One Snowy Night / Long ago at Oxford

Emily Sarah Holt

"One Snowy Night"

Preface.

The story of the following pages is one of the least known yet saddest episodes in English history—the first persecution of Christians by Christians in this land. When Boniface went forth from England to evangelise Germany, he was received with welcome, and regarded as a saint: when Gerhardt came from Germany to restore the pure Gospel to England, he was cast out of the vineyard and slain.

The spirit of her who is drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus is the same now that it was then. She does not ask if a man agree with the Word of God, but whether he agree with her. “When the Church has spoken”—this has been said by exalted ecclesiastical lips quite recently—“we cannot appeal to Scripture against her!”

But we Protestants can—we must—we will. The Church is not God, but man. The Bible is not the word of man, but the Word of God (One Thessalonians, two, verse 13; Ephesians, six, verse 17): therefore it must be paramount and unerring. Let us hold fast this our profession, not being moved away from the hope of the Gospel, nor entangled again with the yoke of bondage, but stablished in the faith, grounded and settled. “For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end.”

Chapter One.

Saint Maudlin’s Well.

“For men must work, and women must weep,
And the sooner ’tis over, the sooner to sleep.”
Reverend Charles Kingsley.

“Flemild!”

“Yes, Mother.”

It was not a cross voice that called, but it sounded like a very tired one. The voice which answered was much more fresh and cheerful.

“Is Romund come in yet?”

“No, Mother.”

“Nor Haimet either?”

“I have not seen him, Mother.”

“Oh dear, those boys! They are never in the way when they are wanted.”

The speaker came forward and showed herself. She was a woman of some forty years or more, looking older than she was, and evidently very weary. She wore a plain untrimmed skirt of dark woollen stuff, short to the ankles, a long linen apron, and a blue hood over her head and shoulders. Resting her worn hands on the half-door, she looked drearily up and down the street, as if in languid hope of catching a glimpse of the boys who should have been there, and were not.

“Well, there’s no help for it!” she said at last, “Flemild, child, you must go for the water to-night.”

“I? O Mother!” The girl’s tone was one of manifest reluctance.

“It can’t be helped, child. Take Derette with you, and be back as quick as you can, before the dusk comes on. The lads should have been here to spare you, but they only think of their own pleasure. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, for my part.”

“Father Dolfin says it’s going to be burnt up,” said a third voice—that of a child—from the interior of the house.

“Time it was!” replied the mother bluntly. “There’s nought but trouble and sorrow in it—leastwise I’ve never seen much else. It’s just work, work, work, from morning to night, and often no rest to speak of from night to morning. You get up tireder than you went to bed, and you may just hold your tongue for all that any body cares, as the saints know. Well, well!—Come, make haste, child, or there’ll be a crowd round Saint Martin’s Well.” (Note 1.)

“O Mother! mayn’t I go to Plato’s Well?”

“What, and carry your budget four times as far? Nonsense, Flemild!”

“But, Mother, please hear me a minute! It’s a quiet enough way, when you are once past the Bayly, and I can step into the lodge and see if Cousin Stephen be at home. If he be, he’ll go with me, I know.”

“You may go your own way,” said the mother, not quite pleasantly. “Young folks are that headstrong! I can’t look for my children to be better than other folks’. If they are as good, it’s as much as one need expect in this world.”

Flemild had been busily tying on a red hood while her mother spoke, and signing to her little sister to do the same. Then the elder girl took from a corner, where it hung on a hook, a budget or pail of boiled leather, a material then much used for many household vessels now made of wood or metal: and the girls went out into the narrow street.

The street was called Kepeharme Lane, and the city was Oxford. This lane ran, in old diction, from the Little Bayly to Fish Street—in modern language, from New Inn Hall Street to Saint Aldate’s, slightly south of what is now Queen Street, and was then known as the Great Bayly. The girls turned their backs on Saint Aldate’s, and went westwards, taking the way towards the Castle, which in 1159 was not a ruined fortress, but an aristocratic mansion, wherein the great De Veres held almost royal state.

“Why don’t you like Saint Martin’s Well, Flemild?” demanded the child, with childish curiosity.

“Oh, for lots of reasons,” answered her sister evasively.

“Tell me one or two.”

“Well, there is always a crowd there towards evening. Then, very often, there are ragamuffins on Penniless Bench (Note 2) that one does not want to come too near. Then—don’t you see, we have to pass the Jewry?”

“What would they do to us?” asked the child.

“Don’t talk about it!” returned her sister, with a shudder. “Don’t you know, Derette, the Jews are very, very wicked people? Hasn’t Mother told you so many a time? Never you go near them—now, mind!”

“Are they worse than we are?”

Flemild’s conscience pricked her a little as she replied, “Of course they are. Don’t you know they crucified our Lord?”

“What, these Jews?” asked Derette with open eyes. “Old Aaron, and Benefei at the corner, and Jurnet the fletcher, and—O Flemild, not, surely not Countess and Regina? They look so nice and kind, I’m sure they never could do any thing like that!”

“No, child, not these people, of course. Why, it was hundreds and hundreds of years ago. But these are just as bad—every one of them. They would do it again if they had the chance.”

“Countess wouldn’t, I know,” persisted the little one. “Why, Flemild, only last week, she caught pussy for me, and gave her to me, and she smiled so prettily. I liked her. If Mother hadn’t said I must never speak to any of them, I’d have had a chat with her; but of course I couldn’t, then, so I only smiled back again, and nodded for ‘thank you.’”

“Derette!” There was genuine terror in the tone of the elder sister. “Don’t you know those people are all wicked witches? Regular black witches, in league with the Devil. There isn’t one of them would not cast a spell on you as soon as look at you.”

“What would it do to me?” inquired the startled child.

“What wouldn’t it do? you had better ask. Make you into a horrid black snake, or a pig, or something you would not like to be, I can tell you.”

“I shouldn’t quite like to be a black snake,” said Derette, after a minute’s pause for reflection. “But I don’t think I should much mind being a pig. Little, tiny pigs are rather pretty things; and when they lie and grunt, they look very comfortable.”

“Silly child!—you’d have no soul to be saved!”

“Shouldn’t I? But, Flemild, I don’t quite see—if I were the pig—would that be me or the pig?”

“Hi, there! Where are you going?”

Flemild was not very sorry to be saved the solution of Derette’s difficult problem. She turned to the youth of some fifteen years, who had hailed her from the corner of Castle Street.

“Where you should have gone instead, Haimet—with the budget for water. Do go with me now.”

“Where on earth are you going—to Osney?”

“No, stupid boy: to Plato’s Well.”

“I’m not going there. I don’t mind Saint Maudlin’s, if you like.”

“We are out of the way to Saint Maudlin’s, or else I shouldn’t have minded—”

“No, my lady, I rather think you wouldn’t have minded the chance of a dance in Horsemonger Street. However, I’m not going to Plato’s Well. If you go with me, you go to Saint Maudlin’s; and if you don’t, you may find your way back by yourselves, that’s all.”

And laying his hands on the budget, Haimet transferred it from his sister’s keeping to his own.

Plato’s Well stood in Stockwell Street, on the further side of the Castle, and on the south of Gloucester Hall, now Worcester College. Fortified by her brother’s presence, Flemild turned after him, and they went up Castle Street, and along North Bayly Street into Bedford Lane, now the northern part of New Inn Hall Street. When they reached the North Gate, they had to wait to go out, for it was just then blocked by a drove of cattle, each of which had to pay the municipal tax of a halfpenny, and they were followed by a cart of sea-fish, which paid fourpence. The gate being clear, they passed through it, Flemild casting rather longing looks down Horsemonger Street (the modern Broad Street), where a bevy of young girls were dancing, while their elders sat at their doors and looked on; but she did not attempt to join them. A little further, just past the Church of Saint Mary Magdalen, they came to a small gothic building over a well. Here, for this was Saint Maudlin’s Well, Haimet drew the water, and they set forth on the return journey.

“Want to go after those damsels?” inquired the youth, with a nod in the direction of the dancers, as they passed the end of the street.

“N-o,” said Flemild. “Mother bade me haste back. Beside, they won’t be out many minutes longer. It isn’t worth while.”

“Like a woman,” retorted Haimet with a satirical grin; “the real reason always comes last.”

“What do you know about it?” answered his sister, not ill-humouredly, as they paused again at the North Gate. “O Haimet, what are those?”

A small company of about thirty—men, women, and a few children—were coming slowly down Horsemonger Street. They were attired in rough short tunics, warm sheepskin cloaks, heavy boots which had seen hard service, and felt hats or woollen hoods. Each man carried a long staff, and all looked as though they were ending a wearisome journey. Their faces had a foreign aspect, and most of the men wore beards,—not a very common sight in England at that date, especially with the upper classes. And these men were no serfs, as was shown by the respectability of their appearance, and the absence of the brazen neck-collar which marked the slave.

The man who walked first of the little company, and had a look of intelligence and power, addressed himself to the porter at the gate in excellent French—almost too excellent for comprehension. For though French was at that date the Court tongue in England, as now in Belgium, it was Norman French, scarcely intelligible to a Parisian, and still less so to a Provençal. The porter understood only the general scope of the query—that the speaker wished to know if he and his companions might find lodging in the city.

“Go in,” said he bluntly. “As to lodgings, the saints know where you will get them. There are dog-holes somewhere, I dare say.”

The leader turned, and said a few words to his friends in an unknown tongue, when they at once followed him through the gate. As he passed close by the girls, they noticed that a book hung down from his girdle—a very rare sight to their eyes. While they were watching the foreigners defile past them, the leader stopped and turned to Haimet, who was a little in advance of his sisters.

“My master,” he said, “would you for the love of God tell us strangers where we can find lodging? We seek any honest shelter, and ask no delicate fare. We would offend no man, and would gladly help with any household work.”

Haimet hesitated, and gnawed his under lip in doubtful fashion. Flemild pressed forward.

“Master,” she said, “if in truth you are content with plain fare and lodging, I think my mother would be willing to give room to one or two of the women among you, if they would pay her by aid in household work: and methinks our next neighbour would maybe do as much. Thinkest thou not so, Haimet?—Will you follow us and see?”

“Most gladly, maiden,” was the answer.

“My word, Flemild, you are in for it!” whispered Haimet. “Mother will be right grateful to you for bringing a whole army of strangers upon her, who may be witches for all you know.”

“Mother will be glad enough of a woman’s arms to help her, and let her rest her own,” replied Flemild decidedly; “and I am sure they look quite respectable.”

“Well, look out for storms!” said Haimet.

Flemild, who had acted on an impulse of compassionate interest, was herself a little doubtful how her action would be received at home, though she did not choose to confess it. They passed down North Gate Street (now the Corn-market), and crossing High Street, went a few yards further before they readied their own street. On their right hand stood the cooks’ shops, and afterwards the vintners’, while all along on their left ran the dreaded Jewry, which reached from High Street to what is now the chief entrance of Christ Church. The fletchers’ and cutlers’ stalls stood along this side of the street. Eastwards the Jewry stretched to Oriel Street, and on the south came very near the Cathedral Church of Saint Frideswide. The (now destroyed) Church of Saint Edward stood in the midst of it.

As our friends turned into their own street, they passed a girl of some seventeen years of age—a very handsome girl, with raven hair and dark brilliant eyes.

She smiled at Derette as she passed, and the child returned the silent salutation, taking care to turn her head so that her sister should not see her. A moment later they came to their own door, over which hung a panel painted with a doubtful object, which charity might accept as the walnut tree for which it was intended. Just as this point was reached, their mother came to the door, carrying a tin basin, from which she threw some dirty water where every body then threw it, into the gutter.

“Saint Benedict be merciful to us!” she cried, nearly dropping the basin. “What on earth is all this ado? And the children here in the midst of it! Holy Virgin, help us! There is nothing but trouble for a poor woman in this world. And me as good as a widow, and worse, too. Haimet! Flemild! whatever are you about?”

“Mother,” said Flemild in politic wise, “I have brought you some help. These good women here seek lodging for the night—any decent kind will serve them—and they offer to pay for it in work. It will be such a rest for you, Mother, if you will take in one or two; and don’t you think Franna would do the same, and old Turguia be glad of the chance?”

Isel stood with the basin in her hand, and a look half vexed, half amused, upon her face.

“Well! what is to be will be,” she said at last. “I suppose you’ve arranged it all. It’ll be grand rest to have every thing smashed in the house. Come in, friends, as many of you as like. Those that can’t find straw to lie on can sit on a budget. Blessed saints, the shiftlessness of girls!”

And with a tone of voice which seemed to be the deeper depth below despair itself, Isel led the way into the house.

Derette had fallen a little back, entranced by a sight which always attracted her. She loved any thing that she could pet, whether a baby or a kitten; and had once, to the horror of her mother’s housekeeping soul, been discovered offering friendly advances to a whole family of mice. In the arms of the woman who immediately followed the leader, lay what seemed to Derette’s eyes a particularly fascinating baby. She now edged her way to her mother’s side, with an imploring whisper of “There’s a baby, Mother!”

“There’s three, child. I counted them,” was the grim reply.

“But, Mother, there’s one particular baby—”

“Then you’d better go and fetch it, before you lose it,” said Isel in the same tone.

Derette, who took the suggestion literally, ran out, and with many smiles and encouraging nods, led in the baby and its mother, with a young girl of about eighteen years, who came after them, and seemed to belong to them.

“I suppose I shall have to go with you, at any rate through this street,” said Haimet, returning after he had set down the bucket. “Our folks here won’t understand much of that lingo of yours. Come along.”

The tone was less rough than the words—it usually was with Haimet,—and the little company followed him down the street, very ready to accept the least attempt at kindness.

Isel and Flemild were somewhat dismayed to discover that their chosen guests could not understand a word they said, and were quite as unintelligible to them. Derette’s mute offer to hold the baby was quickly comprehended; and when Isel, taking the woman and girl up the ladder, showed them a heap of clean straw, on which two thick rough rugs lay folded, they quite understood that their sleeping-place for the night was to be there. Isel led the way down again, placed a bowl of apples before the girl, laid a knife beside it, and beginning to pare one of the apples, soon made known to her what she required. In a similar manner she seated the woman in the chimney-corner, and put into her hands a petticoat which she was making for Derette. Both the strangers smiled and nodded, and went to work with a will, while Isel set on some of the fresh water just brought, and began to prepare supper.

“Well, this is a queer fix as ever I saw!” muttered Isel, as she cleaned her fish ready for boiling. “It’s true enough what my grandmother used to say—you never know, when you first open your eyes of a morning, what they’ll light on afore you shut them at night. If one could talk to these outlandish folks, there’d be more sense in it. Flemild, I wonder if they’ve come across your father.”

“O Mother, couldn’t we ask them?”

“How, child? If I say, ‘Have you seen aught of an Englishman called Manning Brown?’ as like as not they’ll think I’m saying, ‘Come and eat this pie.’”

Flemild laughed. “That first man talks,” she said.

“Ay, and he’s gone with the lot. Just my luck!—always was. My father was sure to be killed in the wars, and my husband was safe to take it into his head to go and fight the Saracens, instead of stopping at home like a decent fellow to help his wife and bring up his children the way they should go. Well!—it can’t be helped, I suppose.”

“Why did Father go to fight the Saracens?” demanded Derette, looking up from the baby.

“Don’t you know, Derette? It is to rescue our Lord’s sepulchre,” said Flemild.

“Does He want it?” replied Derette.

Flemild did not know how to answer. “It is a holy place, and ought not to be left in the hands of wicked people.”

“Are Saracens wicked people?”

“Yes, of course—as bad as Jews. They are a sort of Jews, I believe; at any rate, they worship idols, and weave wicked spells.” (Note 3.)

“Is all the world full of wicked people?”

“Pretty nigh, child!” said her mother, with a sigh. “The saints know that well enough.”

“I wonder if the saints do know,” answered Derette meditatively, rocking the baby in her arms. “I should have thought they’d come and mend things, if they did. Why don’t they, Mother?”

“Bless you, child! The saints know their own business best. Come here and watch this pan whilst I make the sauce.”

The supper was ready, and was just about to be dished up, when Haimet entered, accompanied by the leader of the foreigners, to the evident delight of the guests.

“Only just in time,” murmured Isel. “However, it is as well you’ve brought somebody to speak to. Where’s all the rest of them folks?”

“Got them all housed at last,” said Haimet, flinging his hat into a corner. “Most in the town granary, but several down this street. Old Turguia took two women, and Franna a man and wife: and what think you?—if old Benefei did not come forth and offer to take in some.”

“Did they go with him?”

“As easy in their minds, so far as looks went, as if it had been my Lord himself. Didn’t seem to care half a straw.”

“Sweet Saint Frideswide! I do hope they aren’t witches themselves,” whispered Isel in some perturbation.

To open one’s house for the reception of passing strangers was not an unusual thing in that day; but the danger of befriending—and yet more of offending—those who were in league with the Evil One, was an ever-present fear to the minds of men and women in the twelfth century.

The leader overheard the whisper.

“Good friends,” he said, addressing Isel, “suffer me to set your minds at rest with a word of explanation. We are strangers, mostly of Teutonic race, that have come over to this land on a mission of good and mercy. Indeed we are not witches, Jews, Saracens, nor any evil thing: only poor harmless peasants that will work for our bread and molest no man, if we may be suffered to abide in your good country for this purpose. This is my wife—” he laid his hand on the shoulder of the baby’s mother—“her name is Agnes, and she will soon learn your tongue. This is my young sister, whose name is Ermine; and my infant son is called Rudolph. Mine own name is Gerhardt, at your service. I am a weaver by trade, and shall be pleased to exercise my craft in your behalf, thus to return the kindness you have shown us.”

“Well, I want some new clothes ill enough, the saints know,” said Isel in answer; “and if you behave decent, and work well, and that, I don’t say as I might be altogether sorry for having taken you in. It’s right, I suppose, to help folks in trouble—though it’s little enough help I ever get that way, saints knows!—and I hope them that’s above ’ll bear it in mind when things come to be reckoned up like.”

That was Isel’s religion. It is the practical religion of a sadly large number of people in this professedly Christian land.

Agnes turned and spoke a few words in a low voice to her husband, who smiled in answer.

“My wife wishes me to thank you,” he said, “in her name and that of my sister, for your goodness in taking us strangers so generously into your home. She says that she can work hard, and will gladly do so, if, until she can speak your tongue, you will call her attention, and do for a moment what you wish her to do. Ermine says the same.”

“Well, that’s fair-spoken enough, I can’t deny,” responded Isel; “and I’m not like to say I shan’t be glad of a rest. There’s nought but hard work in this world, without it’s hard words: and which is the uglier of them I can’t say. It’ll be done one of these days, I reckon.”

“And then, friend?” asked Gerhardt quietly.

“Well, if you know the answer to that, you know more than I do,” said Isel, dishing up her salt fish. “Dear saints, where ever is that boy Romund? Draw up the form, Haimet, and let us have our supper. Say grace, boy.”

Haimet obeyed, by the short and easy process of making a large cross over the table, and muttering a few unintelligible words, which should have been a Latin formula. The first surprise received from the foreign guests came now. Instead of sitting down to supper, the trio knelt and prayed in silence for some minutes, ere they rose and joined their hosts at the table. Then Gerhardt spoke aloud.

“God, who blessed the five barley loaves and the two fishes before His disciples in the wilderness, bless this table and that which is set on it, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

“Oh, you do say your prayers!” remarked Isel in a tone of satisfaction, as the guests began their supper. “But I confess I’d sooner say mine while the fish isn’t getting cold.”

“We do, indeed,” answered Gerhardt gravely.

“Oh, by the way, tell me if you’ve ever come across an English traveller called Manning Brown? My husband took the cross, getting on for three years now, and I’ve never heard another word about him since. Thought you might have chanced on him somewhere or other.”

“Whither went he, and which way did he take?”

“Bless you, I don’t know! He went to foreign parts: and foreign parts are all one to me.”

Gerhardt looked rather amused.

“We come from Almayne,” he said; “some of us in past years dwelt in Provence, Toulouse, and Gascony.”

“Don’t tell me!” said Isel, holding up her hands. “It’s all so much gibberish. Have you met with my man?—that’s all I want to know.”

“I have not,” replied Gerhardt. “I will ask my friends, and see if any of them have done so.”

Supper over, a second surprise followed. Again Gerhardt offered his special blessing—“God, who has given us bodily food, grant us His spiritual life; and may God be with us, and we always with Him!” Then they once more knelt and silently prayed. Gerhardt drew his wife and sister into a corner of the house, and opening his book, read a short portion, after which they engaged in low-toned conversation.

