Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (402 page)

“My lord, the pilgrim,” he said, “will be pleased to seat himself for his coifing and the care of his hands.”

“By Jove!” Mr. Sorrell said, “it’s a regular barber’s shop.”

And then he perceived that the Ladies Blanchemain and Amoureuse were approaching him side by side along the causeway, being followed by the two smaller pages carrying basins of silver, silver flasks, towels, combs, and various implements that he could not very well understand.

They surrounded him in a sort of busy swarm, and first the little Jehan shaved him with an extreme dexterity and then, approaching him with a large silver comb, the Lady Blanchemain delicately combed out his hair, parting it down the centre and leaving a fringe over his forehead. Then one of the other little pages, with an air of serious reverence similar to the little Jehan’s, slung round his waist a loose silver belt supporting a small dagger in a red velvet sheath. The other little page slung round his neck a long gold chain, which supported a pomander. And the Lady Amoureuse approached him, having on the one hand one little boy with a basin and towels, and, on the other the other page with silver flasks and little silver knives.

“I say,” Mr. Sorrell protested, for the Lady Amoureuse appeared to him to be of great beauty and obviously high social status, “this doesn’t appear to be
your
work.” But he resigned himself; it appeared all to go by rote.

She knelt on the bottom step before him, and on each side stood one of the little pages. She placed his hands in the silver basin, not without exclaiming rapturously at their whiteness, their smallness considering he was a man, and the delicacy of their shape. She washed them very carefully with a white kind of soap; she poured over them waters that smelt of cummin and mint. And then selecting the little silver knives, she carefully pared his nails and polished them till they shone like pink pebbles, her fingers holding his with an intense softness which was exceedingly gratifying to Mr. Sorrell.

“And surely,” the Lady Amoureuse exclaimed, “it is not such a hand that shall disgust our lady and mistress when it comes into her plate.”

“But I don’t put my hands into other people’s plates,” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed.

“And be very careful,” the Lady Amoureuse continued, “that you do not pat upon the head the dogs that lie under the table before you have finished eating, for nothing can be more disgusting to a person of high stomach. And this I tell you, for we have seen it done by many very excellent knights coming from Palestine, such as the Sieur Walter de Marney himself, for in other countries they have other customs, but this is our custom here.”

And then, taking it from the little Jehan, she placed upon his head a small round cap of red velvet, edged with white fur. Round the cap was a chaplet of the largest pearls that Mr. Sorrell had ever seen, and from within, round the hinder sides, there depended a half-circle of long golden curls.

“Oh, I say,” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed when he had it on, “I’m not going to be made to wear a wig. Nobody in the world shall ever make me wear a wig. I never did at a fancy dress ball, I never will now.”

The Lady Blanchemain exclaimed with pleasure, but a tender and regretful dismay came over the Lady Amoureuse’s features.

“This is the latest fashion of Paris,” she said, “to wear the hair very long and curled. And our Lord Enguerrand de Coucy, being always inclined to gallantry and chivalry, wears himself this hair because he is slightly bald.”

“Oh, yes, my dear lady,” Mr. Sorrell said; “but the latest Paris fashions are all very well for women; they don’t do for men.”

He took the cap off and handed it to the little Jehan.

“Just take that hair out,” he said, “there’s a good nipper.”

The Lady Blanchemain smiled. “It is our good lady and mistress that will be pleased with this, for she is always against these new and foreign customs, and desires the simple old ways of her father before her. And those curls have been the occasion of much dissension between our lord and our lady.”

“Well, I’m always glad to be on the side of the ladies,” Mr. Sorrell said cheerfully, “though,” he added to the Lady Amoureuse, “I’m sorry I can’t oblige you in this.”

The Lady Amoureuse took him gently by the hand and led him down the step. And the Lady Blanchemain approached him with her pink and white cheek extended towards him.

“What’s the matter now?” Mr. Sorrell said, and, little and small and gay, the Lady Blanchemain laughed aloud.

“Why, first you shall kiss me, as being the less in degree, and then the Lady Amoureuse, and this is the requital of our services for waiting on and attending you.” —

“Oh, well, I’m sure I’ve not the slightest objection,” Mr. Sorrell said, and he kissed her cheerfully, first on the right side, then on the left.

The Lady Amoureuse, however, would have him kiss her upon the lips, and indeed she almost swooned in ecstasy at the embrace of this holy stranger, who appeared now like a prince in glory.

“Well, upon my soul,” Mr. Sorrell said, “these times aren’t half as barbarous as I thought.”

But then his gaze went over the squalor and filth of the courtyard.

