Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (400 page)

And with an enormous swiftness the Lady Blanche poured a torrent of words in some story of how the Knight Enguerrand de Coucy and his cousin Egerton of Tamworth had set their archers to shoot arrows upon the knights of Sir John of Hainault, who lay with the King at Newcastle.

“By little good St. Luke,” the lady concluded, slackening the speed of the torrent of words and gazing almost affectionately into Mr. Sorrell’s eyes, “can you wonder that some ladies are unfaithful to their lords, as is the common complaint nowadays? Do our lords pay us the proper attention which wife ‘would exact of husband? no! Not at all. In the last nine years, my Lord of Enguerrand has spent not six weeks quiet at home, but when he was not prancing in Scotland he was laying waste in Flanders, or tilting against the Saracens in Spain. And are not women of certain beauty made to be courted and made much of? But indeed you will see that in all the country round there is not a personable man. So that I think the best of them is my little page Jehan, who you will perceive struts gallantly enough, carrying the large sword. But for anything else, it is a very tedious and disgusting life that we lead who are the great ladies of the realm of England. And for myself, I spend days in plotting revenge upon this monstrous husband of mine.”

She looked fixedly into Mr. Sorrell’s eyes.

“Yes, I will take such a revenge — if only I can think of one — as shall render my lord and master a laughingstock through all the realms of chivalry.”

“Oh, I say,” Mr. Sorrell said, “you oughtn’t to think of that sort of thing — men will be men, you know — and dissensions between husband and wife are very unpleasant. As for myself, I detest family quarrels. They just lead to everybody being hurt, and nobody gaining the value of a centime.”

“Ah!” the Lady Blanche said, “if I can only think how, I will have such a revenge!...”

“Oh, but my beautiful and dear lady,” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed, “that is a most unfortunate frame of mind to have got into. Just let us see if I can’t help you with your business affairs, and then you’ll feel better. You can get up some little fêtes — things like tennis tournaments with your neighbours — that will make the time pass more easily.”

“Tournaments!” the lady exclaimed, for in her turn she had not understood more of Mr. Sorrell’s French than that one word. “Why, that is a very splendid inspiration.”

They passed at that moment under the great archway, and came into the courtyard, which was all in shadow because of its very high walls.

“Now I will take you to your bath,” the lady said. “I hope you will clean yourself very well, for in order to do you honour I will have you eat out of the same plate as myself at supper to-night.”

CHAPTER IX.

THE armed men all around them had dispersed at the voice of the page Jehan, and the Lady Blanche was directing Mr. Sorrell’s steps towards the gate of the large keep. In the middle of the courtyard it frowned, a great mass of stone, towering high up above the surrounding walls.

“But, look here,” Mr. Sorrell said in English, “isn’t it about time this pageant business came to an end? I am always anxious to oblige, but I’ve really got business on hand that makes me want to get up to town as quickly as possible.”

The Lady Blanche shook her head, and then the two ladies attendant upon her came upon them. They were somewhat out of breath, for they had not been able to keep step with the armed men.

“Ladies,” the Lady Blanche said, “it is very negligent of you not to have attended on me better; but take now this holy man to his bath, and attend upon him with all the diligence that you may, for such an excellent man as this is not often seen, and he has put into my head such an idea as, by God’s grace, shall win us great honour, and redound for ever to the ridicule of our abominable men-folk.”

All these things seemed to move somewhat too fast for Mr. Sorrell exactly to get the hang of them. He had a vague idea that he ought to put his foot down and insist upon some sort of explanation, but his feet were quite literally the weakest part of him, and on the rough paving of the courtyard they betrayed him at every step. He felt that he was being gently coerced by people who were the most amiable in the world, but by people who did not pay the least attention to any of his desires or even to any of his words. The Lady Blanche had already, with her swift and determined gait, entered the arched door of the Inner Keep, the pendant cloth from her high steeple hat fluttering bravely behind her. The bowmen and pikemen had mostly disappeared into what appeared to be the stony hollows of the great walls. But he had the feeling that all sorts of shaggy and tousled heads were peering at them out of crevices and crannies that formed the windows in the immense cliff of stone that shut them all in. A certain grimness, a certain ugliness rather astonished Mr. Sorrell; he could not see why if people could afford to build a castle like this, they could not equally afford to beautify it. But there were no rose bushes on the bare stone of the wall; there was no ampeloposis; there was not even any ivy. It was all straight up and down hard, grey stone, so that he had the feeling of being at the bottom of an immense well; whilst far up above them a flag of red and white chequers fluttered lazily against the blue sky.

