The White Ladies of Worcester: A Romance of the Twelfth Century

"Straight to my jasper seat," she said, "to watch—to wait"–

Then came the sudden fading of the spurious strength. The Bishop put out his hand and reached for the holy oil.

* * * * * *

The golden sunset light flooded the chamber with radiance.

The Bishop still watched beside the couch.

Having rallied sufficiently to make her last confession, short and simple as a child's; having received absolution and the last sacred rites of the Church, Mary Antony had slipped into a peaceful slumber.

The Bishop had to bend over and listen, to make sure that she still breathed.

Suddenly she opened her eyes and looked full into his.

"Did you wed the Reverend Mother to the splendid Knight?" she asked, and her voice was strong again and natural, with the little chuckle of curiosity and humour in it, as of old.

"This morning," answered the Bishop, "I wedded them."

"Did he kiss her?" asked old Antony, with an indescribable twinkle of gleeful enjoyment, though those twinkling eyes seemed the only living thing in the old face.

"Nay," said the Bishop. "They who truly kiss, kiss not in public."

"Ah," whispered Mary Antony. "Yea, verily! I know that to be true."

She lifted wandering fingers and, after much groping, touched her forehead, with a happy smile.

Not knowing what else the action could mean, the Bishop leaned forward and made the sign of the cross on her brow.

Mary Antony gave that peculiar little chuckle of enjoyment, which had always marked her pleasure when the very learned made mistakes. It gave her so great a sense of cleverness.

After this the light faded from the old eyes, and the Bishop had begun to think they would not again open upon this world, when a strange thing happened.

There was a flick of wings, and in, through the open window, flew the robin.

First he perched on the marble hand of the Madonna. Then, with a joyful chirp, dropped straight to the couch on which lay Mary Antony.

At sound of that chirp, Mary Antony opened her eyes, and saw her much loved little bird hopping gaily on the coverlet.

"Hey, thou little vain man!" she said. "Ah, naughty Master Pieman! Art come to look upon old Antony in her bed? The great Lord Bishop will have thee hanged."

The robin hopped nearer, and pecked gently at the hand which so oft had fed him, now lying helpless on the quilt.

A look of exquisite delight came into the old woman's eyes.

"Ah, my little Knight of the Bloody Vest," she whispered, "dost want thy cheese? Wait a minute, while old Antony searches in her wallet."

She sat up suddenly, as if to reach for something.

Then a startled look came into her face. She stretched out appealing hands to the Bishop.

Instantly he caught them in his.

"Fear not, dear Antony," he said. "All is well."

The robin, spreading his wings, flew out at the window. And the loving spirit of Mary Antony went with him.

The Bishop laid the worn-out body gently back upon the couch, closed the eyes, and folded the hands upon the breast.

Then he walked over to the window, and stood looking at the golden ramparts of that sunset city, glowing against the delicate azure of the evening sky.

Great loneliness of soul came to the Bishop, standing thus in the empty cell.

The Prioress had gone; the robin had gone; Mary Antony had gone; and the Bishop greatly wished that he might go, also.

Presently he turned to the Prioress's table. She had sent to the Palace the copy she had made, and the copy she had mended, of the Pope's mandate. But she had left upon the table the strips of parchment upon which she had inscribed, on the night of her vigil, copies and translations of ancient prayers from the Sacramentaries. The Bishop gathered these up, reading them as he stood. Two he slipped into his sash, but the third he took to the couch and placed beneath the folded hands.

"Take this with thee to thy jasper seat, dear faithful heart," he said; "for truly it was given unto thee to perceive and know what things thou oughtest to do, and also to have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same."

The peaceful face, growing beautiful with that solemn look of eternal youth which death brings, even to the aged, seemed to smile, as the precious parchment passed into the keeping of those folded hands.

The Bishop knelt long in prayer and thanksgiving. At length, with uplifted face, he said: "And grant, O my God, that I too may be faithful, unto the very end."

Then he rose, and rang the Convent bell.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE "SPLENDID KNIGHT"

On the steps of Warwick Castle stood the Knight and his bride.

Their eyes still lingered on the archway through which the noble figure of Symon, Bishop of Worcester, mounted upon his black mare, Shulamite, had just disappeared from view.