Derette, with the baby in her arms, had drawn near the group. She was not at all bashful.

“I wish I could understand you,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

Gerhardt lifted his cap before answering.

“About our blessed Lord Christ, my maiden,” he said.

Derette nodded, with an air of satisfaction at the wide extent of her knowledge. “I know. He’s holy Mary’s Son.”

“Ay, and He is our Saviour,” added Flemild.

“Is He thy Saviour, little one?” asked Gerhardt.

“I don’t know what you mean,” was the answer.

“O Derette! you know well enough that our Lord is called the Saviour!” corrected her sister in rather a shocked tone.

“I know that, but I don’t know what it means,” persisted the child sturdily.

“Come, be quiet!” said her mother. “I never did see such a child for wanting to get to the bottom of things.—Well, Romund! Folks that want supper should come in time for it. All’s done and put by now.”

“I have had my supper at the Lodge,” responded a tall young man of twenty-two, who had just entered. “Who are those people?”

His mother gave the required explanation. Romund looked rather doubtfully at the guests. Gerhardt, seeing that this was the master of the house, at least under present circumstances, rose, and respectfully raising his cap, apologised for their presence.

“What can you do?” inquired Romund shortly.

“My trade is weaving,” replied Gerhardt, “but I can stack wood or cut it, put up shelves, milk cows, or attend to a garden. I shall be glad to do any thing in my power.”

“You may nail up the vine over the back door,” said Romund, “and I dare say my mother can find you some shelves and hooks to put up. The women can cook and sew. You may stay for a few days, at any rate.”

Gerhardt expressed his thanks, and Romund, disappearing outside the back door, returned with some pieces of wood and tools, which he laid down on the form. He was trying to carve a wooden box with a pattern of oak leaves, but he had not progressed far, and his attempts were not of the first order. Haimet noticed Gerhardt’s interested glance cast on his brother’s work.

“Is that any thing in your line?” he asked with a smile.

“I have done a little in that way,” replied Gerhardt modestly. “May I examine it?” he asked of Romund.

The young carver nodded, and Gerhardt took up the box.

“This is an easy pattern,” he said.

“Easy, do you call it?” replied Romund. “It is the hardest I have done yet. Those little round inside bits are so difficult to manage.”

“May I try?” asked Gerhardt.

It was not very willingly that Romund gave permission, for he almost expected the spoiling of his work: but the carving-tool had not made more than a few cuts in the German’s fingers, before Romund saw that his guest was a master in the art. The work so laborious and difficult to him seemed to do itself when Gerhardt took hold of it.

“Why, you are a first-class hand at it!” he cried.

Gerhardt smiled. “I have done the like before, in my own country,” he said.

“Will you teach me your way of working?” asked Romund eagerly. “I never had any body to teach me. I should be as glad as could be to learn of one that really knew.”

“Gladly,” said Gerhardt. “It will give me pleasure to do any thing for the friends who have been so kind to me.”

“Derette, it is your bedtime,” came from the other corner—not by any means to Derette’s gratification. “Give the baby to its mother, and be off.”

Very unwillingly Derette obeyed: but Gerhardt, looking up, requested Isel’s permission for his wife and sister to retire with the child. They had had a long journey that day, and were quite worn out. Isel readily assented, and Derette with great satisfaction saw them accompany her up the ladder.

The houses of the common people at that time were extremely poor. This family were small gentlefolks after a fashion, and looked down upon the tradesmen by whom they were surrounded as greatly their inferiors: yet they dwelt in two rooms, one above the other, with a ladder as the only means of communication. Their best bed, on which Isel and Flemild slept, was a rough wooden box filled with straw, on the top of which were a bed and a mattress, covered by coarse quilts and a rug of rabbit-skin. Derette and the boys lay on sacks filled with chaff, with woollen rugs over them.

The baby was already asleep, and Agnes laid it gently on one of the woollen rugs, while she and Ermine, to Derette’s amazement, knelt and prayed for some time. Derette herself took scarcely five minutes to her prayers. Why should she require more, when her notion of prayer was not to make request for what she wanted to One who could give it to her, but to gabble over one Creed, six Paternosters, and the doxology, with as much rapidity as she could persuade her lips to utter the words? Then, in another five minutes, after a few rapid motions, Derette drew the woollen rug over her, and very quickly knew nothing more, for that night at least.

The city of Oxford, as then inhabited, was considerably smaller than it is now. The walls ran, roughly speaking, on the north, from the Castle to Holywell Street, on the east a little lower than the end of Merton Street, thence on the south to the other side of the Castle. Beyond the walls the houses extended northwards somewhat further than to Beaumont Street, and southwards about half-way to Friar Bacon’s Tower. The oldest church in the city is Saint Peter’s in the East, which was originally built in the reign of Alfred; the University sermons used to be delivered in the stone pulpit of this church.

There was a royal palace in Oxford, built by Henry First, who styled it le Beau Mont; it stood in Stockwell Street, nearly on the site of the present workhouse. It had not been visited by royalty since 1157, when a baby was born in it, destined to become a mighty man of valour, and to be known to all ages as King Richard Coeur-de-Lion. In 1317 King Edward Second bestowed it on the White Friars, and all that now remains of it is a small portion of the wall built into the workhouse.

The really great man of the city was the Earl of Oxford, at that time Aubrey de Vere, the first holder of the title. He had been married to a lady who was a near relative of King Stephen, but his second and present Countess, though of good family, came from a lower grade.

Modern ideas of a castle are often inaccurate. It was not always a single fortified mansion, but consisted quite as frequently of an embattled wall surrounding several houses, and usually including a church. The Castle of Oxford was of the latter type, the Church of Saint George being on its western side. The keep of a castle was occupied by the garrison, though it generally contained two or three special chambers for the use of the owner, should necessity oblige him and his family to take refuge there in a last extremity. The entrance was dexterously contrived, particularly when the fortress consisted of a single house, to present as much difficulty as possible to a besieger. It was always at some height in the wall, and was reached by a winding, or rather rambling, stairway leading from the drawbridge, and often running round a considerable part of the wall. One or more gates in the course of this stair could be closed at pleasure. A large and imposing portal admitted the visitor to a small tower occupied by the guards, through which the real entrance was approached. This stood in the thickness of the outer wall, and was protected by another pair of gates and a portcullis, just inside which was the porter’s lodge. On the ground-floor the soldiers were lodged; on the midmost were the state and family apartments, while the uppermost accommodated the household servants and attendants. A special tower was usually reserved for the ladies of the family, and was often accompanied by a tiny garden. In the partition wall a well was dug, which could be reached on every floor; and below the vestibule was a dungeon. The great banqueting-hall was the general sitting-room to which every one in the castle had access; and here it was common for family, servants, and guard to take together their two principal meals—dinner at nine a.m., supper at four or five o’clock. The only distinction observed was that the board and trestles for the family and guests were set up on the daïs, for the household and garrison below. The tables were arranged in the form of a horse-shoe, the diners sitting on the outer or larger side, while the servants waited on the inner. The ladies had, beside this, their own private sitting-room, always attached to the bedchamber, and known as the “bower,” to which strangers were rarely admitted. Here they sat and sang, gossiped, and worked their endless embroidery. The days were scarcely yet over when English needlework bore the palm in Europe and even in the East, while the first illuminators were the monks of Ireland. Ladies were the spinners, weavers, surgeons, and readers of the day; they were great at interpreting dreams, and dearly loved flowers. The gentlemen looked upon reading as an occupation quite as effeminate as sewing, war and hunting being the two main employments of the lords of creation, and gambling the chief amusement. Priests and monks were the exceptions to this rule, until Henry First introduced a taste for somewhat more liberal education. Even more respectful to letters was his grandson Henry Second, who had a fancy for resembling his grandfather in every thing; yet he allowed the education of his sons to be thoroughly neglected.

The popular idea that the University of Oxford is older than King Alfred is scarcely borne out by modern research. That there was some kind of school there in Alfred’s day is certain: but nothing like a university arose before the time of Henry First, and the impetus which founded it came from outside. A Frenchman with a Scotch education, and a Jewish Rabbi, are the two men to whom more than any others must be traced the existence of the University of Oxford.

Theodore d’Etampes, a secular priest, and apparently a chaplain of Queen Margaret of Scotland, arrived at Oxford about the year 1116, where he taught classes of scholars from sixty to a hundred in number. But every thing which we call science came there with the Jews, who settled under the shadow of Saint Frideswide shortly after the Conquest. Hebrew, astronomy, astrology, geometry, and mathematics, were taught by them, at their hostels of Lombard Hall, Moses Hall, and Jacob Hall; while law, theology, and the “humanities,” engaged the attention of the Christian lecturers. Cardinal Pullus, Robert de Cricklade, and the Lombard jurist Vacario, each in his turn made Oxford famous, until King Stephen closed the mouth of “the Master” of civil law, and burned at once the law-books and the Jews. Henry Second revived and protected the schools, in the churchyard outside the west door of Saint Mary’s Church; the scriveners, binders, illuminators, and parchmenters, occupying Schools Street, which ran thence towards the city wall.

The special glory of Oxford, at that time, was not the University, but the shrine of Saint Frideswide. This had existed from the eighth century, when the royal maiden whom it celebrated, after declining to fulfil a contract of matrimony which her father had made for her (as she was much too holy to be married), had added insult to injury by miraculously inflicting blindness on her disappointed lover when he attempted to pursue her. She had, however, the grace to restore his sight on due apologies being made. Becoming Prioress of the convent which she founded, she died therein on October 14th, 740, which day was afterwards held as a gaudy day. Possibly because her indignant lover was a king, it was held ominous for any monarch to enter the Chapel of Saint Frideswide in her convent church. King John, who was as superstitious on some points as he was profane on others, never dared to pass the threshold.

His father, being gifted with more common sense, was present at the translation of the saint in 1180. The bones of Saint Frideswide still sleep in Christ Church; but at the Reformation they were purposely mingled with those of Katherine Vermilia, wife of Peter Martyr, and on the grave where the two were interred was carved the inscription, “Here lieth Religion with Superstition.” Of course the object of this was to prevent any further worship of the relics, as it would be impossible to discern the bones of the saint from those of the heretic. It is not improbable that both were good women according to their light; but the saint was assuredly far the less enlightened. To common sense, apart from tradition and sentiment, it is difficult to understand why a certain group of persons, who lived in an age when education was very limited, superstition and prejudice very rife, spirituality almost dormant, and a taste for childish follies and useless hair-splitting the commonest things in literature, should be singled out for special reverence as “saints,” or under the honourable name of “the Fathers,” be deemed higher authorities in respect to the interpretation of Holy Writ than the far more intelligent and often far more spiritual writers of later date. If this curious hero-worship were confined to the generation immediately following the Apostles, it would be a little more intelligible; as such men might possibly have derived some of their ideas from apostolic oral teaching. But to those who know the history of the early ages of Christianity, and are not blinded by prejudice, it is simply amazing that the authority of such men as Basil, Cyprian, and Jerome, should be held to override that of the spiritual giants of the Puritan era, and of those who have deeply and reverently studied Scripture in our own times. To appeal to the views held by such men as decisive of the burning questions of the day, is like referring matters of grave import to the judgment of little children, instead of consulting men of ripe experience. We know what followed a similar blunder on the part of King Rehoboam. Yet how often is it repeated! It would seem that not only is “no prophet accepted in his own country,” but also in his own day.

Note 1. Saint Martin’s Well stood in the junction of the “four-ways” from which Carfax takes its name.

Note 2. Penniless Bench, which ran along the east end of Carfax Church, was the original of all “penniless benches.” It was not always occupied by idle vagrants, for sometimes the scholars of the University used to congregate there, as well as the Corporation of the city.

Note 3. All Christians believed this at that date.

Chapter Two.

Valiant for the Faith.

“As labourers in Thy vineyard,
Send us out, Christ, to be,
Content to bear the burden
Of weariness for Thee.
“We ask no other wages
When Thou shalt call us Home,
But to have shared the travail
Which makes Thy kingdom come.”

It is popularly supposed that surnames only came into existence with the reign of King John. This is not quite an accurate assertion. They existed from the Conquest, but were chiefly personal, and apart from the great feudal families, only began at that date to consolidate and crystallise into hereditary names. So far as common people were concerned, in the reign of Henry the Second, a man’s surname was usually restricted to himself. He was named either from one of his parents, as John William-son, or John Fitz-mildred; from his habitation, as John by the Brook; from his calling, as John the Tanner; from some peculiarity in his costume, as John Whitehood,—in his person, as John Fairhair,—in his mind, as John Lovegood,—in his tastes, as John Milk-sop,—or in his habits, as John Drinkdregs. If he removed from one place to another, he was likely to change his name, and to become known, say at Winchester, as John de Nottingham; or if his father were a priest who was a well-known person, he would not improbably be styled John Fiz-al-Prester. (Note 1.) It will readily be seen that the majority of these names were not likely to descend to a second generation. The son of John William-son would be Henry John-son, or Henry Alice-son; he might or might not retain the personal name, or the trade-name; but the place-name he probably would inherit. This explains the reason why so large a majority of our modern surnames are place-names, whether in respect of a town, as Nottingham, Debenham, Brentwood: or of a country locality, as Brook, Lane, Hill, etcetera. Now and then a series of Johns in regular descent would fix the name of Johnson on the family; or the son and grandson pursuing the same calling as the father, would turn the line into Tanners. All surnames have arisen in such a manner.

Our friends in Kepeharme Lane knew nothing of surnames otherwise than personal, apart from the great territorial families of Norman immigration, who brought their place-names with them. Manning Brown was so termed from his complexion; his elder son, not being specially remarkable, was known merely as Romund Fitz-Manning; but the younger, in his boyhood of a somewhat impetuous temper, had conferred on him the epithet of Haimet Escorceueille, or Burntown. The elder brother of Manning was dubbed Gilbert Cuntrevent, or Against-the-Wind; and his two sons, of whom one was the head porter, and another a watchman, at the Castle, were called Osbert le Porter and Stephen Esueillechien, or Watchdog,—the last term evidently a rendering of English into dog-French. Our forefathers were apt hands at giving nicknames. Their epithets were always direct and graphic, sometimes highly satirical, some very unpleasant, and some very picturesque. Isel, who was recognised as a woman of a complaining spirit, was commonly spoken of as Isel the Sweet; while her next neighbour, who lorded it over a very meek husband, received the pungent appellation of Franna Gillemichel. (Note 2.)

The day after the arrival of the Germans, the porter’s wife came down to see her kindred.

“What, you’ve got some of those queer folks here?” she said in a loud whisper to Isel, though Gerhardt was not present, and his wife and sister could not understand a word she spoke.

“Ay, they seem decentish folks,” was the reply, as Isel washed her eel-like lampreys for a pie—the fish which had, according to tradition, proved the death of Henry the First.

“Oh, do they so? You mind what you are after. Osbert says he makes no account of them. He believes they’re Jews, if not worse.”

“Couldn’t be worse,” said Isel sententiously. “Nothing of the sort, Anania. They say their prayers oftener than we do.”

“Ay, but what to? Just tell me that. Old Turguia has some in her house, and she says they take never a bit of notice of our Lady nor Saint Helen, that she has upstairs and down; they just kneel down and fall a-praying anywhere. What sort of work do you call that?”

“I don’t know as I wish to call it anything in particular, without you’re very anxious,” replied Isel.

“But I am anxious about it, Aunt. These folks are in your house, and if they are witches and such like, it’s you and the girls who will suffer.”

“Well, do you think it’s much matter?” asked Isel, putting aside the lampreys, and taking up a bushel basket of Kentish pearmains. “If our Lady could hear me in one corner, I reckon she could hear me in another.”

“But to turn their backs on them!” remonstrated Anania.

“Well, I turn mine on her, when I’m at work, many a time of a day.”

“Work—ay. But not when you’re at prayer, I suppose?”

“Oh, it’ll be all right at last, I hope,” said Isel a little uneasily.

“Hope’s poor fare, Aunt. But I tell you, these folks are after no good. Why, only think! five of them got taken in by those rascals of Jews—three in Benefei’s house, and two at Jurnet’s. They’d never have taken them in, depend on it, if they hadn’t known they weren’t so much better than they should be.”

Agnes and Ermine understood none of these words, though they saw readily enough that the looks Anania cast upon them were not friendly. But Derette spoke up for her friends.

“They’re much better than you, Cousin Anania!” said that downright young woman.

“Keep a civil tongue in your head,” replied Anania sharply.

“I’d rather have a true one,” was the child’s answer; “and I’m not sure they always go together.”

“Osbert says,” pursued Anania, ignoring Derette, “that he expects there’ll be a stir when my Lord comes to hear of them. Much if they don’t get turned out, bag and baggage. Serve ’em right, too!”

“They haven’t got any bags,” said literal Derette. “I don’t think they’ve any of them any clothes but what they wear. Only Gerard’s got a book.”

“A book! What is it about?” cried Anania. “Is he a priest?—surely not!”

Only a priest or monk, in her eyes, could have any business with a book.

“Oh no, he’s no priest; he’s a weaver.”

“Then what on earth is he doing with a book? You get hold of it, Aunt! I’ll warrant you it’s some sort of wickedness—safe to be! Black spells to turn you all into ugly toads, or some such naughty stuff—take my word for it!”

“I’d rather not, Cousin Anania, for you haven’t seen it, so your word isn’t much good,” said Derette calmly.

“It’s not like to do us much good when we do see it,” observed Isel, “because it will be in their own language, no doubt.”

“But if it’s a witch-book, it’s like to have horoscopes and all manner of things in it!” said Anania, returning to the charge.

“Then it is not, for I have seen it,” said Flemild. “It is in a foreign language; but all in it beside words is only red lines ruled round the pages.”

“He read me a piece out of it,” added Derette; “and it was a pretty story about our Lady, and how she carried our Lord away when He was a baby, that the wicked King should not get hold of Him. It wasn’t bad at all, Cousin Anania. You are bad, to say such things when you don’t know they are true.”

“Hush, child!” said her mother.

“I’ll hush,” responded Derette, marching off to Agnes and the baby: “but it’s true, for all that.”

“That girl wants teaching manners,” commented Anania. “I really think it my duty, Aunt, to tell you that nearly every body that knows you is talking of that child’s forward manners and want of respect for her betters. You don’t hear such remarks made, but I do. She will be insufferable if the thing is not stopped.”

“Oh, well, stop it, then!” said Isel wearily, “only leave me in peace. I’m just that tired!—”

“I beg your pardon, Aunt! Derette is not my child. I have no right to correct her. If I had—”

Anania left it to be understood that the consequences would not be to her little cousin’s taste.

“She’ll get along well enough, I dare say. I haven’t time to bother with her,” said Isel.

“She will just be a bye-word in the whole town, Aunt. You don’t know how people talk. I’ve heard it said that you are too idle to take any pains with the child.”

“Idle?—me!” cried poor Isel. “I’m up long before you, and I don’t get a wink of sleep till the whole town’s been snoring for an hour or more: and every minute of the time as full as it can be crammed. I’ll tell you what, Anania, I don’t believe you know what work means. If you’d just change with me for a week, you’d have an idea or two more in your head at the end of it.”

“I see, Aunt, you are vexed at what I told you,” replied Anania in a tone of superior virtue. “I am thankful to say I have not my house in the mess yours is, and my children are decently behaved. I thought it only kind to let you know the remarks that are being made: but of course, if you prefer to be left ignorant, I don’t need to stay. Good morrow! Pray don’t disturb yourself, Flemild—I can let myself out, as you are all so busy. You’ll be sorry some day you did not take advice. But I never obtrude my advice; if people don’t want it, I shall not trouble them with it. It’s a pity, that’s all.”

“Oh deary, deary!” cried poor Isel, as Anania sailed away with her head held rather higher than usual. “Why ever did she come to plague me, when I’ve got my hands as full already!—And what on earth does she mean, calling me names, and Derette too? The child’s good enough—only a bit thoughtless, as children always are. I do wonder why folks can’t let a body alone!”

For three days the Germans rested peacefully in their new quarters. At the end of that time, Gerhardt called on all his little company, and desired them to meet him early on the following morning on a piece of vacant ground, a few miles from the city. They met as agreed, eighteen men and eleven women, of all ages, from young Conrad whose moustache was little more than down, to old Berthold who carried the weight of threescore and fifteen years.

“My friends,” said Gerhardt, “let us speak to our God, before we say anything to each other.”

All knelt, and Gerhardt poured forth a fervent prayer that God would be with them and aid them in the work which they had undertaken; that He would supply them with bread to eat, and raiment to put on; that He would keep the door of their lips, that they should speak neither guile, discourtesy, nor error, yet open their mouths that with all boldness they might preach His Word; that none of them might be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, nor seek to hide the offence of the cross for the sake of pleasing men. A whole-hearted Amen was the response from the group around him.

