Grisly Grisell

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His mother, Grisell's Duchess, according to the rule of the Court,
lay in bed for six weeks--at least she was bound to lie there
whenever she was not in entire privacy. The room and bed were hung
with black, but a white covering was over her, and she was fully
dressed in the black and white weeds of royal widowhood. The light
of day was excluded, and hosts of wax candles burnt around.

Grisell did not see her during this first period of stately mourning,
but she heard that the good lady had spent her time in weeping and
praying for her husband, all the more earnestly that she had little
cause personally to mourn him.

CHAPTER XXVII--FORGET ME NOT

And added, of her wit,
A border fantasy of branch and flower,
And yellow-throated nestling in the nest.

TENNYSON, Elaine.

The Duchess Isabel sent for Grisell as soon as the rules of etiquette
permitted, and her own mind was free, to attend to the suite of lace
hangings, with which much progress had been made in the interval.
She was in the palace now, greatly honoured, for her son loved her
with devoted affection, and Grisell had to pass through tapestry-hung
halls and chambers, one after another, with persons in mourning, all
filled with men-at-arms first, then servants still in black dresses.
Next pages and squires, knights of the lady, and lastly ladies in
black velvet, who sat at their work, with a chaplain reading to them.
One of these, the Countess of Poitiers, whom Grisell had known at the
Grey Sisters' convent, rose, graciously received her obeisance, and
conducted her into the great State bedroom, likewise very sombre,
with black hangings worked and edged, however, with white, and the
window was permitted to let in the light of day. The bed was raised
on steps in an alcove, and was splendidly draped and covered with
black embroidered with white, but the Duchess did not occupy it. A
curtain was lifted, and she came forward in her deepest robes of
widowhood, leading her little granddaughter Mary, a child of eight or
nine years old. Grisell knelt to kiss the hands of each, and the
Duchess said -

"Good Griselda, it is long since I have seen you. Have you finished
the border?"

"Yes, your Highness; and I have begun the edging of the corporal."

The Duchess looked at the work with admiration, and bade the little
Mary, the damsel of Burgundy, look on and see how the dainty web was
woven, while she signed the maker to seat herself on a step of the
alcove.

When the child's questions and interest were exhausted, and she began
to be somewhat perilously curious about the carved weights of the
bobbins, her grandmother sent her to play with the ladies in the
ante-room, desiring Grisell to continue the work. After a few kindly
words the Duchess said, "The poor child is to have a stepdame so soon
as the year of mourning is passed. May she be good to her! Hath the
rumour thereof reached you in the city, Maid Griselda, that my son is
in treaty with your English King, though he loves not the house of
York? But princely alliances must be looked for in marriage."

"Madge!" exclaimed Grisell; then colouring, "I should say the Lady
Margaret of York."

"You knew her?"

"Oh! I knew her. We loved each other well in the Lord of
Salisbury's house! There never was a maid whom I knew or loved like
her!"

"In the Count of Salisbury's house," repeated the Duchess. "Were you
there as the Lady Margaret's fellow-pupil?" she said, as though
perceiving that her lace maker must be of higher quality than she had
supposed.

"It was while my father was alive, madame, and before her father had
fixed his eyes on the throne, your Highness."

"And your father was, you said, the knight De--De--D'Acor."

"So please you, madame," said Grisell kneeling, "not to mention my
poor name to the lady."

"We are a good way from speech of her," said the Duchess smiling.
"Our year of doole must pass, and mayhap the treaty will not hold in
the meantime. The King of France would fain hinder it. But if the
Demoiselle loved you of old would she not give you preferment in her
train if she knew?"

"Oh! madame, I pray you name me not till she be here! There is much
that hangs on it, more than I can tell at present, without doing
harm; but I have a petition to prefer to her."

"An affair of true love," said the Duchess smiling.

"I know not. Oh! ask me not, madame!"

When Grisell was dismissed, she began designing a pattern, in which
in spray after spray of rich point, she displayed in the pure
frostwork-like web, the Daisy of Margaret, the Rose of York, and
moreover, combined therewith, the saltire of Nevil and the three
scallops of Dacre, and each connected with ramifications of the
forget-me-not flower shaped like the turquoises of her pouncet box,
and with the letter G to be traced by ingenious eyes, though the
uninitiated might observe nothing.