The marriage had taken place in the Castle chapel, half an hour before, with an astonishing amount of pomp and ceremony. Priests and acolytes had appeared from unexpected places. Madonna lilies, on graceful stem, gleamed white in the shadows of the sacred place. Solemn music rose and fell; the deep roll of the Gregorian chants, beginning with a low hum as of giant bees in a vast field of clover; swelling, in full-throated unison, a majestic volume of sound which rang against the rafters, waking echoes in the clerestory; then rumbling back into silence.

Standing beneath the sacred canopy, the bridal pair lifted their eyes to the high altar and saw, amid a cloud of incense, the Bishop, in gorgeous vestments, descending the steps and coming toward them.

To Mora, at the time, and afterwards in most thankful remembrance, the wonder of that which followed lay in the fact that where she had dreaded an inevitable sense of sacrilege in giving to another that which had been already consecrated to God, the Bishop so worded the service as to make her feel that she could still be spiritually the bride of Christ, even while fulfilling her troth to Hugh; also that, in accepting the call to this new Vocation, she was not falling from her old estate, but rather rising above it.

As the words were spoken which made her a wife, it seemed as if the Bishop gently wrapped her about with a fresh mantle of dignity—that dignity which had fallen from her in those moments of humiliation when, at Hugh's bidding she laid herself down upon the stretcher.

The Bishop voiced the Church with a pomp and power which could not be withstood; and when, in obedience to his command Hugh grasped her right hand with his right hand, and the Bishop laid his own on either side of their clasped hands, and pronounced them man and wife, it seemed indeed as if a Divine touch united them, as if a Divine voice ratified their vows and sanctified their union.

Mora had never before seen the man so completely merged in his high office.

And, when all was over, even as he mounted Shulamite and rode away, he rode out of the courtyard with the air of a Knight Templar riding forth-to do battle in a Holy War.

It seemed to Mora that she had bidden farewell to her old friend of the kindly smile, the merry eye, and the ready jest, in the early hours of that morning, as together they left the arbour of the golden roses.

There remained therefore but one man to be considered: the "splendid Knight" of old Antony's vision; the lover who had pursued her into her Nunnery; wooed her in her own cell, unabashed by the dignity of her office; mastered her will; forced her numbed heart to awaken, disturbed by the thrill of an unwilling tenderness; moved her to passion by the poignant anguish of a parting, which she regarded as inevitably final; won the Bishop over, to his side, and, through him, the Pope; and finally, by the persistence of his pleadings, moved our blessèd Lady to vouchsafe a vision on his behalf.

This was the "splendid Knight" against whom the stars in their courses had most certainly not fought. Principalities and powers had all been for him; against him, just a woman and her conscience, and—he had won.

When, at their first interview in her cell, in reply to her demand: "Why are you not with your wife?" he had answered: "I am with my wife; the only wife I have ever wanted, the only woman I shall ever wed, is here"—she stood ready to strike with ivory and steel, at the first attempt upon her inviolable chastity, and could afford to smile, in pitying derision, at so empty a boast.

But now? If he said: "My wife is here," and chose to seize her with possessive grasp, she must meekly fold her hands upon her breast, and say: "Even so, my lord. I am yours. Deal with me as you will."

As the Bishop's purple cloak and the hind quarters of his noble black mare, disappeared from view, the crowd which hitherto had surrounded the bridal pair, also vanished, as if at the wave of a magic wand. Thus for the first time, since those tense moments in the Cathedral crypt, Mora found herself alone with Hugh.

She was not young enough to be embarrassed; but she was old enough to be afraid; afraid of him, and afraid of herself; afraid of his masterful nature and imperious will, which had always inclined to break rather than bend anything which stood in his way; and afraid of something in herself which leapt up in response to this fierce strength in him, yearning to be mastered, hungry to yield, wishful to obey; yet which, if yielded to, would lay her spirit in the dust, and turn the awakened tenderness in her heart to scorn of herself, and anger against him.

