Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (533 page)

“I am Lord Lovell,” he got his answer, “get up and kiss my foot, for that is your duty.”

He looked down at the man whilst he did his homage and said with an aspect of grimness:

“Ay, Hugh Raket, if you were not my horse-boy’s brother you would be a poorer man and I a richer!” The man looked up at his lord with an impudent shade on his face that had a thin beard. It was true that he had not many times done either suit or service since the field of Kenchie’s Burn, for so surely did a Court Baron come round so surely would Hugh Raket be away on the hills after a strayed sow or goose, and Richard, his brother, would beg him off from the Young Lovell. Nevertheless, from time to time, the Young Lovell would take a couple or two of hens from him by force, for this was a very impudent family, and if they had the land scot-free and lot-free for a few years they were such fellows as would swear it was their free-holding — gay fellows they were, both brothers, but they had always a wet mouth for the main chance:

“Friend Raket,” his lord said now, “that you are a very capable cozener I have known very well ever since your brother aided me upon the field. But, if you are upon Belfordtrod, catch you hold of my stirrup leather and you may have its aid as far as that town is. And, if hidden hereabouts — for you hold this land of me — you have any sword or crossbow or pike or such arms as naughty knaves like you are forbidden to have, you may go dig it up and bring it to me and I will look the other way. For, since I came out of my prison I have no arms at all, and it is not meet or seemly that I should ride unarmed.”

The husbandman looked keenly at his lord; for, since Bosworth Field, the King had ordered that none of the simple people, unless they bought a licence at the cost of one pound English, should carry more arms than a short knife.

“Friend Raket,” his lord said, “I think I can find thy arms as well as thou canst, for well I know this terrain, and they lie in a stone chest over beside that holed rock. But, if you will fetch them for me, giving me the sword and carrying for me the crossbow and for thyself the pike, I will call thee my man-at-arms, and so you shall have licence to keep all the arms you will in your own steading, which shall much comfort you when you think of the false Scots in the night-time.” And at that, calling out, “O joy!” and ducking his head between his hands, the fellow ran over the ling to a great stone with a round hole in it that maidens were accustomed to pass their hands through up to the elbow to show their lovers or bridegrooms that they were pure. He knelt down beside this stone.

The Young Lovell sat on his horse in the summer weather. He gave one great sigh and gazed upon the blue sea behind and below him and the green plain before and on a level. The husbandman came back to him. Upon his head he had a cap of steel; over his back a small target was slung; in his left hand he held a pike with a steel head three foot long and armed with a hook such as the common sort use in battles to pull knights from off their horses. Bundled together in his arms were a Genoese cross-bow, a great sword and a little dagger, whilst slung across his back was a leather bag filled with such heavy steel quarrels and bolts as should fit the cross-bow. These arms Hugh Raket and his fellows used when they went raiding into the Scots or the Middle or the Western Marches; for they cared little whom they journeyed upon; even, when they heard that the Scots marched with a strong body upon Carlisle or the Debateable Lands they would take a hand with the Scots and bring back what they could.

And without any manner of doubt these arms — the knight’s great sword and dagger which were a pair, and the Genoese bow — had been taken in a foray when the Lord Dacre was Warden of the Middle Marches and had some Genoese and many gentlemen to help him, though he had not made much of it. The little target had certainly been taken from the Scots, for it was such a one as the Murrays and the Macleods use, being not much larger than a cheese-top with many bosses and bubbles. But the pike and the steel cap this fellow might have made himself, for they were rude enough.

He stood looking up at his lord with a face of anxious roguery, but the Young Lovell never heeded him till the husbandman spoke; he was gazing to northward as if his eyes would start from his head.

The man continued watching his lord and thinking his thoughts as to where that lord had been until he spoke and asked the Young Lovell whether he should indeed have leave to bear all these weapons and be a man-at-arms. The Young Lovell came out of his reverie and said:

“Yes, yes; ye shall be my man-at-arms.” And then he said: “Give me the great sword and the dagger. I will make them serve as arms enough till we come to Belford.”

The bondsman was intent upon his own bargaining. “Then if I be a man-at-arms,” he said, “I shall no longer be a bondsman.”

“If you will give me back your lands, that is so,” said his lord. He was buckling on his sword and he hung the dagger from the belt. He drew the sword from the scabbard to see that it was not rusted in, and it came out very easily, for it had been lately greased.

“It is not very long since you used this sword in gentle feats of arms,” the Young Lovell said.

“For using it,” the man said, “I will not say that; cudgels and stones proved enough.”

“Well, you shall tell me,” Young Lovell said. “But now take my stirrup leather and let us go to Belford, for the sun is high.”

The man took the stirrup, and whilst he ran lightly beside the great horse over the ling and the mosshags he called, a little coyly, his story up to his lord. It was a long tale, or he made it so, for there was a great deal to tell as to how a Milburn called Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock had called the bondsmen of the Castle Lovell together, and of how they had said that in the absence of the Young Lovell they would pay no heriots, nor yet hens, nor yet bolls of wheat. So, when the bailiff of the Castle had come among their steadings and had sought to take heriots for the death of the Lord Lovell and tythes in hens and pence, they had greeted him at first civilly and had asked to see the charters and papers of their lands, saying that that was the custom upon the death of the lord.

