The White Rose of Langley Part 26

Maude was startled. Was the charge true--that she was no longer a "Catholic," but a Lollard? And if so, in what did the change consist of which she was herself unconscious?

That afternoon, when she sat down to read to the Dowager as usual, Maude asked timidly--

"Madam, under your Ladys.h.i.+p's good leave, there is a thing I would fain ask at you."

"Ask freely, my maid," was the kindly answer.

"Might it like you to arede me, Madam, of your grace--in what regard, and to what greatness, the Lollards do differ from the Catholics?"

The Dowager smiled, but she looked a little surprised.

"A short question, forsooth, my maid, the which to answer shortly should lack sharper wit than mine. But I will give thee to wit so far as I can. We do believe that all things which be needful for a Christian man to know, be founden in G.o.d's Word, yclept Holy Scripture: so that all other our differences take root in this one. For the which encheson [reason] we do deny the Pope to have right and rule over this our Church of England, which lieth not in his diocese, neither find we in Holy Scripture that the Bishop of Rome should wield rule over other Bishops; but that in every realm the King thereof should be highest in estate over the priests as over any other of his subjects. Wherefore likewise we call not upon the saints, seeing that Holy Scripture saith 'oo G.o.d and a Mediatour is of G.o.d and of men, a man, Crist Jesu:' neither may we allow the holy bread of the blessed Sacrament of the Altar to be the very carnal flesh of our Saviour Christ, there bodily present, seeing both that Paul sayeth of it 'this breed' after that it be consecrate, and moreover that our own very bodily senses do deny it to be any other matter. So neither will any of us use swearing, which is utterly forbid in G.o.d's Word; neither hold we good the right of sanctuary, ne the power of the Pope's indulgence, ne virginity of the priesthood--seeing that no one of all these be bidden by Holy Scripture."

The old lady paused, and cut off her loose threads before she continued, in a rather more constrained voice.

"Beyond all these," she then added, "there be other matters wherein certain of us do differ from other. To wit, some of us do love to sing unto symphony [music] the praise and laud of G.o.d; the which othersome (of whom am I myself) do account to be but a vain indulgence of the flesh, and a thing unmeet for its vanity to be done of G.o.d's servants dwelling in this evil world. Some do hold that childre ought not to be baptised, but only them that be of age to perceive the signification of that holy rite: herein I see not with them. Likewise there be othersome that would have the old prayers for to abide, being but a form of words; while other (of whom be I) do understand such forms to be but things dead and dry, and we rather would pray unto our Lord with such words as He in the instant moment shall show unto us--the which (nowise contaking [reproaching] other) we do nathless judge to be more agreeable with Holy Scripture. But wherefore wouldst know all this, my maid?"

Maude's answer was not a reply according to grammar, but it showed her thoughts plainly enough. She had been carefully comparing her own inward convictions with the catalogue as it proceeded. She certainly could see no harm either in infant baptism or sacred music: as to the question of forms of prayer, she had never considered it. But on all the other points, though to her own dismay, she found herself exactly in agreement with the description given by the Dowager.

"Then I _am_ a Lollard, I account!" she said at last, with a sigh.

"And what if so, my maid?" quietly asked the old lady.

"Good Madam, can I so be, and yet be in unity with the Catholic Church?"

said Maude in a tone of distress. "Methinks 'tis little comfort to be not yet excommunicate, if I do wit that an' holy Church knew of mine errors, she should cut me away as a dry branch. And yet--" and a very puzzled, troubled look came into Maude's face--"what I crede, I crede; ne can I thereof uncharge [disburden] me."

"My maid," said the Dowager earnestly, looking up, "the true unity of the Church Catholic is the unity of Christ. He said not 'Come into the Church,' but 'Come to Me.' He that is one with Christ cannot be withoutenside Christ's Church."

No more was said at that time; but what she had heard already left Maude's mind in a turmoil. She next, but very cautiously, endeavoured to ascertain the opinions of her mistress. Constance made her explain her motive in asking, and then laughed heartily.

"By Saint Veronica her sudary, what matter? Names be but names. So long as a man deal uprightly and keep him from deadly sin--call him Catholic, call him Lollard--is he the worser man? There be good and ill of every sort. I have known some weary tykes [really, a sheep-dog; used as a term of reproach] that were rare Catholics; and I once had a mother that is with G.o.d and His angels now, and men called her a Lollard."

Evidently Constance's practical religion was summed up in the childish phrase--"Be good." An excellent medicine--if the patient were not unable to swallow.

Maude tried Bertram next, and felt, to use her own phrase, more "of a bire" [confused] than ever. For she found him nearly in the same state of mind as herself, but advanced one step further. Convinced that the true meaning of Lollardism was plain adhesion to Holy Scripture, he was prepared to accept the full consequences. He had not only been thinking for himself, but talking with Hugh Calverley: and Hugh, like his father, was a Lollard of the most extreme type.