They rose, and Gerhardt repeated by heart three Psalms—the fifteenth, the forty-sixth, and the ninetieth—not in Latin, but in sonorous German, many of his compatriots taking up the words and repeating them with him, in a style which made it plain that they were very familiar. Then Gerhardt spoke.

“I will but shortly remind you, my friends,” he said, “of the reason for which we are here. Hundreds of years ago, it pleased God to send to us Germans a good English pastor, who name was Winfrid, when we were poor heathens, serving stocks and stones. He came with intent to deliver us from that gloomy bondage, and to convert us to the faith of Christ. God so blessed his efforts that as their consequence, Germany is Christian at this day; and he, leaving his English name of Winfrid, the Peace-Conqueror (though a truer name he could never have had), is known among us as Boniface, the doer of good deeds. Since his day, four hundred years have passed, and the Church of Christ throughout the world has woefully departed from the pure faith. We are come out, like the Apostles, a little company,—like them, poor and unlearned,—but rich in the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord; we are come to tread in their steps, to do the work they did, and to call the world back to the pure truth of the earliest days of Christendom. And we come here, because it is here that our first duty is due. We come to give back to England the precious jewel of the true faith which she gave to us four hundred years ago. Let every one of us clearly understand for what we are to be ready. We tread in our Master’s steps, and our Master was not flattered and complimented by the world. He came bringing salvation, and the world would none of it, nor of Him. So, if we find the world hates us, let us be neither surprised nor afraid, but remember that it hated Him, and that as He was, so are we in this world. Let us be prepared to go with Him, if need be, both into prison and to death. If we suffer with Him, we shall reign. Brethren, if we seek to reign, we must make account first to suffer.”

“We are ready!” cried at least a dozen voices.

“Will ye who are foremost now, be the foremost in that day?” asked Gerhardt, looking round upon them with a rather compassionate smile. “God grant it may be so! Now, my friends, I must further remind you—not that ye know it not, but that ye may bear its importance in mind—that beyond those beliefs common to all Christians, our faith confesses three great doctrines which ye must teach.

“First, that Holy Scripture alone containeth all things necessary to salvation; and nothing is to be taught as an article of faith but what God has revealed.

“Secondly, the Church of God consists of all who hear and understand the Word of God. All the saved were elect of God before the foundation of the world; all who are justified by Christ go into life eternal. Therefore it follows that there is no Purgatory, and all masses are damnable, especially those for the dead. And whosoever upholds free will—namely, man’s capacity to turn to God as and when he will—denies predestination and the grace of God. Man is by nature utterly depraved; and all the evil that he doth proceeds from his own depravity.

“Thirdly, we acknowledge one God and one Mediator—the Lord Jesus Christ; and reject the invocation of saints or angels. We own two Sacraments—baptism and the Supper of the Lord; but all Church observances not ordained by Christ and the Apostles, we reject as idle superstitions and vain traditions of men. (Note 3.)

“This is our faith. Brethren, do ye all stand banded together in this faith?”

Up went every right arm, some quietly, some impetuously.

“Furthermore,” continued the leader, “as to conduct. It is incumbent upon us to honour all secular powers, with subjection, obedience, promptitude, and payment of tribute. On the Sabbath, cease ye from all worldly labours, abstain from sin, do good works, and pay your devotions to God. Remember, to pray much is to be fervent in prayer, not to use many words nor much time. Be orderly in all things; in attire, so far as lies in your power, avoid all appearance of either pride or squalor. We enter no trade, that we may be free from falsehood: we live by the labour of our hands, and are content with necessaries, not seeking to amass wealth. Be ye all chaste, temperate, sober, meek: owe no man anything; give no reason for complaint. Avoid taverns and dancing, as occasions of evil. The women among you I charge to be modest in manners and apparel, to keep themselves free from foolish jesting and levity of the world, especially in respect of falsehood and oaths. Keep your maidens, and see that they wander not; beware of suffering them to deck and adorn themselves. ‘We serve the Lord Christ.’ ‘Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong!’ Read the Scriptures, serve God in humility, be poor in spirit. Remember that Antichrist is all that opposeth Christ. ‘Love not the world, neither the things of the world.’ ‘Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,’ and bear in mind that ye are sent forth as sheep in the midst of wolves, as under-shepherds to seek for His strayed sheep. Beware that ye glorify not yourselves, but Him.

“Berthold, Arnulph, and Guelph, ye tarry in this city with me, going forth to preach in the surrounding villages, as the Lord shall grant us opportunity. Heinrich, Otho, Conrad, and Magnus, ye go northward to evangelise in like manner. Friedrich, Dietbold, Sighard, and Leopold, ye to the south; Albrecht, Johann, and Hermann, ye to the east; Wilhelm, Philipp, and Ludwig, ye to the west. Every man shall take with him wife and children that hath them. The elder women among us—Cunegonde, Helena, Luitgarde, Elisabeth, and Margarethe—I especially exhort to instruct the young women, as the Apostle bids, and to evangelise in such manner as women may, by modest and quiet talking with other women. Once in the year let us meet here, to compare experiences, resolve difficulties, and to comfort and edify one another in our work. And now I commend you to God, and to the Word of His grace. Go ye forth, strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might, always abounding in the work of the Lord, teaching all to observe whatsoever He has commanded. For lo! He is with us always, even unto the end of the world.”

Another fervent prayer followed the address. Then each of the little company came up in turn to Gerhardt, who laid his hand upon the head of every one, blessing them in the name of the Lord. As each thus took leave, he set out in the direction which he had been bidden to take, eight accompanied by their wives, and three by children. Then Gerhardt, with Agnes and Ermine, turned back into the town; Berthold, with his wife Luitgarde, and his daughter Adelheid, followed; while Arnulph and Guelph, who were young unmarried men, went off to begin their preaching tour in the villages.

The day afterwards, the priest of Saint Aldate’s rapped at the door of the Walnut Tree. It was opened by Flemild, who made a low reverence when she saw him. With hand uplifted in blessing, and—“Christ save all here!”—he walked into the house, where Isel received him with an equally respectful courtesy.

“So I hear, my daughter, you have friends come to see you?”

“Well, they aren’t friends exactly,” said Isel: “leastwise not yet. May be, in time—hope they will.”

“Whence come they, then, if they be strangers?”

“Well,” replied Isel, who generally began her sentences with that convenient adverb, “to tell truth, Father, it beats me to say. They’ve come over-sea, from foreign parts; but I can’t get them outlandish names round my tongue.”

“Do they speak French or English?”

“One of ’em speaks French, after a fashion, but it’s a queer fashion. As to English, I haven’t tried ’em.”

The Reverend Dolfin (he had no surname) considered the question.

“They are Christians, of course?”

“That they are, Father, and good too. Why, they say their prayers several times a day.”

The priest did not think that item of evidence so satisfactory as Isel did. But he had not come with any intention of ferreting out doubtful characters or suspicious facts. He was no ardent heretic-hunter, but a quiet, peaceable man, as inoffensive as a priest could be.

“Decent and well-behaved?” he asked.

“As quiet and sensible as any living creature in this street,” Isel assured him. “The women are good workers, and none of them’s a talker, and that’s no small blessing!”

“Truly, thou art right there, my daughter,” said the priest, who, knowing nothing about women, was under the impression that they rarely did any thing but talk, and perform a little desultory housework in the intervals between the paragraphs. “So far, good. I trust they will continue equally well-behaved, and will give no scandal to their neighbours.”

“I’ll go surety for that,” answered Isel rather warmly; “more than I will for their neighbours giving them none. Father, I’d give a silver penny you’d take my niece Anania in hand; she’ll be the death of me if she goes on. Do give her a good talking-to, and I’ll thank you all the days of my life!”

“With what does she go on?” asked the priest, resting both hands on his silver-headed staff.

“Words!” groaned poor Isel. “And they bain’t pretty words, Father—not by no manner of means. She’s for ever and the day after interfering with every mortal thing one does. And her own house is just right-down slatternly, and her children are coming up any how. If she’d just spend the time a-scouring as she spends a-chattering, her house ’d be the cleanest place in Oxfordshire. But as for the poor children, I’m that sorry! Whatever they do, or don’t do, they get a slap for it; and then she turns round on me because I don’t treat mine the same. Why, there’s nothing spoils children’s tempers like everlasting scolding and slapping of ’em. I declare I don’t know which to be sorriest for, them that never gets no bringing up at all, or them that’s slapped from morning to night.”

“Does her husband allow all that?”

“Bless you, Father, he’s that easy a man, if she slapped him, he’d only laugh and give it back. It’s true, when he’s right put out he’ll take the whip to her; but he’ll stand a deal first that he’d better not. Biggest worry I have, she is!”

“Be thankful, my daughter, if thy biggest worry be outside thine own door.”

“That I would, Father, if I could keep her outside, but she’s always a-coming in.”

The priest laughed.

“I will speak to my brother Vincent about her,” he said. “You know the Castle is not in my parish.”

“Well, I pray you, Father, do tell Father Vincent to give it her strong. She’s one o’ them that won’t do with it weak. It’ll just run off her like water on a duck’s back. Father, do you think my poor man ’ll ever come back?”

The priest grew grave when asked that question.

“I cannot tell, my daughter. Bethink thee, that if he fall in that holy conflict, he is assured of Heaven. How long is it since his departing?”

“It’s two years good, Father—going in three: and I’m glad enough he should be sure of Heaven, but saving your presence, I want him here on earth. It’s hard work for a lone woman to bring up four children, never name boys, that’s as rampageous as young colts, and about as easy to catch. And the younger and sillier they are, the surer they are to think they know better than their own mother.”

“That is a standing grievance, daughter,” said the priest with a smile, as he rose to take leave. “Well, I am glad to hear so good a report of these strangers. So long as they conduct themselves well, and come to church, and give no offence to any, there can be no harm in your giving them hospitality. But remember that if they give any occasion of scandal, your duty will be to let me know, that I may deal with them. The saints keep you!”

No occasion of scandal required that duty from Isel. Every now and then Gerhardt absented himself—for what purpose she did not know; but he left Agnes and Ermine behind, and they never told the object of his journeys. At home he lived quietly enough, generally following his trade of weaving, but always ready to do any thing required by his hostess. Isel came to congratulate herself highly on the presence of her quiet, kindly, helpful guests. In a house where the whole upper floor formed a single bedchamber, divided only by curtains stretched across, and the whole ground-floor was parlour and kitchen in one, a few inmates more or less, so long as they were pleasant and peaceable, were of small moment. Outwardly, the Germans conducted themselves in no way pointedly different from their English hosts. They indulged in rather longer prayers, but this only increased the respect in which they were held. They went to church like other people; and if they omitted the usual reverences paid to the images, they did it so unobtrusively that it struck and shocked no one.

The Roman Church, in 1160, was yet far from filling the measure of her iniquity. The mass was in Latin, but transubstantiation was only a “pious opinion;” there were invocation of saints and worship of images, prayers for the dead, and holy water; but dispensations and indulgences were uninvented, the Inquisition was unknown, numbers of the clergy were married men, and that organ of tyranny and sin, termed auricular confession, had not yet been set up to grind the consciences and torment the hearts of those who sought to please God according to the light they enjoyed. Without that, it was far harder to persecute; for how could a man be indicted for the belief in his heart, if he chose to keep the door of his lips?

The winter passed quietly away, and Isel was—for her—well pleased with her new departure. The priest, having once satisfied himself that the foreign visitors were nominal Christians, and gave no scandal to their neighbours, ceased to trouble himself about them. Anania continued to make disagreeable remarks at times, but gradually even she became more callous on the question, and nobody else ever said any thing.

“I do wonder if Father Vincent have given her a word or two,” said Isel. “She hasn’t took much of it, if he have. If she isn’t at me for one thing, she’s at me for another. If it were to please the saints to make Osbert the Lord King’s door-keeper, so as he’d go and live at London or Windsor, I shouldn’t wonder if I could get over it!”

“Ah, ‘the tongue can no man tame,’” observed Gerhardt with a smile.

“I don’t so much object to tongues when they’ve been in salt,” said Isel. “It’s fresh I don’t like ’em, and with a live temper behind of ’em. They don’t agree with me then.”

“It is the live temper behind, or rather the evil heart, which is the thing to blame. ‘Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts,’ which grow into evil words and deeds. Set the heart right, and the tongue will soon follow.”

“I reckon that’s a bit above either you or me,” replied Isel with a sigh.

“A man’s thoughts are his own,” interposed Haimet rather warmly. “Nobody has a right to curb them.”

“No man can curb them,” said Gerhardt, “unless the thinker put a curb on himself. He that can rule his own thoughts is king of himself: he that never attempts it is ‘a reed driven with the wind and tossed.’”

“Oh, there you fly too high for me,” said Haimet. “If my acts and words are inoffensive, I have a right to my thoughts.”

“Has any man a right to evil thoughts?” asked Gerhardt.

“What, you are one of those precise folks who make conscience of their thoughts? I call that all stuff and nonsense,” replied Haimet, throwing down the hammer he was using.

“If I make no conscience of my thoughts, of what am I to make conscience?” was the answer. “Thought is the seed, act the flower. If you do not wish for the flower, the surest way is not to sow the seed. Sow it, and the flower will blossom, whether you will or no.”

“That sort of thing may suit you,” said Haimet rather in an irritated tone. “I could never get along, if I had to be always measuring my thoughts with an ell-wand in that fashion.”

“Do you prefer the consequences?” asked Gerhardt.

“Consequences!—what consequences?”

“Rather awkward ones, sometimes. Thoughts of hatred, for instance, may issue in murder, and that may lead to your own death. If the thoughts had been curbed in the first instance, the miserable results would have been spared to all the sufferers. And ‘no man liveth to himself’: it is very seldom that you can bring suffering on one person only. It is almost sure to run over to two or three more. And as the troubles of every one of them will run over to another two or three, like circles in the water, the sorrow keeps ever widening, so that the consequences of one small act or word for evil are incalculable. It takes God to reckon them.”

“Eh, don’t you, now!” said Isel with a shudder. “Makes me go all creepy like, that does. I shouldn’t dare to do a thing all the days of my life, if I looked at every thing that way.”

“Friend,” said Gerhardt gravely, “these things are. It does not destroy them to look away from them. It is not given to us to choose whether we will act, but only how we will act. In some manner, for good or for ill, act we must.”

“I declare I won’t listen to you, Gerard. I’m going creepy-crawly this minute. Oh deary me! you do make things look just awful.”

“Rubbish!” said Haimet, driving a nail into the wall with unnecessary vehemence.

“It is the saying of a wise man, friends,” remarked Gerhardt, “that ‘he that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little.’ And with equal wisdom he saith again, ‘Be not confident in a plain way.’” (Note 5.)

“But it is all nonsense to say ‘we must act,’” resumed Haimet. “We need not act in any way unless we choose. How am I acting if I sit here and do nothing?”

“Unless you are resting after work is done, you are setting an example of idleness or indecision. Not to do, is sometimes to do in a most effectual way. Not to hinder the doing of evil, when it lies in your power, is equivalent to doing it.”

Haimet stared at Gerhardt for a moment.

“What a wicked lot of folks you would make us out to be!”

“So we are,” said Gerhardt with a quiet smile.

“Oh, I see!—that’s how you come by your queer notions of every man’s heart being bad. Well, you are consistent, I must admit.”

“I come by that notion, because I have seen into my own. I think I have most thoroughly realised my own folly by noting in how many cases, if I were endued with the power of God, I should not do what He does: and in like manner, I most realise my own wickedness by seeing the frequent instances wherein my will raises itself up in opposition to the will of God.”

“But how is it, then, that I never see such things in myself?”

“Your eyes are shut, for one thing. Moreover, you set up your own will as the standard to be followed, without seeking to ascertain the will of God. Therefore you do not see the opposition between them.”

“Oh, I don’t consider myself a saint or an angel. I have done foolish things, of course, and I dare say, some things that were not exactly right. We are all sinners, I suppose, and I am much like other people. But taking one thing with another, I think I am a very decent fellow. I can’t worry over my ‘depravity,’ as you do. I am not depraved. I know several men much worse than I am in every way.”

“Is that the ell-wand by which God will measure you? He will not hold you up against those men, but against the burning snow-white light of His own holiness. What will you look like then?”

“Is that the way you are going to be measured, too?”

“I thank God, no. Christ our Lord will be measured for me, and He has fulfilled the whole Law.”

“And why not for me?” said Haimet fiercely. “Am I not a baptised Christian, just as much as you?”

“Friend, you will not be asked in that day whether you were a baptised Christian, but whether you were a believing Christian. Sins that are laid on Christ are gone—they exist no longer. But sins that are not so destroyed have to be borne by the sinner himself.”

“Well, I call that cowardice,” said Haimet, drawing a red herring across the track, “to want to burden somebody else with your sins. Why not have the manliness to bear them yourself?”

“If you are so manly,” answered Gerhardt with another of his quiet smiles, “will you oblige me, Haimet, by taking up the Castle, and setting it down on Presthey?”

“What are you talking about now? How could I?”

“Much more easily than you could atone for one sin. What do you call a man who proposes to do the impossible?”

“A fool.”

“And what would you call the bondman whose master had generously paid his debt, and who refused to accept that generosity, but insisted on working it out himself, though the debt was more than he could discharge by the work of a thousand years?”

“Call him what you like,” said Haimet, not wishing to go too deeply into the question.

“I will leave you to choose the correct epithet,” said Gerhardt, and went on with his carving in silence.

The carving was beginning to bring in what Isel called “a pretty penny.” Gerhardt’s skill soon became known, and the Countess of Oxford employed him to make coffers, and once sent for him to the Castle to carve wreaths on a set of oak panels. He took the work as it came, and in the intervals, or on the summer evenings, he preached on the village greens in the neighbourhood. His audiences were often small, but his doctrines spread quietly and beneath the surface. Not one came forward to join him openly, but many went away with thoughts that they had never had before. Looked on from the outside, Gerhardt’s work seemed of no value, and blessed with no success. Yet it is possible that its inward progress was not little. There may have been silent souls that lived saintly lives in that long past century, who owed their first awakening or their gradual edification to some word of his; it may be that the sturdy resistance of England to Papal aggression in the subsequent century had received its impetus from his unseen hand. Who shall say that he achieved nothing? The world wrote “unsuccessful” upon his work: did God write “blessed”? One thing at least I think he must have written—“Thou hast been faithful in a few things.” And while the measure of faithfulness is not that of success, it is that of the ultimate reward, in that Land where many that were first shall be last, and the last first. “They that are with” the Conqueror in the last great battle, are not the successful upon earth, but the “called and chosen and faithful.”

“If any man serve Me, let him follow Me,”—and what work ever had less the appearance of success than that which seemed to close on Calvary?

Note 1. “William, son of the fat priest,” occurs on the Pipe Roll for 1176, Unless “Grossus” is to be taken as a Christian name.

Note 2. Servant or slave of Michael. The Scottish gillie comes from the same root.

Note 3. These are the tenets of the ancient Waldensian Church, with which, so far as they are known, those of the German mission agreed. (They are exactly those of the Church of England, set forth in her Sixth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Seventeenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth, Twenty-Second, Twenty-Fifth, and Thirty-First Articles of Religion.) She accepted two of our three Creeds, excluding the Nicene.

Note 4. Ecclesiasticus nineteen 1, and thirty-two 21. The Waldensian Church regarded the Apocrypha as the Church of England does—not as inspired Scripture, but as a good book to be read “for example of life and instruction of manners.”

Chapter Three.

The Jewish Maiden’s Vow.

“To thine own self be true!
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Shakespeare.

“There’s the Mayor sent orders for the streets to be swept clean, and all the mud carted out of the way. You’d best sweep afore your own door, and then maybe you’ll have less rate to pay, Aunt Isel.”

It was Stephen the Watchdog who looked in over the half-door to give this piece of information.

“What’s that for?” asked Isel, stopping in the work of mopping the brick floor.

“The Lady Queen comes through on her way to Woodstock.”

“To-day?” said Flemild and Derette together.

“Or to-morrow. A running footman came in an hour ago, to say she was at Abingdon, and bid my Lord hold himself in readiness to meet her at the East Gate. The vintners have had orders to send in two tuns of Gascon and Poitou wine; and Henry the Mason tells me a new cellar and chimney were made last week in the Queen’s chamber at Woodstock. Geoffrey the Sumpter was in town yesterday, buying budgets, coffers, and bottles. So if you girls want to see her, you had better make haste and get your work done, and tidy yourselves up, and be at the East Gate by noon or soon after.”

