'Nay, nay!' exclaimed the courteous De Guader, smiling affectionately at the bewildered and somewhat frightened Emma, and not a little pleased by this crude revelation of his lady's favour. 'Thy n.o.ble sister must take me of her own free will or not at all. Holy Virgin!

her will is my law.'

Emma raised her head with a proud and splendid gesture.

'Ay,' she cried, 'Sir Earl of Norwich! I will have neither thee nor any man else but of my own free will! Did they stretch me on the rack, or persuade me ever so by such-like loving persuasions, I would have none I did not choose!'

The two earls laughed.

'Well crowed, fair hen!' cried her brother, and Ralph regarded her with admiring eyes.

'There spoke the true daughter of William Fitzosbern, eh, Roger?' he exclaimed. 'Methinks if the Lady Emma had felt the Conqueror's heel as heavy as we, her blood would boil as easily. But in sooth, dear lady, the minstrels and romaunt writers fill damsels' heads with fine notions which we poor knights find it hard to carry out in the vulgar battle of everyday life. Thy hero William, our lord-king himself, rebelled when he was ordered to give up the chosen of his heart, the beautiful Matilda of Flanders; and--saints defend us!--it was the Holy Father himself that he disobeyed!' Here the earl crossed himself.

'Thou hast a n.o.ble example, Emma; make haste to follow it,' said her brother jestingly.

'Oh,' said Emma, 'your converse brings me to perplexity. Give me till the morning, and let me ponder on your words. They are sudden.'

Ralph raised her hand respectfully to his lips.

'We can do no less, dear lady,' he said.

CHAPTER III.

JEST AND EARNEST.

'That means,' said Ralph de Guader thoughtfully, when Emma had left the room, '"Let me consult my ghostly counsellor." Who is the Lady Emma's director, Fitzosbern? Is not Father Theodred of Crowland thine almoner?--he who was the pet of our East Anglian Bishop aethelmaer, and who was recommended to thee by thine English-loving uncle of Exeter?'

'That is so,' a.s.sented Hereford; but added impatiently, 'I prithee truce to thy plans and plottings. I am no moonstruck lover, and cannot subsist on air, however well such unsubstantial fare may suit thy humour. Here we have ridden a good thirty miles, and talked a candle to the sconce, and I vow to thee, I had liefer satisfy my hunger than my ambition. What boots a fat earldom to a man if he is to die of starvation before he gets it?'

De Guader glanced rather contemptuously at his companion, but prepared to follow him.

'Let me have speech with thine almoner this night, nevertheless,' he said, 'in my chamber when I retire from the hall. It may make or mar our undertaking.'

'As thou wilt,' answered Roger carelessly; 'but thou canst scarce expect to find the good man in the best of humours if thou hast so little grace as to waken him up in the dead of night. I warrant me he has been snug under his coverlet this two hours.'

'I have that to say which will wake him,' said Ralph grimly. 'But of a truth the hours have sped. It would be better, perhaps, to pray the good father to give me audience with him in the morning, before he sees any other. Wilt thou have such message delivered?'

Earl Roger called a menial and gave the necessary order, and summoned his armourer, whom he bade to attend his guest, and then wait on himself; and they retired to their chambers to be unharnessed of their armour,--a process requiring aid of hammer and tongs,--and to indulge in the refreshment of the bath, a luxury the Normans loved as dearly as the Romans.

The hour was not far past nine, and, to our way of thinking, would not have been late; but the Norman fashion was to begin the day early, dinner being served at nine in the morning, and a second meal only being usual. When a third meal was desired, as on this occasion, it was informal, and consisted usually of cold meats, being called _liverie_.

Accordingly, when the two earls met again, clad in the flowing robes which replaced their military accoutrements, they had no companions at the table save a couple of fine bloodhounds, which were pets of the Earl of Hereford, and had invited themselves when they smelt the good cheer; the Countess of Hereford remaining in her bower, where her husband had visited her, and delighted her by his unexpected return.

The table was covered with fine linen; tall candles, in golden candlesticks handsomely wrought, gave light to the scene; and the dishes of gold and silver containing the meats were presented on the knee by pages, whose tunics were embroidered with the Hereford cognisance, gules, a bend azure and a fesse or.

Before commencing their meal, a silver basin containing scented water was offered to the earls in which to wash their hands. De Guader called for a napkin on which to dry the fingers he had daintily dipped into the scent, whereat the page opened wide eyes, though he obeyed the order, for the Norman fashion was to wave the hands in the air till they were dry, so that the scent might not be lost, and to wipe them on a cloth was considered Saxon and barbaric.

'I am cultivating English ways, thou seest,' observed the Earl of the East Angles. 'It is well to begin at once.' Whereat Hereford laughed.

The fare was dainty rather than bountiful. A cold venison pasty, and a young heron, larded, roasted, and eaten with ginger, forming the most important dishes; with simnel and wastel cakes, and sundry sweetmeats, and wines rejoicing in the strange names of pigment and moral.

The earls carved for themselves with their daggers, and used neither forks nor spoons.

Hereford, although he had declared himself in such a famished condition, showed no great prowess as a trencherman, but seemed more inclined to help himself from the wine-cup. He was obviously in an unsettled and irritable mood, while his companion inclined to the taciturn.

Suddenly Earl Roger exclaimed,--

'By the ma.s.s! this meal is not sprightly. Did I not see thy jester Grillonne amongst thy _meinie_? Send for the rogue and for my Marlette, and let the twain hold a tourney of wit. Though I wager thy knave will win.'

'If thy sleepy almoner might not be summoned from his slumber to hold converse on a weighty matter, methinks it is somewhat hard that my poor jester should be called upon to cudgel his wits!' said Ralph. 'But as thou wilt.'