“I can’t understand,” he said once more, “how it is since you are so polite and accomplished in yourselves, that you can put up with such dirt in your surroundings.”

The Lady Blanchemain laughed again.

“Would you have us wash down and clear our courtyards every day in the week?” she said. “That is done here once a year, when we move to our lord’s other castle, near Christchurch.”

“But, really,” Mr. Sorrell said, “it must be most unhealthy, and it’s surely disgusting to look at.”

The Lady Amoureuse regarded him with wide and apologetic eyes.

“Oh, holy man,” she said, “it would be beyond human strength to imitate the spotless whiteness of the courts of heaven, where there is neither eating nor drinking. Consider that you are amongst the mortal inhabitants of this earth; not even the palaces of the French King are cleaned more often than once a year, and there the greatest of politeness prevails, such as is not known in any other Court of Christendom.”

Her eyes roved round over the courtyard, over heaps of straw and the rushes that had been thrown out from the great hall, over the skins of beasts, the offal, the mud, and the green slime....

“Why,” she said, “there is very little disorder here! I would have you see such a courtyard in time of siege. It is a very different sight, with all things thrown pellmell.”

“But the stench!” Mr. Sorrell expostulated. “The want of any sanitary arrangements!”

“Oh, holy man,” the Lady Amoureuse said, “for the stench it is very little, if anything at all, and you may easily counteract it by holding your pomander to your nose.”

And the Lady Blanchemain laughed again.

“In the name of the Seven Saints of the Brehon!” she exclaimed, “these things must lie somewhere.”

“But what I’m contending,” Mr. Sorrell said, “is that they ought to lie where you can’t see them.”

“But if they have to be,” the Lady Blanchemain said, “and if we know that they have to be, why should we not see them, for there is nothing more disgusting in the sight of the hide of a beast than in the sight of its flesh smoking upon the board, and in this way our forefathers have lived healthy and lusty ever since William the Norman first built castles in this land?”

“Oh, well,” Mr. Sorrell said, “I suppose you can score that point, for there’s no doubt that in the old days of ‘Merrie England’ we were much stronger and healthier, whereas we’re a degenerate lot nowadays.”

“That is very true,” the little Jehan said bravely. “I have heard that in the old days there were knights who could fell an ox with a blow of their fist. There are very few that to-day could do that thing.”

“Yes, it’s all the crowding into towns that’s done it,” Mr. Sorrell said.

The sun in setting was sending great shafts of blood-red light over the tower of the keep and the upper walls of the eastern side of the castle, so that everything there appeared to be rosy and beautiful. And at that moment a bell began to ring, and suddenly all of them fell upon their knees where they stood.

“They certainly do seem to be the most extraordinary set of people,” Mr. Sorrell said, as he followed their example out of a desire not to seem conspicuous. “You never know what they’ll be doing next.”

A little time afterwards a number of high, clear calls came from the horn at the head of the tower.

“That will be the Lady Dionissia approaching. In a few minutes the trumpet for washing hands will blow.”

“Dear me!” Mr. Sorrell observed, “there doesn’t seem to be any end to all this washing.”

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

DURING all this time Mr. Sorrell had kept the golden cross attached to his little finger by the ring that was on top of it. He could not attach any particular supernatural value to its possession; but he had a very definite feeling that as long as he kept hold of it he was a personage of importance, and, since it fitted on to his finger really very well, he did not intend even to put it in his pocket. For the matter of that, he could not discover any pocket in the close-fitting garment that he wore, and he could only suppose that the gentleman who usually went about in these clothes was attended upon by pages, who carried such trifles as his pocket-handkerchief, or whatever it was that he carried instead of these necessaries. It seemed to him besides that this was the proper thing to do, even if he were merely acting in a pageant.

On the other hand, it was certainly his line if the things that he saw going on about him were what you might call authentic. For Mr. Sorrell disliked putting it to himself that he was back in the Middle Ages. It sounded ridiculous, it sounded laughable, and although he was fully prepared to take things exactly as he found them, and to accept the idea that he was back in the fourteenth century if there was no other way out of it, he was quite determined to leave no stone unturned in the effort to detect any flaw in the proceedings of these people. On the face of it they had appeared perfectly convincing, but he thought he might be able to trip them up in some anachronism. For instance, at dinner they might be supplied with artificial lemonade sent down by some caterer from London. Or they might be given New Zealand mutton. He was pretty certain that he would be able to detect the flavour of either of these things. Or, on the other hand, he might discover one of the supers smoking a surreptitious pipe behind a battlement; or, since the castle contained such a very high tower as the central watch-tower of the keep, it was possible that there might even be a lift.

