Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (547 page)

“Not so,” the monk answered, “she had dark hair divided down the middle and parted lips. She was like the cousin that I slew and so she smiled.”

The Bishop groaned. And so he wrung his hands and cried out:

“As God is good to me, I saw that naked woman stand so and smile so, in my vestiary, this morning after I had said mass. Six times I made the sign of the cross and she went not away. I was pondering upon the case of the Young Lovell.... She went not away.... Pondering.... God help me, a sinful man.... The eremites of the Libyan desert.... But no, it was not so.... No temptation...

The waves of terror shook that Bishop with the thin features. His hands were so knitted and squeezed together in a paroxysm that it seemed the blood must spurt from his finger nails. And even as he stood, so he groaned with a hollow and continuous sound. Then the monk Francis cried out:

“Those are the fairies! Those women are the fairies! God help you, Lord Bishop, you cannot condemn my friend because he has seen them, if you cannot keep them out of your own vestiary.... For all about this world they are.... They peer in upon us. Thro’ the windows they peer in! Looking! Looking! You cannot condemn my friend.... Like beasts of pray in the night they peer into the narrow rooms.... Hungering!... Hungering!” His voice was like heavy, fierce sobs and it sounded against the Bishop’s moans.

“God forgive me,” he cried out, “it was upon these that I thought when I comforted my friend with talks of angels and saints.... I lied and thought I was lying.... Angels! These are the little people! The little angels, as the country people say, that were once the angels of God. But they would not aid Him against Lucifer, doubting the issue of the combat.... They it is, have brought this fine weather we enjoy. A great host of them, like fair women, is descended upon this country. They cannot live without fine weather....”

Both these churchmen were weakened with fasting and prayers when they might have slept. The monk Francis had great fears, their minds leapt from place to place. That long, bare room seemed surrounded with hosts of fair, evil fiends. He imagined devils with twisted snouts and long claws scraping and scratching at the leads of the painted glass and at the stones of the mortar.

Then the Bishop cried out upon him with a fearful voice, calling him ignorant, a fool rustic monk, a low, religious filled with barbarous superstitions. He came close to the monk Francis and cried into his very face:

“God help me, thou fool, bleating of fairies.... All those women were one woman!... And again God help me! When I heard thee bleat ignorantly of the prowess of that young knight I did not believe thee.... But now I do believe he is the most precious defender we have in this place.... I will asperge his shining armour with holy oils.... I will bless his sword.... God help him.... How shall he fight against a goddess with a sword of steel.... Yet she is vulnerable! All writings say she is vulnerable...

He began a pitiful babble that the monk could not well understand, of Italy where he had lived many years as the King’s Friend. So he spoke of cypress groves and the ruined corners of old temples, and fireflies and nights of love. He spoke of earth crumbling away in pits and great white statues with sightless eyes rising out of the graves on hill-sides, tall columns that no one could overset, and the gods of the hearth. Of all these things the monk Francis knew nothing. The Bishop spoke of crafty Italians with whom he had spoken, and of subtle Greeks of the fallen Eastern Empire; and of how this subtle creature, as the credible legends said, dwelt now, since the fall of Byzantium, upon a mountainside in Almain, and of an almond staff that flowered....

Then that Bishop cast himself upon his bed, face downwards, and so he lay still.

That monk sat there many hours upon the little stool, and whether the Bishop slept or thought he could not tell, for the Bishop never moved. Then that monk considered that that Bishop had many and strange knowledges, having passed so long a time in foreign parts. And there was fear in that monk’s heart, for he thought he was with a sorcerer that aimed to make himself pope by sorceries. And afterwards he fell to considering of how this Bishop should deal with his friend the Young Lovell, for that Bishop was master and lord.

And so, being the harder man of the two, he went over in his mind the necessity that that see had for a champion in those parts and how there could be none so good as the Young Lovell, even though that knight were, as he feared, a man accursed and certain of a pitiful end. Yet he might as well do what he could for the Church before that end came. And the monk thought of the evil King and the subtle Sir Bertram and the grim coward that the Percy was and the discontent of the common sort and how that might be used. And he thought of all these things for a long time, as if they were counters he moved upon a chess-board. And he cried to himself:” Ah, if I were Bishop I would control these things.”

And then he remembered that it was long since he had prayed for the soul of his cousin that he had slain. So he set himself upon his knees and sought to make up for lost time in prayer. Those windows faced towards the west, being high over the river that rushes below. And from where one knelt he could see the tower of St. Margaret’s Church through the open casement of stained glass. And at last, towards its setting, the sun shone blood red through all those windows of colours, ruby, purple, vermeil, grass green and the blue of lapis lazuli. All those colours fell upon the tiles of the floor that were hewn with a lily pattern in yellow of the potter. Twenty colours fell upon the figure of the Bishop, lying all in black upon his bed and as many upon the form of the monk where he knelt and prayed. Scarlet irradiated his forehead, purple his chin and shoulder, and to the waist he was bluish.

The voices of the pigeons on the roofs lamented the passing of the day with bubbling sounds, the great bell of the cathedral and many other bells called for evening prayer in the fields; it was late, for that was the season of hay-making. Then that praying monk perceived, through the small window, a great red globe hastening down behind the tower of St. Margaret’s Church and, with a sudden deepening, twilight and shadows filled that long room because of the opaque and coloured windows.