So she feared as she stood in the sunshine, watching the now empty archway through which her sole remaining link with Convent life had vanished; conscious, without looking round, that Debbie, who had been curtseying behind her, was there no longer; that Martin Goodfellow, who had held Shulamite's bridle while the Bishop mounted, had disappeared in one direction, the rest of the men in another; intensely conscious that she and Hugh were now alone; and fearing, she shivered again, as she had shivered in the crypt; then, of a sudden, knew that she had done so, and, with a swift impulse of shame and contrition, turned and looked at Hugh.

He was indeed the "splendid Knight" of Mary Antony's vision! He had donned for his bridal the dress of white and silver, which he had last put on when he supped at the Palace with the Bishop. This set off, with striking effect, his dark head and the noble beauty of his countenance; and Mora, who chiefly remembered him as a handsome youth, graceful and gay, realised for the first time his splendour as a man, and the change wrought in him by all he had faced, endured, and overcome.

In the crypt, the day before, and during the hours which followed, she had scarce let herself look at him; and he, though always close beside her, had kept out of her immediate range of vision.

Since that infolding clasp in the crypt when he had flung the cloak about her, not once had he touched her, until the Church just now bade him, with authority, to take her right hand, with his.

Her mind flew back to the happenings of the previous day. With the lightning rapidity of retrospective thought, she passed again through each experience from the moment when the call of the blackbird sounded in the crypt. The helpless horror of being lifted by unseen hands; the slow, swinging progress, to the accompaniment of the measured tread of the men-at-arms; the stifling darkness, air and light shut out by the heavy cloak, and yet the clear consciousness of the moment when the stretcher passed from the Cathedral into the sunshine without; the sudden pause, as the Bishop met the stretcher, and then—as she lay helpless between them—Symon's question and Hugh's reply, with their subtlety of hidden meaning, which filled her with impotent anger, shewing as it did the completeness of the Bishop's connivance at Hugh's conspiracy. Then Hugh's request, and the Bishop's hand laid upon her, the Bishop's voice uplifted in blessing. Then once again the measured tramp, tramp, and the steady swing of the stretcher; but now the men's heels rang on cobbles, and voices seemed everywhere; cheery greetings, snatches of song, chance words concerning a bargain or a meeting, a light jest, a coarse oath; and, all the while, the steady, tramp, tramp, and the ring of Hugh's spurs.

She grew faint and it seemed to her she was about to die beneath the cloak, and that when at length Hugh removed it, it would prove a pall beneath which he would find a dead bride.

"Dead bride! Dead bride!" sounded the tramping footsteps. And all the way she was haunted by the belief, assailing her confused senses in the darkness, that the spirit of Father Gervaise had met the stretcher; that his was the voice which murmured low and tenderly; "Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed. Go in peace."

With this had come a horror of the outer world, a wild desire for the safety and shelter of the Cloister, and an absolute physical dread of the moment when the covering cloak should be removed, and she would find herself alone with her lover; and, on rising from the stretcher, be seized by his arms.

Yet when, having been tilted up steps, she was conscious of the silence of passages and soon the even more complete quiet of a room; when the stretcher was set down, and the bearers' feet died away, Hugh's deep voice said gently: "Change thy garments quickly, my belovèd. There is no time to lose." But he laid no hand upon the cloak, and his footsteps, also, died away.

Then pushing back the heavy folds and sitting up, she had found herself alone in a bedchamber, everything she could need laid ready to her hand; while, upon the bed, lay her green riding-dress, discarded forever, eight years before!

Her mind refused to look back upon the half-hour that followed.

She saw herself next appearing in the doorway at the top of a flight of eight steps, leading down into the yard of the hostelry, where a cavalcade of men and horses waited; while Icon, the Bishop's beautiful white palfrey, was being led to and fro, and Hugh stood with an open letter in his hand.

As she hesitated in the doorway, gazing down upon the waiting, restive crowd, Hugh looked up and saw her. Into his eyes flashed a light of triumphant joy, of adoring love and admiration. She had avoided looking at her own reflection; but his face, as he came up the steps, mirrored her loveliness. It had cost her such anguish of soul to divest herself of her sacred habit and don these gay garments belonging to a life long left behind, that his evident delight in the change, moved her to an unreasonable resentment. Also that sudden blaze of love in his dark eyes, dazzled her heart, even as a burst of sunshine might dazzle one used to perpetual twilight.

She took the Bishop's letter, with averted eyes; read it; then moved swiftly down the steps to where Icon waited.