"It seemeth me, Mistress Maude," he said boldly, "less dread to say that the Church Catholic must needs have erred, than to say that G.o.d in His Word can err."

"But the whole Church Catholic!" objected Maude in a most troubled voice. "All the holy doctors and bishops that have ever been--yea, and the very Fathers of the Church!"

"'Nyle ye clepe to you a fadir on erthe,'" replied Bertram gravely.

"But, Master Lyngern, think you, the Holy Ghost dwelleth in the priests, and so He doth not in slender folk like to you and me."

"Ay so?" answered he, with a slight curl of his lip. "He dwelleth in such men as my Lord of Canterbury, trow? Our Lord saith the tree is known by his fruits. It were a new thing, mereckoneth, for a man to be indwelt of the Holy Ghost, and to bring forth fruits of the Devil."

"But our Lord behote [promised] to dwell in His Church alway," urged Maude, though she was arguing against herself.

"He behote to dwell in all humble and faithful souls--they be His Church, Mistress Maude. I never read in no Scripture that He behote to write all the Pope's decretals, nor to see that no Archbishop of Canterbury should blunder in his pastorals."

"But the Church, Master Lyngern--_the Church_ cannot err! Holy Scripture saith it."

"Ay so?" said Bertram again. "Where?"

Maude was obliged to confess that she did not know where; she had "alway heard say the same;" but finding Bertram rather too much for her in argument, she carried her difficulty to Father Ademar when she next went to confession. She would never have propounded such a query to Father Dominic at Langley, since it would most certainly have ensured her a severe scolding and some oppressive penance; perhaps to lie flat on the threshold of the chapel and let every one pa.s.s over her, perhaps to lick the dust all round the base of the Virgin's pedestal. And Maude's own private conviction was that penances of this kind never did her the least good. Father Dominic told her that they humbled her. It was true they made her feel humiliated; but was that the same as feeling humble?

They also made her feel irritated and angry--with whom, or with what, she hardly knew; but certainly with some person or thing outside of herself. But they never made her think that she had done wrong--only that she had been misunderstood and badly used.

Matters were very different with Father Ademar. He was so quiet and gentle that Maude never felt afraid of him. Confession to Father Dominic bore the awful aspect cast over a visit to a dentist's surgery; but confession to Father Ademar was (at least to Maude) merely talking over her difficulties with a friend. He often said, "Pray our Lord to grant thee wisdom in this matter," but he never said, "Repeat fifty Aves and ten Paternosters." And when Maude now laid her troubles before him as lucidly as she could, he gave her an answer which, she thought at first, did not touch the case at all, and yet which in the end settled every difficulty connected with it.

"Daughter," said the Lollard priest, "there is another question which must be first answered. Thou hast taken up the golden rod by the wrong end. Turn it around and have the other ensured; then we will talk of this."

"What other question, Father?"

"The same that our Lord asked of the sick man at the cistern [pool]--'Wilt thou be made whole?' Art thou of the unity of Christ?-- art thou one with Him? Hast thou closed with Him? Wist thou that 'He loved _thee_, and gave Himself for thee?' For without thou be first ensured of this, it shall serve thee but little to search all the tomes of the Fathers touching the unity of the Church."

"But if I be in the true Church, Father, I must needs be of the unity of Christ."

"Truth," said Father Ademar, in his quietest manner. "Then turn the matter about, as I bade thee, and see whether thou art in Christ. So shalt thou plainly see thyself to be in the true Church."

Maude was silenced, but at first she was not convinced. Ademar did not press her answer. He left her to decide the question for herself. But many months pa.s.sed away, fraught with many struggles and heart searchings and deep studies of Wycliffe's Bible, before Maude was able to decide it. Bertram, whose mental nature was less self-conscious and a.n.a.lytical than hers, was at peace long before she was. But the day came at last when Maude was able to answer Ademar's question--when she could say, "Father, I am of the true Church, because I am one with Christ."

The life at Cardiff Castle was very quiet--much too quiet to please Constance, who was again becoming extremely restless. They heard of wars and rumours of war--conspiracy after conspiracy, all more or less futile: some to free King Richard, whom a great number believed to be still living; some to release and crown the little Earl of March, yet a close prisoner in Windsor Castle; some to depose or a.s.sa.s.sinate Henry.

But they were all to the dwellers in Cardiff Castle like the sounds of distant tempest, until the summer of 1402, when two terrible events happened almost simultaneously, and one at their very doors. Owain Glyndwr, the faithful Welsh henchman of King Richard, took and burnt Cardiff in one of his insurrectionary marches; sparing the Castle and one of the monasteries on account of the loyalty (to Richard) of their inmates; and about the same time Hugh Calverley came one day from Bristol, to summon the Princess to come immediately to Langley. Her father was dying.

