The Herd Boy and His Hermit

CHAPTER XXII. THE NUT-BROWN MAID

All my wellfare to trouble and care

Should change if you were gone,

For in my mynde, of all mankind

I love but you alone.-NUT-BROWN MAID.

Anne St. John, in her 'doul' or deep mourning, sat by Hal's couch or daybed in tears, as he lay in the deep bay of the mullioned window, and told him of the consultation that had been held.

'Ah, dear lady!' he said, 'now am I grieved that I have not mine own to endow you with! Well would I remain the landless shepherd were it not for you.'

'Nay,' she said, looking up through her tears, 'and wherefore should I not share your shepherd's lot?'

'You! Nan, sweet Nan, tenderly nurtured in the convent while I have ever lived as a rough hardy shepherd!'

'And I have ever been a moorland maid,' she answered, 'bred to no soft ways. I know not how to be the lady of a castle-I shall be a much better herdsman's wife, like your good old Dolly, whom I have always loved and envied.'

'You never saw us snowed up in winter with all things scarce, and hardly able to milk a goat.'

'Have not we been snowed up at Greystone for five weeks at a time?'

'Ay, but with thick walls round and a stack of peat at hand,' said Hal, his heart beating violently as more and more he felt that the maiden did not speak in jest, but in full earnestness of love.

'Verily one would deem you took me for a fine dainty dame, such as I saw at the Minoresses', shivering at the least gust of fresh wind, and not daring to wet their satin shoes if there had been a shower of rain in the cloisters. Were we not all stifled within the walls, and never breathed till we were out of them? Nay, Hal, there is none to come between us now. Take me to your moors and hills! I will be your good housewife and shepherdess, and make you such a home! And you will teach me of the stars and of the flowers and all the holy lore of your good royal hermit.'

'Ah! my hermit, my master, how fares it with him? Would that I could go and see!'

'Which do you love best-me or the hermit?' asked Anne archly, lifting up her head, which was lying on his shoulder.

'I love you, mine own love and sweetheart, with all my heart,' he said, regaining her hand, 'but my King and master with my soul; and oh! that I had any strength to give him! I love him as my master in holy things, and as my true prince, and what would I not give to know how it is with him and how he bears these dreadful tidings!'

He bent his head, choking with sobs as he spoke, and Anne wept with him, her momentary jealousy subdued by the picture of the lonely prisoner, his friends slain in his cause, and his only child cut off in early prime; but she tried the comfort of hoping that his Queen would be with him. Thus talking now of love, now of grief, now of the future, now of the past, the Prioress found them, and as she was inclined to blame Anne for letting her patient weep, the maiden looked up to her and said, 'Dear Mother, we are disputing-I want this same Hal to wed me so soon as he can stand and walk. Then I would go home with him to Derwentside, and take care of him.'

The Prioress burst out laughing. 'Make porridge, milk the ewes and spin their wool? Eh? Meet work for a baron's daughter!'

'So I tell her,' said Harry. 'She knows not how hard the life is.'

'Do I not?' said Anne. 'Have I not spent a night and day, the happiest my childhood knew, in your hut? Has it not been a dream of joy ever since?'

'Ay, a summer's dream!' said Hal. 'Tell her the folly of it.'

'I verily believe he does not want me. If he had not a lame leg, I trow he would be trying to be mewed up with his King!'

'It would be my duty,' murmured Hal, 'nor should I love thee the less.'

''Tis a duty beyond your reach,' said the Prioress. 'Master Lorimer hears that none have access to King Henry, God help him! and he sits as in a trance, as though he understood and took heed of nothing-not even of this last sore battle.'

'God aid him! Aye, and his converse is with Him,' said Hal, with a gush of tears. 'He minds nought of earth, not even earthly griefs.'

'But we, we are of earth still, and have our years before us,' said Anne, 'and I will not spend mine the dreary lady of a dull castle. Either I will back and take my vows in your Priory, reverend Mother, if Hal there disdains to have me.'

'Nan, Nan! when you know that all I dread is to have you mewed behind a wall of snow as thick as the walls of the Tower and freezing to the bone!'

'With you behind it telling all the tales. Mother, prithee prove to him that I am not made of sugar like the Clares, but that I love a fresh wind and the open moorlands.'

The Prioress laughed and took her away, but in private the maiden convinced her that the proposal, however wild, was in full earnest, and not in utter ignorance of the way of life that was preferred.

Afterwards the good lady discussed it with the Lorimers. 'For my part,' she said, 'I see nought to gainsay the children having their way. They are equal in birth and breeding, and love one another heartily, and the times may turn about to bring them to their own proper station.'

'But the hardness and the roughness of the life,' objected Mistress Lorimer, 'for a dainty, convent-bred lady.'

'My convent-God, forgive me!-is not like the Poor Clares. We knew there what cold and hunger mean, as well as what free air and mountains are. Moreover, though the maid thinks not of it, I do not believe the life will be so bare and comfortless. The lad's mother hath not let him want, and there is a heritage through the Vescis that must come to him, even if he never can claim the lands of Clifford.'