"Mount me," she said to Martin Goodfellow, as she passed him; and it was Martin who swung her into the saddle.

Then she trembled at what she had done, in yielding to this impulse which made her shrink from Hugh.

As the black mane of his horse drew level with Icon's head, and side by side they rode out from the courtyard, she feared a thunder-cloud on the Knight's brow, and a sullen silence, as the best she could expect. But calm and cheerful, his voice fell on her ear; and glancing at him furtively, she still saw on his face that light which dazzled her heart. Yet no word did he speak which all might not have heard, and not once did he lay his hand on hers. Each time they dismounted, she saw him sign to Martin Goodfellow, and it was Martin who helped her to alight.

All this, in rapid retrospect, passed through Mora's mind as she stood alone beside her splendid Knight, miserably conscious that she had shivered, and that he knew it; and fearful lest he divined the shrinking of her soul away from him, away from love, away from all for which love stood. Alas, alas! Why did this man—this most human, ardent, loving man—hang all his hopes of happiness upon the heart of a nun? Would it be possible that he should understand, that eight years of cloistered life cannot be renounced in a day?

Mora looked at him again.

The stern profile might well be about to say: "Shudder again, and I will do to thee that which shall give thee cause to shudder indeed!"

Yet, at that moment he spoke, and his voice was infinitely gentle.

"Yonder rides a true friend," he said. "One who has learned love's deepest lesson."

"What is love's deepest lesson?" she asked.

He turned and looked at her, and the fire of his dark eyes was drowned in tenderness.

"That true love means self-sacrifice," he said. "Come, my belovèd. Let us walk in the gardens, where we can talk at ease of our plans for the days to come."

CHAPTER XL

THE HEART OF A NUN

Hugh and Mora passed together through the great hall, along the armoury, down the winding stair and so out into the gardens.

The Knight led the way across the lawn and through the rose garden, toward the yew hedge and the bowling-green.

Old Debbie, looking from her casement, thought them beautiful beyond words as she watched them cross the lawn—she in white and gold, he in white and silver; his dark head towering above her fair one, though she was uncommon tall. And, falling upon her knees, old Debbie prayed to the Angel Gabriel that she might live to hold in her arms, and rock to sleep upon her bosom, sweet babes, both fair and dark: "Fair little maids," she said, "and fine, dark boys," explaining to Gabriel that which she thought would be most fit.

Meanwhile Hugh and Mora, walking a yard apart—all unconscious of these family plans, being so anxiously made for them at an upper casement—bent their tall heads and passed under the arch in the yew hedge, crossed the bowling-green, and entered the arbour of the golden roses.

Hugh led the way; yet Mora gladly followed. The Bishop's presence seemed to abide here, in comfort and protection.

All signs of the early repast were gone from the rustic table.

Mora took her seat there where in the early morning she had sat; while Hugh, not knowing he did so, passed into the Bishop's place.

The sun shone through the golden roses, hanging in clusters over the entrance.

The sense of the Bishop's presence so strongly pervaded the place, that almost at once Mora felt constrained to speak of him.

"Hugh," she said, "very early this morning, long before you were awake, the Bishop and I broke our fast, in this arbour, together."

The Knight smiled.

"I knew that," he said. "In his own characteristic way the Bishop told it me. 'My son,' he said, 'you have reversed the sacred parable. In your case it was the bride-groom who, this morning, slumbered and slept.' 'True, my lord,' said I. 'But there were no foolish virgins about.' 'Nay, verily!' replied the Bishop. 'The two virgins awake at that hour were pre-eminently wise: the one, making as the sun rose most golden pats of butter and crusty rolls; the other, rising early to partake of them with appetite. Truly there were no foolish virgins about. There was but one foolish prelate.'"

She, who so lately had been Prioress of the White Ladies, flushed with indignation at the words.

"Wherefore said he so?" she inquired, severely. "He, who is always wiser than the wisest."

Hugh noted the heightened colour and the ready protest.

"Perhaps," he suggested, speaking slowly, as if choosing his words with care, "the Bishop's head, being so wise, revealed to him, in himself, a certain foolishness of heart."

Mora struck the table with her hand.