She had plenty of time, though the treaty soon made it as much of a
certainty as royal betrothals ever were, but it was not till July
came round again that Bruges was in a crisis of the fever of
preparation to receive the bride. Sculptors, painters, carvers were
desperately at work at the Duke's palace. Weavers, tapestry-workers,
embroiderers, sempstresses were toiling day and night, armourers and
jewellers had no rest, and the bright July sunshine lay glittering on
the canals, graceful skiffs, and gorgeous barges, and bringing out in
full detail the glories of the architecture above, the tapestry-hung
windows in the midst, the gaily-clad Vrows beneath, while the bells
rang out their merriest carillons from every steeple, whence
fluttered the banners of the guilds.

The bride, escorted by Sir Antony Wydville, was to land at Sluys, and
Duchess Isabel, with little Mary, went to receive her.

"Will you go with me as one of my maids, or as a tirewoman
perchance?" asked the Duchess kindly.

Grisell fell on her knee and thanked her, but begged to be permitted
to remain where she was until the bride should have some leisure.
And indeed her doubts and suspense grew more overwhelming. As she
freshly trimmed and broidered Leonard's surcoat and sword-belt, she
heard one of the many gossips who delighted to recount the members of
the English suite as picked up from the subordinates of the heralds
and pursuivants who had to marshal the procession and order the
banquet. "Fair ladies too," he said, "from England. There is the
Lord Audley's daughter with her father. They say she is the very
pearl of beauties. We shall see whether our fair dames do not
surpass her."

"The Lord Audley's daughter did you say?" asked Grisell.

"His daughter, yea; but she is a widow, bearing in her lozenge, per
pale with Audley, gules three herrings haurient argent, for
Heringham. She is one of the Duchess Margaret's dames-of-honour."

To Grisell it sounded like her doom on one side, the crisis of her
self-sacrifice, and the opening of Leonard's happiness on the other.

CHAPTER XXVIII--THE PAGEANT

When I may read of tilts in days of old,
And tourneys graced by chieftains of renown,
Fair dames, grave citoyens, and warriors bold -
If fancy would pourtray some stately town,
Which for such pomp fit theatre would be,
Fair Bruges, I shall then remember thee.

SOUTHEY, Pilgrimage to Waterloo.

Leonard Copeland was in close attendance on the Duke, and could not
give a moment to visit his friends at the Green Serpent, so that
there was no knowing how the presence of the Lady of Heringham
affected him. Duke Charles rode out to meet his bride at the little
town of Damme, and here the more important portions of the betrothal
ceremony took place, after which he rode back alone to the Cour des
Princes, leaving to the bride all the splendour of the entrance.

The monastic orders were to be represented in the procession. The
Grey Sisters thought they had an especial claim, and devised the
presenting a crown of white roses at the gates, and with great
pleasure Grisell contributed the best of Master Lambert's lovely
white Provence roses to complete the garland, which was carried by
the youngest novice, a fair white rosebud herself.

Every one all along the line of the tall old houses was hanging from
window to window rich tapestries of many dyes, often with gold and
silver thread. The trades and guilds had renewed their signs,
banners and pennons hung from every abode entitled to their use,
garlands of bright flowers stretched here and there and everywhere.
All had been in a frenzy of preparation for many days past, and the
final touches began with the first hours of light in the long, summer
morning. To Grisell's great delight, Cuthbert Ridley plodded in at
the hospitable door of the Green Serpent the night before. "Ah! my
ladybird," said he, "in good health as ever."

"All the better for seeing you, mine old friend," she cried. "I
thought you were far away at Compostella."

"So verily I was. Here's St. James's cockle to wit--Santiago as they
call him there, and show the stone coffin he steered across the sea.
No small miracle that! And I've crossed France, and looked at many a
field of battle of the good old times, and thought and said a prayer
for the brave knights who broke lances there. But as I was making
for St. Martha's cave in Provence, I met a friar, who told me of the
goodly gathering there was like to be here; and I would fain see
whether I could hap upon old friends, or at any rate hear a smack of
our kindly English tongue, so I made the best of my way hither."

"In good time," said Lambert. "You will take the lady and the
housewife to the stoop at Master Caxton's house, where he has
promised them seats whence they may view the entrance. I myself am
bound to walk with my fellows of the Apothecaries' Society, and it
will be well for them to have another guard in the throng, besides
old Anton."

"Nay, but my garb scarce befits the raree show," said Ridley, looking
at his russet gown.

