The Young Lovell

So they made out between them that all these things, and making the arch between the great chamber and the tower came to £10 6s. 4d., and since they owed Robert Chambers and John Richardson already £17 13s. 4d., the whole payment then to be made was £27 19s. 8d.

The esquire, John Harbottle, pulled his money bag from beneath his girdle and counted out the money, throwing it on to the bed, for there was no table in that cell.

Then he drew from his belt two papers and so he said:

"My lord will have you buy from Christiana Paynter the armorial bearings of my lord to set up upon the tower, and that shall cost you 3s. And this you shall have carved upon the same stone:

"'In the year of Xt. jhu MCCCCLXXXV
This tower was builded by Sir Henry Percy
The IV. Earl of Northumberland of great honour and worth
That espoused Maud the good lady full of virtue and beauty
… Whose soule's God save.'"

"That shall be set up," the monk said.

"Then," John Harbottle said, "there is this you may do to convenience me who have been your favourer in all things. That you may the earlier come to it, read you this paper which I have written out, but in English, for I have no Latin beyond mass-Latin."

"What we may do to please you," the monk said, gravely, "that we will, if it be not to the discredit of God."

"It is rather to His greater glory," the esquire said.

So the monk took the paper and read:

"The Prior of Belford, Patent of XX merks by yere. Henry Erle of Northumberland…" The monk glanced on, and his eye fell upon the words, "myn armytage builded in a rock of stone against the church of Castle Lovell," and, later on … "the gate and pasture of twenty kye and a bull with their calves sukyng," – "One draught of fisshe every Sondaie in the year to be drawen fornenst the said armytage, called the Trynete draught…"

The monk looked up over his shoulder at the esquire.

"I perceive," he said, "that you would have us to take over the commandment of my Lord's hermitage at Castle Lovell."

John Harbottle looked down a little nervously at his hands. That was what he sought.

"I have heard that the holy hermit is dead?" the monk asked.

"It is even that," John Harbottle said. "I am worn with the trouble of riding over from Alnwick to Castle Lovell. It is a great burden, yet there is the hermitage that must be kept up for the honour of the Percies."

"That," the monk said, "was because it was esteemed a privilege to house a holy anchoret."

"Then," John Harbottle asked, "may not my lord save his soul as well by making your brotherhood a payment to watch over the holy man?"

"I am not saying that he may not," the monk said.

"Then of your courtesy, do this for me," John Harbottle said, "for it is a troublesome matter. This last year, once a month, news has been sent me that this holy man was dead. Then I have ridden over to Castle Lovell and lost a day, calling into the hole in his cell to see if he would answer 'Et cum spiritu tuo,' as his manner was. And, after a whole day lost, he will answer; or maybe not till the next day, and there are two days lost when I should be getting rents or going upon my lord's business. And I am not the man to have much dealing with these holy beings. A plain blunt man! It gives me a grue to be thus calling in at a little hole. And the stench is very awful. I do my duty by the blessed sacraments on Sundays and feast days. And if he be dead, I must find a successor. It will not be very easy for me to find a man to go into that kennel and be walled up. And never again to come out…"

The monk looked again at the paper with the particulars of the gift.

"Well, I will think of it," he said, "or rather I will commune with the worshipful Prior and Sub-Prior. But I would have you know that if they agree to do this thing it is upon me that the pain and labour will fall, for there is none else in this monastery to do it. So I must go over to Castle Lovell once by the week at least to see that the holy hermit is given bread and water. And if he be truly dead it is I that must find his successor; that will not be easy."

"But twenty marks by the year for doing it," John Harbottle said, "that is a goodly sum to fall to your brotherhood."

"I do not understand," the monk answered him, "for this patent is not very clear – whether that twenty marks is in addition to the grassground, the garden and orchard at Conygarth, the pasturage of kine, bulls, horses and the draughts of fishes. Or are the draughts of fishes and the rest to be taken as of the value of twenty marks by the year?"

"It is the last that is meant," John Harbottle answered, a little dubiously.

"Then it is not enough," the monk said firmly and made to roll up the paper, "I cannot advise the Prior to accept this gift. For the monastery must lose so much of my time and prayers, though, God knows, those are little worth enough; yet I, a not very holy man, am all that these saintly brothers have to care for their temporalities."

John Harbottle grumbled some retort beneath his breath, and then he sighed and pushed the paper with his hand.

