The first sounds she there heard were, "Sir, I have given my faith to the Lady Eleanor of Audley, whom I love."
"What is that to me? 'Twas a precontract to my daughter."
"Not made by me nor her."
"By your parents, with myself. You went near to being her death outright, marred her face for life, so that none other will wed her. What say you? Not hurt by your own will? Who said it was? What matters that?"
"Sir," said Leonard, "it is true that by mishap, nay, if you will have it so, by a child's inadvertence, I caused this evil chance to befall your daughter, but I deny, and my father denies likewise, that there was any troth plight between the maid and me. She will own the same if you ask her. As I spake before, there was talk of the like kind between you, sir, and my father, and it was the desire of the good King that thus the families might be reconciled; but the contract went no farther, as the holy King himself owned when I gave my faith to the Lord Audley's daughter, and with it my heart."
"Aye, we know that the Frenchwoman can make the poor fool of a King believe and avouch anything she choose! This is not the point. No more words, young man. Here stands my daughter; there is the rope. Choose-wed or hang."
Leonard stood one moment with a look of agonised perplexity over his face. Then he said, "If I consent, am I at liberty, free at once to depart?"
"Aye," said Whitburn. "So you fulfil your contract, the rest is nought to me."
"I am then at liberty? Free to carry my sword to my Queen and King?"
"Free."
"You swear it, on the holy cross?"
Lord Whitburn held up the cross hilt of his sword before him, and made oath on it that when once married to his daughter, Leonard Copeland was no longer his prisoner.
Grisell through her veil read on the youthful face a look of grief and renunciation; he was sacrificing his love to the needs of King and country, and his words chimed in with her conviction.
"Sir, I am ready. If it were myself alone, I would die rather than be false to my love, but my Queen needs good swords and faithful hearts, and I may not fail her. I am ready!"
"It is well!" said Lord Whitburn. "Ho, you there! Bring the horses to the door."
Grisell, in all the strange suspense of that decision, had been thinking of Sir Gawaine, whose lines rang in her head, but that look of grief roused other feelings. Sir Gawaine had no other love to sacrifice.
"Sir! sir!" she cried, as her father turned to bid her mount the pillion behind Ridley. "Can you not let him go free without? I always looked to a cloister."
"That is for you and he to settle, girl. Obey me now, or it will be the worse for him and you."
"One word I would say," added the mother. "How far hath this matter with the Audley maid gone? There is no troth plight, I trow?"
"No, by all that is holy, no. Would the lad not have pleaded it if there had been? No more dilly-dallying. Up on the horse, Grisly, and have done with it. We will show the young recreant how promises are kept in Durham County."
He dragged rather than led his daughter to the door, and lifted her passively to the pillion seat behind Cuthbert Ridley. A fine horse, Copeland's own, was waiting for him. He was allowed to ride freely, but old Whitburn kept close beside him, so that escape would have been impossible. He was in the armour in which he had fought, dimmed and dust-stained, but still glancing in the morning sun, which glittered on the sea, though a heavy western thunder-cloud, purple in the sun, was rising in front of this strange bridal cavalcade.
It was overhead by the time the church was reached, and the heavy rain that began to fall caused the priest to bid the whole party come within for the part of the ceremony usually performed outside the west door.
It was very dark within. The windows were small and old, and filled with dusky glass, and the arches were low browed. Grisell's mufflings were thrown aside, and she stood as became a maiden bride, with all her hair flowing over her shoulders and long tresses over her face, but even without this, her features would hardly have been visible, as the dense cloud rolled overhead; and indeed so tall and straight was her figure that no one would have supposed her other than a fair young spouse. She trembled a good deal, but was too much terrified and, as it were, stunned for tears, and she durst not raise her drooping head even to look at her bridegroom, though such light as came in shone upon his fair hair and was reflected on his armour, and on one golden spur that still he wore, the other no doubt lost in the fight.
All was done regularly. The Lord of Whitburn was determined that no ceremony that could make the wedlock valid should be omitted. The priest, a kind old man, but of peasant birth, and entirely subservient to the Dacres, proceeded to ask each of the pair when they had been assoiled, namely, absolved. Grisell, as he well knew, had been shriven only last Friday; Leonard muttered, "Three days since, when I was dubbed knight, ere the battle."
"That suffices," put in the Baron impatiently. "On with you, Sir Lucas."
The thoroughly personal parts of the service were in English, and Grisell could not but look up anxiously when the solemn charge was given to mention whether there was any lawful "letting" to their marriage. Her heart bounded as it were to her throat when Leonard made no answer.
But then what lay before him if he pleaded his promise!
It went on-those betrothal vows, dictated while the two cold hands were linked, his with a kind of limp passiveness, hers, quaking, especially as, in the old use of York, he took her "for laither for fairer"-laith being equivalent to loathly-"till death us do part." And with failing heart, but still resolute heart, she faltered out her vow to cleave to him "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness or health, and to be bonner (debonair or cheerful) and boughsome (obedient) till that final parting."
The troth was plighted, and the silver mark-poor Leonard's sole available property at the moment-laid on the priest's book, as the words were said, "with worldly cathel I thee endow," and the ring, an old one of her mother's, was held on Grisell's finger. It was done, though, alas! the bridegroom could hardly say with truth, "with my body I thee worship."
Then followed the procession to the altar, the chilly hands barely touching one another, and the mass was celebrated, when Latin did not come home to the pair like English, though both fairly understood it. Grisell's feeling was by this time concentrated in the one hope that she should be dutiful to the poor, unwilling bridegroom, far more to be pitied than herself, and that she should be guarded by God whatever befell.
It was over. Signing of registers was not in those days, but there was some delay, for the darkness was more dense than ever, the rush of furious hail was heard without, a great blue flash of intense light filled every corner of the church, the thunder pealed so sharply and vehemently overhead that the small company looked at one another and at the church, to ascertain that no stroke had fallen. Then the Lord of Whitburn, first recovering himself, cried, "Come, sir knight, kiss your bride. Ha! where is he? Sir Leonard-here. Who hath seen him? Not vanished in yon flash! Eh?"
No, but the men without, cowering under the wall, deposed that Sir Leonard Copeland had rushed out, shouted to them that he had fulfilled the conditions and was a free man, taken his horse, and galloped away through the storm.
CHAPTER XIV-THE LONELY BRIDE
Grace for the callant
If he marries our muckle-mouth Meg.
BROWNING.
"The recreant! Shall we follow him?" was the cry of Lord Whitburn's younger squire, Harry Featherstone, with his hand on his horse's neck, in spite of the torrents of rain and the fresh flash that set the horses quivering.
"No! no!" roared the Baron. "I tell you no! He has fulfilled his promise; I fulfil mine. He has his freedom. Let him go! For the rest, we will find the way to make him good husband to you, my wench," and as Harry murmured something, "There's work enow in hand without spending our horses' breath and our own in chasing after a runaway groom. A brief space we will wait till the storm be over."