The White Rose of Langley Part 43

"What, take you nought from me but only him?" she cried indignantly.

"Is it not rather mine own good name whereof you would undo me? Ye have bereaved me of him already. I tare him from mine heart long ago, though I tare mine own heart in the doing of it. He is not worth the love I have wasted on him, and have repreved [denied, rejected] thereof one ten thousand times his better! G.o.d a.s.soil [forgive] my blindness!--for mine eyes be opened now. But you, Sire,--you ask of me that I shall sign away mine own honourable name and my child's birthright, and as bribe to bid me thereunto, you proffer me my lands! What saw you ever in Custance of Langley to give you the thought that she should thus lightly sell her soul for gold, or weigh your paltry acres in the balances against her truth and honour?"

Every nerve of the outraged soul was quivering with excitement. In the calm even tones which responded, there was no more excitement than in an iceberg.

"Fair Cousin, you do but utterly mistake. The matter is done and over; nor shall your 'knowledgment thereof make but little difference. 'Tis neither for our own sake, neither for our cousin of Kent, but for yours, that we would fain sway you unto a better mind. Nor need you count, fair Cousin, that your denial should let by so much as one day our cousin of Kent his bridal with the Lady Lucy. We do you to wit that you stand but in your own light. Your marriage is annulled. What good then shall come of your 'knowledgment, saving your own eas.e.m.e.nt? But for other sake, if ye do persist yet in your unwisdom, we must needs make note of you as a disobedient subject."

There was silence again, only broken by the quiet regular dripping of the water-clock in a corner of the room. Silence, until Custance sank slowly on her knees, and buried her face upon the cus.h.i.+on of the settle.

"G.o.d, help me; for I have none other help!" sobbed the agitated voice.

"Help me to make this unceli [miserable] choice betwixt wrong and wrong, betwixt sorrow and sorrow!"

A less impulsive and demonstrative woman would not have spoken her thoughts aloud. But Custance wore her heart upon her sleeve. What wonder if the daws pecked at it?

"Not betwixt wrong and wrong, fair Cousin," responded the cool voice of the King. "Rather, betwixt wrong and right. Nor betwixt sorrow and sorrow, but betwixt sorrow and pleasance."

With another sudden change in her mood, Custance lifted her head, and asked in a tone which was almost peremptory--

"Is it the desire of my Lord himself that I be present?"

To reply in the affirmative was to lie; for Kent was entirely innocent and ignorant of the King's demand. But what mattered a few lies, when Archbishop Arundel, the fountain of absolution, was seated in the banquet-hall? So Henry had no scruple in answering unconcernedly--

"It is our cousin of Kent his most earnest desire."

"And yet once more," she said, fixing her eyes upon him, as if to watch the expression of his face while she put her test-question. "Yonder writ of excommunication:--was it verily and indeed forth against Sir Ademar de Milford, the Sunday afore I was wed?"

Did she expect to read any admission of fraud in that handsome pa.s.sionless face? If she did, she found herself utterly mistaken.

"Fair Cousin, have ye so unworthy thoughts of your friends? Certes, the writ was forth."

"My friends! where be my friends?--The writ was forth?"

"a.s.suredly."

"Then wreak your will--you and Satan together!"

"How conceive we by that, fair Cousin?" inquired the King rather satirically.

"Have your will, man!" she said wearily, as if she were tired of keeping measures with him any longer. "Things be sorely acrazed in this world.

If there be an other world where they be set straight, there shall be some travail to iron out the creases."

"Signify you that you will sign this paper?"

Isabel pa.s.sed the paper quietly to Henry.

"What matter what I signify, or what I sign? If my name must needs be writ up in black soot, it were as well done on that paper as an other."

The King laid the doc.u.ment on the table, where the standish was already, and with much show of courtesy, offered a pen to his prisoner. She knelt down to sign, holding the pen a moment idle in her fingers.