That had occasioned some delay, since the charters and papers had all been taken to Cullerford, to the tower of Sir Walter Limousin that had married the Young Lovell’s sister, the Lady Isopel. So a strong guard was sent to Cullerford and brought the charters back for the time. At beat of drum the charters, customs, the number of the rent-hens and such things had been read out by the bailiff and the lawyer called Stone, standing upon a little mound at the head of the village. From here these things had been read from time immemorial, even to the oldest ages when it had been called the Wise Men’s Talking-place. The lawyer Stone had told them that the heritage of the old Lovell had fallen to those three, the Decies, called now Young Lovell and the husbands of the ladies Isopel and Douce. They had, the lawyer read, fyled a suit against the late Young Lovell for sorcery, at a Warden’s Court held in the Debateable Land on St. Mark’s Day last gone. Since the Young Lovell had not appeared, that bill had been fouled and those three had taken his lands and all he had. And the lawyer Slone, standing upon that mound had bidden them go back to their byres and, peaceably, to do suit and service and pay their heriots and rent-hens and bolls of corn and the rest.

Then Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock, his friend, and Robert Raket, had answered for the other bondsmen that they would think upon it. Then the three of them had ridden to Lucker, where there was a lawyer called Shurstanes, and had taken counsel with him. So when, upon the morrow, the bailiff of that Castle came again, those three cunning ones had met him courteously, and said that, for a suit of sorcery, a Warden’s Court could not foul or find a bill. It must go before a court of the Bishop Palatine. They had great respect for the Lord Warden, but so it was and his court was only for raidings in the Marches. And for the dispossession of a barony that could only be tried (after the Bishop’s Court in Durham had found a true bill of sorcery) in an assize of the King’s justices travelling, Alnwick or wheresoever it might be. And any such finding of the assize court must be ratified by the most dreadful King of England in council before ever the Young Lovell could be dispossessed of his lands.

And those three cunning men had further answered the bailiff that they were very willing to pay rent-hens and tythes and heriots and pence and whatever was rightfully to be had of them. But first they must be assured of what the King said in his council. Else the Young Lovell, coming again, might have it all of them a second time, and that, being poor men, they could not well abide.

Then the bailiff went back to the Castle — he was not the old bailiff of the Lord Lovell who had been cast out of his dwelling in the King’s Tower and had gone to live at Beal — but it was a new bailiff that Sir Walter Vesey had brought from Haltwhistle, where he had been a surveyor’s clerk.

But, in three days, the bailiff had issued again from the Castle and had gone to the byres of the poor widow of Martin Taylor, having about him ten pikemen for his protection.

Then Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock and Richard Raket considered that if this thing were done, even upon the poorest of them, it might well serve as a precedent. They had called together all the bondsmen and their sons, and the number of sixty-seven men and all the women had come, being ninety in number, and the more noisy because it was a woman and a widow that the bailiff sought to oppress. So they had thrown stones at the pikemen who were bearing off the widow’s donkey, and had broken out the bailiff’s teeth, and driven them all back to the Castle.

And, in expectation that the bailiff should come again with a greater force, they had fetched from their hiding-places all their arms, and had them ready. But the people from the Castle never came again; without doubt they thought they were not strong enough; the bondsmen of Castle Lovell were all very notable reivers and fighting men.

Thus, if Sir Walter and Limousin and the Decies came out with such forces as they had, it was very likely — nay it was certain — that the men who were in the White Tower and still faithful to the Young Lovell would issue behind them into the Castle with their cannons, and so, if they might not take the Castle they might at least set free the Lady Rohtraut, and have her away by sea; for they of the Castle had no boats, and no fisherman would help them.

The Young Lovell listened as attentively as he might to what Hugh Raket had to say, and, at the end of the story, they were come to the hill top where the heather and marshy ground ceased. They saw before them great plains of green grass with people going about everywhere, and there getting their hay. And a little way away there were going, along a trodden road, some ten armed men and another amongst them, all on horseback.

So the Lord Lovell kept himself apart, but sent Hugh Raket to look who these men were that went abroad upon his lands. Before him, but a little to the right was the town of Belford, but the monastery, with its great church and its great tower just in building, was a little to the South, near the wood called Newlands. Further to the South was the little hamlet of Lucker. He cast his eyes behind him and he frowned. For, apart from the sea and the sky, the two Castles and the islands set in foam, he had seen mostly the square tower of Glororum. A little company, in the clear weather, were riding out of this tower, and there the Lady Margaret dwelt. It seemed a weary thought to him since he remembered the lady with the crooked smile.

Hugh Raket came back to him and said that those ten men rode with a prisoner that had been convicted of theft in the Courts of the Nevilles. He had appealed to the Bishop’s Courts in Durham, and so they were taking him there. Hugh Raket thought that it was a folly to make such matter of a felon. Let them hang him to the first tree and ride back. For this appeal, before they had the thief strung up, should cost the Neville lord, for guards and victual and horsemeat and harbouring, nothing less than ten pounds which was a great sum of money, and a folly too.

He was of opinion that, if such great lords as the Nevilles and the Darceys and the Young Lovell suffered none to appeal from their courts, but hung every man that came before them, it would be much better; for then there would be none of this monstrous outlay that was for ever occurring, and the great lords could excuse their poor bondsmen their rent-hens and their suit and service.

The Lord Lovell made Hugh Raket tell all over again his story of how they had contended with the bailiff. For, the first time, he had not been very attentive. But now he bent his brows firmly on the face of this cunning bondsman and gave him all his mind. And then it speedily appeared to him that it was this fellow that had really moved in the resistance to the bailiff, and that Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock had had little to do with it, for they were simple, slow fellows. So the Young Lovell frowned upon Hugh Raket and called him a naughty knave, for the Young Lovell prized good order in his dominions above everything.