"We will see to that anon," said Lambert; and ere supper was over,
old Anton had purveyed a loose blue gown from the neighbouring
merchants, with gold lace seams and girdle, peaked boots, and the
hideous brimless hat which was then highly fashionable. Ridley's
trusty sword he had always worn under his pilgrim's gown, and with
the dagger always used as a knife, he made his appearance once more
as a squire of degree, still putting the scallop into his hat, in
honour of Dacre as well as of St. James.

The party had to set forth very early in the morning, slowly gliding
along several streets in a barge, watching the motley crowds
thronging banks and bridges--a far more brilliant crowd than in these
later centuries, since both sexes were alike gay in plumage. From
every house, even those out of the line of the procession, hung
tapestry, or coloured cloths, and the garlands of flowers, of all
bright lines, with their fresh greenery, were still unfaded by the
clear morning sun, while joyous carillons echoed and re-echoed from
the belfry and all the steeples. Ridley owned that he had never seen
the like since King Harry rode home from Agincourt--perhaps hardly
even then, for Bruges was at the height of its splendour, as were the
Burgundian Dukes at the very climax of their magnificence.

After landing from the barge Ridley, with Grisell on his arm, and
Anton with his mistress, had a severe struggle with the crowd before
they gained the ascent of the stoop, where the upper steps had been
railed in, and seats arranged under the shelter of the projecting
roof.

Master Caxton was a gray-eyed, thin-cheeked, neatly-made Kentishman,
who had lived long abroad, and was always ready to make an Englishman
welcome. He listened politely to Grisell's introduction of Master
Ridley, exchanged silent greetings with Vrow Clemence, and insisted
on their coming into the chamber within, where a repast of cold
pasty, marchpane, strawberries, and wine, awaited them--to be eaten
while as yet there was nothing to see save the expectant multitudes.

Moreover, he wanted to show Mistress Grisell, as one of the few who
cared for it, the manuscripts he had collected on the history of Troy
town, and likewise the strange machine on which he was experimenting
for multiplying copies of the translation he had in hand, with blocks
for the woodcuts which Grisell could not in conscience say would be
as beautiful as the gorgeous illuminations of his books.

Acclamations summoned them to the front, of course at first to see
only scattered bodies of the persons on the way to meet the bride at
the gate of St. Croix.

By and by, however, came the "gang," as Ridley called it, in earnest.
Every body of ecclesiastics was there: monks and friars, black,
white, and gray; nuns, black, white, and blue; the clergy in their
richest robes, with costly crucifixes of gold, silver, and ivory held
aloft, and reliquaries of the most exquisite workmanship, sparkling
with precious jewels, diamond, ruby, emerald, and sapphire flashing
in the sun; the fifty-two guilds in gowns, each headed by their
Master and their banner, gorgeous in tint, but with homely devices,
such as stockings, saw and compasses, weavers' shuttles, and the
like. Master Lambert looked up and nodded a smile from beneath a
banner with Apollo and the Python, which Ridley might be excused for
taking for St. Michael and the Dragon. The Mayor in scarlet, white
fur and with gold collar, surrounded by his burgomasters in almost
equally radiant garments, marched on.

Next followed the ducal household, trumpets and all sorts of
instruments before them, making the most festive din, through which
came bursts of the joy bells. Violet and black arrayed the
inferiors, setting off the crimson satin pourpoints of the higher
officers, on whose brimless hats each waved with a single ostrich
plume in a shining brooch.

Then came more instruments, and a body of gay green archers; next
heralds and pursuivants, one for each of the Duke's domains,
glittering back and front in the tabard of his county's armorial
bearings, and with its banner borne beside him. Then a division of
the Duke's bodyguard, all like himself in burnished armour with
scarves across them. The nobles of Burgundy, Flanders, Hainault,
Holland, and Alsace, the most splendid body then existing, came in
endless numbers, their horses, feather-crested as well as themselves,
with every bridle tinkling with silver bells, and the animals
invisible all but their heads and tails under their magnificent
housings, while the knights seemed to be pillars of radiance. Yet
even more gorgeous were the knights of the Golden Fleece, who left
between them a lane in which moved six white horses, caparisoned in
cloth of gold, drawing an open litter in which sat, as on a throne,
herself dazzling in cloth of silver, the brown-eyed Margaret of old,
her dark hair bride fashion flowing on her shoulders, and around it a
marvellously-glancing diamond coronet, above it, however, the wreath
of white roses, which her own hands had placed there when presented
by the novice. Clemence squeezed Grisell's hand with delight as she
recognised her own white rose, the finest of the garland.