For he remembered that at Braby Castle, in Suffolk, where he had once spent a week-end, the Isaac Goldsteins, when they had been making their restorations had included one of these modern facilities in their architect’s design. These reflections occurred to Mr. Sorrell when he had paused half-way up the interminable, narrow, winding, and very dark staircase up which the little page Jehan was conducting him, as he understood, to have an interview with the Lady Blanche d’Enguerrand de Coucy before the dinner-bell rang. Mr. Sorrell wished indeed that he had come upon some traces of a lift. He was leaning against a stone beside the opening of a very narrow window in a very broad wall. He held in his hand the shoe portions of his leg-gear, for he had found it utterly impossible, with those obtrusions before him, to climb the exceedingly narrow triangular steps that wound away up into a very profound darkness. He could not do it, and upon the whole he was relieved to be informed by the little Jehan that the great lords and knights of that day invariably climbed stairs in what Mr. Sorrell would have called their stockinged feet, if his lower garments had not been all one piece.

The little Jehan indeed informed him that Father Bavo thundered unceasingly from his pulpit in Salisbury against this monstrous fashion of nobles, who were daily becoming more idle, more dissolute, and more extravagant.

The landing upon which Mr. Sorrell stayed to recover his breath was dimly lit by its window, which was, however, no more than a slit in the wall, and the whole staircase had a damp, musty, and sepulchral odour which reminded Mr. Sorrell of the Twopenny Tube at the time of its opening. The diffused and feeble ray of light fell upon the pleasant form of the little Jehan, who with his candid blue eyes, his golden curls, and his little ragged, furred doublet, stood seriously at attention and gazed at him. Mr. Sorrell felt a real liking for this little lad, and asked him pleasantly where he went to school.

He found that when he talked French very slowly and distinctly the little boy understood him very well, as long as his sentences were short. And the little boy had such a fluting and grave voice that he himself had little difficulty in understanding his answers. Jehan answered that the Manage fields were about a bowshot to the west of the castle, and the elder pages did their dismounted exercises with sword and lance in the great hall after the boards were cleared. Mr. Sorrell said he did not mean that; he meant the sort of school where you went to learn the three R’s and geography and things.

“Ah! sir,” the little page said, “we do not have schools for such things, though, without doubt, they are many and excellent in the land from which your pilgrimship comes. But I have been taught by Brother Squerry, so that I can write my name fairly, and can read a passage in the Book of Hours, if I know beforehand what that passage is. And this much I have learned, in order to have benefit of clergy in case I should fall into any crime.”

Mr. Sorrell laughed so loudly that the sounds echoed up and down the darkness of the stairway.

“You commit a crime!” he said. “Why, I don’t believe you’d whip a cat.”

“Ah! sir,” the page said, “I don’t know why I should desire to whip a cat, nor do I know that it would be a crime to do it. But this I know, it is my desire to be a great and gallant knight, such as have been written of in the Chronicles and in Holy Writ. A great knight, being a man of hot blood, will come sometimes to commit crimes against the law, or, by taking arms for one King when another deposes him, he is discovered to be guilty of treason. And this was seen very clearly in the case of our late King, that was put away and murdered with a horn in Berkeley Castle this very year, and many knights and great lords that were of the late King’s party have been put to death very cruelly — though without doubt they deserved it — by the Queen Mother of the present King, who is a little boy not much older than I, but much more worshipful. And for those poor dead knights and lords, it would have been very well if they could have pleaded benefit of the clergy.”

Mr. Sorrell laughed again.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose your mother and father know their business best, but it seems a droll way to bring up a child to have such ideas.”

“These matters,” the little Jehan said gravely, “are above my head. It is for me to do what my parents command and to make no bones about it.”

“Why, so it is, sonny,” Mr. Sorrell said; “but I should think a year or two upon the modern side of a good public school without any classical tomfoolery would be a great deal better for you.”

The little boy was too respectful to offer any further comments, and they began once more to climb the dark stairs.

In spite of the dampness and the chill, Mr. Sorrell became intolerably warm. He brushed against the rough stones of the wall, he stumbled and hurt his feet against the hard stairs. After an immensely long time, they came into a room which Mr. Sorrell, whilst once more he paused to take breath, considered must be a servant’s bedroom. There was a large chest at the bottom of the bed, and across the bed itself a great covering of the red fur of foxes.

“This,” the little Jehan said, “is my lady’s bower.”

“Now is it?” Mr. Sorrell asked. “I always thought a bower was a summer-house. I suppose your Lady Blanche is going in for an open-air cure, because there’s no glass in the windows. The air must be very good up here.”