'I'll waken the varlet up with a cup of moral,' answered Hereford; and a few moments later the two fools were introduced, in obedience to his order,--Marlette rubbing his eyes and yawning; Grillonne awake and eager-eyed.

Marlette was a poor imbecile, with a heavy face and clumsy figure, who caused laughter more by the incongruity of his short, puzzle-headed interjections, than by any real humour in his sayings. But the Earl of East Anglia's jester was a born buffoon, who would have made a comfortable living, if not a fortune, in the circus in these days.

Little, alert, wiry, his lithe body seemed to be always in motion, and the bells on his peaked cap rarely ceased to jingle. He was nearly sixty, and his scant white hair, straggling from under his whimsical headgear, gave him an elfish look, enhanced by the wizened, wrinkled countenance beneath it, and his oblique, twinkling eyes. He was a Breton, who had come over in the train of Ralph the Staller's Breton bride in good King Eadward's days, and he had loved the gentle lady, who was always kind to him, and well pleased to hear him troll French ballads when she grew weary of hearing the strange Saxon tongue, and felt forlorn and homesick. And he had loved her handsome boy, who inherited her dark face and eagle nose, though not her bright dark eyes, and had followed him back to Brittany, when, for some reason the chroniclers do not report, he had suffered banishment and confiscation of his estates. And he had returned with him when he helped the Conqueror to win England. De Guader knew and valued his fidelity, and took him with him whithersoever he went.

'How now, fool Grillonne!' was the Earl of Hereford's greeting. 'I promised to pour out a full cup of moral to wake thee up withal, but it seems thou art by far too much awake already. I had best give two cups to Marlette here.'

'Nay, good uncle,' cried the jester, 'that would be but sorry sport! I do but walk in my sleep. Give me the wine, and thou wilt see me in my waking state.'

The earl signed to a page to pour out a cup of wine, and handed it to him. He drank it, not hastily, but sipping it, and smacking his lips with the air of a judge; and when he had drained the cup he turned it bottom upwards. He then performed a series of somersaults from one end of the long banqueting-hall to the other, and finished by springing upon the shoulders of Marlette, standing erect with one foot upon the table, and the other on his brother fool's neck.

'Ha! Good nuncles, I am like our lord King William astride of two kingdoms!' he cried, waving his bauble as if it were a sceptre, and aping an air of majesty, rendered most ridiculous by his effort to keep his balance on his unequal and, on one side, unsteady footing.

Marlette, astonished and quite at a nonplus, sought only to free himself from the weight on his shoulder, and with a yell dropped his half-empty goblet of wine, and dashed away, leaving the saucy Grillonne sprawling on his back on the table, while the pages sprang forward to rescue the dishes, and the bloodhounds snarled in fierce surprise.

'Help, help, good nuncles!' cried the jester. 'Mine island gives me the slip. Ah, well, I'll content myself with the continent! It hath good cheer upon it.' So saying, he began to help himself to the dainties in his reach.

The Earl of Hereford burst into a roar of laughter, but the jester's master, smiling grimly, bade him beware of unseemly subjects. 'Crowned heads are no fit themes for thy cracks, Sir Fool!' he said.

'Chide me not, my Earl of earls!' replied the jester, who saw that his lord was not seriously displeased. 'I meant no damage or irreverence. I have too great a respect for my hide, and would fain save it a tanning!' Wherewith he descended from the table with an air of the most sage gravity, calmly filling his pockets the while with simnels.

'Go to! Thou art an impudent knave!' cried De Guader; and Earl Roger, laughing more heartily than before, pulled out a penny (equal to about seventeen shillings and sixpence of our money) and tossed it to him.

'Thou art the prince of fools!' he exclaimed. 'Would I had thee in my following. Thou art of some worth to drive dull care away.'

In explanation of the fool's dangerous jest, we may relate how William of Normandy dealt with the Angevins when they dared to remind him that his mother was the daughter of a tanner, by ornamenting the walls of Alencon with hides, and shouting '_La Pel! a la Pel!_' in ridicule, when he came to besiege their town. They had formed a _tete-du-pont_ to cover the pa.s.sage of the river, from which William dislodged them by filling up the moat with wood and firing it, so that the unfortunate Angevins were surrounded by flames, through which gleamed the swords of the mocking Normans, barring their pa.s.sage to the river beyond. The half-roasted garrison fought with unavailing valour, but twenty surviving for a still worse fate from their relentless foe. William ordered their hands and feet to be cut off and their eyes to be put out, and despatched an Angevin soldier, who had previously been made prisoner, and who had witnessed the punishment, to tell the garrison how their comrades had fared, and to promise them a similar fate unless they surrendered before night. That they might not doubt the veracity of the messenger, he had the hands and feet which had been struck from the prisoners put into his mangonels, and shot them on to the walls, which so impressed the townsmen that they surrendered at once.

When the two earls had finished their repast, they retired to their sleeping chambers; but as Ralph de Guader reached his apartment, he was met by the Earl of Hereford's almoner.

'I am come, n.o.ble earl, in obedience to thy summons,' he said, 'understanding that thy wish was to have speech of me before any other; and I venture to intrude on thee to-night, because the Lady Emma has desired me to attend her at daybreak.'

'Ha! just as I expected,' said the earl to himself. 'I thank thee, reverend father,' he replied. 'It is courteous and kind, and my wish was to have speech with thee to-night, but that I feared to break in upon thy rest. Take me, I pray thee, to thy sanctum, where we may be together without audience.'

Theodred bowed his a.s.sent, and the earl, having dismissed his attendants, followed the almoner to his private apartment, a small but snug room in a recess in one of the towers of the castle. In the centre stood a small table bearing a silver crucifix, covered with parchments and materials for writing and illuminating, a page of an unfinished missal lying on the writing-desk, and showing what the occupant's last business had been.