"Then take and write," he said, and when the monk had mended his pen he dictated. "'And in addition the said stipend of XX markes by year to be taken and received of the rent and ferm of my fisshyng of Warkworth, by thands of my fermour of the same for the tyme beynge, yerly at the times there used and accustomed to, even portions. In wytnes whereof to these my letters patentes, I the said erle have set the seale of my names.' … That," John Harbottle continued, "if you will agree to, you shall have written out fair on parchment, and so the matter ends."

"I think it will end very well," the monk answered, "and the Earl of Northumberland shall have honour of it in Heaven. And, since I am about to do this thing in your service, and to relieve you of travels and the fear of a holy man, having no advantage myself and seeking none, since I am a monk, so I will take it as a kindness if you will do, for my sake, what you can at odd moments to advantage the cause of my friend, this Young Lovell, who is lately come, as I have heard, from prison amongst the false thieves of Rokehope and Cheviot."

John Harbottle did not answer this, for he thought there was little love lost between his lord and that young lording. Within himself he thought that, if the religious should espouse that lording's cause it would be a good thing for the Percy to be advised to let him be, and this monk had great voice with the lower order of people whom the Earl had cause to fear, since they were sworn to have his blood because of the taxes that, in the King's name, he laid upon them. But he did not speak upon those matters, saying aloud:

"It is strange, though I know it to be true, that my lord shall have honour in heaven by reason that a man be found to be walled up in a space no larger than the kennel of my hound Diccon and so live out his life."

"My friend," the monk said, "I may not listen to you further, for that would come near conversing with a heretic. And the penalty for such conversation is that at every Easter and high feast I must stand beside the high altar, in a robe of penitence, having in my hand a rod or peeled wand ten foot in length and other penances, a many I must do."

"God forbid!" John Harbottle said, "for I am no heretic and no more than a plain, blunt man. And surely these things are hard to understand."

"My son," that monk said, and by the creasing of his tight lips John Harbottle knew that he had been pleasant with him before and had not meant in earnestness to call him a heretic. "Every day you hear of the ways of God that are hard to understand. You have heard to-day or yesterday of the miracle that was wrought on Tuesday in the Abbey of our own town of Alnwick – how that the foot of Sir Simon de Montfort, that there they have and that is incorruptible, cured a certain very wealthy burgess of Newcastle called Arnoldus Pickett. For he was not able to move his foot from his bed or put his hand to his mouth or perform any bodily function. And so, in a dream he was bidden to go to your Abbey of the Premonstratensian Brotherhood and the foot of Simon de Montfort should cure him. Which, when it was known to the canons, there serving God, in order that this merchant might approach more easily – for as yet he heavily laboured in his lameness – and lest he should suffer too much, two of them brought it reverently to him, in its silver shoe. But, before the patient was able to approach for the purpose of kissing it, and by the mere sight of the slipper, on account of the merits of Simon de Montfort, he was restored. And this, to-day, our monks are writing in their chronicle and praising God. And consider what glory there will be in this foot of Simon de Montfort when it is reunited to his whole body after the great judgment, by comparison of its efficacy before Doomsday, when such healing virtue went out of it as a dead member, concealing itself in a slipper of silver…"

The monk was determined very thoroughly at once to abash and edify this minion of the Earl of Northumberland and so to bring that Lord more thoroughly to the reverence of the Church and more particularly of the Bishop Palatine with whom these monks had a great friendship. And this not only in the matter of the Young Lovell, where the Earl had sought to give judgment in a matter that was full surely ecclesiastical and not pertaining to the lay Court of the Border Warden. So that monk continued in a loud voice:

"Shall you seek to understand these miracles that are of daily happening and occur all round you, God knows, often enough? For in the monastery or priory of Durham they have not only the most famous bodies of St. Cuthbert and St. Bede, but the cross of St. Margaret that is well known to be of avail to women that labour with child. And in the Cella of Fenkull they have St. Guthric, and in Newminster the zone and mass-book of St. Robert, and in Blondeland the girdle of St. Mary the Mother of God. And all these cure, according to their marvellous faculties, the halt, the blind, those who have the shaking palsy and those with the falling sickness. And in Hexham they have the Red-book of Hexham, and at Tynemouth they have not only the body of St. Oswin, King and martyr in a feretory, but also the spur of St. Cuthbert, the finger of St. Bartholomew and the girdle of Blessed Margaret… And all these things being under your very eyes or at a short day's journey, you will question the glory and the strangeness of God and you will set yourself up – oh, stiffnecked generation! …"

A gentle knocking came at the cell door and the old and dirty lay-brother who was in the outer room pushed it ajar. They heard immediately a great outcry from beyond and the lay brother whispered that, at the outer door stood the Young Lovell asking for admittance with all his men-at-arms around him.

