Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (540 page)

After he had watched the river and reflected a long time, for he was a slow thinker, adding point to point in his mind, to have as it were a strong platform on which to build, he heard a woman’s voice say highly: “I tell you, ah, gentle Princess, that there is no man more hated in these North parts, and if you will lend your sanction and your wealth we may speedily have down not only these robbers that hold your daughter imprisoned by his encouragement but also that flail of the North himself.”

Sir Bertram turned slowly on his elbow, leaning upon the sill and looked into the room. There he saw a monstrous beautiful young lady that kneeled with her voluminous rich gown all about her and held out her two hands towards the Princess whom he could not see. The Princess did not speak, and that lady held her peace, so that knight moved softly and deliberately forward, and when he was near the younger lady he asked her:

“Even who is this man who is so hated in the North parts?”

That young lady looked at him with astonished lowering and resentful eyes, as much as to say, who was he that he should ask her such a question? The Princess had been leaning back in her chair with both elbows upon the arms and a hand caressing her chin, for all the world as if she had been an old man considering a knotty point. But, when she saw Sir Bertram and heard his voice, she said hastily and harshly:

“Get up, child and your ladyship. It is not decent that a lady of high rank and my kinswoman should be spoken to kneeling by a Cornish knight of nowhere and yesterday, God help me, if he be ten times a King’s spy!” And so she bade the lady, who was the Lady Margaret of Glororem, to fetch a stool from a corner of the room and set it by her throne on the step. And there she had the Lady Margaret sit beside her and that Sir Bertram fetch off his hat with the large feather and so stand before them. “For,” said she to that knight, “you may well be the King’s companion, but in this place the King’s writ does not run and I am a royal Princess and this is my cousin and niece.”

It was nonsense and a tyranny, but Sir Bertram did it with calmness. He cared little about forms when there was news to be had that could help him and only one old woman and one very beautiful and proud one before whom to abase himself. So he made an apology, saying that he had not known that lady to be of such high rank, she being in the dim room and not over plain to his eyes which had been gazing on the sunlight. He bent one knee and stood there composedly with his hat in his hands before him.

Then that old Princess, who had affected anger affected now a complaisance towards that gentleman. She spoke as follows, formally to the Lady Margaret:

“This Sir Bertram of Lyonesse,” she said,—”though God knows where Lyonesse is; I have heard it is some poor islands in Scilly or Cornwall or where you will, — so this Sir Bertram of Lyonesse is the King’s commissioner to inquire into the state of these North parts. And if you will ask me what make of a thing a commissioner is, I will answer you that he is what you and I and other simple folk do call a spy. But. the King calls him his commissioner and that is very well.”

She looked upon Sir Bertram maliciously to see -if he winced. But that knight turned his face composedly to the Lady Margaret.

“Ah, gentle lady,” said he, “you may count that for truth. I am here to find out what I can.”

The old Princess liked this Sir Bertram, in truth, very well. She counted him so low, on account of his obscure and distant birth and his former poverty, that she could jest with him as if he had been a peasant boy. She considered English lords as of so low a rank against her own that she thought not much about them, one with another, except may be it was the Dacres and their kin. So she was very glad to keep this Sir Bertram, if she could do it without trouble or expense, and have some amusement from it.

She turned upon the Lady Margaret and said again:

“You must know that, though in a concealed manner, this Sir Bertram is of great worth in the counsels of King Henry VII. Why this should be so, God knows, for one says one thing and one will say another. But so it is; in all matters in which a king may be advised this new knight rules the King.”

Then again Sir Bertram looked upon the Lady Margaret:

“Ah, gentle lady,” he said, “to dispel what may appear of mystery in this royal Princess’s account of me, let me say this — for I would not have you think evil of me: I have twice saved this King’s life, once by discovering assassins sent to murder him in France before he was King and once, since, at Windsor where I caught by the wrist a man with a knife that came behind him when he walked in the gardens. And I have farmed the King’s private lands to greater profit than came to him before and, having studied the art of fortifying of a pupil of the monk Olberitz that made most of the strong castles of France, I have designed or strengthened successfully certain strong places for this King. If I could say I had saved this King’s life in gallant battles I would rather say it, for it would gain me greater honour in your sight. But I am rather a man of the exchequer board than of the tented field. It is for caution, defence and prudence that the King trusts me rather than for things more gallant that should stir your pulse in the recital. I wish it were the other way, but that is not the truth of it.”

“Well, it is true what this knight says,” the old Princess confirmed him.
“
He has twice saved the King’s life by caution and has increased the King’s gear and so on. Now he is sent here as the King’s spy — the King’s reconciler or the King’s trumpeter or what you will. For his mission is to take a survey of these North parts first and then to prove to them that the King is a mild, loving, gracious and economical sovereign.”

“Well, that is my mission,” Sir Bertram said to the Lady Margaret, “and I hope I may do it.”

“I will tell you what I think of it,” the Lady Margaret said then, “as soon as I have your opinion on certain words I said two nights ago to Henry Percy, my cousin, Earl of Northumberland.”

“I shall hear them very gladly,” Sir Bertram answered.