“Get their work done! Don’t you know better than that, Stephen? A woman’s work never is done. It’s you lazy loons of men that stop working and take your pleasure when night comes. Work done, indeed!”

“But, Isel, I will finish de work for you. Go you and take your pleasure to see de Queen, meine friend. You have not much de pleasure.”

“You’re a good soul, Agnes, and it was a fine day for me when I took you in last winter. But as for pleasure, it and me parted company a smart little while ago. Nay, let the maids go; I’ll tarry at home. You can go if you will.—Stephen! are you bound elsewhere, or can you come and look after the girls?”

“I can’t, Aunt Isel; I’m on duty in the Bayly in half an hour, and when I shall be free again you must ask my Lord or Master Mayor.”

“Never mind: the boys are safe to be there. Catch them missing a show! Now, Flemild, child, drop that washing; and leave the gavache (Note 1), Ermine, and get yourselves ready. It’s only once in three or four years at most that you’re like to see such a sight. Make haste, girls.”

There was little need to tell the girls to make haste. Flemild hastily wrung out the apron she was washing, and pinned it on the line; Ermine drew the thread from her needle—the entire household owned but one of those useful and costly articles—and put it carefully away; while Derette tumbled up the ladder at imminent risk to her limbs, to fling back the lid of the great coffer at the bed-foot, and institute a search, which left every thing in wild confusion, for her sister’s best kerchief and her own. Just as the trio were ready to start, Gerhardt came in.

“Saint Frideswide be our aid! wherever are them boys?” demanded Isel of nobody in particular.

“One on the top of the East Gate,” said Gerhardt, “and the other playing at quarter-staff in Pary’s Mead.”

Pary’s Mead lay between Holywell Church and the East Gate, on the north of the present Magdalen College.

“Lack-a-daisy! but however are the girls to get down to the gate? I daren’t let ’em go by themselves.”

The girls looked blank: and two big tears filled Derette’s eyes, ready to fall.

“If all you need is an escort, friend, here am I,” said Gerhardt; “but why should the girls go alone? I would fain take you and Agnes too.”

“Take Agnes and welcome,” said Isel with a sigh; “but I’m too old, I reckon, and poor company at best.”

A little friendly altercation followed, ended by Gerhardt’s decided assertion that Agnes should not go without her hostess.

“But who’s to see to Baby?” said Derette dolefully.

“We will lock up the house, and leave Baby with old Turguia,” suggested Isel.

“Nay, she tramped off to see the show an hour ago.”

“Never mind! I’ll stop with Baby,” said Derette with heroic self-abnegation.

“Indeed you shall not,” said Ermine.

A second war of amiability seemed likely to follow, when a voice said at the door—

“Do you all want to go out? I am not going to the show. Will you trust me with the child?”

Isel turned and stared in amazement at the questioner.

“I would not hurt it,” pleaded the Jewish maiden in a tremulous voice. “Do trust me! I know you reckon us bad people; but indeed we are not so black as you think us. My baby brother died last summer; and my aims are so cold and empty since. Let me have a little child in them once more!”

“But—you will want to see the show,” responded Isel, rather as an excuse to decline the offered help than for any more considerate reason.

“No—I do not care for the show. I care far more for the child. I have stood at the corner and watched you with him, so often, and have longed so to touch him, if it might be but with one finger. Won’t you let me?”

Agnes was looking from the girl to Gerhardt, as if she knew not what to do.

“Will you keep him from harm, and bring him back as soon as we return, if you take him?” asked Gerhardt. “Remember, the God in whom we both believe hears and records your words.”

“Let Him do so to me and more also,” answered Countess solemnly, “if I bring not the child to you unhurt.”

Gerhardt lifted little Rudolph from his mother’s arms and placed him in those of the dark-eyed maiden.

“The Lord watch over thee and him!” he said.

“Amen!” And as Countess carried away the baby close pressed to her bosom, they saw her stoop down and kiss it almost passionately.

“Holy Virgin! what have you done, Gerard?” cried Isel in horror. “Don’t you know there is poison in a Jew’s breath? They’ll as sure cast a spell upon that baby as my name’s Isel.”

“No, I don’t,” said Gerhardt a little drily. “I only know that some men say so. I have placed my child in the hands of the Lord; and He, not I, has laid it in that maiden’s. It may be that this little kindness is a link in the chain of Providence, whereby He designs to bring her soul to Him. Who am I, if so, that I should put my boy or myself athwart His purpose?”

“Well, you’re mighty pious, I know,” said Isel. “Seems to me you should have been a monk, by rights. However, what’s done is done. Let’s be going, for there’s no time to waste.”

They went a little way down Fish Street, passing the Jewish synagogue, which stood about where the northernmost tower of Christ Church is now, turned to the left along Civil School Lane—at the south end of Tom Quad, coming out about Canterbury Gate—pursued their way along Saint John Baptist Street, now Merton Street, and turning again to the left where it ended, skirted the wall till they reached the East Gate. Here a heterogeneous crowd was assembled, about the gate, and on the top were perched a number of adventurous youths, among whom Haimet was descried.

“Anything coming?” Gerhardt called to him.

“Yes, a drove of pigs,” Haimet shouted back.

The pigs came grunting in, to be sarcastically greeted by the crowd, who immediately styled the old sow and her progeny by the illustrious names of Queen Eleonore and the royal children. Her Majesty was not very popular, the rather since she lived but little in England, and was known greatly to prefer her native province of Aquitaine. Still, a show was always a show, and the British public is rarely indifferent to it.

The pigs having grunted themselves up Cat Street—running from the east end of Saint Mary’s to Broad Street—a further half-hour of waiting ensued, beguiled by rough joking on the part of the crowd. Then Haimet called down to his friends—

“Here comes Prester John, in his robes of estate!”

The next minute, a running footman in the royal livery—red and gold—bearing a long wand decorated at the top with coloured ribbons, sped in at the gate, and up High Street on his way to the Castle. In ten minutes more, a stir was perceptible at the west end of High Street, and down to the gate, on richly caparisoned horses, came the Earl and Countess of Oxford, followed by a brilliant crowd of splendidly-dressed officials. It was evident that the Queen must be close at hand.

All eyes were now fixed on the London Road, up which the royal cavalcade was quickly seen approaching. First marched a division of the guard of honour, followed by the officials of the household, on horseback; then came the Queen in her char, followed by another bearing her ladies. The remainder of the guard brought up the rear.

The char was not much better than a handsomely-painted cart. It had no springs, and travelling in it must have been a trying process. But the horses bore superb silken housings, and the very bits were gilt. (Note 2.) Ten strong men in the royal livery walked, five on each side of the char; and their office, which was to keep it upright in the miry tracks—roads they were not—was by no means a sinecure.

The royal lady, seated on a Gothic chair which made the permanent seat of the char, being fixed to it, was one of the most remarkable women who have ever reigned in England. If a passage of Scripture illustrative of the life and character were to be selected to append to the statue of each of our kings and queens, there would be little difficulty in the choice to be made for Eleonore of Aquitaine. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” She sowed the wind, and she reaped the whirlwind. A youth of the wildest giddiness was succeeded by a middle life of suffering and hardship, and both ended in an old age of desolation.

But when Eleonore rode in that spring noon-day at the East Gate of Oxford, the reaping-time was not yet. The headstrong giddiness was a little toned down, but the terrible retribution had not begun.

The Queen’s contemporaries are eloquent as to her wondrous loveliness and her marvellous accomplishments. “Beauty possessed both her mind and body,” says one writer who lived in the days of her grandson, while another expatiates on her “clairs et verds yeux,” and a third on her “exquisite mouth, and the most splendid eyes in the world.” Her Majesty was attired with equal stateliness and simplicity, for that was not an era of superb or extravagant dress. A close gown with tight sleeves was surmounted by a pelisse, the sleeves of which were very wide and full, and the fur trimming showed the high rank of the wearer. A long white veil came over her head, and fell around her, kept in its place by a jewelled fillet. The gemmed collar of gold at the neck, and the thick leather gloves (with no partitions for the fingers) heavily embroidered on the back, were also indicative of regal rank.

The Queen’s char stopped just within the gate, so that our friends had an excellent view of her. She greeted the Earl and Countess of Oxford with a genial grace, which she well knew how to assume; gave her hand to be kissed to a small selection of the highest officials, and then the char passed on, and the sight was over.

Isel and her friends turned homewards, not waiting for the after portion of the entertainment. There was to be a bull-baiting in the afternoon on Presthey—Christ Church Meadow—and a magnificent bonfire at night in Gloucester Meadows—Jericho; but these enjoyments they left to the boys. There would be plenty of women, however, at the bull-baiting; as many as at a Spanish corrida. The idea of its being a cruel pastime, or even of cruelty being at all objectionable or demoralising, with very few exceptions, had not then dawned on the minds of men.

They returned by the meadows outside the city, entering at the South Gate. As they came up Fish Street, they could see Countess on a low seat at her father’s door, with little Rudolph on her knee, both parties looking very well content with their position. On their reaching the corner, she rose and came to meet them.

“Here is the baby,” she said, smiling rather sadly. “See, I have not done him any harm! And it has done me good. You will let me have him again some day?—some time when you all want to go out, and it will be a convenience to you. Farewell, my pretty bird!”

And she held out the boy to Agnes. Little Rudolph had shown signs of pleasure at the sight of his mother; but it soon appeared that he was not pleased by any means at the prospect of parting with his new friend. Countess had kept him well amused, and he had no inclination to see an abrupt end put to his amusement. He struggled and at last screamed his disapprobation, until it became necessary for Gerhardt to interfere, and show the young gentleman decidedly that he must not always expect to have his own way.

“I t’ank you”—Agnes began to say, in her best English, which was still imperfect, though Ermine spoke it fluently now. But Countess stopped her, rather to her surprise, by a few hurried words in her own tongue.

“Do not thank me,” she said, with a flash of the black eyes. “It is I who should thank you.”

And running quickly across Fish Street, the Jewish maiden disappeared inside her father’s door.

All European nations at that date disliked and despised the hapless sons of Israel: but the little company to whom Gerhardt and Agnes belonged were perhaps a shade less averse to them than others. They were to some extent companions in misfortune, being themselves equally despised and detested by many; and they were much too familiar with the Word of God not to recognise that His blessing still rested on the seed of Abraham His friend, hidden “for a little moment” by a cloud, but one day to burst into a refulgence of heavenly sunlight. When, therefore, Flemild asked Ermine, as they were laying aside their out-door garb—“Don’t you hate those horrid creatures?” it was not surprising that Ermine paused before replying.

“Don’t you?” repeated Flemild.

“No,” said Ermine, “I do not think I do.”

“Don’t you?” echoed Flemild for the third time, and with emphasis. “Why, Ermine, they crucified our Lord.”

“So did you and I, Flemild; and He bids us love one another.”

Flemild stood struck with astonishment, her kerchief half off her head.

“I crucified our Lord!” she exclaimed. “Ermine, what can you mean?”

“Sin crucified Him,” said Ermine quietly; “your sins and mine, was it not? If He died not for our sins, we shall have to bear them ourselves. And did He not die for Countess too?”

“I thought He died for those who are in holy Church; and Countess is a wicked heathen Jew.”

“Yes, for holy Church, which means those whom God has chosen out of the world. How can you know that Countess is not some day to be a member of holy Church?”

“Ermine, they are regular wicked people!”

“We are all wicked people, till God renews us by His Holy Spirit.”

“I’m not!” cried Flemild indignantly; “and I don’t believe you are either.”

“Ah, Flemild, that is because you are blind. Sin has darkened our eyes; we cannot see ourselves.”

“Ermine, do you mean to say that you see me a wicked creature like a Jew?”

“By nature, I am as blind as you, Flemild.”

“‘By nature’! What do you mean? Do you see me so?”

“Flemild, dear friend, what if God sees it?”

Ermine had spoken very softly and tenderly, but Flemild was not in a mood to appreciate the tenderness.

“Well!” she said in a hard tone. “If we are so dreadfully wicked, I wonder you like to associate with us.”

“But if I am equally wicked?” suggested Ermine with a smile.

“I wonder how you can hold such an opinion of yourself. I should not like to think myself so bad. I could not bear it.”

Flemild entertained the curious opinion—it is astonishing how many people unwittingly hold it—that a fact becomes annihilated by a man shutting his eyes to it. Ermine regarded her with a look of slight amusement.

“What difference would it make if I did not think so?” she asked.

Flemild laughed, only then realising the absurdity of her own remark. It augured well for her good sense that she could recognise the absurdity when it was pointed out to her.

Coming down the ladder, they found Anania seated below.

“Well, girls! did you see the Queen?”

“Oh, we had a charming view of her,” said Flemild.

“Folks say she’s not so charming, seen a bit nearer. You know Veka, the wife of Chembel? She told me she’d heard Dame Ediva de Gathacra say the Queen’s a perfect fury when she has her back up. Some of the scenes that are to be seen by nows and thens in Westminster Palace are enough to set your hair on end. And her extravagance! Will you believe it, Dame Ediva said, this last year she gave over twenty pounds for one robe. How many gowns would that buy you and me, Aunt Isel?”

At the present value of money, Her Majesty’s robe cost rather more than 500.

“Bless you, I don’t know,” was Isel’s answer. “Might be worth cracking my head over, if I were to have one of ’em when I’d done. But there’s poor chance of that, I reckon; so I’ll let it be.”

“They say she sings superbly,” said Flemild.

“Oh, very like. Folks may well sing that can afford to give twenty pound for a gown. If she’d her living to earn, and couldn’t put a bit of bread in her mouth, nor in her children’s, till she’d worked for it, she’d sing o’ t’other side her mouth, most likely.”

“Anania, don’t talk so unseemly. I’m sure you’ve a good enough place.”

“Oh, are you? I dress in samite, like the Queen, don’t I?—and eat sturgeon and peacocks to my dinner?—and drive of a gilt char when I come to see folks? I should just like to know why she must have all the good things in life, and I must put up with the hard ones? I’m as good a woman as she is, I’m sure of that.”

“Cousin Anania,” said Derette in a scandalised tone, “you should not tell us you’re a good woman; you should wait till we tell you.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” snapped Anania.

“I didn’t tell you so because I don’t think so,” replied Derette with severity, “if you say such things of the Queen.”

“Much anybody cares what you think, child. Why, just look!—tuns and tuns of Gascon wine are sent to Woodstock for her: and here must I make shift with small ale and thin mead that’s half sour. She’s only to ask and have.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Isel. “I wouldn’t give my quiet home for a sup of Gascon wine—more by reason I don’t like it. ‘Scenes at Westminster Palace’ are not things I covet. My poor Manning was peaceable enough, and took a many steps to save me, and I doubt if King Henry does even to it. Eh dear! if I did but know what had come of my poor man! I should have thought all them Saracens ’d have been dead and buried by now, when you think what lots of folks has gone off to kill ’em. And as to ‘asking and having’—well, that hangs on what you ask for. There’s a many folks asks for the moon, but I never heard tell as any of ’em had it.”

“Why do folks go to kill the Saracens?” demanded Derette, still unsatisfied on that point.

“Saints know!” said her mother, using her favourite comfortable expletive. “I wish he hadn’t ha’ gone—I do so!”

“It’s a good work, child,” explained Anania.

“Wouldn’t it have been a good work for Father to stay at home, and save steps for Mother?”

“I think it would, my child,” said Gerhardt; “but God knoweth best, and He let thy father go. Sometimes what seems to us the best work is not the work God has appointed for us.”

Had Gerhardt wished to drive away Anania, he could not have taken a surer method than by words which savoured of piety. She resembled a good many people in the present day, who find the Bread of Life very dry eating, and if they must swallow a little of it, can only be persuaded to do so by a thick coating of worldly butter. They may be coaxed to visit the church where the finest anthem is sung, but that where the purest Gospel is preached has no attraction for them. The porter’s wife, therefore, suddenly discovered that she had plenty to do at home, and took her departure, much to the relief of the friends on whom she inflicted herself. She had not been gone many minutes when Stephen looked in.

“Lads not come in yet?” said he. “Well, have you seen the grand sight? The Queen’s gone again; she only stayed for supper at the Castle, and then off to Woodstock. She’ll not be there above a month, they say. She never tarries long in England at once. But the King’s coming back this autumn—so they say.”

“Who say?” asked Gerhardt.

“Oh, every body,” said Stephen with a laugh, as he leaned over the half-door.

“Every body?” inquired Gerhardt drily.

“Oh, come, you drive things too fine for me. Every body, that is anybody.”

“I thought every body was somebody.”

“Not in this country: maybe in yours,” responded Stephen, still laughing. “But I’m forgetting what I came for. Aunt Isel, do you want either a sheep or a pig?”

“Have you got ’em in that wallet on your back?”

“Not at present, but I can bring you either if you want it.”

“What’s the price, and who’s selling them?”

“Our neighbour Veka wants to sell three or four bacon pigs and half-a-dozen young porkers; Martin le bon Fermier, brother of Henry the Mason, has a couple of hundred sheep to sell.”

“But what’s the cost? Veka’s none so cheap to deal with, though she feeds her pigs well, I know.”

“Well, she wants two shillings a-piece for the bacons, and four for the six porkers.”

“Ay, I knew she’d clap the money on! No, thank you; I’m not made of gold marks, nor silver pennies neither.”

“Well, but the sheep are cheap enough; he only asks twopence halfpenny each.”

“That’s not out of the way. We might salt one or two. I’ll think about it. Not in a hurry to a day or two, is he?”

“Oh, no; I shouldn’t think so.”

“Has he any flour or beans to sell, think you? I could do with both those, if they were reasonable.”

“Ay, he has. Beans a shilling a quarter, and flour fourteen pence a load. (Note 3.) Very good flour, he says it is.”

“Should be, at that price. Well, I’ll see: maybe I shall walk over one of these days and chaffer with him. Any way, I’m obliged to you, Stephen, for letting me know of it.”

“Very good, Aunt Isel; Martin will be glad to see you, and I’ll give Bretta a hint to be at home when you come, if you’ll let me know the day before.”

This was a mischievous suggestion on Stephen’s part, as he well knew that Martin’s wife was not much to his aunt’s liking.

“Don’t, for mercy’s sake!” cried Isel. “She’s a tongue as long as a yard measure, and there isn’t a scrap of gossip for ten miles on every side of her that she doesn’t hand on to the first comer. She’d know all I had on afore I’d been there one Paternoster, and every body else ’d know it too, afore the day was out.”

The space of time required to repeat the Lord’s Prayer—of course as fast as possible—was a measure in common use at that day.

“Best put on your holiday clothes, then,” said Stephen with a laugh, and whistling for his dog, which was engaged in the pointing of Countess’s kitten, he turned down Fish Street on his way to the East Gate.

Stephen’s progress was arrested, as he came to the end of Kepeharme Lane, by a long and picturesque procession which issued from the western door of Saint Frideswide. Eight priests, fully robed, bore under a canopy the beautifully-carved coffer which held the venerated body of the royal saint, and they were accompanied by the officials of the Cathedral, the choir chanting a litany, and a long string of nuns bringing up the rear. Saint Frideswide was on her way to the bedside of a paralysed rich man, who had paid an immense sum for her visit, in the hope that he might be restored to the use of his faculties by a touch of her miracle-working relics. As the procession passed up the street, a door opened in the Jewry, and out came a young Jew named Dieulecresse (Note 4), who at once set himself to make fun of Saint Frideswide. Limping up the street as though he could scarcely stir, he suddenly drew himself erect and walked down with a free step; clenching his hands as if they were rigid, he then flung his arms open and worked his fingers rapidly.

“O ye men of Oxford, bring me your oblations!” he cried. “See ye not that I am a doer of wonders, like your saint, and that my miracles are quite as good and real as hers?”

The procession passed on, taking no notice of the mockery. But when, the next day, it was known that Dieulecresse had committed suicide in the night, the priests did not spare the publication of the fact, with the comment that Saint Frideswide had taken vengeance on her enemy, and that her honour was fully vindicated from his aspersions.

“Ah!” said Gerhardt softly, “‘those eighteen, on whom the tower in Siloam fell!’ How ready men are to account them sinners above all men that dwell in Jerusalem! Yet it may be that they who thus judge are the worse sinners of the two, in God’s eyes, however high they stand in the world’s sight.”

“Well, I don’t set up to be better than other folks,” said Stephen lightly. He had brought the news. “I reckon I shall pass muster, if I’m as good.”

“That would not satisfy me,” said Gerhardt. “I should want to be as good as I could be. I could not pass beyond that. But even then—”

“That’s too much trouble for me,” laughed Stephen. “When you’ve done your work, hand me over the goodness you don’t want.”