And ever as the monk prayed there, he was pervaded by the image of his cousin’s face — Passerose of Widdrington she had been called, for she was held to exceed the rose in beauty. In that darkness where he knelt he was pervaded by the thought of her face with the hair divided in the middle, the smooth brow, the so kind eyes and the parted lips. He knew she must be in purgatory for that space, for he had killed her with an arrow in the woodlands, unassoiled, and he could not consider that his prayers yet had sufficed to save her so little as five hundred years of that dread place. Yet, tho’ he knew her to be in purgatory, in those dark shadows he had a sense that she was near him so that he could hear the rustle of her weed moving around him. She had loved green that is very dark in shadowy places. A great longing seized upon him to stretch out his arms and so to touch her. Then he remembered that it was that face that had looked kindly in upon him in his cell, and he groaned and cried upon our Saviour and His Mother to save him from such carnal longings. He had much loved his kind cousin whilst he had been a rough knight of this world. Many had loved her, but he alone remembered, and he considered how she that had been most beautiful was now no more than a horrible and grinning skull, God so willing it with all beauty that is of this world and made of the red blood that courses through the veins.

At the sound that he then gave forth he heard another sound which was that of the Bishop where he stirred upon his bed. And, in the deep shadows, he was aware that that Bishop sat up and looked upon him. And at last John Sherwood, Bishop Palatine spoke, his voice being harsh and first.

“Brother in God,” he said, “I have determined that this Young Lovell shall have my absolution and blessing upon his arms and the sacrament of knighthood and all the things of this world that you desired for him. Touching the things that are not of this world I will not say much, but only such matters as shall suffice for your guidance. For of these matters I know somewhat and you nothing at all.”

The Bishop paused and the monk said humbly:

“Father in God and my lord, I thank you.”

“I lately rebuked you,” the Bishop said, “for meddling brutishly in things of which you knew nothing. For you cried out to me ignorant and rustic superstitions, such as it is not fitting for a religious to meditate upon. And so I rebuke you again and I command you that you ask of your confessor such a penance as he shall think fitting for one that has miserably blasphemed, and in a manner of doctrine.

... Now this I tell you for your guidance.... This apparition that you have seen and I, appeareth with many faces and bodies, being the spirit that most snareth men to carnal desires. So doth she show herself to each man in the image that should snare him to sin, with a face, kind, virtuous and alluring after each man’s tastes. That is the nature of such false gods. For this is a false god, such as I have discerned you never, in your black ignorance, to have heard of. But Holy Writ, which I have much studied and you very little, after the fashion of certain monks, enjoins upon us to believe in the existence of false gods. So there are ever strange and cold creatures, looking upon this world with steadfast eyes. For Lucretius says, that was a writer, pagan yet half inspired: ‘The universe is very large and in it there is room for a multitude of gods.’ So I rede you, believe of false gods.”

“Father in God, I will,” the monk said, “I perceive it to be my duty. For now I remember me the Church enjoins upon us to be constant in fighting against such, therefore they must exist.”

“Then this too I command you as a duty,” the Bishop said from the thick darkness, “that for the duration of his life you quit never this knight but be ever with him, seeking how you may win him from the perception of this evil being. For signing of the cross shall not do it, neither shall sprinklings with holy water such as avail with the spirits of men deceased or with Satan and such imps. For this is even a god and the only way you may prevail against it is by keeping the mind of your penitent upon the things of this world of God. If you shall perceive this form of a woman here or there you shall speak to him quickly of setting up an oratory, or charity to the poor, or riding, in the name of God, against the false Scots. This shall avail little, but somewhat it may. Do you mark me?”

“Father in God,” the monk said, “you put me in much better heart than I was before. For if I may, I will tell you how once I have done.”

So the monk, from the darkness, told the Bishop how for the second time he had seen that lady. This was upon the road below Eshot Hill, going to Morpeth, near the farmhouse called Helm. Here, as he rode with the Young Lovell, a little before his men, he had seen that lady come out of a little wood and mount upon a white horse with a great company of damsels upon horses about her. And so all that many, brightly clad, rode down to a little hillock and watched that lording pass them, all smiling together. So that monk for the first time had been afraid that this was no St. Katharine and no angel of God.

But the Young Lovell had gone drooping in the hot sun and thirsting within himself and had not seen that lady. And at first that monk had wished to pull out his breviary and bid the Young Lovell read a prayer in it. But in his haste he could not come upon it amongst his robes for he was riding upon a mule. So, in that same haste, he had made certain lines with his finger nail upon the saddle before him and commanded the Young Lovell to look upon them saying it was a plan of Castle Lovell that he scratched, and the White Tower. And to have money, he told the Young Lovell, that lord must go with a boat to below the White Tower where it stood in the sea. And so Richard Raket should lower him gold in baskets at the end of a rope.

And the Young Lovell had looked down upon these markings attentively and said it was a good plan and never looked up at that lady and her company who sat there, all smiling, until they were passed.

“Well, she can bide her time,” the Bishop said; then he said: “Brother in God, I have never seen this Young Lovell, but I perceive that he must be fair in his body.”

“He is the fairest man of his body that ever I saw,” the monk answered, “And as I have heard said by servants that went to meet him and his father, to Venice, he was esteemed the fairest man that those parts, as all the world, ever saw. But how that may be I know not.”

“You may say he is the fairest knight of Christendom,” the Bishop said. “That is very certain. I know it that have never seen this lord.... But so it is that I see you are not so great a fool as I had thought. And it is ever in such ways that you shall deal with this Young Lovell as you did then.”

“I will very well do that, if I may,” the monk said. “And if I may do nothing more I will spit upon that foul demon who without doubt beneath a fair exterior beareth a beak or snout, claws, and filthy scales....”