The monk opened a little door in the wall that gave into a passage leading to the church of the monastery. Through this he led John Harbottle, and at the entrance to the church he let him go. For, because John Harbottle was receiver for the Earl of Northumberland, he was not much beloved by the Lovell men-at-arms, and the monk Francis feared that they might offer him some violence now that their spirits were inflamed, and their stomachs rendered proud and rebellious by the return of their lord who should take them into his service again. And when the monk had thrown himself down before the image of the Mother of God that was in the Lady Chapel near that entrance, and had laid there long enough to say twelve "Hail Maries," he arose and went back to his cell and bade the lay brother let in Young Lovell.

III

When the Young Lovell was admitted to the inner cell, a fine smile of friendship came over the monk's hard face. He loved this young lord for his open features, his frank voice, his deeds of arms and his great courage. He stretched forward his hand towards the Young Lovell, but, in his faded scarlet cloak, and with his pierced cap in his hands the young lord went down upon his knees and wished to confess himself.

The monk Francis blessed him very lovingly, but said that he did not wish to hear a confession, and that the Young Lovell should seek a holier man. But he was ready to hear the Young Lovell's true story, and to take counsel with him as to how all things might be turned to the greater glory of the Most High. He observed with concern the saddened and blank eyes of his friend, his faded clothes, in which he appeared like a figure in a painted missal that the dampness of a cell had rendered dim. And he was determined, if he could, to render aid to his friend, for twice already he had befriended the young man, once after the battle of Kenchie's Burn, and he had done it since. For indeed, when he had had time, he had gone to the township of Castle Lovell, and had talked with the lawyer Stone and with the witch called Meg of the Foul Tyke. With the Decies he had not talked, but he had heard him on that day in the Great Hall and knew him for a false knave. He had observed, too, that the stories of the lawyer Stone and of the old women did not in all things tally. One talked of the naked witch as having black hair and six paps; the other said she was most fair and had no deformity. The lawyer placed the witches' fire to the left of the large rock called Bondale that was before the chapel, and the old woman said it was to the right, with the wind from the east, so that if it had been a real fire there must be the marks of burning upon it.

The monk had asked his questions very cunningly, rather as a religious anxious for information as to the ways of sinners, in order that he might the better detect and punish them, than as one desiring to sift their answers. But he was very certain that they were evil liars, and he was sure that, were they brought before the Bishop's courts in Durham, he would be able to bring their perjuries to light. So he was very certain that the lording had been taken by Gib Elliott and held for ransom, and well he knew that no one in the Castle would ransom him, so that it was small wonder if they had heard nothing of it. The Decies and his confederates would conceal any news they had from Elliott, and perhaps slay his messenger or keep him jailed that the outlaw might be angered and slay the Young Lovell. So that it was with a great cheerfulness that now he offered to have brought to his friend, food and clean linen and hot, scented water, and a serving man to wash his feet; for he thought he must be come from far after having fared ill enough.

But the Young Lovell would have none of these things, neither would he be persuaded to rise from his knees; but, being there, he said a long prayer to Our Lord that hung from the crucifix and appeared in an agony. And the monk sat himself at the foot of the box of straw covered with a rug that was his bed and again marvelled at the face of his friend. For the long, brown hair was blanched by the sun, the closed eyes were sunken, the lids gone bluish, the lips parched as if with desire. And so, whilst the lording prayed, the monk sat on the bed foot. Then he heard a rustle of wings and, on the sill of the glassless window, he saw a blue dove and, in the sunlight without, a fair woman that peered in at that window and smiled – all white and with the sunlight upon her.

The monk got down from the bed foot, to reprove her courteously, for no woman should be seen there between the church and the monk's cells. But then he considered that it might be a penitent of one of the other monks, and when he looked towards the window again, the woman and the dove alike had vanished from the view of that window, and he judged he had better let the matter be. And so he sat down upon the bed foot.

The Young Lovell groaned several times in his praying, and most he had groaned when that fair woman had looked in at the cell. His breathing made a heavy sound in the silent room. And then he cried out in a great, lamentable voice:

"I have been with a fairy woman! Three months long I have looked upon the whiteness of a fairy woman! Who shall absolve me?"

The monk slipped down from the bed.

"Ah misericordia!" he cried out and: "Jesu pity us!"