“I shall not have any, for it won’t be enough.”

“That’s a poor lookout!”

“It would be, if I had to rely on my own goodness.”

Stephen stared. “Why, whose goodness are you going to rely on?”

Gerhardt lifted his cap. “‘There is none good but One,—that is, God.’”

“I reckon that’s aiming a bit too high,” said Stephen, with a shake of his head. “Can’t tell how you’re going to get hold of that.”

“Nor could I, unless the Lord had first laid hold of me. ‘He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness’—I do not put it on myself.”

Gerhardt never made long speeches on religious topics. He said what he had to say, generally, in one pithy sentence, and then left it to carry its own weight.

“I say, Gerard, I’ve wondered more than once—”

“Well, Stephen?”

“No offence, friend?”

“Certainly not: pray say all you wish.”

“Whether you were an unfrocked priest.”

“No, I assure you.”

“Can’t tell how you come by all your notions!” said Stephen, scratching his head.

“Notions of all kinds have but two sources,” was the reply: “the Word of God, and the corruption of man’s heart.”

“Come, now, that won’t do!” objected Stephen. “You’ve built your door a mile too narrow. I’ve a notion that grass is green, and another that my new boots don’t fit me: whence come they?”

“The first,” said Gerhardt drily, “from the Gospel of Saint Mark; the second from the Fourteenth Psalm.”

“The Fourteenth Psalm makes mention of my boots!”

“Not in detail. It saith, ‘There is none that doeth good,—no, not one.’”

“What on earth has that to do with it?”

“This: that if sin had never entered the world, both fraud and suffering would have tarried outside with it.”

“Well, I always did reckon Father Adam a sorry fellow, that he had no more sense than to give in to his wife.”

“I rather think he gave in to his own inclination, at least as much. If he had not wanted to taste the apple, she might have coaxed till now.”

“Hold hard there, man! You are taking the woman’s side.”

“I thought I was taking the side of truth. If that be not one’s own, it is quite as well to find it out.”

Stephen laughed as he turned away from the door of the Walnut Tree.

“You’re too good for me,” said he. “I’ll go home before I’m infected with the complaint.”

“I’d stop and take it if I were you,” retorted Isel. “You’re off the better end, I’ll admit, but you’d do with a bit more, may be.”

“I’ll leave it for you, Aunt Isel,” said Stephen mischievously. “One shouldn’t want all the good things for one’s self, you know.”

The Queen did not remain for even a month at Woodstock. In less than three weeks she returned to London, this time without passing through Oxford, and took her journey to Harfleur, the passage across the Channel costing the usual price of 7 pounds, 10 shillings equivalent in modern times to 187 pounds, 10 shillings.

Travelling seems to have been an appalling item of expense at that time. The carriage of fish from Yarmouth to London cost 9 shillings (11 pounds, 5 shillings); of hay from London to Woodstock, 60 shillings (75 pounds); and of the Queen’s robes from Winchester to Oxford, 8 shillings (10 pounds). Yet the Royal Family were perpetually journeying; the hams were fetched from Yorkshire, the cheeses from Wiltshire, and the pearmain apples from Kent. Exeter was famous for metal and corn; Worcester and London for wheat; Winchester for wine—there were vineyards in England then; Hertford for cattle, and Salisbury for game; York for wood; while the speciality of Oxford was knives.

An old Jew, writing to a younger some thirty years later, in the reign of Henry Second, and giving him warning as to what he would find in the chief towns of southern England, thus describes such as he had visited: “London much displeases me; Canterbury is a collection of lost souls and idle pilgrims; Rochester and Chichester are but small villages; Oxford scarcely (I say not satisfies, but) sustains its clerks; Exeter refreshes men and beasts with corn; Bath, in a thick air and sulphurous vapour, lies at the gates of Gehenna!”

But if travelling were far more costly than in these days, there were much fewer objects on which money could be squandered. Chairs were almost as scarce as thrones, being used for little else, and chimneys were not more common. (Note 5.) Diamonds were unknown; lace, velvet, and satin had no existence, samite and silk being the costly fabrics; and the regal ermine is not mentioned. Dress, as has been said, was not extravagant, save in the item of jewellery, or of very costly embroidery; cookery was much simpler than a hundred years later. Plate, it is true, was rich and expensive, but it was only in the hands of the nobles and church dignitaries. On the other hand, fines were among the commonest things in existence. Not only had every breach of law its appropriate fine, but breaches of etiquette were expiated in a similar manner. False news was hardly treated: 13 shillings 4 pence was exacted for that (Pipe Roll, 12 Henry Third) and perjury (Ibidem, 16 ib) alike, while wounding an uncle cost a sovereign, and a priest might be slain for the easy price of 4 shillings 9 pence (Ibidem, 27 ib). The Prior of Newburgh was charged three marks for excess of state; and poor Stephen de Mereflet had to pay 26 shillings 8 pence for “making a stupid reply to the King’s Treasurer”! (Pipe Roll, 16 Henry Third) It was reserved for King John to carry this exaction to a ridiculous excess, by taking bribes to hold his tongue on inconvenient topics, and fining his courtiers for not having reminded him of points which he happened to forget. (Misae Roll, I John.)

Note 1. A long undergarment then worn by men and women alike.

Note 2. “For gilding the King’s bit (frenum), 56 shillings.” (Pipe Roll, 31 Henry First.)

Note 3. Reckoned according to modern value, these prices stand about thus:—Bacon pig, 2 pounds, 10 shillings; porkers, 5 pounds; sheep, 5 shillings 3 pence; quarter of beans, 25 shillings; load of flour, 30 shillings.

Note 4. “Dieu L’encroisse,” a translation of Gedaliah, and a very common name among the English Jews at that time. This incident really occurred about twenty-five years later.

Note 5. Some writers deny the existence of chimneys at this date; but an entry, on the Pipe Roll for 1160, of money expended on “the Queen’s chamber and chimney and cellar,” leaves no doubt on the matter.

Chapter Four.

The Fair of Saint Frideswide.

“That’s what I always say - if you wish a thing to be well done,
You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to others.”
Longfellow.

The month of May was the liveliest and gayest of the year at Oxford, for not only were the May Day games common to the whole country, but another special attraction lay in Saint Frideswide’s Fair, held on Gloucester Green early in that month. Oxford was a privileged town, in respect of the provision trade, the royal purveyors being forbidden to come within twenty miles of that city. In those good old times, the King was first served, then the nobility, lay and clerical, then the gentry, and the poor had to be content with what was left. It was not unusual, when a report of anything particularly nice reached the monarch—such as an import of wine, a haul of fish, or any other dainty,—for the Sheriff of that place to receive a mandate, bidding him seize for the royal use a portion or the whole thereof. Prices, too, were often regulated by proclamation, so that tradesmen not unfrequently found it hard to live. If a few of our discontented and idle agitators (I do not mean those who would work and cannot) could spend a month or two in the olden time, their next speeches on Tower Hill might be somewhat differently flavoured.

Saint Frideswide’s Fair was a sight to see. For several days before it was held, a multitude of carpenters were employed in putting up wooden booths and stalls, and Gloucester Green became a very lively place. Fairs in the present day, when they are held at all, are very different exhibitions from what they were seven hundred years ago. The stalls then were practically shops, fully stocked with goods of solid value. There was a butcher’s row, a baker’s row, a silversmith’s row, and a mercer’s row—ironmongers, saddlers, shoemakers, vintners, coopers, pelters (furriers), potters, hosiers, fishmongers, and cooks (confectioners)—all had their several streets of stalls. The Green—larger than now—became a town within a town. As the fair was held by licence of Saint Frideswide, and was under her especial protection, the Canons of that church exacted certain dues both from the Crown and the stall-holders, which were duly paid. From the Crown they received 25 shillings per annum. It was deemed a point of honour to keep the best of everything for the fair; and those buyers who wished to obtain good value for their money put off their purchases when it grew near fair time. When the third of May came, they all turned out in holiday costume to lay in necessaries, so far as possible, for the year—meat excepted, which could be purchased again at the cattle fair in the following September.

There was one serious inconvenience in shopping at that time, of which we know nothing at the present day. With the exception of the penny and still smaller coins (all silver) there was no money. The pound, though it appears on paper, was not a coin, but simply a pound weight of pence; the mark was two-thirds, and the noble (if used so early) one-third of that amount. When a woman went out to buy articles of any value, she required to carry with her an enormous weight of small silver cash. Purses were not therefore the toys we use, but large bags of heavy leather, attached to the girdle on the left side; and the aim of a pickpocket was to cut the leather bag away from its metal fastening—hence the term cut-purse.

Every woman in Kepeharme Lane—and it might be added, in Oxford—appeared in the street with a basket on her arm as soon as daylight had well dawned. The men went at their own time and convenience. For many of them a visit to the fair was merely amusement; but the ladies were on business. Even Derette followed her mother, armed with a smaller basket than the rest. Little Rudolph was left with Countess, who preferred him to the fair; and such is the power of habit that our friends had now become quite accustomed to this, and would give a nod and a smile to Countess when they met, just as they did to any other neighbour. This does not mean that they entertained an atom less of prejudice against Jews in general; they had merely got over their prejudice in the case of that one Jewish girl in particular.

Isel’s business was heavy enough. She wanted a pig, half an ox, twenty ells of dark blue cloth, a cloak for herself and capes for her daughters, thirty pairs of slippers—a very moderate allowance for three women, for slippers were laid in by the dozen pairs in common—fifty cheeses (an equally moderate reckoning) (Note 1), a load of flour, another of oatmeal, two quarters of cabbage for salting, six bushels of beans, five hundred herrings, a barrel of ale, two woollen rugs for bedclothes, a wooden coffer, and a hundred nails. She had already bought and salted two sheep from Martin, so mutton was not needed.

“Now, Agnes, what do you want?” she asked.

Agnes, who was following with another basket, replied that she wanted some stuff for a dress, some flannel for Rudolph, and a few pairs of shoes. Shoes must have worn only a very short time, considering the enormous quantity of them usually bought at once.

“And you, Ermine?”

“Nothing but a hood, Mother Isel.”

“You’re easily satisfied. Well, I’ll go first after my pig.”

They turned into the Butcher’s Row, where in a minute they could scarcely hear each other speak. The whole air seemed vocal with grunts, lowing, and bleating, and, the poulterers’ booths lying close behind, crowing and cackling also.

“How much for a good bacon pig?” screamed Isel to a fat butcher, who was polishing a knife upon a wooden block.

“Hertford kids? I have none.”

“Bacon pig!” screamed Isel a little louder.

“Oh! Well, look you, there’s a nice one—twenty pence; there’s a rare fine one—twenty-two; there’s a—”

“Bless thee, man! dost thou think I’m made of money?”

“Shouldn’t wonder if you’d a pot laid by somewhere,” said the butcher with a knowing wink. He was an old acquaintance.

“Well, I haven’t, then: and what’s more, I’ve plenty to do with the few marks I have. Come now, I’ll give you sixteen pence for that biggest fellow.”

The butcher intimated, half in a shout and half by pantomime, that he could not think of such a thing.

“Well, eighteen, then.”

The butcher shook his head.

“Nineteen! Now, that’s as high as I’ll go.”

“Not that one,” shouted the butcher; “I’ll take nineteen for the other.”

Isel had to execute a gymnastic feat before she could answer, to save herself from the horns of an inquisitive cow which was being driven up the row; while a fat pig on the other side was driving Flemild nearly out of the row altogether.

“Well! I’ll agree to that,” said Isel, when she had settled with the cow.

A similar process having been gone through for the half ox, for which Isel had to pay seventeen pence (Salted cow was much cheaper, being only 2 shillings each.)—a shameful price, as she assured her companions—the ladies next made their way to Drapers’ Row. The draper, then and for some centuries later, was the manufacturer of cloth, not the retail dealer only: but he sold retail as well as wholesale. Isel found some cloth to her mind, but the price was not to her mind at all, being eighteen pence per ell.

“Gramercy, man! wouldst thou ruin me?” she demanded.

A second battle followed with the draper, from which Isel this time emerged victorious, having paid only 1 shilling 5 pence per ell. They then went to the clothier’s, where she secured a cloak for a mark (13 shillings 4 pence) and capes for the girls at 6 shillings 8 pence each. At the shoemaker’s she laid in her slippers for 6 pence per pair, with three pairs of boots at a shilling. The cheeses were dear, being a halfpenny each; the load of flour cost 14 pence, and of meal 2 shillings; the beans were 1 shilling 8 pence, the cabbage 1 shilling 2 pence, the herrings 2 shillings. The coffer came to 5 shillings, the nails to 2 shillings 4 pence. (Note 2.) Isel looked ruefully at her purse.

“We must brew at home,” she said, easily dismissing that item; “but how shall I do for the rugs?”

Rugs were costly articles. There was no woollen manufacture in England, nor was there to be such for another hundred years. A thick, serviceable coverlet, such as Isel desired, was not to be bought much under two pounds.

“We must do without them,” she said, with a shake of her head. “Girls, you’ll have to spread your cloaks on the bed. We must eat, but we needn’t lie warm if we can’t afford it.”

“Isel, have you de one pound? Look, here is one,” said Agnes timidly, holding out her hand.

“But you want that, my dear.”

“No, I can do widout. I will de gown up-mend dat I have now. Take you de money; I have left for de shoes and flannel.”

She did not add that the flannel would have to be cut down, as well as the new dress resigned.

“And I can do very well without a hood,” added Ermine quickly. “We must help Mother Isel all we can.”

“My dears, I don’t half like taking it.”

“We have taken more from you,” said Ermine.

Thus urged, Isel somewhat reluctantly took the money, and bought one rug, for which she beat down the clothier to two marks and a half, and departed triumphant, this being her best bargain for the day. It was then in England, as it yet is in Eastern lands, an understood thing that all tradesmen asked extortionate prices, and must be offered less as a matter of course: a fact which helps to the comprehension of the Waldensian objection to trade as involving falsehood.

Isel returned to Agnes the change which remained out of her pound, which enabled her to get all the flannel she needed. Their baskets being now well filled, Isel and her party turned homewards, sauntering slowly through the fair, partly because the crowd prevented straightforward walking, but partly also because they wished to see as much as they could. Haimet was to bring a hand-cart for the meat and other heavy purchases at a later hour.

Derette, who for safety’s sake was foremost of the girls, directly following her mother and Agnes, trudged along with her basket full of slippers, and her head full of profound meditation. Had Isel known the nature of those meditations, she certainly would never have lingered at the silversmiths’ stalls in a comfortable frame of mind, pointing out to her companions various pretty things which took her fancy. But she had not the remotest idea of her youngest daughter’s private thoughts, and she turned away from Gloucester Green at last, quite ignorant of the fashion wherein her feelings of all sorts were about to be outraged.

Derette was determined to obtain a dress for Agnes. She had silently watched the kindly manner in which the good-natured German gave up the thing she really needed: for poor Agnes had but the one dress she wore, and Derette well knew that no amount of mending would carry it through another winter. But how was a penniless child to procure another for her? If Derette had not been a young person of original ideas and very independent spirit, the audacious notion which she was now entertaining would never have visited her mind.

This was no less than a visit to the Castle, to beg one of the cast-off gowns of the women of the household. Dresses wore long in the Middle Ages, and ladies of rank were accustomed to make presents of half-worn ones to each other. Derette was not quite so presumptuous as to think of addressing the Countess—that, even in her eyes, seemed a preposterous impossibility; but surely one of her waiting-women might be reached. How was she to accomplish her purpose?

That she must slip away unseen was the first step to be taken. Her mother would never dream of allowing such an errand, as Derette well knew; but she comforted herself, as others have done beside her, with the reflection that the excellence of her motive quite compensated for the unsatisfactory details of her conduct. Wedged as she was in the midst of the family group, and encumbered with her basket, she could not hope to get away before they reached home; but she thought she saw her chance directly afterwards, when the baskets should have been discharged of their contents, and every body was busy inspecting, talking about, and putting away, the various purchases that had been made.

Young girls were never permitted to go out alone at that time. It was considered less dangerous in town than country, and a mere run into a neighbouring house might possibly have been allowed; but usually, when not accompanied by some responsible person, they were sent in groups of three or four at once. Derette’s journey must be taken alone, and it involved a few yards of Milk Street, as far as Saint Ebbe’s, then a run to Castle Street and up to the Castle. That was the best way, for it was both the shortest and comparatively the quietest. But Derette determined not to go in at the entrance gate, where she would meet Osbert and probably Anania, but to make for the Osney Gate to the left, where she hoped to fall into the kindlier hands of her cousin Stephen. The danger underlying this item was that Stephen might have gone to the fair, in which case she would have to encounter either the rough joking of Orme, or the rough crustiness of Wandregisil, his fellow-watchmen. That must be risked. The opportunity had to be bought, and Derette made up her mind to pay the necessary price.

The Walnut Tree was reached, the baskets laid down, and while Agnes was divesting herself of her cloak, and Isel reiterating her frequent assertion that she was “that tired,” Derette snatched her chance, and every body’s back being turned for the moment, slipped out of the door, and sped up Kepeharme Lane with the speed of a fawn. Her heart beat wildly, and until she reached Milk Street, she expected every instant to be followed and taken back. If she could only get her work done, she told herself, the scolding and probable whipping to follow would be easily borne.

Owing to its peculiar municipal laws, throughout the Middle Ages, Oxford had the proud distinction of being the cleanest city in England. That is to say, it was not quite so appallingly smothered in mire and filth as others were. Down the midst of every narrow street ran a gutter, which after rain was apt to become a brook, and into which dirt of every sort was emptied by every householder. There were no causeways; and there were frequent holes of uncertain depth, filled with thick mud. Ownerless dogs, and owned but equally free-spoken pigs, roamed the streets at their own sweet will, and were not wont to make way for the human passengers; while if a cart were met in the narrow street, it was necessary for the pedestrian to squeeze himself into the smallest compass possible against the wall, if he wished to preserve his limbs in good working order. Such were the delights of taking a walk in the good old times. It may reasonably be surmised that unnecessary walks were not frequently taken.

Kepeharme Lane left behind, where the topography of the holes was tolerably familiar, Derette had to walk more guardedly. After getting pretty well splashed, and dodging a too attentive pig which was intent on charging her for venturing on his beat, Derette at last found herself at the Osney Gate. She felt now that half her task was over.

“Who goes there?” demanded the welcome voice of Stephen, when Derette rapped at the gate.

“It’s me, Stephen,—Derette: do let me in.”

The gate stood open in a moment, and Stephen’s pleasant face appeared behind it, with a look of something like consternation thereon.

“Derette!—alone!—whatever is the matter?”

“Nothing, Stephen; oh, nothing’s the matter. I only came alone because I knew Mother wouldn’t let me if I asked her.”

“Hoity-toity!—that’s a nice confession, young woman! And pray what are you after, now you have come?”

“Stephen—dear, good Stephen, will you do me a favour?”

“Hold off, you coaxing sinner!”

“Oh, but I want it so much! You see, she gave it up because Mother wanted a rug, and she let her have the money—and I know it won’t mend up to wear any thing like through the winter—and I do want so to get her another—a nice soft one, that will be comfortable, and—You’ll help me, won’t you, Steenie?”

And Derette’s small arms came coaxingly round her cousin’s wrist.

“I’m a heathen Jew if I have the shadow of a notion what I’m wanted to help! ‘A nice soft one!’ Is it a kitten, or a bed-quilt, or a sack of meal, you’re after?”

“O Stephen!—what queer things you guess! It’s a gown—.”

“I don’t keep gowns, young woman.”

“No, but, Steenie, you might help me to get at somebody that does. One of the Lady’s women, you know. I’m sure you could, if you would.”

Steenie whistled. “Well, upon my word! You’ll not lose cakes for want of asking for. Why don’t you go to Anania?”

“You know she’d only be cross.”

“How do you know I sha’n’t be cross?” asked Stephen, knitting his brows, and pouting out his lips, till he looked formidable.

“Oh, because you never are. You’ll only laugh at me, and you won’t do that in an ugly way like some people. Now, Steenie, you will help me to get a gown for Agnes?”

“Agnes, is it? I thought you meant Flemild.”

“No, it’s Agnes; and Ermine gave up her hood to help: but Agnes wants the gown worse than Ermine does a hood. You like them, you know, Steenie.”

“Who told you that, my Lady Impertinence? Dear, dear, what pests these children are!”

“Now, Stephen, you know you don’t think any thing of the sort, and you are going to help me this minute.”

“How am I to help, I should like to know? I can’t leave my gate.”