"Nay then, verily!" she cried. "Head and heart alike are wise; and—unlike other men—the Bishop's head rules his heart."

"And a most noble heart,", the Knight said, with calmness; neither wincing at the blow upon the table, nor at the "unlike other men," flung out in challenge.

Then, folding his arms upon the table, and looking searchingly into the face of his bride: "Tell me," he said, "during all these years, has this friendship with Symon of Worcester meant much to thee?"

Something in his tone arrested Mora. She answered, with an equal earnestness: "Yes, Hugh. It has done more for me than can well be told. It has kept living and growing in me much that would otherwise have been stunted or dead; an ever fresh flow of thought, where, but for him, would have been a stagnant pool. My sad heart might have grown bitter, my nature too austere, particularly when advancement to high office brought with it an inevitable loneliness, had it not been for the interest and charm of his visits and missives; his constant gifts and kindness. There is about him a light-hearted gaiety, a whimsical humour, a joy in life, which cannot fail to wake responsive gladness in any heart with which he comes in contact. And mingled with his shrewd wisdom, his wide knowledge of men and matters, there is ever a tender charity, which thinks no evil, always believing in good and hoping for the best; a love which never fails; a kindness which makes one ashamed of harbouring hard or revengeful thoughts."

Hugh made no reply. He sat with his eyes fixed upon the beautiful face before him, now glowing with enthusiasm. He waited for something more. And presently it came.

"Also," said Mora, slowly: "a very precious memory of my early days at Court, when as a young maiden I attended on the Queen, was kept alive by a remarkable likeness in the Bishop to one who was, as I learned this morning for the first time, actually near of kin to him. Do you remember, Hugh, long years ago, that I spoke to you of Father Gervaise?"

"I do remember," said the Knight.

She leaned her elbows on the table, framed her face in her hands, and looked straight into his eyes.

"Father Gervaise was more to me than I then told you, Hugh."

"What was he to thee, Mora?"

"He was the Ideal of my girlhood. For a time, I thought of him by day, I dreamed of him by night. No word of his have I ever forgotten. Many of his sayings and precepts have influenced, and still deeply influence, my whole life. In fact, Hugh, I loved Father Gervaise; not as a woman loves a man—ah, no! But, rather, as a nun loves her Lord."

"I see," said the Knight. "But you were not then a nun, Mora."

"No, I was not then a nun. But I have been a nun since then; and that is how I can best describe my love for the Queen's Confessor."

"Long after," said the Knight, "you were betrothed to me?"

"Yes, Hugh."

"How did you love me, Mora?"

Across the rustic table they looked full into each other's eyes. Tragedy, stalking around that rose-covered arbour, drew very near, and they knew it. Almost, his grim shadow came between them and the sunshine.

Then the Knight smiled; and with that smile rushed back the flood-tide of remembrance; remembrance of all which their young love had meant, of the sweet promise it had held.

His eyes still holding hers, she smiled also.

The golden roses clustering in the entrance swayed and nodded in the sunlight, as a gently rising breeze fanned them to and fro.

"Dear Knight," she said, softly, a wistful tenderness in her voice, "I suppose I loved you, as a girl loves the man who has won her."

"Mora," said Hugh, "I have something to tell thee."

"I listen," she said.

"My wife—so wholly, so completely, do I love thee, that I would not consciously keep anything from thee. So deeply do I love thee, that I would sooner any wrong or sin of mine were known to thee and by thee forgiven, than that thou shouldest think me one whit better than I am."

He paused.

Her eyes were tender and compassionate. Often she had listened, with a patient heart of charity, to the tedious, morbid, self-centred confessions of kneeling nuns, who watched with anxious eyes for the sign which would mean that they might clutch at the hem of her robe and press it to their lips in token that they were forgiven.

But she had had no experience of the sins of men. What had the "splendid Knight" upon his conscience, which must now be told her, in this sunny arbour, on the morning of their bridal day?

Her heart throbbed painfully. Alas, it was still the heart of a nun. It would not be controlled. Must she hear wild tales of wickedness and shame, of which she would but partly understand the meaning?

Oh, for the calm of the Cloister! Oh, for the sheltered purity of her quiet cell!

Yet his eyes, still meeting hers, were clear and fearless.

"I listen," she said.