CHAPTER TWO.

SOMEBODY'S CHILD.

"'Now G.o.d, that is of mightes most, Grant him grace of the Holy Ghost His heritage to win: And Mary moder of mercy fre Save our King and his meynie Fro' sorrow and shame and sin.'"

The song was trilled in a pleasant voice by an old lady who sat spinning in an upper chamber of Langley Palace. She paused a moment in her work, and then took up again the latter half of the strain.

"'And Mary moder of mercy fre'--Called any yonder?"

"May I come in, Dame Agnes?" said a child's voice at the door.

The old lady rose hastily, laid down her distaff, and opening the door, courtesied low to the little girl of ten years old who stood outside.

"Enter freely, most gracious Lady! Wherefore abide without?"

It was a pretty vision which entered. Not that there was any special beauty in the child herself, for in that respect she was merely on the pretty side of ordinary. She was tall for her age--as tall as Maude, though she was two years younger. Her complexion was very fair, her hair light with a golden tinge, and her eyes of a peculiar shade of blue, bright, yet deep--the shade known as blue eyes in Spain, but rarely seen in England. But her costume was a study for a painter.

Little girls dressed like women in the fourteenth century; and this child wore a blue silk tunic embroidered with silver harebells, over a brown velvet skirt spangled with rings of gold. Her hair was put up in a net of golden tissue, ornamented with pearls. The dress was cut square at the neck; she wore a pearl necklace, and a girdle of turquoise and pearls. Two rows of pearls and turquoise finished the sleeves at the wrist; they were of brown velvet, like the skirt. This finery was evidently nothing new to the little wearer. She came into the room and flung herself carelessly down on a small stool, close to the chair where Dame Agnes had been sitting--to the unfeigned horror of that courtly person.

"Lady, Lady! Not on a stool, for love of the blessed Mary!"

And drawing forward an immense old arm-chair, Dame Agnes motioned the child to take it.

"Remember, pray you, that you be a Prince's daughter!" [See Note 1.]

The child rose with some reluctance, and climbed into the enormous chair, in which she seemed almost lost.

"Prithee, Dame Agnes, is it because I be a Prince's daughter that I must needs be let from sitting whither I would?"

"There is meetness in all things," said the old lady, picking up her distaff.

"And what meetness is in setting the like of me in a chair that would well hold Charlemagne and his twelve Peers?" demanded the little girl, laughing.

"The twelve Peers of Charlemagne, such saved as were Princes, were not the like of _you_, Lady Custance," said Dame Agnes, almost severely.

"Ah me!" and Constance gaped (or, as she would herself have said, "goxide.") "I would I were a woodman's daughter."

Dame Agnes de La Marche, [see Note 2], whose whole existence had been spent in the scented atmosphere of Court life, stared at the child in voiceless amazement.

"I would so, Dame. I might sit then of the rushes, let be the stools, or in a fieldy nook amid the wild flowers. And Dona Juana would not be ever laying siege to me--with 'Dona Constanca, you will soil your robes!'--or, 'Dona Constanca, you will rend your lace!'--or, 'Dona Constanca, you will dirty your fingers!' Where is the good of being rich and well-born, if I must needs sit under a cloth of estate [a canopy] all the days of my life, and dare not so much as to lift a pin from the floor, lest I dirty my puissant and royal fingers? I would liefer have a blacksmith to my grandsire than a King."

"Lady Custance! With which of her Grace's scullion maidens have you demeaned yourself to talk?"

"I will tell thee, when thou wilt answer when I was suffered to say so much as 'Good morrow' to any maid under the degree of a knight's daughter."

"Holy Mary, be our aid!" interjected the horrified old lady.

"I am aweary, Dame Agnes," said the child, laying herself down in the chair, as nearly at full length as its size would allow. "I have played the damosel [person of rank--used of the younger n.o.bility of both s.e.xes]

so long time, I would fain be a little maid a season. I looked forth from the lattice this morrow, and I saw far down in the base court a little maid the bigness of me, washing of pans at a window. Now, prithee, have yon little maid up hither, and set her under the cloth of estate in my velvets, and leave me run down to the base court and wash the pans. It were rare mirth for both of us."

Dame Agnes shook her head, as if words failed to express her feelings at so unparalleled a proposal.

"What sangst thou as I was a-coming in?" asked the child, dropping a subject on which she found no sympathy.

"'Twas but an old song, Lady, of your Grace's grandsire King Edward (whom G.o.d a.s.soil! [pardon]) and his war of France."

"That was ere I was born. Was it ere thou wert, Dame?"

"Truly no, Lady," said Agnes, smiling; "nor ere my Lord your father."

"What manner of lad was my Lord my father, when he was little?"

"Rare meek and gent, Lady,--for a lad, and his ire saved." [Except when he was angry.]

Dame Agnes saved her conscience by the last clause, for gentle as Prince Edmund had generally been, he was as capable of going into a genuine Plantagenet pa.s.sion as any of his more fiery brothers.

"But a maiden must be meeker and gentler?"

"Certes, Damosel," said Agnes, spinning away.

The child reclined in her chair for a time in silence. Perhaps it was the suddenness of the next question which made the old lady drop her distaff.

"Dame, who is Sir John de Wycliffe?"

The distaff had to be recovered before the question could be considered.

"Ask at Dame Joan, Lady," was the discreet reply.

"So I did; and she bade me ask at thee."

"A priest, methinks," said Agnes vaguely.

"Why, I knew that," answered the child. "But what did he, or held he?-- for 'tis somewhat naughty, folk say."

"If it be somewhat naughty, Lady Custance, you should not seek to know it."

"But my Lady my mother wagged her head, though she spake not. So I want to know."

"Then your best way, Damosel," suggested the troubled Agnes, "were to ask at her Grace."

"I did ask at her."

"And what said she?"

"She said she would tell me another day. But I want to know now."

"Her Grace's answer might have served you, Lady."