“You can call somebody. Now do, Steenie, there’s a darling cousin!—and I’ll ask Mother to make you some of those little pies you like so much. I will, really.”

“You outrageous wheedler! I suppose I shall have no peace till I get rid of you.—Henry!”

A lad of about twelve years old, who was crossing the court-yard at the other side, turned and came up at the call.

“Will you take this maid in, and get her speech of Cumina? She’s very good-natured, and if you tell her your story, Derette, I shouldn’t wonder if she helps you.”

“Oh, thank you, Steenie, so much!”

Derette followed Henry, who made faces at her, but gave her no further annoyance, into the servants’ offices at the Castle, where he turned her unceremoniously over to the first person he met—a cook in a white cap and apron—with the short and not too civil information that—

“She wants Cumina.”

The cook glanced carelessly at Derette.

“Go straight along the passage, and up the stairs to the left,” he said, and then went on about his own business.

Never before had Derette seen a house which contained above four rooms at the utmost. She felt in utter confusion amid stairs, doors, and corridors. But she managed to find the winding staircase at the end of the passage, and to mount it, wishing much that so convenient a mode of access could replace the ladder in her mother’s house. She went up till she could go no further, when she found herself on the top landing of a round tower, without a human creature to be seen. There were two doors, however; and after rapping vainly at both, she ventured to open one. It led to the leads of the tower. Derette closed this, and tried the other. She found it to open on a dark fathomless abyss,—the Castle well (Note 3), had she known it—and shut it quickly with a sensation of horror. After a moment’s reflection, she went down stairs to the next landing.

Here there were four doors, and from one came the welcome sound of human voices. Derette rapped timidly on this. It was opened by a girl about the age of Flemild.

“Please,” said Derette, “I was to ask for Cumina.”

“Oh, you must go to the still-room,” answered the girl, and would have shut the door without further parley, had not Derette intercepted her with a request to be shown where the still-room was.

With an impatient gesture, the girl came out, led Derette a little way along the corridor running from the tower, and pointed to a door on the left hand.

Derette’s hopes rose again. She was one of those persons whom delays and difficulties do not weary out or render timid, but rather inspire to fresh and stronger action.

“Well, what do you want?” asked the pleasant-faced young woman who answered Derette’s rap. “Please, is there somebody here called Cumina?”

“I rather think there is,” was the smiling answer. “Is it you?”

“Ay. Come in, and say what you wish.” Derette obeyed, and poured out her story, rather more lucidly than she had done to Stephen. Cumina listened with a smile.

“Well, my dear, I would give you a gown for your friend if I had it,” she said good-humouredly; “but I have just sent the only one I can spare to my mother. I wonder who there is, now—Are you afraid of folks that speak crossly?”

“No,” said Derette. “I only want to shake them.” Cumina laughed. “You’ll do!” she said. “Come, then, I’ll take you to Hagena. She’s not very pleasant-spoken, but if any body can help you, she can. The only doubt is whether she will.”

Derette followed Cumina through what seemed to her endless corridors opening into further and further corridors, till at last she asked in a tone of astonishment—

“How can you ever find your way?”

“Oh, you learn to do that very soon,” said Cumina, laughing, as she opened the door of a long, low chamber. “Now, you must tread softly here, and speak very respectfully.”

Derette nodded acquiescence, and they went in.

The room was lined with presses from floor to ceiling. On benches which stood back to back in its midst, several lengths of rich silken stuffs were spread out; and on other benches near the windows sat two or three girls busily at work. Several elder ladies were moving about the room, and one of them, a rather stout, hard-featured woman, was examining the girls’ work. Cumina went up to her.

“If you please, Hagena,” she said, “is there any where an old gown which it would please you to bestow on this girl, who has asked the boon?”

Hagena straightened herself up and looked at Derette.

“Is she the child of one of my Lord’s tenants?”

“No,” answered Derette. “My mother’s house is her own.”

“Well, if ever I heard such assurance! Perchance, Madam, you would like a golden necklace to go with it?”

If Derette had not been on her good behaviour, Hagena would have received as much as she gave. But knowing that her only chance of success lay in civil and submissive manners, she shut her lips tight and made no answer.

“Who sent you?” pursued Hagena, who was the Countess’s mistress of the household, and next in authority to her.

“Nobody. I came of myself.”

“Ha, chétife! I do wonder what the world’s coming to! The impudence of the creature! How on earth did she get in? Just get out again as fast as you can, and come on such an errand again if you dare! Be off with you!”

Derette’s voice trembled, but not with fear, as she turned back to Cumina. To Hagena she vouchsafed no further word.

“I did not know I was offending any body,” she said, in a manner not devoid of childish dignity. “I was trying to do a little bit of good. I think, if you please, I had better go home.”

Derette’s speech infuriated Hagena. The child had kept her manners and her dignity too, under some provocation, while the mistress of the household was conscious that she had lost hers.

“How dare—” she was beginning, when another voice made her stop suddenly.

“What has the child been doing? I wish to speak with her.”

Cumina hastily stopped Derette from leaving the room, and led her up to the lady who had spoken and who had only just entered.

“What is it, my little maid?” she said kindly.

“I beg your pardon,” said the child. She was but a child, and her brave heart was failing her. Derette was very near tears. “I did not mean any harm. Somebody had given up having a new gown—and she wanted it very much—to let somebody else have the money; and I thought, if I could beg one for her—but I did not mean to be rude. Please let me go home.”

“Thou shalt go home, little one,” answered the lady; “but wait a moment. Does any one know the child?”

Nobody knew her.

“Stephen the Watchdog knows me,” said Derette, drawing a long breath. “He is my cousin. So is Osbert the porter.”

The lady put her arm round Derette.

“What sort of a gown wouldst thou have, my child?”

Derette’s eyes lighted up. Was she really to succeed after all?

“A nice one, please,” she said, simply, making every one smile except Hagena, who was still too angry for amusement. “Not smart nor grand, you know, but warm and soft. Something woollen, I suppose, it should be.”

The lady addressed herself to Hagena.

“Have I any good woollen robe by the walls?”

When a dress was done with, if the materials were worth using for something else, it was taken to pieces; if not, it was hung up “by the walls,” ready to give away when needed.

Hagena had some difficulty in answering properly.

“No, Lady; the last was given to Veka, a fortnight since.”

“Then,” was the quiet answer, which surprised all present, “it must be one of those I am wearing. Let Cumina and Dora bring such as I have.”

Derette looked up into the face of her new friend.

“Please, are you the Lady Countess?”

“Well, I suppose I am,” replied the Countess with a smile. “Now, little maid, choose which thou wilt.”

Seven woollen gowns were displayed before the Countess and Derette, all nearly new—blue, green, scarlet, tawny, crimson, chocolate, and cream-colour. Derette looked up again to the Countess’s face.

“Nay, why dost thou look at me? Take thine own choice.”

The Countess was curious to see what the child’s selection would be.

“I looked to see which you liked best,” said Derette, “because I wouldn’t like to choose that.”

“True courtesy here!” remarked the Countess. “It is nothing to me, my child. Which dost thou like?”

“I like that one,” said Derette, touching the crimson, which was a rich, soft, dark shade of the colour, “and I think Agnes would too; but I don’t want to take the best, and I am not sure which it is.”

“Fold it up,” said the Countess to Cumina, with a smile to Derette; “let it be well lapped in a kerchief; and bid Wandregisil go to the Osney Gate, so that Stephen can take the child home.”

The parcel was folded up, the Countess’s hand kissed with heartfelt thanks, and the delighted Derette, under the care of Cumina, returned to the Osney Gate with her load.

“Well, you are a child!” exclaimed Stephen. “So Cumina has really found you a gown? I thought she would, if she had one to give away.”

“No,” said Derette, “it is the Countess’s gown.”

“And who on earth gave you a gown of the Lady’s?”

“Her own self!—and, Stephen, it is of her own wearing; she hadn’t done with it; but she gave it me, and she was so nice!—so much nicer than all the others except Cumina.”

“Well, if ever I did!” gasped Stephen. “Derette, you are a terrible child! I never saw your like.”

“I don’t know what I’ve done that’s terrible,” replied the child. “I’m sure Agnes won’t think it terrible to have that pretty gown to wear. What is terrible about it, Stephen?”

They had left the Castle a few yards behind, were over the drawbridge, and winding down the narrow descent, when a sharp call of “Ste-phen!” brought them to a standstill.

“Oh dear, that’s Cousin Anania!” exclaimed Derette. “Let me run on, Stephen, and you go back and see what she wants.”

“Nay, I must not do that, child. The Lady sent orders that I was to see you home. You’ll have to go back with me.”

“But she’ll worry so! She’ll want to know all about the gown, and then she’ll want it undone, and I’m sure she’ll mess it up—and Cumina folded it so smooth and nice:” urged Derette in a distressed tone.

“We won’t let her,” answered Stephen, quietly, as they came to the entrance gate. “Well, what’s up, Anania?”

“What’s Derette doing here? Who came with her? Where are you going?—and what’s in that fardel?”

“Oh, is that all you’re after? I’ll answer those questions when I come back. I’ve got to take Derette home just now.”

“You’ll answer them before you go an inch further, if you please. That child’s always in some mischief, and you aid and abet her a deal too often.”

“But I don’t please. I am under orders, Anania, and I can’t stop now.”

“At least you’ll tell me what’s in the fardel!” cried Anania, as Stephen turned to go on his way without loosing his hold of the parcel.

“A gown which the Lady has given to Derette,” said Stephen mischievously, “and she sent commands that I was to escort her home with it.”

“A gown!—the Lady!—Derette!” screamed Anania. “Not one of her own?—why on earth should she give Derette a gown?”

“That’s the Lady’s business, not mine.”

“Yes, one of her own,” said Derette proudly.

“But what on earth for? She hasn’t given me a gown, and I am sure I want it more than that child—and deserve it, too.”

“Perhaps you haven’t asked her,” suggested Derette, trotting after Stephen, who was already half-way across the bridge.

“Asked her! I should hope not, indeed—I know my place, if you don’t. You never mean to say you asked her?”

“I can’t stop to talk, Cousin Anania.”

“But which gown is it?—tell me that!” cried Anania, in an agony of disappointed curiosity.

“It’s a crimson woollen one. Good morrow.”

“What! never that lovely robe she had on yesterday? Saints bless us all!” was the last scream that reached them from Anania.

Stephen laughed merrily as Derette came up with him.

“We have got clear of the dragon this time,” said he.

A few minutes brought them to the Walnut Tree.

“Haimet—Oh, it’s Stephen!” cried Isel in a tone of sore distress, as soon as he appeared at the door. “Do, for mercy’s sake—I’m just at my wits’ end to think whatever—Oh, there she is!”

“Yes, Mother, I’m here,” said Derette demurely.

“Yes, she’s here, and no harm done, but good, I reckon,” added Stephen. “Still, I think it might be as well to look after her a bit, Aunt Isel. If she were to take it into her head to go to London to see the Lady Queen, perhaps you mightn’t fancy it exactly.”

“What has she been doing?” asked Isel in consternation.

“Only paying a visit to the Countess,” said Stephen, laughing.

By this time Derette had undone the knots on the handkerchief, and the crimson robe was revealed in all its beauty.

“Agnes,” she said quietly, but with a little undertone of decided triumph, “this is for you. You won’t have to give up your gown, though you did give Mother the money.”

A robe, in the Middle Ages, meant more than a single gown, and the crimson woollen was a robe. Under and upper tunics, a mantle, and a corset or warm under-bodice, lay before the eyes of the amazed Agnes.

“Derette, you awful child!” exclaimed her mother almost in terror, “what have you been after, and where did you get all that? Why, it’s a new robe, and fit for a queen!”

“Don’t scold the child,” said Stephen. “She meant well, and I believe she behaved well; she got more than she asked for, that’s all.”

“Please, it isn’t quite new, Mother, because the Lady wore it yesterday; but she said she hadn’t one done with, so she gave me one she was wearing.”

Bit by bit the story was told, while Isel held up her hands in horrified astonishment, which she allowed to appear largely, and in inward admiration of Derette’s spirit, of which she tried to prevent the appearance. She was not, however, quite able to effect her purpose.

“Meine Kind!” cried Agnes, even more amazed and horrified than Isel. “Dat is not for me. It is too good. I am only poor woman. How shall I such beautiful thing wear?”

“But it is for you,” pleaded Derette earnestly, “and you must wear it; because, you see, if you did not, it would seem as if I had spoken falsely to the Lady.”

“Ay, I don’t see that you can do aught but take it and wear it,” said Stephen. “Great ladies like ours don’t take their gifts back.”

Gerhardt had come in during the discussion.

“Nor does the Lord,” he said, “at least not from those who receive them worthily. Take it from Him, dear, with thankfulness to the human instruments whom He has used. He saw thy need, and would not suffer thee to want for obeying His command.”

“But is it not too fine, Gerhardt?”

“It might be if we had chosen it,” answered Gerhardt with a smile; “but it seems as if the Lord had chosen it for thee, and that settles the matter. It is only the colour, after all.”

There was no trimming on the robe, save an edging of grey fur,—not even embroidery: and no other kind of trimming was known at that time. Agnes timidly felt the soft, fine texture.

“It is beautiful!” she said.

“Oh, it is beautiful enough, in all conscience,” said Isel, “and will last you a life-time, pretty nigh. But as to that dreadful child—”

“Now, Mother, you won’t scold me, will you?” said Derette coaxingly, putting her arms round Isel’s neck. “I haven’t done any harm, have I?”

“Well, child, I suppose you meant well,” said Isel doubtfully, “and I don’t know but one should look at folks’ intentions more than their deeds, in especial when there’s no ill done; but—”

“Oh, come, let’s forgive each other all round!” suggested Stephen. “Won’t that do?”

Isel seemed to think it would, for she kissed Derette.

“But you must never, never do such a thing again, child, in all the days of your life!” said she.

“Thank you, Mother, I don’t want to do it again just now,” answered Derette in a satisfied tone.

The afternoon was not over when Anania marched into the Walnut Tree.

“Well, Aunt Isel! I hope you are satisfied now!”

“With what, Anania?”

“That dreadfully wicked child. Didn’t I tell you? I warned you to look after her. If you only would take good advice when folks take the trouble to give it you!”

“Would you be so good as to say what you mean, Anania? I’m not at all satisfied with dreadfully wicked children. I’m very much dissatisfied with them, generally.”

“I mean Derette, of course. I hope you whipped her well!”

“What for?” asked Isel, in a rather annoyed tone.

“‘What for?’” Anania lifted up her hands. “There now!—if I didn’t think she would just go and deceive you! She can’t have told you the truth, of course, or you could never pass it by in that light way.”

“If you mean her visit to the Castle,” said Isel in a careless tone, “she told us all about it, of course, when she got back.”

“And you take it as coolly as that?”

“How did you wish me to take it? The thing is done, and all’s well that ends well. I don’t see that it was so much out of the way, for my part. Derette got no harm, and Agnes has a nice new gown, and nobody the worse. If anybody has a right to complain, it is the Countess; and I can’t see that she has so much, either; for she needn’t have given the robe if she hadn’t liked.”

“Oh, she’s no business to grumble; she has lots more of every thing. She could have twenty robes made like that to-morrow, if she wanted them. I wish I’d half as many—I know that!”

Agnes came down the ladder at that moment, carrying one of her new tunics, which she had just tried on, and was now going to alter to fit herself.

“That’s it, is it?” exclaimed Anania in an interested voice. “I thought it was that one. Well, you are in luck! That’s one of her newest robes, I do believe. Ah, folks that have more money than they know what to do with, can afford to do aught they fancy. But to think of throwing away such a thing as that on you!”

Neither words nor tone were flattering, but the incivility dropped harmless from the silver armour of Agnes’s lowly simplicity.

“Oh, but it shall not away be t’rown,” she said gently; “I will dem all up-make, and wear so long as they will togeder hold. I take care of dat, so shall you see!”

Anania looked on with envious eyes.

“How good lady must de Countess be!” added Agnes.

“Oh, she can be good to folks sometimes,” snarled Anania. “She’s just as full of whims as she can be—all those great folks are—proud and stuck-up and crammed full of caprice: but they say she’s kind where she takes, you know. It just depends whether she takes to you. She never took to me, worse luck! I might have had that good robe, if she had.”

“I shouldn’t think she would,” suddenly observed the smallest voice in the company.

“What do you mean by that, you impudent child?”

“Because, Cousin Anania, I don’t think there’s much in you to take to.”

Derette’s prominent feeling at that moment was righteous indignation. She could not bear to hear the gentle, gracious lady, who had treated her with such unexpected kindness, accused of being proud and full of whims, apparently for no better reason than because she had not “taken to” Anania—a state of things which Derette thought most natural and probable. Her sense of justice—and a child’s sense of justice is often painfully keen—was outraged by Anania’s sentiments.

“Well, to be sure! How high and mighty we are! That comes of visiting Countesses, I suppose.—Aunt Isel, I told you that child was getting insufferable. There’ll be no bearing her very soon. She’s as stuck-up now as a peacock. Just look at her!”

“I don’t see that she looks different from usual,” said Isel, who was mixing the ingredients for a “bag-pudding.”

Anania made that slight click with her tongue which conveys the idea of despairing compassion for the pitiable incapacity of somebody to perceive patent facts.

Isel went on with her pudding, and offered no further remark.

“Well, I suppose I’d better be going,” said Anania—and sat still.

Nobody contradicted her, but she made no effort to go, until Osbert stopped at the half-door and looked in.

“Oh, you’re there, are you?” he said to his wife. “I don’t know whether you care particularly for those buttons you bought from Veka, but Selis has swallowed two, and—”

“Those buttons! Graven silver, as I’m a living woman! I’ll shake him while I can stand over him! And only one blessed dozen I had of them, and the price she charged me—The little scoundrel! Couldn’t he have swallowed the common leaden ones?”

“Weren’t so attractive, probably,” said Osbert, as Anania hurried away, without any leave-taking, to bestow on her son and heir, aged six, the shaking she had promised.

“But de little child, he shall be sick!” said Agnes, looking up from her work with compassionate eyes.

“Oh, I dare say it won’t hurt him much,” replied Osbert coolly, “and perhaps it will teach him not to meddle. I wish it might teach his mother to stay at home and look after him, but I’m afraid that’s hopeless. Good morrow!”

Little Selis seemed no worse for his feast of buttons, beyond a fit of violent indigestion, which achieved the wonderful feat of keeping Anania at home for nearly a week.

“You’ve had a nice quiet time, Aunt Isel,” said Stephen. “Shall I see if I can persuade Selis to take the rest of the dozen?”

Life went on quietly—for the twelfth century—in the little house in Kepeharme Street. That means that nobody was murdered or murderously assaulted, the house was not burned down nor burglariously entered, and neither of the boys lost a limb, and was suffered to bleed to death, for interference with the King’s deer. In those good old times, these little accidents were rather frequent, the last more especially, as the awful and calmly-calculated statistics on the Pipe Rolls bear terrible witness.

Romund married, and went to live in the house of his bride, who was an heiress to the extent of possessing half-a-dozen houses in Saint Ebbe’s parish. Little Rudolph grew to be seven years old, a fine fearless boy, rather more than his quiet mother knew how to manage, but always amenable to a word from his grave father. The Germans had settled down peaceably in various parts of the country, some as shoemakers, some as tailors, some as weavers, or had hired themselves as day-labourers to farmers, carpenters, or bakers. Several offers of marriage had been made to Ermine, but hitherto, to the surprise of her friends, all had been declined, her brother assenting to this unusual state of things.

“Why, what do you mean to do, Gerard?” asked Isel of her, when the last and wealthiest of five suitors was thus treated. “You’ll never have a better offer for the girl than Raven Soclin. He can spend sixty pound by the year and more; owns eight shops in the Bayly, and a brew-house beside Saint Peter’s at East Gate. He’s no mother to plague his wife, and he’s a good even-tempered lad, as wouldn’t have many words with her. Deary me! but it’s like throwing the fish back into the sea when they’ve come in your net! What on earth are you waiting for, I should just like to know?”

“Dear Mother Isel,” answered Ermine softly, “we are waiting to see what God would have of me. I think He means me for something else. Let us wait and see.”

“But there is nothing else, child,” returned Isel almost irritably, “without you’ve a mind to be a nun; and that’s what I wouldn’t be, take my word for it. Is that what you’re after?”

“No, I think not,” said Ermine in the same tone.

“Then there’s nothing else for you—nothing in this world!”

“This is not the only world,” was the quiet reply.

“It’s the only one I know aught about,” said Isel, throwing her beans into the pan; “or you either, if I’m not mistaken. You’d best be wise in time, or you’ll go through the wood and take the crookedest stick you can find.”