The two ladies led him slowly forward; he was limping painfully, for his feet had become decidedly tender. Thus before he knew exactly where he was, he was being led up three stone steps into an immensely large, draughty, and bare hall. The roof was vaulted, and had wooden beams across it very high up. The walls were quite bare, except that on the right-hand side, upon a sort of a platform ascending the wall and coming forward upon a square framework, was a broad and very long Turkey carpet “Well, that’s a daïs, anyhow,” Mr. Sorrell said to himself. “I know what that is.”

On each side of the daïs there protruded from the wall a lance, and from each lance depended a banner. The one was very faded and coloured light blue with stripes of pale yellow, the other was newer and with a pattern of red and white chequered. Against the right-hand side of the length of the hall some very long boards were laid, and beside them were upturned trestles and long wooden benches. In the left-hand further corner were a rusty plough, a number of spades, and perhaps twenty or thirty reaping hooks upon long staves. The windows along the outer side of the hall were without glass, arched and very tall, and barred with iron bars which had been painted red and white in chequers, like the banner to the right of the dais. Near the door there was a great untidy heap of rushes nearly as tall as a man, and this was being added to from the detritus of the rest of the stone floor by three other old women with long wooden rakes. At the same time, through a window at the farther end of the hall, three old women with pitchforks were shovelling new rushes from a cart that stood outside.

“Why, you’re tidying up a bit, I see,” said Mr. Sorrell pleasantly; “not before it was needed either. Look at all those bones! I suppose this is your salle-a-manger.” He said this by way of a joke, for he could not imagine that any people of distinction could, even for the sake of a pageant, sit down to eat in such a place. The flagstones of the floor were really disgustingly dirty, and there must be a tremendous draught from all the unglazed windows.

But the Lady Amoureuse, catching only the one word
manger
, hastened to assure him that very soon he should eat. The trumpet for washing hands would blow in a little half hour. The whiteness of this ‘holy man’s skin after so many days of travel evidenced that assuredly he had been under angelic protection — if, indeed, he had not actually been received up to heaven to rest himself after his journey from Palestine to Sandwich — or if, indeed, he was not actually an angel himself, who had been sent from heaven as a distinguished mark of favour to the very high and noble family of Egerton of Tamworth. She understood next that this very holy man positively desired clothes and linen. She made out at least those words from the odd perversion of French French that he insisted on speaking. This appeared to her a singular desire; for his single white garment, long and spotless in its purity, seemed to her to be exactly appropriate for one who came bearing the holy cross which St. Joseph of Arimathea had fashioned from the gold of the money-changers in the temple. Why should he desire the ordinary and vile clothes of mankind, when he had himself this garment of a whiteness so peculiar, of a smoothness so alluring, and of an unknown and possibly celestial fabric? But there could not be any doubt that this holy man was persistently and even with agitation demanding clothes before he ate. She commanded, therefore, the Lady Blanchemain to go to their lady and mistress, and to put before her this singular demand.

The Lady Blanchemain grumbled ominously. She said that it was exactly like the Lady Amoureuse, with her pallid beauty, to insist upon being left alone with anybody of any distinction who chanced to be in her vicinity. But, with a haughty indifference, the Lady Amoureuse informed her that this was a command from a feudal superior to an inferior. She was forced to do her duty: the holy man desired clothes. And reluctantly the little Lady Blanchemain ran over the dirty floor of the hall to come to their mistress as soon as might be.

Holding his hand very gently, the Lady Amoureuse led Mr. Sorrell across the gloomy hall through a little door and out into the warm sunshine of an inner court. Here in the walls there were many doors, for it was in this courtyard that there were the kitchens. A pile of the skins of cattle lay in one corner of the yard, and all the ground was clammy and noisome with vestiges of the slaughter of beasts and of cookery. The stench was almost intolerable to Mr. Sorrell, though the Lady Amoureuse counteracted it quite equably by holding to her nose a small bag of lawn filled with dry cloves, lavender, peppercorns, and spices, which was hung round her waist by a silken cord. A narrow causeway of white stones ran across this evil ground, and in the farthest corner of the courtyard was a great wooden vat standing high upon a platform. To this there ascended wooden steps, and the Lady Amoureuse informed Mr. Sorrell that here was his bath. The agitation which ensued in the holy man she was not at all able to understand. She told him that it was a very efficient bath, and the soap which would be brought was of the very best that could be had of the best soap-boiler in Coventry, whilst the towels were soft and fine. The warm water, she pointed out, ran along a wooden conduit from an upper room of the castle, when it was heated and poured in by scullions. Mr. Sorrell halted resolutely some yards from this large structure, whilst the Lady Amoureuse called out for a page with towels and soap. The little Jehan with his long curls came hastening. He stepped past them on the causeway, the towels floating over his arm, the soap upon a wooden platter. He approached the bath, and setting the soap down upon the steps, he pulled out with all his force the large peg at the bottom of the tub. A spout of water splashed out and added to the unpleasant moisture of the sunlit court. The Lady Amoureuse explained to the holy man that this bath was always kept filled with clean water — firstly that it should be sweet, and secondly that the wood of it should not start in the heat of the sun. Such a bath as this was not known to be elsewhere in Christendom except at the Court of the French King. It was Sir Enguerrand dé Coucy who had insisted on setting it up. And his lady took great pride in it, though she feigned she was utterly averse from all new and polite ideas, holding that knights and pages should bathe themselves in the old-fashioned manner in such streams, ponds, and rivers as the countryside afforded.

