The Well in the Desert | Page 2

castle, still carrying the child.
Eleven hours later, a very different procession climbed the castle-hill, and passed in at the portcullis. It was headed by a sumptuous litter, beside which rode a gentleman magnificently attired. Behind came a hundred horsemen in livery, and the line was closed by a crowd of archers in Lincoln green, bearing cross-bows. From the litter, assisted by the gentleman, descended a young lady of some three-and-twenty years, upon whose lips hovered a smile of pleasure, and whose fair hair flowed in natural ringlets from beneath a golden fillet. The gentleman was her senior by about fifteen years. He was a tall, active, handsome man, with a dark face, stern, set lips, and a pair of dark, quick, eagle-like eyes, beneath which the group of servants manifestly quailed.
"Is the Lady's bower ready?" he asked, addressing the foremost of the women--the one who had so roughly insisted on Alina's return.
"It is so, an't like your noble Lordship," answered she with a low reverence; "it shall be found as well appointed as our poor labours might compass."
He made no answer; but, offering his hand to the young lady who had alighted from the litter, he led her up the stairs from the banqueting-hall, into a suite of fair, stately apartments, according to the taste of that period. Rich tapestry decorated the walls, fresh green rushes were strewn upon the floor, all the painting had been renewed, and above the fireplace stood two armorial shields newly chiselled.
"Lady," he said, in a soft, courtly tone, "here is the bower. Doth it like the bird?"
"It is beauteous," answered the lady, with a bright smile.
"It hath been anew swept and garnished," replied the master, bowing low, as he took his leave. "Yonder silver bell shall summon your women."
The lady moved to the casement on his departure. It stood open, and the lovely sea-view was to be seen from it.
"In good sooth, 'tis a fair spot!" she said half aloud. "And all new swept and garnished!"
There was no mocking echo in the chamber. If there had been, the words might have been borne back to the ear of the royal Alianora--"Not only garnished, but swept!"
My Lady touched the silver bell, and a crowd of damsels answered her call. Among them came Alina; and she held by the hand the little flaxen-haired child, who had played so prominent a part in the events of the morning.
"Do you all speak French?" asked the Countess in that language--which, be it remembered, was in the reign of Edward the Third the mother-tongue of the English nobles.
She received an affirmative reply from all.
"That is well. See to my sumpter-mules being unladen, and the gear brought up hither.--What a pretty child! whose is it?"
Alina brought the little girl forward, and answered for her. "The Lady Philippa Fitzalan, my Lord's daughter."
"My Lord's daughter!" And a visible frown clouded the Countess's brow. "I knew not he had a daughter--Oh! that child! Take her away--I do not want her. Mistress Philippa, for the future. That is my pleasure."
And with a decided pout on her previously smiling lips, the Lady of Arundel seated herself at her tiring-glass. Alina caught up the child, and took her away to a distant chamber in a turret of the castle, where she set her on her knee, and shed a torrent of tears on the little flaxen head.
"Poor little babe! fatherless and motherless!" she cried. "Would to our dear Lady that thou wert no worse! The blessed saints help thee, for none other be like to do it save them and me."
And suddenly rising, she slipped down on her knees, holding the child before her, beside a niche where a lamp made of pottery burned before a blackened wooden doll.
"Lady of Pity, hast thou none for this little child? Mother of Mercy, for thee to deceive me! This whole month have I been on my knees to thee many times in the day, praying thee to incline the Lady's heart, when she should come, to show a mother's pity to this motherless one. And thou hast not heard me--thou hast not heard me. Holy Virgin, what doest thou? Have I not offered candles at thy shrine? Have I not deprived myself of needful things to pay for thy litanies? What could I have done more? Is this thy pity, Lady of Pity?--this thy compassion, Mother and Maiden?"
But the passionate appeal was lost on the lifeless image to which it was made. As of old, so now, "there was neither voice, not any to answer, nor any that regarded."
Nineteen years after that summer day, a girl of twenty-two sat gazing from the casement in that turret-chamber--a girl whose face even a flatterer would have praised but little; and Philippa Fitzalan had no flatterers. The pretty child--as pretty children often