“I hope to be wise in time, Mother Isel; but I would rather it were God’s time than mine. And we Germans, you know, believe in presentiments. Methinks He has whispered to me that the way He has appointed for my treading is another road than that.”

Ermine was standing, as she spoke, by the half-door, her eyes fixed on the fleecy clouds which were floating across the blue summer sky.

“Can you see it, Aunt Ermine?” cried little Rudolph, running to her. “Is it up there, in the blue—the road you are going to tread?”

“It is down below first,” answered Ermine dreamily. “Down very low, in the dim valleys, and it is rough. But it will rise by-and-bye to the everlasting hills, and to the sapphire blue; and it leads straight to God’s holy hill, and to His tabernacle.”

They remembered those words—seven months later.

Note 1. The Pipe Rolls speak of large cheeses, which cost from threepence to sixpence each, and the ordinary size, of which two or three were sold for a penny. They were probably very small.

Note 2. Modern value of above prices:—Pig, 1 pound, 19 shillings 7 pence; half ox, 1 pound, 15 shillings 5 pence; cloth, 1 pound 16 shillings 5 and a half pence per ell; cloak, 13 pounds 6 shillings 8 pence; cape, 6 pounds, 13 shillings 4 pence; pair of slippers, 12 shillings 6 pence; boots, per pair, 25 shillings; cheeses, 2 shillings 1 penny each; flour and cabbage, each 1 pound 9 shillings 2 pence; meal and herrings, each 2 pounds, 10 shillings; beans, 2 pounds 1 shilling 8 pence; coffer, 6 pounds, 5 shillings; nails, 2 pounds, 18 shillings 4 pence; rug, 50 pounds. It will be seen that money was far cheaper than now, and living much more expensive.

Note 3. For the sinking of which King Henry paid 19 pounds, 19 shillings 5 pence near this time.

Chapter Five.

Warned.

“Though briars and thorns obstruct the way,
Oh, what are thorns and briars to me,
If Thy sweet words console and stay,
If Thou but let me go with Thee?”
“G.E.M.”

In the house of Henry the Mason, six doors from the Walnut Tree, three of the Germans had been received—old Berthold, his wife Luitgarde, and their daughter Adelheid. Two years after their coming, Luitgarde had died, and Berthold and his daughter were left alone Adelheid, though ten years the elder, was a great friend of Ermine, and she seemed about as much averse to matrimony as the latter, though being less well-favoured, she had received fewer incentives to adopt it. Raven Soclin, however, did not allow his disappointment in love to affect his spirits, nor to have much time for existence. Ermine’s refusal was barely six weeks old when he transferred his very transferable affections to Flemild, and Romund, the family dictator, did not allow any refusal of the offer. In fact, Flemild was fairly well satisfied with the turn matters had taken. She knew she must be either wife or nun—there was no third course open for a woman in England at that day—and she certainly had no proclivity for the cloister. Derette, on the other hand, had expressed herself in terms of great contempt for matrimony, and of decided intention to adopt single life, in the only form in which it was then possible. It was therefore arranged by Romund, and obediently sanctioned by Isel—for that was an age of obedient mothers, so far as sons were concerned—that Flemild should marry Raven Soclin, and Derette should become a novice at Godstowe, in the month of September shortly about to open.

Nothing had yet been heard of Manning, the absent husband and father. Isel still cherished an unspoken hope of his return; but Romund and Flemild had given him up for dead, while the younger children had almost forgotten him.

Another person who had passed out of their life was the Jewish maiden, Countess. She had been married the year after the arrival of the Germans, and had gone to live at Reading: married to an old Jew whom she only knew by name, then no unusual fate for girls of her nation. From little Rudolph, who was just beginning to talk, she had parted most unwillingly.

“Ah! if you would give him to me!” she had said in German to Agnes, with a smile on her lips, yet with tears in the dark eyes. “I know it could not be. Yet if time should come that trouble befel you, and you sought refuge for the child, my heart and my arms would be open. Ah, you think, what could a poor Jewess do for you? Well, maybe so. Yet you know the fable of the mouse that gnawed the net in which the lion was caught. It might be, some day, that even poor Countess—”

Gerhardt laid his hand on the arm of the young Jewess, and Isel, who saw the action, trembled for the consequences of his temerity.

“Friend,” he said, “I would, if so were, confide my child to you sooner than to any other outside this house, if your word were given that he should not be taught to deride and reject the Lord that died for him.”

“You would take my word?” The dark eyes flashed fire.

“I would take it, if you would give it.”

“And you know that no Court in this land would receive the witness of a Jew! You know it?” she repeated fierily.

“I know it,” he answered, rather sadly.

“Yet you would take mine?”

“God would know if you spoke truth. He is the Avenger of all that have none other.”

“He has work to do, then!” replied Countess bitterly.

“He would not be too busy, if need were, to see to my little Rudolph. But I do not believe in the need: I think you true.”

“Gerhardt, you are the strangest Christian that I ever knew! Do you mean what you say?”

“I mean every word of it, Countess.”

“Then—you shall not repent it.” And she turned away.

Little Rudolph fretted for a time after his nurse and playfellow. But as the months passed on, her image grew fainter in his memory, and now, at seven years old, he scarcely remembered her except by name, Ermine having spoken of her to him on several occasions.

“I wonder you talk of the girl to that child!” Isel remonstrated. “It were better that he should forget her.”

“Pardon me, Mother Isel, but I think not so. The good Lord brought her in our way, and how do I know for what purpose? It may be for Rudolph’s good, no less than hers; and she promised, if need arose, to have a care of him. I cannot tell what need may arise, wherein it would be most desirable that he should at least recall her name.”

“But don’t you see, Ermine, even on your own showing, our Lord has taken her out of your way again?”

“Yes, now. But how do I know that it is for always?”

“Why, child, how can Countess, a married woman, living away at Reading, do anything to help a child at Oxford?”

“I don’t know, Mother Isel. The Lord knows. If our paths never cross again, it will not hurt Rudolph to remember that a young Jewess named Countess was his loving friend in childhood: if they should meet hereafter, it may be very needful. And—” that dreamy look came into Ermine’s eyes—“something seems to whisper to me that it may be needed. Do not blame me if I act upon it.”

“Well, with all your soft, gentle ways, you have a will of your own, I know,” said Isel; “so you must e’en go your own way. And after September, Ermine, you’ll be the only daughter left to me. Ah me! Well, it’s the way of the world, and what is to be must be. I am sure it was a good wind blew you in at my door, for I should have been dreadful lonely without you when both my girls were gone.”

“But, dear Mother Isel, Flemild is not going far.”

“Not by the measuring-line, very like; but she’s going far enough to be Raven’s wife, and not my daughter. It makes a deal of difference, that does. And Derette’s going further, after the same fashion. I sha’n’t see her, maybe, again, above a dozen times in my life. Eh dear! this is a hard world for a woman to live in. It’s all work, and worry, and losing, and giving up, and such like.”

“There is a better world,” said Ermine softly.

“There had need be. I’m sure I deserve a bit of rest and comfort, if ever a hard-working woman did. I’ll say nought about pleasure; more by reason that I’m pretty nigh too much worn out and beat down to care about it.”

“Nay, friend,” said Gerhardt; “we sinners deserve the under-world. The road to the upper lieth only through the blood and righteousness of our Lord Christ.”

“I don’t know why you need say that,” returned Isel with mild resentment. “I’ve been as decent a woman, and as good a wife and mother, as any woman betwixt Grandpont and Saint Maudlin, let the other be who she may,—ay, I have so, though I say it that hadn’t ought. But you over-sea folks seem to have such a notion of everybody being bad, as I never heard before—not even from the priest.”

The Church to which Gerhardt belonged held firmly, as one of her most vital dogmas, that strong view of human depravity which human depravity always opposes and resents. Therefore Gerhardt did but enunciate a foundation-article of his faith when he made answer—

“‘All the evil which I do proceeds from my own depravity.’”

“Come, you’re laying it on a bit too thick,” said Isel, with a shake of her head.

“He only speaks for himself, don’t you hear, Mother?” suggested Haimet humorously.

Gerhardt smiled, and shook his head in turn.

“Well, but if all the ill we do comes of ourselves, I don’t see how you leave any room for Satan. He’s busy about us, isn’t he?”

“He’s ‘a roaring lion, that goeth about, seeking whom he may devour’; but he can devour no man without his own participation.”

“Why, then, you make us all out to be witches, for it’s they who enter into league with Satan.”

“Do you know, Gerard,” said Haimet suddenly, “some folks in the town are saying that you belong to those over-sea heretics whose children are born with black throats and four rows of teeth, and are all over hair?”

“I don’t see that Rudolph resembles that description,” was the calm reply of Gerhardt. “Do you?”

“Oh, of course we know better. But there are some folks that say so, and are ready to swear it too. It would be quite as well if you stayed quiet at home for a while, and didn’t go out preaching in the villages so much. If the Bishop comes to hear of some things you’ve said—”

Isel and her daughters looked up in surprise. They had never imagined that their friend’s frequent journeys were missionary tours. Haimet, who mixed far more with the outer world, was a good deal wiser on many points.

“What have I said?” quietly replied Gerhardt, stopping his carving—which he still pursued in an evening—to sweep up and throw into the corner the chips which he had made.

“Well, I was told only last week, that you had said when you spoke at Abingdon, that ‘Antichrist means all that is in contrast to Christ,’ and that there was no such thing as a consecrated priest in the world.”

“The first I did say: can you disprove it? But the second I did not say. God forbid that I ever should!”

“Oh, well, I am glad to hear it: but I can tell you, Halenath the Sacristan said he heard you.”

“I wish that old chattering magpie would hold his tongue!” exclaimed Isel, going to the door to empty the bowl in which she had been washing the cabbages for supper. “He makes more mischief than any man within ten miles of the Four-Ways.”

“Haimet,” said Gerhardt, looking up from the lovely wreath of strawberry-blossom which he was carving on a box, “I must not leave you to misapprehend me as Halenath has done. I never said there was no such thing as a consecrated priest: for Christ our Priest is one, of the Order of Melchizedek, and by His one offering He hath perfected His saints for ever. But I did say that the priests of Rome were not rightly consecrated, and that the Pope’s temporal power had deprived the Church of true consecration. I will stand as firmly to that which I have said, as I will deny the words I have not spoken.”

Isel stood aghast, looking at him, while the spoon in her hand went down clattering on the brick floor.

“Dear blessed saints!” seemed to be all she could say.

“Why, whatever do you call that?” cried Haimet. “It sounds to me just as bad as the other, if it isn’t worse. I should think, if anything, it were a less heresy to say there were no consecrated priests, than to say that holy Church herself had lost true consecration. Not that there’s very much to choose between them, after all; only that you cunning fellows can split straws into twenty bits as soon as we can look at them.”

“Do you mean to say that the Church of England has lost true consecration?” gasped Isel.

“If he means one, he means the other,” said Haimet, “because our Church is subject to the holy Father.”

“There is one Church, and there are many Churches,” answered Gerhardt. “One—holy, unerring, indivisible, not seen of men. This is the Bride, the Lamb’s wife; and they that are in her are called, and chosen, and faithful. This is she that shall persevere, and shall overcome, and shall receive the crown of life. But on earth there are many Churches; and these may err, and may utterly fall away. Yea, there be that have done it—that are doing it now.”

“I don’t understand you a bit!” exclaimed Isel. “I always heard of the Catholic Church, that she was one and could not err; that our Lord the Pope was her head, and the Church of England was a branch of her. Isn’t that your doctrine?”

“You mean the same thing, don’t you, now?” suggested Flemild, trying to make peace. “I dare be bound, it’s only words that differ. They are so queer sometimes. Turn ’em about, and you can make them mean almost anything.”

Gerhardt smiled rather sadly, as he rose and put away his carving on one of the broad shelves that ran round the house-place, and served the uses of tables and cupboards.

“Words can easily be twisted,” he said, “either by ignorance or malice. But he is a coward that will deny his words as he truly meant them. God help me to stand to mine!”

“Well, you’d better mind what I tell you about your preaching,” responded Haimet. “Leave preaching to the priests, can’t you? It is their business, not a weaver’s. You keep to your craft.”

“Had you not once a preacher here named Pullus?” asked Gerhardt, without replying to the question.

“I think I have heard of him,” said Haimet, “but he was before my time.”

“I have been told that he preached the Word of God in this city years ago,” said Gerhardt.

“Whom did you say? Cardinal Pullus?” asked Isel, standing up from her cooking. “Ay, he did so! You say well, Haimet, it was before your day; you were only beginning to toddle about when he died. But I’ve listened to him many a time at Saint Martin’s, and on Presthey, too. He used to preach in English, so that the common folks could understand him. Many professed his doctrines. I used to like to hear him, I did—when I was younger. He said nice words, though I couldn’t call ’em back now. No, I couldn’t.”

“I am sorry to hear it; I rather hoped you could,” replied Gerhardt.

“Bless you! I never heard aught of that sort yet, that I could tell you again, a Paternoster after I’d gone forth of the door. Words never stay with me; they run in at one ear and out at the other. Seem to do me good, by times; but I never can get ’em back again, no more than you can the rain when it has soaked into the ground.”

“If the rain and the words bring forth good fruit, you get them back in the best way of all,” said Gerhardt. “To remember the words in your head only, were as fruitless as to gather up rain-drops from the stone or metal into which they cannot penetrate.”

“Well, I never had nought of a head-piece,” returned Isel. “I’ve heard my mother tell that I had twenty wallopings ere she could make me say the Paternoster; and I never could learn nought else save the Joy and the Aggerum.”

“What do you mean by the ‘Aggerum,’ Mother?” inquired Haimet.

“Well, isn’t that what you call it? Aggerum or Adjerum, or some such outlandish name. It’s them little words that prayers begin with.”

“‘Deus, in adjutorium,’” said Gerhardt quietly.

Haimet seemed exceedingly amused. He had attended the schools long enough to learn Latin sufficient to interpret the common prayers and Psalms which formed the private devotions of most educated people. This was because his mother had wished him to be a priest. But having now, in his own estimation, arrived at years of discretion, he declined the calling chosen for him, preferring as he said to go into business, and he had accordingly been bound apprentice to a moneter, or money-changer. Poor Isel had mourned bitterly over this desertion. To her mind, as to that of most people in her day, the priesthood was the highest calling that could be attained by any middle-class man, while trade was a very mean and despicable occupation, far below domestic service. She recognised, however, that Haimet was an exception to most rules, and was likely to take his own way despite of her.

Isel’s own lack of education was almost as unusual as Haimet’s possession of it. At that time all learning was in the hands of the clergy, the monastic orders, and the women. By the Joy, she meant the Doxology, the English version of which substituted “joy” for “glory;” while the Adjutorium denoted the two responses which follow the Lord’s Prayer in the morning service, “O God, make speed to save us,” “O Lord, make haste to help us.”

“Can’t you say adjutorium, Mother?” asked the irreverent youth.

“No, lad, I don’t think I can. I’ll leave that for thee. One’s as good as t’other, for aught I see.”

Haimet exploded a second time.

“Good evening!” said Romund’s voice, and a cloaked figure, on whose shoulders drops of rain lay glittering, came in at the door. “I thought you were not gone up yet, for I saw the light under the door. Derette, I have news for you. I have just heard that Saint John’s anchoritess died yesterday, and I think, if you would wish it, that I could get the anchorhold for you. You may choose between that and Godstowe.”

Derette scarcely stood irresolute for a moment.

“I should like the anchorhold best, Brother. Then Mother could come to me whenever she wanted me.”

“Is that the only reason?” asked Haimet, half laughing.

“No, not quite,” said Derette, with a smile; “but it is a good one.”

“Then you make up your mind to that?” questioned Romund.

“Yes, I have made up my mind,” replied Derette.

“Very good: then I will make application for it. Good night! no time to stay. Mabel? Oh, she’s all right. Farewell!”

And Romund shut the door and disappeared.

“Deary me, that seems done all of a hurry like!” said Isel. “I don’t half like such sudden, hasty sort of work. Derette, child, are you sure you’ll not be sorry?”

“No, I don’t think I shall, Mother. I shall have more liberty in the anchorhold than in the nunnery.”

“More liberty, quotha!” cried Isel in amazement. “Whatever can the child mean? More liberty, penned up in two little chambers, and never to leave them all your life, than in a fine large place like Godstowe, with a big garden and cloisters to walk in?”

“Ah, Mother, I don’t want liberty for my feet, but for my soul. There will be no abbess nor sisters to tease one in the anchorhold.”

“Well, and what does that mean, but never a bit of company? Just your one maid, and tied up to her. And the child calls it ‘liberty’!”

“You forget, Mother,” said Haimet mischievously. “There will be the Lady Derette. In the cloister they are only plain Sister.”

Every recluse had by courtesy the title of a baron.

“As if I cared for that rubbish!” said Derette with sublime scorn.

“Dear! I thought you were going on purpose,” retorted her brother.

“Whom will you have for your maid, Derette?” asked her sister.

“Ermine, if I might have her,” answered Derette with a smile.

Gerhardt suddenly stopped the reply which Ermine was about to make.

“No,” he said, “leave it alone to-night, dear. Lay it before the Lord, and ask of Him whether that is the road He hath prepared for thee to walk in. It might be for the best, Ermine.”

There was a rather sorrowful intonation in his voice.

“I will wait till the morning, and do as you desire,” was Ermine’s reply. “But I could give the answer to-night, for I know what it will be. The best way, and the prepared way, is that which leads the straightest Home.”

It was very evident, when the morning arrived, that Gerhardt would much have liked Ermine to accept the lowly but safe and sheltered position of companion to Derette in the anchorhold. While the hermit lived alone, but wandered about at will, the anchorite, who was never allowed to leave his cell, always had with him a companion of his own sex, through whom he communicated with the outer world. Visitors of the same sex, or children, could enter the cell freely, or the anchorite might speak through his window to any person. Derette, therefore, would really be less cut off from the society of her friends in the anchorhold, than she would have been as a cloistered sister at Godstowe, where they would only have been permitted to see her, at most, once in a year. But outside the threshold of her cell she might never step, save for imminent peril of life, as in the case of fire. She must live there, and die there, her sole occupation found in devotional exercises, her sole pleasure in her friends’ visits, the few sights she could see from her window, and through a tiny slit into the chancel of the Church of Saint John the Baptist, which we know as the chapel of Merton College. Every anchorhold was built close to a church, so as to allow its occupant the privilege of seeing the performance of mass, and of receiving the consecrated wafer, by the protrusion of his tongue through the narrow slit.

In those early days, and before the corruptions of Rome reached their full development, this cloistered life was not without some advantages for the securing of which it is not required now. In rough, wild times, when insult or cruelty to a woman was among the commonest events, it was something for a woman to know that by wearing a certain uniform, her person would be regarded as so sacred that he who dared to molest her would be a man of rare and exceptional wickedness. It was something, also, to be sure, even moderately sure, of provision for her bodily needs during life: something to know that if any sudden accident should deprive her of the services of her only companion, the world deemed it so good a deed to serve her, that any woman whom she might summon through her little window would consider herself honoured and benefited by being allowed to minister to her even in the meanest manner. The loss of liberty was much assuaged and compensated, by being set against such advantages as these. The recluse was considered the holiest of nuns, not to say of women, and the Countess of Oxford herself would have held it no degradation to serve her in her need.

Derette would dearly have liked to secure the companionship of Ermine, but she saw plainly that it was not to be. When the morning came, therefore, she was much less surprised than sorry that Ermine declined the offer. Gerhardt pressed it on her in vain.

“If you command me, my brother,” said Ermine, “I will obey, for you have a right to dispose of me; but if the matter is left to my own choice, I stay with you, and your lot shall be mine.”

“But if our lot be hardship and persecution, my Ermine—cold and hunger, nakedness, and peril and sword! This might be a somewhat dull and dreary life for thee, but were it not a safe one?”

“Had the Master a safe and easy life, Brother, that His servants should seek it? Is the world so safe, and the way to Paradise so hard? Is it not written, ‘Blessed are ye, when they shall persecute you’? Methinks I see arising, even now, that little cloud which shall ere long cover all the sky with darkness. Shall I choose my place with the ‘fearful’ that are left without the Holy City, rather than with them that shall follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth?”

“It is written again, ‘When they persecute you in one city, flee ye into another,’” replied Gerhardt.

“‘When they persecute you,’” repeated Ermine. “It has not come yet.”

“It may be too late, when it has come.”

“Then the way will be plain before me.”

“Well, dear, I will urge you no further,” said Gerhardt at last, drawing a heavy sigh. “I had hoped that for thee at least—The will of the Lord be done.”

