The Earl stood talking with a tall brawny man, lean and strong, brown and weather-beaten, in a frayed suit of buff leather stained to all sorts of colours, in which rust predominated, and a face all brown and red except for the grizzled eyebrows, hair, and stubbly beard. She had not seen her father since she was five years old, and she would not have known him.
"I am from the south now, my lord," she heard his gruff voice say. "I have been taking my lad to be bred up in the Duke of York's house, for better nurture than can be had in my sea-side tower."
"Quite right. Well done in you," responded Warwick. "The Duke of York is the man to hold by. We have an exchange for you, a daughter for a son," and he was leading the way towards Grisell, who had just dismounted from her pony, and stood by it, trembling a little, and bending for her father's blessing. It was not more than a crossing of her, and he was talking all the time.
"Ha! how now! Methought my Lady of Salisbury had bestowed her in the Abbey-how call you it?"
"Aye," returned Warwick; "but since we have not had King or Parliament with spirit to stand up to the Pope, he thrusts his claw in everywhere, puts a strange Abbess into Wilton, and what must she do but send down her Proctor to treat the poor nunnery as it were a sponge, and spite of all my Lady Mother's bounties to the place, what lists he do but turn out the poor maid for lack of a dowry, not so much as giving time for a notice to be sent."
"If we had such a rogue in the North Country we should know how to serve him," observed Sir William, and Warwick laughed as befitted a Westmoreland Nevil, albeit he was used to more civilised ways.
"Scurvy usage," he said, "but the Prioress had no choice save to put her in such keeping as she could, and send her away to my Lady Mother, or failing her to her home."
"Soh! She must e'en jog off with me, though how it is to be with her my lady may tell, not I, since every groat those villain yeomen and fisher folk would raise, went to fit out young Rob, and there has not been so much as a Border raid these four years and more. There are the nuns at Gateshead, as hard as nails, will not hear of a maid without a dower, and yonder mansworn fellow Copeland casts her off like an old glove! Let us look at you, wench! Ha! Face is unsightly enough, but thou wilt not be a badly-made woman. Take heart, what's thy name- Grisell? May be there's luck for thee still, though it be hard of coming to Whitburn," he added, turning to Warwick. "There's this wench scorched to a cinder, enough to fright one, and my other lad racked from head to foot with pain and sores, so as it is a misery to hear the poor child cry out, and even if he be reared, he will be good for nought save a convent."
Grisell would fain have heard more about this poor little brother, but the ladies were entering the castle, and she had to follow them. She saw no more of her father except from the far end of the table, but orders were issued that she should be ready to accompany him on his homeward way the next morning at six o'clock. Her brother Robert had been sent in charge of some of the Duke of York's retainers, to join his household as a page, though they had missed him on the route, and the Lord of Whitburn was anxious to get home again, never being quite sure what the Scots, or the Percies, or his kinsmen of Gilsland, might attempt in his absence. "Though," as he said, "my lady was as good as a dozen men-at-arms, but somehow she had not been the same woman since little Bernard had fallen sick."
There was no one in the company with whom Grisell was very sorry to part, for though Dame Gresford had been kind to her, it had been merely the attending to the needs of a charge, not showing her any affection, and she had shrunk from the eyes of so large a party.
When she came down early into the hall, her father's half-dozen retainers were taking their morning meal at one end of a big board, while a manchet of bread and a silver cup of ale was ready for each of them at the other, and her father while swallowing his was in deep conversation over northern politics with the courteous Earl, who had come down to speed his guests. As she passed the retainers she heard, "Here comes our Grisly Grisell," and a smothered laugh, and in fact "Grisly Grisell" continued to be her name among the free-spoken people of the north. The Earl broke off, bowed to her, and saw that she was provided, breaking into his conversation with the Baron, evidently much to the impatience of the latter; and again the polite noble came down to the door with her, and placed her on her palfrey, bidding her a kind farewell ere she rode away with her father. It would be long before she met with such courtesy again. Her father called to his side his old, rugged-looking esquire Cuthbert Ridley, and began discussing with him what Lord Warwick had said, both wholly absorbed in the subject, and paying no attention to the girl who rode by the Baron's side, so that it was well that her old infantine training in horsemanship had come back to her.
She remembered Cuthbert Ridley, who had carried her about and petted her long ago, and, to her surprise, looked no older than he had done in those days when he had seemed to her infinitely aged. Indeed it was to him, far more than to her father, that she owed any attention or care taken of her on the journey. Her father was not unkind, but never seemed to recollect that she needed any more care than his rough followers, and once or twice he and all his people rode off headlong over the fell at sight of a stag roused by one of their great deer-hounds. Then Cuthbert Ridley kept beside her, and when the ground became too rough for a New Forest pony and a hand unaccustomed to northern ground, he drew up. She would probably-if not thrown and injured-have been left behind to feel herself lost on the moors. She minded the less his somewhat rude ejaculation, "Ho! Ho! South! South! Forgot how to back a horse on rough ground. Eh? And what a poor soft-paced beast! Only fit to ride on my lady's pilgrimage or in a State procession."
(He said Gang, but neither the Old English nor the northern dialect could be understood by the writer or the reader, and must be taken for granted.)
"They are all gone!" responded Grisell, rather frightened.
"Never guessed you were not among them," replied Ridley. "Why, my lady would be among the foremost, in at the death belike, if she did not cut the throat of the quarry."
Grisell could well believe it, but used to gentle nuns, she shuddered a little as she asked what they were to do next.
"Turn back to the track, and go softly on till my lord comes up with us," answered Ridley. "Or you might be fain to rest under a rock for a while."
The rest was far from unwelcome, and Grisell sat down on a mossy stone while Ridley gathered bracken for her shelter, and presently even brought her a branch or two of whortle-berries. She felt that she had a friend, and was pleased when he began to talk of how he remembered her long ago.
"Ah! I mind you, a little fat ball of a thing, when you were fetched home from Herring Dick's house, how you used to run after the dogs like a kitten after her tail, and used to crave to be put up on old Black Durham's back."
"I remember Black Durham! Had he not a white star on his forehead?"
"A white blaze sure enough."
"Is he at the tower still? I did not see him in the plump of spears."
"No, no, poor beast. He broke his leg four years ago come Martinmas, in a rabbit-hole on Berwick Law, last raid that we made, and I tarried to cut his throat with my dagger-though it went to my heart, for his good old eyes looked at me like Christians, and my lord told me I was a fool for my pains, for the Elliots were hard upon us, but I could not leave him to be a mark for them, and I was up with the rest in time, though I had to cut down the foremost lad."
Certainly "home" would be very unlike the experience of Grisell's education.
Ridley gave her a piece of advice. "Do not be daunted at my lady; her bark is ever worse than her bite, and what she will not bear with is the seeming cowed before her. She is all the sharper with her tongue now that her heart is sore for Master Bernard."