Immediately after the car came Margaret's English attendants, the
stately, handsome Antony Wydville riding nearest to her, and then a
bevy of dames and damsels on horseback, but moving so slowly that
Grisell had full time to discover the silver herrings on the
caparisons of one of the palfreys, and then to raise her eyes to the
face of the tall stately lady whose long veil, flowing down from her
towered head-gear, by no means concealed a beautiful complexion and
fair perfect features, such as her own could never have rivalled even
if they had never been defaced. Her heart sank within her,
everything swam before her eyes, she scarcely saw the white doves let
loose from the triumphant arch beyond to greet the royal lady, and
was first roused by Ridley's exclamation as the knights with their
attendants began to pass.

"Ha! the lad kens me! 'Tis Harry Featherstone as I live."

Much more altered in these seven years than was Cuthbert Ridley,
there rode as a fully-equipped squire in the rear of a splendid
knight, Harry Featherstone, the survivor of the dismal Bridge of
Wakefield. He was lowering his lance in greeting, but there was no
knowing whether it was to Ridley or to Grisell, or whether he
recognised her, as she wore her veil far over her face.

This to Grisell closed the whole. She did not see the figure which
was more to her than all the rest, for he was among the knights and
guards waiting at the Cour des Princes to receive the bride when the
final ceremonies of the marriage were to be performed.

Ridley declared his intention of seeking out young Featherstone, but
Grisell impressed on him that she wished to remain unknown for the
present, above all to Sir Leonard Copeland, and he had been quite
sufficiently alarmed by the accusations of sorcery to believe in the
danger of her becoming known among the English.

"More by token," said he, "that the house of this Master Caxton as
you call him seems to me no canny haunt. Tell me what you will of
making manifold good books or bad, I'll never believe but that Dr.
Faustus and the Devil hatched the notion between them for the
bewilderment of men's brains and the slackening of their hands."

Thus Ridley made little more attempt to persuade his young lady to
come forth to the spectacles of the next fortnight to which he
rushed, through crowds and jostling, to behold, with the ardour of an
old warrior, the various tilts and tourneys, though he grumbled that
they were nothing but child's play and vain show, no earnest in them
fit for a man.

Clemence, however, was all eyes, and revelled in the sight of the
wonders, the view of the Tree of Gold, and the champion thereof in
the lists of the Hotel de Ville, and again, some days later, of the
banquet, when the table decorations were mosaic gardens with silver
trees, laden with enamelled fruit, and where, as an interlude, a
whale sixty feet long made its entrance and emitted from its jaws a
troop of Moorish youths and maidens, who danced a saraband to the
sound of tambourines and cymbals! Such scenes were bliss to the deaf
housewife, and would enliven the silent world of her memory all the
rest of her life.

The Duchess Isabel had retired to the Grey Sisters, such scenes being
inappropriate to her mourning, and besides her apartments being
needed for the influx of guests. There, in early morning, before the
revels began, Grisell ventured to ask for an audience, and was
permitted to follow the Duchess when she returned from mass to her
own apartments.

"Ah! my lace weaver. Have you had your share in the revels and
pageantries?"

"I saw the procession, so please your Grace."

"And your old playmate in her glory?"

"Yea, madame. It almost forestalled the glories of Heaven!"

"Ah! child, may the aping of such glory beforehand not unfit us for
the veritable everlasting glories, when all these things shall be no
more."

The Duchess clasped her hands, almost as a foreboding of the day when
her son's corpse should lie, forsaken, gashed, and stripped, beside
the marsh.

But she turned to Grisell asking if she had come with any petition.

"Only, madame, that it would please your Highness to put into the
hands of the new Duchess herself, this offering, without naming me."

She produced her exquisite fabric, which was tied with ribbons of
blue and silver in an outer case, worked with the White Rose.

The Dowager-Duchess exclaimed, "Nay, but this is more beauteous than
all you have wrought before. Ah! here is your own device! I see
there is purpose in these patterns of your web. And am I not to name
you?"

"I pray your Highness to be silent, unless the Duchess should divine
the worker. Nay, it is scarce to be thought that she will."

"Yet you have put the flower that my English mother called 'Forget-
me-not.' Ah, maiden, has it a purpose?"

"Madame, madame, ask me no questions. Only remember in your prayers
to ask that I may do the right," said Grisell, with clasped hands and
weeping eyes.