“If it were His will to preserve my life, even the persecutors themselves might be made the occasion of doing so.”

“True, my Ermine. It may be thou hast more faith than I. Be it as thou wilt.”

So Derette had to seek another maid.

“I’m sure I don’t know who you’ll get,” said Isel. “There’s Franna’s Hawise, but she’s a bit of a temper,”—which her hearers knew to be a very mild representation of facts: “and there’s Turguia’s grand-daughter, Canda, but you’ll have to throw a bucket of water over her of a morrow, or she’ll never be out of bed before sunrise on the shortest day of the year. Then there’s Henry’s niece, Joan—” then pronounced as a dissyllable, Joan—“but I wouldn’t have such a sloven about me. I never see her but her shoes are down at heel, and if her gown isn’t rent for a couple of hand-breadths, it’s as much as you can look for. Deary me, these girls! they’re a sorry lot, the whole heap of ’em! I don’t know where you’re going to find one, Derette.”

“Put it in the Lord’s hands, and He will find you one.”

“I’ll tell you what, Gerard, I never heard the like of you,” answered Isel, setting her pan swinging by its chain on the hook over the fire. “You begin and end every mortal thing with our Lord, and you’re saying your prayers pretty nigh all day long. Are you certain sure you’ve never been a monk?”

“Very certain, friend,” said Gerhardt, smiling. “Is not the existence of Agnes answer enough to that?”

“Oh, but you might have run away,” said Isel, whose convictions on most subjects were of rather a hazy order. “There are monks that do, and priests too: or if they don’t forsake their Order, they don’t behave like it. Why, just look at Reinbald the Chaplain—who’d ever take him for a priest, with his long curls and his silken robes, and ruffling up his hair to hide the tonsure?”

“Ay, there are men who are ashamed of nothing so much as of the cross which their Master bore for them,” admitted Gerhardt sorrowfully. “And at times it looks as if the lighter the cross be, the less ready they are to carry it. There be who would face a drawn sword more willingly than a scornful laugh.”

“Well, we none of us like to be laughed at.”

“True. But he who denies his faith through the mockery of Herod’s soldiers, how shall he bear the scourging in Pilate’s hall?”

“Well, I’m none so fond of neither of ’em,” said Isel, taking down a ham.

“It is only women who can’t stand being touched,” commented Haimet rather disdainfully. “But you are out there, Gerard: it is a disgrace to be laughed at, and disgrace is ever worse to a true man than pain.”

“Why should it be disgrace, if I am in the right?” answered Gerhardt. “If I do evil, and refuse to own it, that is disgrace, if you will; but if I do well, or speak truth, and stand by it, what cause have I to be ashamed?”

“But if men believe that you have done ill, is that no disgrace?”

“If they believe it on false witness, the disgrace is equally false. ‘Blessed are ye, when men shall persecute you, and shall say all evil against you, lying, for My sake.’ Those are His words who bore all shame for us.”

“They sha’n’t say it of me, unless they smart for it!” cried Haimet hotly.

“Then wilt thou not be a true follower of the Lamb of God, who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, but committed Himself unto Him that judgeth righteously.”

“Saints be with you!” said Anania, lifting the latch, and intercepting a response from Haimet which might have been somewhat incisive. “I declare, I’m just killed with the heat!”

“I should have guessed you were alive, from the look of you,” returned Derette calmly.

“So you’re going into the anchorhold, I hear?” said Anania, fanning herself with her handkerchief.

“If Romund can obtain it for me.”

“Oh, he has; it’s all settled. Didn’t you know? I met Mabel in Saint Frideswide’s Street (which ran close to the north of the Cathedral), and she told me so.—Aunt Isel, I do wonder you don’t look better after that young woman! She’ll bring Romund to his last penny before she’s done. That chape (a cape or mantle) she had on must have cost as pretty a sum as would have bought a flock of sheep. I never saw such extravagance.”

“The money’s her own,” responded Isel shortly.

“It’s his too. And you’re his mother. You never ought to let her go on as she does.”

“Deary me, Anania, as if I hadn’t enough to do!”

“Other folks can slice ham and boil cabbage. You’ve got no call to neglect your duty. I can tell you, Franna’s that shocked you don’t speak to the girl; and Turguia was saying only the other day, she didn’t believe in folks that pretended to care so much for their children, and let other folks run ’em into all sorts of troubles for want of looking after a bit. I’ll tell you, Aunt Isel—”

“Anania, I’ll tell you,” cried Isel, thoroughly put out, for she was hot and tired and not feeling strong, “I’ll tell you this once, you’re a regular plague and a mischief-maker. You’d make me quarrel with all the friends I have in the world, if I listened to you. Sit you down and rest, if you like to be peaceable; and if you don’t, just go home and give other folks a bit of rest for once in your life. I’m just worn out with you, and that’s the honest truth.”

“Well, to be sure!” gasped the porter’s wife, in high dudgeon and much amazement. “I never did—! Dear, dear, to think of it—how ungrateful folks can be! You give them the best advice, and try to help them all you can, and they turn on you like a dog for it! Very well, Aunt Isel; I’ll let you alone!—and if you don’t rue it one of these days, when your fine lady daughter-in-law has brought you down to beggary for want of a proper word, my name isn’t Anania—that’s all!”

“Oh, deary weary me!” moaned poor Isel, dropping herself on the form as if she could not stand for another minute. “If this ain’t a queer world, I just don’t know! Folks never let you have a shred of peace, and come and worrit you that bad till you scarce can tell whether you’re on your head or your heels, and you could almost find in your heart to wish ’em safe in Heaven, and then if they don’t set to work and abuse you like Noah’s wife (Note 1) if you don’t thank ’em for it! That girl Anania ’ll be the death of me one of these days, if she doesn’t mend her ways. Woe worth the day that Osbert brought her here to plague us!”

“I fancy he’d say Amen to that,” remarked Haimet.

“I heard him getting it pretty hot last night. But he takes it easier than you, Mother; however she goes on at him, he only whistles a tune. He has three tunes for her, and I always know how she’s getting on by the one I hear. So long as it’s only the Agnus, I dare lift the latch; but when it come to Salve Regina, things are going awkward.”

“I wish she wasn’t my niece, I do!” said poor Isel. “Well, folks, come and get your supper.”

Supper was over, and the trenchers scraped—for Isel lived in great gentility, seeing that she ate from wooden trenchers, and not on plates made of thick slices of bread—when a rap on the door heralded the visit of a very superior person. Long ago, when a young girl, Isel had been chamberer, or bower-woman, of a lady named Mildred de Hameldun; and she still received occasional visits from Mildred’s daughter, whose name was Aliz or Elise de Norton. Next to the Countess of Oxford and her two daughters, Aliz de Norton was the chief lady in the city. Her father, Sir Robert de Hameldun, had been Seneschal of the Castle, and her husband, Sir Ording de Norton, was now filling a similar position. Yet the lofty title of Lady was barely accorded to Aliz de Norton. At that time it was of extreme rarity; less used than in Saxon days, far less than at a subsequent date under the later Plantagenets. The only women who enjoyed it as of right were queens, wives of the king’s sons, countesses, and baronesses: for at this period, the sole titles known to the peerage were those of baron and earl. Duke was still a sovereign title, and entirely a foreign one. The epithet of Dame or Lady was also the prerogative of a few abbesses, who held the rank of baroness. Very commonly, however, it was applied to the daughters of the sovereign, to all abbesses, prioresses, and recluses, and to earls’ daughters; but this was a matter rather of courtesy than of right. Beyond the general epithet of “my Lord,” there was no definite title of address even for the monarch. The appropriation of such terms as Grace, Highness, Excellence, Majesty, or Serenity, belongs to a much later date. Sir, however, was always restricted to knights; and Dame was the most respectful form of address that could be offered to any woman, however exalted might be her rank. The knight was above the peer, even kings receiving additional honour from knighthood; but the equivalent title of Dame does not seem to have been regularly conferred on their wives till about 1230, though it might be given in some cases, as a matter of courtesy, at a rather earlier period.

Perceiving her exalted friend, Isel went forward as quickly as was in her, to receive her with all possible cordiality, and to usher her to the best place in the chimney-corner. Aliz greeted the family pleasantly, but with a shade of constraint towards their German guests. For a few minutes they talked conventional nothings, as is the custom of those who meet only occasionally. Then Aliz said—

“I came to-day, Isel, for two reasons. Have here the first: do you know of any vacant situation for a young woman?”

Isel could do nothing in a hurry,—more especially if any mental process was involved.

“Well, maybe I might,” she said slowly. “Who is it, I pray you, and what are her qualifications?”

“It is the daughter of my waiting-woman, and grand-daughter of my old nurse. She is a good girl—rather shy and inexperienced, but she learns quickly. I would have taken her into my own household, but I have no room for her. I wish to find her a good place, not a poor one. Do you know of any?”

As Isel hesitated, Haimet took up the word.

“Would it please you to have her an anchorhold maid?”

“Oh, if she could obtain such a situation as that,” said Aliz eagerly, “there would be no more to wish for.”

The holiness of an anchoritess was deemed to run over upon her maid, and a young woman who wore the semi-conventual garb of those persons was safe from insult, and sure of help in time of need.

“My youngest sister goes into Saint John’s anchorhold next month,” said Haimet, “and we have not yet procured a maid for her.”

“So that is your destiny?” said Aliz, with a smile to Derette. “Well, it is a blessed calling.”

Her manner, however, added that she had no particular desire to be blessed in that fashion.

“That would be the very thing for Leuesa,” she pursued. “I will send her down to talk with you. Truly, we should be very thankful to those choice souls to whom is given the rare virtue of such holy self-sacrifice.”

Aliz spoke the feeling of her day, which could see no bliss for a woman except in marriage, and set single life on a pinnacle of holiness and misery not to be reached by ordinary men and women. The virtues of those self-denying people who sacrificed themselves by adopting it were supposed to be paid into an ecclesiastical treasury, and to form a kind of set-off against the every-day shortcomings of inferior married folks. Therefore Aliz expressed her gratitude for the prospect, as affording her an extra opportunity of doing her duty by proxy.

Derette was in advance of her age.

“But I am not sacrificing myself,” she said. “I am pleasing myself. I should not like to be a wife.”

“Oh, what a saintly creature you must be!” cried Aliz, clasping her hands in admiration. “That you can prefer a holy life! It is given to few indeed to attain that height.”

“But the holy life does not consist in dwelling in one chamber,” suggested Gerhardt, “nor in refraining from matrimony. He that dwelleth in God, in the secret place of the Most High—this is the man that is holy.”

“It would be well for you, Gerard, and your friends,” observed Aliz freezingly, “not to be quite so ready in offering your strange fancies on religious topics. Are you aware that the priests of the city have sent up a memorial concerning you to my Lord the Bishop, and that it has been laid before King Henry?”

The strawberry which Gerhardt’s tool was just then rounding was not quite so perfect a round as its neighbours. He laid the tool down, and the hand which held the carving trembled slightly.

“No, I did not know it,” he said in a low voice. “I thank you for the warning.”

“I fear there may be some penance inflicted on you,” resumed Aliz, not unkindly. “The wisest course for you would be at once to submit, and not even to attempt any excuse.”

Gerhardt looked up—a look which struck all who saw it. There was in it a little surface trouble, but under that a look of such perfect peace and sweet acceptance of the Divine will, as they had never before beheld.

“There will be no penance laid on me,” he said, “that my Father will not help me to bear. I have only to take the next step, whether it lead into the home at Bethany or the judgment-hall of Pilate. The Garden of God lies beyond them both.”

Aliz looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign tongue.

“Gerard,” she said, “I do hope you have no foolish ideas of braving out the censure of the Bishop. Such action would not only be sin, but it would be the worst policy imaginable. Holy Church is always merciful to those who abase themselves before her,—who own their folly, and humbly bow to her rebuke. But she has no mercy on rebels who persist in their rebellion,—stubborn self-opinionated men, who in their incredible folly and presumption imagine themselves capable of correcting her.”

“No,” answered Gerhardt in that same low voice. “She has no mercy.”

“Then I hope you see how very foolish and impossible it would be for you to adopt any other course than that of instant and complete submission?” urged Aliz in a kinder tone.

Gerhardt rose from his seat and faced her.

“Your meaning is kind,” he said, “and conscientious also. You desire the glory of your Church, but you also feel pity for the suffering of the human creatures who dissent from her, and are crushed under the wheels of her triumphal car. I thank you for that pity. In the land where one cup of cold water goeth not without its reward, it may be that even a passing impulse of compassion is not forgotten before God. It may at least call down some earthly blessing. But for me—my way is clear before me, and I have but to go straight forward. I thank God that I know my duty. Doubt is worse than pain.”

“Indeed, I am thankful too,” said Aliz, as she rose to take leave. “That you should do your duty is the thing I desire.—Well, Isel, our Lady keep you! I will send Leuesa down to-morrow or the next day.”

Aliz departed, and the rest began to think of bedtime. Isel sent the girls upstairs, then Haimet followed, and Agnes went at last. But Gerhardt sat on, his eyes fixed on the cold hearth. It was evident that he regarded the news which he had heard as of no slight import. He rose at length, and walked to the window. It was only a wooden shutter, fastened by a button, and now closed for the night. Looking round to make sure that all had left the lower room, he threw the casement open. But he did not see Isel, who at the moment was concealed by the red curtain drawn half-way across the house-place, at the other end where the ladder went up.

“Father!” he said, his eyes fixed on the darkened sky, “is the way to Thy holy hill through this thorny path? Wheresoever Thou shalt guide, I go with Thee. But ‘these are in the world!’ Keep them through Thy name, and let us meet in the Garden of God, if we may not go together. O blessed Jesu Christ! the forget-me-nots which bloom around Thy cross are fairer than all the flowers of the world’s gardens.”

Note 1. In the medieval mystery plays, Noah’s wife was always represented as a scolding vixen.

Chapter Six.

Taken in the Net.

“There is no time so miserable
But a man may be true.”
Shakespeare.

“Berthold, hast thou heard the news?”

“I have, Pastor. I was coming to ask if you had heard it.”

“Ah, it was told me last night, by one that meant it kindly. I knew it would come sooner or later.”

“What will they do, think you?” Gerhardt hesitated. It was not so easy to guess in 1165 the awful depths to which religious hatred could descend, as it would have been some two centuries later. They knew something then of the fury of the Church against open unbelievers or political enemies; but persecution of Christians by Christians on account of nothing but their belief and the confession of it, was something new at that time.

“They will impose penance on us, I suppose,” suggested old Berthold.

“Doubtless, if we stand firm. And we must stand firm, Berthold,—every one of us.”

“Oh, of course,” replied Berthold calmly. “They won’t touch the women?—what think you?”

“I know not what to think. But I imagine—not.”

“Fine and scourging, perchance. Well, we can stand that.”

“We can stand any thing with God to aid us: without Him we can bear nothing. Thanks be to the Lord, that last they that trust Him will never be called upon to do.”

“I heard there was a council of the bishops to be held upon us,” suggested Berthold a little doubtfully.

“I hope not. That were worse for us than a summons before the King. Howbeit, the will of the Lord be done. It may be that the hotter the furnace is heated, the more glory shall be His by the song of His servants in the fires.”

“Ay, there’ll be four,” said old Berthold, bowing reverently. “Sure enough, Pastor, whatever we are called upon to bear, there will be One more than our number, and His form shall be that of the Son of God. Well! the children will be safe, no question. But I am afraid the hottest corner of the furnace may be kept for you, dear Teacher.”

“Be it so,” answered Gerhardt quietly. “Let my Lord do with me what is good in His sight; only let me bring glory to Him, and show forth His name among the people.”

“Ay, but it does seem strange,” was the response, “that the work should be stopped, and the cause suffer, and eloquent lips be silenced, just when all seemed most needed! Can you understand it, Pastor?”

“No,” said Gerhardt calmly. “Why should I? He understands who has it all to do. But the cause, Berthold! The cause will not suffer. It is God’s custom to bring good out of evil—to give honey to His Samsons out of the carcases of lions, and to bring His Davids through the cave of Adullam to the throne of Israel. It is for Him to see that the cause prospers, in His own time and way. We have only to do each our little handful of duty, to take the next step as He brings it before us. Sometimes the next step is a steep pull, sometimes it is only an easy level progress. We have but to take it as it comes. Never two steps at once; never one step, without the Lord at our right hand. Never a cry of ‘Lord, save me!’ from a sinking soul, that the hand which holds up all the worlds is not immediately stretched forth to hold him up.”

“One can’t always feel it, though,” said the old man wistfully.

“It is enough to know it.”

“Ay, when we two stand talking together in Overee Lane (Overee Lane ran out of Grandpont Street, just below the South Gate), so it may be: but when the furnace door stands open, an King Nebuchadnezzar’s mighty men are hauling you towards it, how then, good Pastor?”

“Berthold, what kind of a father would he be who, in carrying his child over a bridge, should hold it so carelessly that he let it slip from his arms into the torrent beneath, and be drowned?”

“Couldn’t believe such a tale, Pastor, unless the father were either drunk or mad. Why, he wouldn’t be a man—he’d be a monster.”

“And is that the character that thou deemest it fair and true to give to Him who laid down His life for thee?”

“Pastor!—Oh! I see now what you mean. Well—ay, of course—”

“Depend upon it, Berthold, the Lord shall see that thou hast grace sufficient for the evil day, if thy trust be laid on Him. He shall not give thee half enough for thy need out of His royal treasure, and leave thee to make up the other half out of thy poor empty coffer. ‘My God shall supply all your need, according to His riches in glory’—‘that ye, always having all-sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.’ Is that too small an alner (Note 1) to hold the wealth thou wouldst have? How many things needest thou beyond ‘all things’?”

“True enough,” said Berthold. “But I was not thinking so much of myself, Pastor—I’ve had my life: I’m two-and-fourscore this day; and if I am called on to lay it down for the Lord, it will only be a few months at the furthest that I have to give Him. It wouldn’t take so much to kill me, neither. An old man dies maybe easier than one in the full vigour of life. But you, my dear Pastor!—and the young fellows among us—Guelph, and Conrad, and Dietbold, and Wilhelm—it’ll be harder work for the young saplings to stand the blast, than for the old oak whose boughs have bent before a thousand storms. There would most likely be a long term of suffering before you, when my rest was won.”

“Then our rest would be the sweeter,” replied Gerhardt softly. “‘He knoweth the way that we take; when He hath tried us, we shall come forth as gold.’ He is faithful, who will not suffer us to be tried above that we are able to bear. And He can make us able to bear any thing.”

Gerhardt was just turning into Kepeharme Lane, when a voice at his elbow made him pause and look back.

“Did you want me, friend?”

“No,” answered a hoarse voice, in a significant tone. “You want me.”

Gerhardt smiled. “I thank you, then, for coming to my help. I almost think I know your voice. Are you not Rubi, the brother of Countess, who made such a pet of my little child?”

An affirmative grunt was the response.

“Well, friend?”

“If an open pit lay just across this street, between you and the Walnut Tree, what would you do?” asked the hoarse voice.

“That would depend on how necessary it was that I should pass it, would it not?”

“Life this way—death that way,” said Rubi shortly.

“And what way honour?”

“Pshaw! ‘All that a man hath will he give for his life.’”

“Truth: yet even life, sometimes, will a man give for glory, patriotism, or love. There is a life beyond this, friend Rubi; and for that, no price were too high to pay.”

“Men may weigh gold, but not clouds,” answered Rubi in a rather scornful tone.

“Yet how much gold would purchase the life-giving water that comes from the clouds?” was Gerhardt’s ready response.

“At how much do you value your life?” asked Rubi without answering the question.

“Truly, friend, I know not how to respond to that. Do you count my life to be in danger, that you ask me?”

“Not if the morning light come to you in Aylesbury or Cricklade—at least, perchance not. But if it dawn on you where you can hear the bell from yon tower—ay, I do.”

“I perceive your meaning. You would have me to fly.”

In the evening twilight, now fast darkening, Gerhardt could see a nod of Rubi’s black head.

“‘Should such a man as I flee?’ Friend, I am the leader of this band of my countrymen—”

“Just so. That’s the reason.”

“Were I to flee, would they stand firm?” said Gerhardt thoughtfully, rather to himself than to the young Jew.

“Firm—to what?”

“To God,” replied Gerhardt reverently, “and to His truth.”

“What does a Gentile care for truth? They want you to worship one dead man, and you prefer to worship another dead man. What’s the odds to you? Can’t you mutter your Latin, and play with your beads, before both, and have done with it?”

“I worship no saints, and have no beads.”