"What a little matter art thou!" she said, soliloquising dreamily. "A grey goose quill! Yet on one stroke of thee all my coming life hangeth."

The pen was lifted to sign the fatal doc.u.ment, when the proceedings were stopped by an unexpected little wail from something in Maude's arms.

Custance dashed down the quill, and springing up, took her little Alianora to her bosom.

"Sign away thy birthright, my star, my dove! Wretched mother that I am, to dream thereof! How could I ever meet thine innocent eyes again? I will not sign it!"

"As it like you, fair Cousin," was the quiet response of that voice gifted with such inexplicable power. "For us, we have striven but to avance you unto your better estate. 'Tis nought to us whether ye sign or no."

She hesitated; she wavered; she held out the child to Maude.

"I would but add," observed the King, "that yonder babe is no wise touched by your signing of that paper. Her birthright is gone already; or more verily, she had never none to go. Your name unto yon paper maketh no diversity thereabout."

Still the final struggle was terrible. Twice she resumed the pen; twice she flung it down in pa.s.sionate though transient determination not by her own act to alienate her child's inheritance and blot her own fair name. But every time the memory of her favourite, her loving little Richard, rose up before her, and she could not utter the refusal which would deprive her of him for ever. Perhaps she might even yet have held out, had the alternative been that of resigning him to any person but Joan. But the certain knowledge that he would be taught to despise and hate her was beyond the mother's power to endure. At last she s.n.a.t.c.hed up the pen, and dashed her name on the paper. It was signed in regal form, without a surname.

"There!" she cried pa.s.sionately: "behold all ye get of me! If I may not sign 'Custance Kent,' content you with 'Custance.' Never 'Custance Le Despenser!' My Lord was true to his heart's core; and never sign I _his_ name to a dishonour and a lie!--O my d.i.c.kon, my pretty, pretty d.i.c.kon! thou little knowest the price thine hapless mother hath paid for thee this day!"

Henry the Fourth was not a man who loved cruelty for its own sake: he was simply a calculating, politic one. He never wasted power on unnecessary torture. When his purpose was served, he let his victim go.

"Fully enough, fair Cousin!" he said with apparent kindness. "You sign as a Prince's daughter--and such are you. We thank you right heartily for this your wise submission, and as you shall shortly see, you shall not lose thereby."

Not another word was said about her presence at the wedding. That would, come later. His present object was to get her to London. The evening of the 17th of November saw them at Westminster Palace.

During the journey, Avice carefully avoided any private intercourse with Maude. The latter tried once or twice to renew the interrupted conversation; but it was either dinner-time, or it was prayer-time, or there was some excellent reason why Avice could not listen. And at last Maude resigned the hope. They never met again. But one winter day, eighteen years later, Maude Lyngern heard that Sister Avice, of the Minoresses' house at Aldgate, had died in the odour of sanct.i.ty; and that the sisters were not without hope that the holy Father might p.r.o.nounce her a saint, or at least "beata." It was added that she had worn herself to a skeleton by fasting, and for three weeks before her death had refused all sustenance but the sacrament, which she received daily. And that was the last of Cousin Hawise.

We return from this digression to Westminster Palace.

News met them as they stepped over the threshold--news of death.

Alianora, Countess of March, sister of Kent, and mother of the Mortimers, had died at Powys Castle.

When Custance reached the chamber allotted to her at Westminster, she found there all the personal property which she had left at Langley twelve months earlier.

"Maude!" she said that night, as she laid her head on the pillow.

"Lady?" was the response.

"To-morrow make thou ready for me my widow's garb. I shall never wear any other again."

"Ay, Lady," said Maude quietly.

"And--hast here any book of Sir John de Wycliffe?"

"The Evangel after Lucas, Lady."

"Wilt read me to sleep therewith?"

"Surely, Lady mine."

"Was it thence thou readst once unto me, of a woman that was sinful, which washed our Lord's feet?"

"Ay so, Madam."