Then, in her own way, the old Princess exposed all these matters to Sir Bertram of Lyonesse, how certain filthy rogues had taken prisoner her daughter Rohtraut, and the rest. Sir Bertram had heard all that before. The King had ordered him to travel to the North with the Princess of Croy, protecting her the better with his train and bearing a share of her expenses, so that he might the better make out the affairs of the Dacres, what was their wealth, who resorted to them, and whether they seemed to conspire with other rebels. And, upon the road, in three various towns, three delayed messengers had met the Princess of Croy, coming from that very Lady Margaret with broad letters in which she told the story of the things that passed at Castle Lovell. So Sir Bertram had heard most of the tale before, nevertheless he heard it very gladly again, more particularly as the Lady Margaret corrected the old Princess here and there and made things the plainer.

It was a very long congress that they held in that room with the vaulted ceiling and the painted walls, that were all sprays of leaves and dark green boskage with the figures of men and women in scarlets and whites and blues, holding bows and fowling nets and fish nets and falcons. For, when the Princess had told that story she was impatient to know, but with sarcastic and hard words, what this adviser of the King would advise her to do. For her own part, she said, it was her purpose to go with a small train, and unarmed, up to that Castle Lovell and in at the door. And she did not think it was those robbers who would withstand her when she set free her daughter, opening the door of her prison with her own hands, and so leading her out into the light of day and so there to Durham, where she might dwell till justice was done about the lands and other things that were in dispute.

The Lady Margaret said she was very glad to hear this, for she had been afraid that the Princess had too much displeasure against her daughter, seeing that in fifteen years she had not spoken to her or written broad letters.

The Princess erected her old, round head stiffly, with the pillows upon it, and exclaimed that it was not the fashion of their royal house to quarrel with its daughters or to do less than decency demanded for their rescue and sustenance. She would not wish that Lady Rohtraut to dwell in her house and at her charges for ever, for she must have her due train and estate, and that would make a great charge. But, until she were set up in her own lands and had her wealth again, that Princess would there maintain her and her train.

The Lady Margaret said again that she was very glad of it, and she was certain that those robbers would very quickly release the Princess’s daughter. For they would fear the might of the Dacres and the Duke of Croy with his tall ships, his cannon, and his thousands of men that would come by sea and burn that Castle.

It was at that that Sir Bertram said that the King of England would not very willingly see Flemings and Almains landing in his dominion; but the Lady Margaret might be certain that that King would see justice done to that injured lady by his own knights and the terror of his name.

Then the old Princess scowled upon both that knight and the lady so fiercely that her eyes grew red and dreadful. She smote her breast with the handle of the black crutch that dangled from her wrist and cried:

“Mutter Gottes! By the mother of God! It is not the King of England nor my father, the Duke of Croy, that shall go to that Castle but I alone and
bij Gott!
It is at my wrath that the knees of these robbers shall knock together and the keys fall from their hands.”

Then the Lady Margaret said that that might well be the case and Sir Bertram said that so it would be much better. The old Princess bent her brows upon that knight and asked him, jesting bitterly, if he had any better advice to give her. He said that he had none, but that he would very gladly hear what Henry, Earl Percy, had had to say to the Lady Margaret and she to him and also something of Sir Paris Lovell, that well-esteemed lording.

The Lady Margaret told him very clearly all that she knew, and that knight considered her to be as sensible as she was fair. When she told him of the disappearing of her true love and of the rumours that were told against him he had a pensive air; but when she told him of the Percy’s high words of how he was minded to break the great lords of the North and that that was the King’s mind, Sir Bertram frowned heavily. When she said that it was the duty of great lords not to support too readily a new King that they had set up, nor too abjectly to obey him or lavishly fawn upon him, that knight’s eyebrows went up, for this was a new thought to him. And so, whilst she recited to him the history of this realm of England as she had done to the Percy, he continued with his left hand behind his back holding his blue hat with the white feather and his right hand to his mouth whilst he hit the knuckles and reflected.

The old Princess of Croy said that all that the Lady Margaret uttered was nonsense; the truth of the matter was that all the English and their lords were murderers and wallowers in blood, slaying their kings without reason or pity or the fear of God, but like hogs fighting at a trough.

When she was done Sir Bertram took down his hand from his mouth and smoothed his beard. He said that if that was the mind of the Northern lords, though it was a new thought to him, he need quarrel little with it. For, though he might need to reflect further upon the principle, yet undoubtedly the case of King Richard III had gone in favour of the Lady Margaret. He was a King set up by certain lords and pulled down again when they found him evil. And, as far as the practice went, he would be satisfied to have that the touchstone for King Henry VII. For he was certain that that King would prove a dread lord benign, loving and prudent; all mighty lords and Princes of the North parts would gladly acknowledge — in the course of a year or two — that there had never been so good a King and they would all of them very willingly support him. And, if King Henry VII did not prove as good a King as he then reported, Sir Bertram, though he loved him, would very willingly see him cast down as Richard Crookback had been.

The Lady Margaret said she was very glad to hear it, and that upon such terms they might soon be good friends. Then Sir Bertram smiled a little in his beard and said:

“Ah, gentle lady, I perceive from certain words you have dropped that you did not think all these thoughts of the constitution of this realm of England by your lonely self.” And so he perceived certain tears in that lady’s eyes.

“Nay, truly,” she said, “I learned them of the lips of my lord, Sir Paris Lovell, in sweet devising and conversations that we had before his death, and may God receive his poor soul and give him sweet rest in paradise! For such a gentle lording, or one so wise in the reading of books, anxious for the good of his estate, so fine of his fair body, so fierce in war and fightful in the breach, or so merciful to his foes, they being down, God never did make. Though he was of young age yet he had fought in Italy, in Ferrara, in Venice, in France, in harness; in this realm against the false Scots and upon fightful journeys into Scotland.”