CHAPTER XXIX--DUCHESS MARGARET

I beheld the pageants splendid, that adorned those days of old;
Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of
Gold.

LONGFELLOW, The Belfry of Bruges.

In another week the festivities were over, and she waited anxiously,
dreading each day more and more that her gift had been forgotten or
misunderstood, or that her old companion disdained or refused to take
notice of her; then trying to console herself by remembering the
manifold engagements and distractions of the bride.

Happily, Grisell thought, Ridley was absent when Leonard Copeland
came one evening to supper. He was lodged among the guards of the
Duke in the palace, and had much less time at his disposal than
formerly, for Duke Charles insisted on the most strict order and
discipline among all his attendants. Moreover, there were tokens of
enmity on the part of the French on the border of the Somme, and
Leonard expected to be despatched to the camp which was being formed
there. He was out of spirits. The sight and speech of so many of
his countrymen had increased the longing for home.

"I loathe the mincing French and the fat Flemish tongues," he owned,
when Master Lambert was out of hearing. "I should feel at home if I
could but hear an honest carter shout 'Woa' to his horses."

"Did you have any speech with the ladies?" asked Grisell.

"I? No! What reck they of a poor knight adventurer?"

"Methought all the chivalry were peers, and that a belted knight was
a comrade for a king," said Grisell.

"Ay, in the days of the Round Table; but when Dukes and Counts, and
great Marquesses and Barons swarm like mayflies by a trout stream,
what chance is there that a poor, landless exile will have a word or
a glance?"

Did this mean that the fair Eleanor had scorned him? Grisell longed
to know, but for that very reason she faltered when about to ask, and
turned her query into one whether he had heard any news of his
English relations.

"My good uncle at Wearmouth hath been dead these four years--so far
as I can gather. Amply must he have supplied Master Groot. I must
account with him. For mine inheritance I can gather nothing clearly.
I fancy the truth is that George Copeland, who holds it, is little
better than a reiver on either side, and that King Edward might grant
it back to me if I paid my homage, save that he is sworn never to
pardon any who had a share in the death of his brother of Rutland."

"You had not! I know you had not!"

"Hurt Ned? I'd as soon have hurt my own brother! Nay, I got this
blow from Clifford for coming between," said he, pushing back his
hair so as to show a mark near his temple. "But how did you know?"

"Harry Featherstone told me." She had all but said, "My father's
squire."

"You knew Featherstone? Belike when he was at Whitburn. He is here
now; a good man of his hands," muttered Leonard. "Anyway the King
believes I had a hand in that cruel business of Wakefield Bridge, and
nought but his witness would save my neck if once I ventured into
England--if that would. So I may resign myself to be the Duke's
captain of archers for the rest of my days. Heigh ho! And a lonely
man; I fear me in debt to good Master Lambert, or may be to Mistress
Grisell, to whom I owe more than coin will pay. Ha! was that--"
interrupting himself, for a trumpet blast was ringing out at
intervals, the signal of summons to the men-at-arms. Leonard started
up, waved farewell, and rushed off.

The summons proved to be a call to the men-at-arms to attend the Duke
early the next morning on an expedition to visit his fortresses in
Picardy, and as the household of the Green Serpent returned from
mass, they heard the tramp and clatter, and saw the armour flash in
the sun as the troop passed along the main street, and became visible
at the opening of that up which they walked.

The next day came a summons from the convent of the Grey Sisters that
Mistress Griselda was to attend the Duchess Isabel.

She longed to fly through the air, but her limbs trembled. Indeed,
she shook so that she could not stand still nor walk slowly. She
hurried on so that the lay sister who had been sent for her was quite
out of breath, and panted after her within gasps of "Stay! stay,
mistress! No bear is after us! She runs as though a mad ox had got
loose!"

Her heart was wild enough for anything! She might have to hear from
her kind Duchess that all was vain and unnoticed.

Up the stair she went, to the accustomed chamber, where an additional
chair was on the dais under the canopy, the half circle of ladies as
usual, but before she had seen more with her dazzled, swimming eyes,
even as she rose from her first genuflection, she found herself in a
pair of soft arms, kisses rained on her cheeks and brow, and there
was a tender cry in her own tongue of "My Grisell! my dear old
Grisell! I have found you at last! Oh! that was good in you. I
knew the forget-me-nots, and all your little devices. Ah!" as
Grisell, unable to speak for tears of joy, held up the pouncet box,
the childish gift.

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