Constance reached Langley in time to receive his last blessing. He died in the same quiet, apathetic manner in which he had lived--his intellect insufficient to realise all the mischief of which he had been guilty, but having realised one mistake he had made--his second marriage. He desired to be buried in the Priory Church at Langley, by the side of his "dear wife Isabel," whose worth he had never discovered until she was lost to him for ever.

It was on the first of August that Edmund of Langley died. After his funeral, the d.u.c.h.ess Joan--now a young woman of nineteen--intimated her intention of paying a visit to Court, as soon as her first mourning was over, and blandis.h.i.+ngly hoped that her dear daughter would do her the pleasure of accompanying her. Maude would have liked her mistress to decline the invitation, for she would far rather have gone home. But Constance accepted it eagerly. It was exactly what she wished. They reached Westminster Palace just after the King had returned from his autumn progress, and he expressed a hope that his aunt and cousin would stay with him long enough to be present at the approaching ceremony of his second marriage with the d.u.c.h.ess Dowager of Bretagne.

It was the evening after their arrival at Westminster, and Maude sat on a stool in the great hall, every now and then recognising and addressing some acquaintance of old time. On the dais was a brilliant crowd of royal and semi-royal persons, among whom Constance sat engaged in animated conversation, and evidently enjoying herself. Maude knew most of them by sight, but as her eyes roved here and there, they lighted on a young man coming up towards the dais whom she did not know. He stopped almost close to her, to speak to Aumerle, now Duke of York, so that Maude had time and opportunity to study him.

He was dressed in the height of the fas.h.i.+on. In the present day his costume would be thought supremely ridiculous for a man; but when he wore it, it was considered perfectly enchanting. It consisted of a gown--similar to a long dressing-gown, nearly touching the feet--of blue velvet, spangled with gold fleur-de-lis, and lined with white satin; an under-tunic (equivalent to a waistcoat) of bright apple-green satin, with wide sweeping sleeves of the same, cut at the edge into imitations of oak-leaves. Under these were tight sleeves of pink velvet, edged at the wrist by white frills, and a similar white frill finished the gown at the neck. His boots were black velvet, with white b.u.t.tons; they were about a yard long, tapering to a point, and were tied up to the garter by silver chains, a pattern resembling a church window being cut through the upper portion of the boot. These very fas.h.i.+onable and most uncomfortable articles were known as cracowes, having come over from Germany with the late Queen Anne. In the young man's hand was a black velvet cap, covered by a spreading plume of apple-green feathers. Round the waist, outside the gown, was a tight black velvet band, to which was fastened the scabbard of a golden-hilted sword.

This extremely smart young gentleman was Sir Edmund de Holand, Earl of Kent,--brother and heir of the Duke of Surrey, and brother also of Constance's step-mother. He was a true Holand in appearance, nearly six feet in height, most graceful in carriage, very fair in complexion, his hair a glossy golden colour, with a moustache of similar shade. His age was just twenty-one. He was pre-eminently handsome--surpa.s.sing even Surrey. His eyes were of the softest blue, clear and bright; his voice soft, musical, and insinuating.

I am careful to describe the Earl of Kent fully, because he is about to become a prominent person in the story, and also because he had absolutely nothing to recommend him beyond his physical courage, his taste in dress, his fascinating manners, and his very handsome person.

These points have to be dwelt upon, since his virtues lay entirely in them.

Kent and York conversed in a low tone for some minutes. When the subject seemed exhausted, York turned quickly round to his sister, as if a sudden idea had occurred to him.

"Lady Custance! You remember my Lord of Kent, trow?--though methinks you have scarce met together sithence we were all childre."

Constance lifted up her eyes, and offered her hand to Kent's kiss of homage. Ay, to her utter misery and undoing, like Elaine--

--"she lifted up her eyes, And loved him, with that love which was her doom."

Not worth such love as that, Constance! Not worth one beat of that true heart which was stilled at Bristol, and which now lies, dust to dust, in Tewkesbury Abbey. This man will not love you as he did, to the end. He will only give you what love he can spare from himself, for he is his own most cherished treasure. And it will be--as, a few hours later, you whisper to yourself, pulling the petals from a white daisy--"_un peu_--_beaucoup_--_point du tout_:"--a little yesterday, intense to-day, and none at all to-morrow.

Constance and Kent saw a good deal of each other during her visit to Westminster. Her brother of York evidently furthered his suit to the utmost of his power. Maude, who had learned utterly to distrust the Duke of York, set herself to consider what his reason could be. That York rarely did any thing except with some ulterior and selfish object, she was satisfied. But the more she thought about the matter, the further she found herself from arriving at any conclusion. The secret was to be revealed to her before long. The plotting brain of the Prince was busy as usual in the concoction of another conspiracy, and to forward his purposes on this occasion he intended to make a catspaw of his sister. The plot was not yet quite ripe; but when it should be, for Constance to be Kent's wife would make her all the more eligible as a tool.