'And now that all Lancaster is gone, King Edward may be less vindictive against the Red Rose,' said Lorimer.

'There must be a dowry secured to the maid,' said the Prioress. 'Let them only lie quiet for a time till the remains of the late tempest have blown over, and all will be well with them. Ay, and Master Lorimer, the Lady Threlkeld, as well as myself, will fully acquit ourselves of the heavy charges you have been put to for your hospitality to us.'

Master Lorimer disclaimed all save his delight in the honour paid to his poor house, and appealed to his wife, who seconded him courteously, though perhaps the expenses of a wounded knight, three nuns, a noble damsel and their horses, were felt by her enough to make the promise gratifying.

While the elders talked, a horseman was heard in the court, asking whether the young demoiselle of Bletso were lodged there. It was the seneschal Wenlock, who had come with what might be called the official report of his lord's death, and to consider of the disposal of the young lady, being glad to find the Prioress of Greystone, to whom she had originally been committed by her father.

Before summoning her, he explained to the Prioress that a small estate which had belonged to her mother devolved upon her. The proceeds of the property were not large, but they had been sufficient to keep her at the convent, on the moderate charges of the time. Anne was only eighteen, and at no time of their lives were women, even widows, reckoned able to dispose of themselves. She would naturally become a ward of the Crown, and Lord Redgrave having been killed, the seneschal was about to go and inform King Edward of the situation.

'But,' said the Prioress, 'suppose you found her already betrothed to a gentleman of equal birth, and with claims to an even greater inheritance? Would you not be silent till the match was concluded, and the King had no chance of breaking it?'

'If it were well for the maid's honour and fortune,' said the seneschal. 'If you, reverend Mother, have found a fair marriage for her, it might be better to let well alone.'

Then the Prioress set forth the situation and claims of young Clifford, and the certainty, that even if it were more prudent not to advance them at present, yet the ruin of the house of Nevil removed one great barrier, and at least the Vesci inheritance held by his mother must come to him, and she was the more likely to make a portion over to him when she found that he had married nobly.

The seneschal acquiesced, even though the Prioress confessed that the betrothal had not actually taken place. In fact he was relieved that the maiden, whom he had known as a fair child, should be off his hands, and secured from the greed of some Yorkist partisan needing a reward.

When Anne, her dark eyes and hair shaded by her mourning veil, came down, and had heard his greeting, with such details of her father's death and the state of the family as he could give her, she rose and said: 'Sir, there have been passages between Sir Harry Clifford and myself, and I would wed none other than him.'

Nor did the seneschal gainsay her.

All that he desired was that what was decided upon should be done quickly, before heralds or lawyers brought to the knowledge of the Woodvilles that there was any sort of prize to be had in the damsel of St. John, and he went off, early the next morning, back to Bletso, that he might seem to know nothing of the matter.

The Prioress laughed at men being so much more afraid than women. She was willing to bear all the consequences, but then the Plantagenets were not in the habit of treating ladies as traitors. However, all agreed that it would be wiser to be out of reach of London as soon as possible, and Master Lorimer, who had become deeply interested in this romance of true love, arranged to send one of his wains to York, in which the bride and bridegroom might travel unsuspected, until the latter should be able to ride and all were out of reach of pursuit. The Prioress would go thus far with them, 'And then! And then,' she said sighing, 'I shall have to dree my penance for all my friskings!'

'But, oh, what kindly friskings!' cried Anne, throwing herself into those tender arms.

'Little they will reck of kindness out of rule,' sighed the Prioress. 'If only they will send me back to Greystone, then shall I hear of thee, and thou hadst better take Florimond, poor hound, or the Sisters at York may put him to penance too!'

Henry Clifford was able to walk again, though still lame, when, in the early morning of Ascension Day, he and Anne St. John were married in the hall of Master Lorimer's house by a trusty priest of Barnet, and in the afternoon, when the thanksgiving worship at the church had been gone through, they started in the waggon for the first stage of the journey, to be overtaken at the halting-place by the Prioress and Master Lorimer, who had had to ride into London to finish some business.

And he brought tidings that rendered that wedding-day one of mournful, if peaceful, remembrances.

For he had seen, borne from the Tower, along Cheapside, the bier on which lay the body of King Henry, his hands clasped on his breast, his white face upturned with that heavenly expression which Hal knew so well, enhanced into perfect peace, every toil, every grief at an end.

Whether blood dropped as the procession moved along, Lorimer could not certainly tell. Whether so it was, or whoever shed it, there was no marring the absolute rest and joy that had crowned the 'meek usurper's holy head,' after his dreary half-century of suffering under the retribution of the ancestral sins of two lines of forefathers. All had been undergone in a deep and holy trust and faith such as could render even his hereditary insanity an actual shield from the poignancy of grief.

Tears were shed, not bitter nor vengeful. Such thoughts would have seemed out of place with the memory of the gentle countenance of love, good-will and peace, and as Harry and Anne joined in the service that the Prioress had requested to have in the early daylight before starting, Hal felt that to the hermit saint of his boyhood he verily owed his own self.