In the warm sunlight an ineffable bliss descended upon the Lady Amoureuse. It seemed to radiate from the holy man; it seemed to radiate from the gleaming and sacred emblem that he held depending from his finger. Here at last she who had lived for so long an insignificant life in this dull castle, subjected to the insults and jealous caprices of a mistress who hated her as well for her mind as for her looks — here at last there was come to her a holy man protected by angels and bearing a relic more sacred than all the feretories of Salisbury itself could show.

“And, O, holy man,” she exclaimed, “if it is not permitted to me to show you such honour as should be accorded to great and gallant knights and to strangers of very high degree, blame not me but the lady who is my mistress, and who sets her face against all that is new and polite and the fashion of the day. For in all places now throughout Christendom, when a knight of highness has travelled far and comes to a castle, he is very softly and ceremoniously entreated. Thus if I had my will, I should kneel at your feet and bathe them with warm water, I should anoint them with the most precious salves and ointments that the castle affords. But so vigorous is our lady and mistress in her determination to set her face against all new and gentle usages that I must be gone, leaving you to anoint and tend yourself, to stand behind the palisade which is beyond the bath, and to hand you your garments as you have need of them. And this is the folly of our lady and mistress, who thinks that thus is a better discipline obtained. As if it were not manifest that that is the best usage and the most sure discipline which teaches us to be courteous and gentle in the proper fashion of our own day.”

And having said this, the Lady Amoureuse went back along the causeway and picked her steps gently. At this moment, too, the Lady Blanchemain came out from the door in the corner of the courtyard, having behind her two pages each smaller than the little Jehan, and each bearing a quantity of wearing apparel. The Lady Amoureuse was able to marshal Lady Blanchemain and the pages upon the comparatively dry path that ran along the wall of the courtyard. Thus the Lady Amoureuse had the added gratification of shepherding the little Lady Blanchemain away from her holy man, and of seeing the glances of vexation that the little fair woman threw at the palisade which finally hid them from view.

The little page Jehan had climbed the steps and was now in the great bath, and Mr. Sorrell was relieved to observe that so large was that vat, that it entirely hid the page from view. It seemed to him possible, therefore, that he might be able to perform his ablutions without any embarrassments from these people, who seemed to him as shockingly lacking in, any sense of decency as of sanitation. He mounted the steps and peered down into the bath. The little page with a hogshair brush was engaged in cleaning the wooden sides and bottom.

“I don’t understand,” Mr. Sorrell addressed him, “why in the world you take such a lot of trouble over washing yourself, when you keep the courtyard in such a disgustingly filthy state?”

The little page looked at him with large and serious blue eyes.

“Ick han ne Greek,” he exclaimed gently.

“Oh, well,” Mr. Sorrell said, “I wasn’t asking you to speak Greek, though I suppose that as it’s part of the play that I’m supposed to be a Greek slave, I may be expected to speak it.”

Mr. Sorrell, indeed, had made up his mind that he was just going to speak ordinary English. It wasn’t very much against his will that he was taking part in these absurd proceedings; he rather enjoyed it. It was like being taken behind the scenes of a theatre; but he did not see why in strict privacy he should not speak his natural tongue, which the page, in spite of his pretending ignorance, must perfectly well understand. To satisfy himself as to all the circumstances, however, he stepped over the side of the bath and into it. He was relieved to find that the wooden breastwork formed by its sides came nearly as high as his chin, and upon looking round the stony walls of the castle he could see no window that commanded a view of him. On the other hand, when he looked downwards over the palisade he noticed that his head at least was in full view of the Ladies Amoureuse and Blanchemain and the two little pages.

“We are all ready,” the Lady Blanchemain said in her barbarous French, “to hand you up your clothes.”