Mercy, Jesu!"--Maude could imagine nothing more frightful. It seemed to her equivalent to the whole world tumbling into chaos. What was to become of "slender folk," such as Bertram and herself, when men breathed who could hear unmoved the pleadings of "Caesar's daughter?"