Grisly Grisell; Or, The Laidly Lady of Whitburn: A Tale of the Wars of the Roses by - (summer reads .TXT) 📕

reach of home.  There was a tall church tower and some wretched hovels round it.  The Lord of Whitburn halted, and blew his bugle with the peculiar note that signified his own return, then all rode down to the old peel, the outline of which Grisell saw with a sense of remembrance, against the gray sea-line, with the little breaking, glancing waves, which she now knew herself to have unconsciously wanted and missed for years past.

Whitburn Tower stood on the south side, on a steep cliff overlooking the sea.  The peel tower itself looked high and strong, but to Grisell, accustomed to the widespread courts of the great castles and abbeys of the south, the circuit of outbuildings seemed very narrow and cramped, for truly there was need to have no more walls than could be helped for the few defenders to guard.

All was open now, and under the arched gateway, with the portcullis over her head, fitly framing her, stood the tall, gaunt figure of the lady, grayer, thinner, more haggard than when Grisell had last seen her, and beside her, leaning on a crutch, a white-faced boy, small and stunted for six years old.

“Ha, dame!  Ha, Bernard; how goes it?” shouted the Baron in his gruff, hoarse voice.

“He willed to come down to greet you, though he cannot hold your stirrup,” said the mother.  “You are soon returned.  Is all well with Rob?”

“O aye, I found Thorslan of Danby and a plump of spears on the way to the Duke of York at Windsor.  They say he will need all his following if the Beauforts put it about that the King has recovered as much wit as ever he had.  So I e’en sent Rob on with him, and came back so as to be ready in case there’s a call for me.  Soh!  Berney; on thy feet again?  That’s well, my lad; but we’ll have thee up the steps.”

He seemed quite to have forgotten the presence of Grisell, and it was Cuthbert Ridley who helped her off her horse, but just then little Bernard in his father’s arms exclaimed—

“Black nun woman!”

“By St. Cuthbert!” cried the Baron, “I mind me!  Here, wench!  I have brought back the maid in her brother’s stead.”

And as Grisell, in obedience to his call, threw back her veil, Bernard screamed, “Ugsome wench, send her away!” threw his arms round his father’s neck and hid his face with a babyish gesture.

“Saints have mercy!” cried the mother, “thou hast not mended much since I saw thee last.  They that marred thee had best have kept thee.  Whatever shall we do with the maid?”

“Send her away, the loathly thing,” reiterated the boy, lifting up his head from his father’s shoulder for another glimpse, which produced a puckering of the face in readiness for crying.

“Nay, nay, Bernard,” said Ridley, feeling for the poor girl and speaking up for her when no one else would.  “She is your sister, and you must be a fond brother to her, for an ill-nurtured lad spoilt her poor face when it was as fair as your own.  Kiss your sister like a good lad, and—

“No! no!” shouted Bernard.  “Take her away.  I hate her.”  He began to cry and kick.

“Get out of his sight as fast as may be,” commanded the mother, alarmed by her sickly darling’s paroxysm of passion.

Grisell, scarce knowing where to go, could only allow herself to be led away by Ridley, who, seeing her tears, tried to comfort her in his rough way.  “’Tis the petted bairn’s way, you see, mistress—and my lady has no thought save for him.  He will get over it soon enough when he learns your gentle convent-bred conditions.”

Still the cry of “Grisly Grisell,” picked up as if by instinct or by some echo from the rear of the escort, rang in her ears in the angry fretful voice of the poor little creature towards whom her heart was yearning.  Even the two women-servants there were, no more looked at her askance, as they took her to a seat in the hall, and consulted where my lady would have her bestowed.  She was wiping away bitter tears as she heard her only friend Cuthbert settle the matter.  “The chamber within the solar is the place for the noble damsels.”

“That is full of old armour, and dried herrings, and stockfish.”

“Move them then!  A fair greeting to give to my lord’s daughter.”

There was some further muttering about a bed, and Grisell sprang up.  “Oh, hush! hush!  I can sleep on a cloak; I have done so for many nights.  Only let me be no burthen.  Show me where I can go to be an anchoress, since they will not have me in a convent or anywhere,” and bitterly she wept.

“Peace, peace, lady,” said the squire kindly.  “I will deal with these ill-tongued lasses.  Shame on them!  Go off, and make the chamber ready, or I’ll find a scourge for you.  And as to my lady—she is wrapped up in the sick bairn, but she has only to get used to you to be friendly enough.”

“O what a hope in a mother,” thought poor Grisell.  “O that I were at Wilton or some nunnery, where my looks would be pardoned!  Mother Avice, dear mother, what wouldst thou say to me now!”

The peel tower had been the original building, and was still as it were the citadel, but below had been built the very strong but narrow castle court, containing the stables and the well, and likewise the hall and kitchen—which were the dwelling and sleeping places of the men of the household, excepting Cuthbert Ridley, who being of gentle blood, would sit above the salt, and had his quarters with Rob when at home in the tower.  The solar was a room above the hall, where was the great box-bed of the lord and lady, and a little bed for Bernard.

Entered through it, in a small turret, was a chamber designed for the daughters and maids, and this was rightly appropriated by Ridley to the Lady Grisell.  The two women-servants—Bell and Madge—were wives to the cook and the castle smith, so the place had been disused and made a receptacle for drying fish, fruit, and the like.  Thus the sudden call for its use provoked a storm of murmurs in no gentle voices, and Grisell shrank into a corner of the hall, only wishing she could efface herself.

