The White Rose of Langley | Page 9

dirty my puissant and royal fingers? I would liefer have a
blacksmith to my grandsire than a King."
"Lady Custance! With which of her Grace's scullion maidens have you
demeaned yourself to talk?"

"I will tell thee, when thou wilt answer when I was suffered to say so
much as `Good morrow' to any maid under the degree of a knight's
daughter."
"Holy Mary, be our aid!" interjected the horrified old lady.
"I am aweary, Dame Agnes," said the child, laying herself down in the
chair, as nearly at full length as its size would allow. "I have played the
damosel [person of rank--used of the younger nobility of both sexes] so
long time, I would fain be a little maid a season. I looked forth from the
lattice this morrow, and I saw far down in the base court a little maid
the bigness of me, washing of pans at a window. Now, prithee, have
yon little maid up hither, and set her under the cloth of estate in my
velvets, and leave me run down to the base court and wash the pans. It
were rare mirth for both of us."
Dame Agnes shook her head, as if words failed to express her feelings
at so unparalleled a proposal.
"What sangst thou as I was a-coming in?" asked the child, dropping a
subject on which she found no sympathy.
"'Twas but an old song, Lady, of your Grace's grandsire King Edward
(whom God assoil! [pardon]) and his war of France."
"That was ere I was born. Was it ere thou wert, Dame?"
"Truly no, Lady," said Agnes, smiling; "nor ere my Lord your father."
"What manner of lad was my Lord my father, when he was little?"
"Rare meek and gent, Lady,--for a lad, and his ire saved." [Except
when he was angry.]
Dame Agnes saved her conscience by the last clause, for gentle as
Prince Edmund had generally been, he was as capable of going into a
genuine Plantagenet passion as any of his more fiery brothers.
"But a maiden must be meeker and gentler?"

"Certes, Damosel," said Agnes, spinning away.
The child reclined in her chair for a time in silence. Perhaps it was the
suddenness of the next question which made the old lady drop her
distaff.
"Dame, who is Sir John de Wycliffe?"
The distaff had to be recovered before the question could be
considered.
"Ask at Dame Joan, Lady," was the discreet reply.
"So I did; and she bade me ask at thee."
"A priest, methinks," said Agnes vaguely.
"Why, I knew that," answered the child. "But what did he, or held he?--
for 'tis somewhat naughty, folk say."
"If it be somewhat naughty, Lady Custance, you should not seek to
know it."
"But my Lady my mother wagged her head, though she spake not. So I
want to know."
"Then your best way, Damosel," suggested the troubled Agnes, "were
to ask at her Grace."
"I did ask at her."
"And what said she?"
"She said she would tell me another day. But I want to know now."
"Her Grace's answer might have served you, Lady."
"It did not serve Ned. He said he would know. And so will I."

"The Lord Edward is two years your elder, Lady."
"Truth," said the child shrewdly, "and you be sixty years mine elder, so
you should know more than he by thirty."
Agnes could not help smiling, but she was sadly perplexed how to
dismiss the unwelcome topic.
"Let be. If thou wilt not tell me, I will blandish some that will. There be
other beside thee in the university [world, universe].--What is yonder
bruit?" [a noise.]
It was little Maude, flying in frantic terror, with Parnel in hot pursuit,
both too much absorbed to note in what direction they were running.
The cause was not far to seek.
After Maude had recovered from the effects of her exposure in the
forest, she lighted unexpectedly on the little flat parcel which her
mother had charged her to keep. It was carefully sewn up in linen, and
the sewing cost Maude some trouble to penetrate. She reached the core
at last. It was something thin and flat, with curious black and red
patterns all over it. This would have been the child's description. It was,
in truth, a vellum leaf of a manuscript, elaborately written, but not
illuminated, unless capitals in red ink can be termed illumination.
Remembering her mother's charge, to let "none beguile her of it,"
Maude had striven to keep its possession a secret from every one, first
from the nuns, and then from Ursula Drew. Strange to say, she had
succeeded until that morning. It was to her a priceless treasure--all the
more inestimable because she could not read a word of it. But on