“I do not fully understand what you say,” the little Jehan said; “but this is my lady’s bower.”

“Well, you said that before,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “and I was only uttering my observations.”

When they came to the tiny little stairway that ascended from the room, Mr. Sorrell exclaimed:

“I do wish your architect had made some allowance for persons of my figure.”

But the little page did not hear him.

The Lady Blanche was leaning out of the battlements, watching the approach of the Lady Dionissia and her train that, very far below, wound slowly along beside the River Wiley.

“It is natural,” she grumbled to herself with an air of vexation, “that to-night she comes with more armed men than usual.”

She counted carefully, and could perceive the Lady Dionissia in yellow and green, two ladies in scarlet that attended upon her, all these three being upon white horses. And there were two priests and thirteen men-at-arms, as well as five pages that ran beside the horses. This gave the Lady Dionissia eighteen armed retainers as against the Lady Blanche’s thirty; but, on the other hand, the Lady Dionissia had ten very able-bodied Welsh pikemen amongst her eleven men-at-arms, and these ten alone, once they were inside, would be sufficient to take the whole castle from the Lady Blanche’s retainers, so weakened were these by dysentery and summer coughs. The Lady Dionissia had this good fortune, because these ten Welshmen had been part of the guard that had come down with her in her bridal tour from the Welsh Marches. Without doubt, had her contracted husband Egerton of Tamworth not already set out for the Scotch wars, he would have taken the Lady Dionissia’s men to fight under his banner. But as it was, the Lady Dionissia had come a full three weeks too late, having been impeded by the great floods of the River Severn. So that she had never even seen her husband to whom she had been married by proxy already three months. She had in exchange what was at the moment more valuable, these ten able-bodied fighting-men, who were reported to be extraordinarily ferocious and devoted to their mistress.

The Lady Blanche had in her mind a problem of how to retain in her own keeping alike the holy cross of St. Joseph of Arimathea and the holy and mysterious personage who had brought it to her. Her first impulse had been to close the castle gates against the Lady Dionissia. and to repel even with arms any attempt that she and her men might make to enter.

But, on the one hand, she had to consider the ferocity of her Welsh men-at-arms, who were said to be able to run up precipices, sticking to them like flies. She had, besides, to consider the probable return from the war of her husband and of Egerton of Tamworth. Her husband and his cousin loved each other with the deep love of boon companions, so that if upon their return they should find their respective castles warring the one upon the other, she would certainly have to face her husband’s anger. For that she cared very little, but it had to be further considered that Egerton of Tamworth would probably desire to espouse the quarrel of his wife, the Lady Dionissia.

On the other hand, her own husband, who was exceedingly hot-headed, would probably take up her own quarrel, if only because he too would desire to retain possession of the golden cross, if not of the holy man. There would thus arise almost certainly a private war between the two castles. And this would be a very costly and extravagant affair, lasting perhaps for a couple of years, during which, since they would not be able to get any crops in, both combatants would have to have continual recourse to the Jew Goldenface of Salisbury. Force, therefore,’ was almost out of the question, though she would dearly have loved to use force, which was more in her character than any kind of guile.

That it should ever occur to her not to attempt to obtain possession of this relic, which was plainly not her own but the property of her cousin of Tamworth, was out of the question. In the hardier old times of which she had heard her grandfather and father speak, and to which she felt herself to belong — in those times she would calmly have killed the bearer of the cross, and have hidden the cross itself in the stones of the wall of her bower for two or three years. But nowadays that sort of thing was growing too troublesome, if not too dangerous, for it would signify endless lawsuits, the expense of which she dreaded almost more than anything in the world. But if she could get possession of the cross, she certainly meant to do it.

In the first place, it was of gold, so that it was desirable; in the second place, it was miraculous, so that to possess it would make her very much looked up to throughout the whole of England, or, for the matter of that, throughout the whole of Christendom: and to render herself notorious along economical lines was the chief desire of this lady’s life.

Thus it was with great eagerness that, hearing the sound of voices behind her, she turned upon Mr. Sorrell. He was putting on his shoes, and the little page Jehan was explaining to him that although getting upstairs was impossible in these garments, descending was perfectly easy, as Mr. Sorrell could reason out for himself. She sent the little page immediately downstairs to wait for them in her bower, and at once she tackled Mr. Sorrell.

“It is about this cross,” she said. “It is a very valuable and holy cross.”

Mr. Sorrell replied that he believed that it was both these things, and very ancient to boot.

“Has it not occurred to you,” the lady asked, “to think that you might be very easily killed, and the cross stolen from you by robbers?”