And as she looked out on the sea from her narrow window, it seemed to her dismally gray, moaning, restless, and dreary.

p. 101CHAPTER X
COLD WELCOME

Seek not for others to love you,
   But seek yourself to love them best,
And you shall find the secret true,
   Of love and joy and rest.

I. Williams.

To lack beauty was a much more serious misfortune in the Middle Ages than at present.  Of course it was probable that there might be a contract of marriage made entirely irrespective of attractiveness, long before the development of either of the principal parties concerned; but even then the rude, open-spoken husband would consider himself absolved from any attention to an ill-favoured wife, and the free tongues of her surroundings would not be slack to make her aware of her defects.  The cloister was the refuge of the unmarried woman, if of gentle birth as a nun, if of a lower grade as a lay-sister; but the fifteenth century was an age neither of religion nor of chivalry.  Dowers were more thought of than devotion in convents as elsewhere.  Whitby being one of the oldest and grandest foundations was sure to be inaccessible to a high-born but unportioned girl, and Grisell in her sense of loneliness saw nothing before her but to become an anchoress, that is to say, a female hermit, such as generally lived in strict seclusion under shelter of the Church.

“There at least,” thought poor Grisell, “there would be none to sting me to the heart with those jeering eyes of theirs.  And I might feel in time that God and His Saints loved me, and not long for my father and mother, and oh! my poor little brother—yes, and Leonard Copeland, and Sister Avice, and the rest.  But would Sister Avice call this devotion?  Nay, would she not say that these cruel eyes and words are a cross upon me, and I must bear them and love in spite—at least till I be old enough to choose for myself?”

She was summoned to supper, and this increased the sense of dreariness, for Bernard screamed that the grisly one should not come near him, or he would not eat, and she had to take her meal of dried fish and barley bread in the wide chimney corner, where there always was a fire at every season of the year.

Her chamber, which Cuthbert Ridley’s exertions had compelled the women to prepare for her, was—as seen in the light of the long evening—a desolate place, within a turret, opening from the solar, or chamber of her parents and Bernard, the loophole window devoid of glass, though a shutter could be closed in bad weather, the walls circular and of rough, untouched, unconcealed stone, a pallet bed—the only attempt at furniture, except one chest—and Grisell’s own mails tumbled down anyhow, and all pervaded by an ancient and fishy smell.  She felt too downhearted even to creep out and ask for a pitcher of water.  She took a long look over the gray, heaving sea, and tired as she was, it was long before she could pray and cry herself to sleep, and accustomed as she was to convent beds, this one appeared to be stuffed with raw apples, and she awoke with aching bones.

Her request for a pitcher or pail of water was treated as southland finery, for those who washed at all used the horse trough, but fortunately for her Cuthbert Ridley heard the request.  He had been enough in the south in attendance on his master to know how young damsels lived, and what treatment they met with, and he was soon rating the women in no measured terms for the disrespect they had presumed to show to the Lady Grisell, encouraged by the neglect of her parents

The Lord of Whitburn, appearing on the scene at the moment, backed up his retainer, and made it plain that he intended his daughter to be respected and obeyed, and the grumbling women had to submit.  Nor did he refuse to acknowledge, on Ridley’s representation, that Grisell ought to have an attendant of her own, and the lady of the castle, coming down with Bernard clinging to her skirt with one hand, and leaning on his crutch, consented.  “If the maid was to be here, she must be treated fitly, and Bell and Madge had enough to do without convent-bred fancies.”

So Cuthbert descended the steep path to the ravine where dwelt the fisher folk, and came back with a girl barefooted, bareheaded, with long, streaming, lint-white locks, and the scantiest of garments, crying bitterly with fright, and almost struggling to go back.  She was the orphan remnant of a family drowned in the bay, and was a burthen on her fisher kindred, who were rejoiced thus to dispose of her.

She sobbed the more at sight of the grisly lady, and almost screamed when Grisell smiled and tried to take her by the hand.  Ridley fairly drove her upstairs, step by step, and then shut her in with his young lady, when she sank on the floor and hid her face under all her bleached hair.

“Poor little thing,” thought Grisell; “it is like having a fresh-caught sea-gull.  She is as forlorn as I am, and more afraid!”

So she began to speak gently and coaxingly, begging the girl to look up, and assuring her that she would not be hurt.  Grisell had a very soft and persuasive voice.  Her chief misfortune as regarded her appearance was that the muscles of one cheek had been so drawn that though she smiled sweetly with one side of her face, the other was contracted and went awry, so that when the kind tones had made the girl look up for a moment, the next she cried, “O don’t—don’t!  Holy Mary, forbid the spell!”

“I have no spells, my poor maid; indeed I am only a poor girl, a stranger here in my own home.  Come, and do not fear me.”

“Madge said you had witches’ marks on your face,” sobbed the child.

“Only the marks of gunpowder,” said Grisell.  “Listen, I will tell thee what befell me.”

Gunpowder seemed to be quite beyond all experience of Whitburn nature, but the history of the catastrophe gained attention, and the girl’s terror abated, so that Grisell could ask her name, which was Thora, and learning, too, that she had led a hard life since her granny died, and her uncle’s wife beat her, and made her carry heavy loads of seaweed when it froze her hands, besides a hundred other troubles.  As to knowing any kind of feminine art, she was as ignorant as if the rough and extremely dirty woollen