The Young Lovell

"Now, by God's dreadful grace, that is not so," he cried. "For if I would have murdered ye – and I tremble at that word – might I not have done so even now, when I had the arms and weapons that I surrendered to you so that ye might have killed me? Ye are my very dread lord, and well I know it. For I have sate under the mass priest and heard his sermons, and well I know how that the lion is the symbol and token of Antichrist, the dragon of Satan, the basilisk of death, and the aspic of the sinner that shut his ears to the teachings of life. And have I not seen all these trampled beneath the feet of the Saviour in stone set upon the church door? And shall I be like unto the aspic and pass from life to hell … the aspic that shutteth his ears? Alas, no! I do know that there are set over me, God and the Saints and the most dreadful King Henry, Seventh of that name, and the Bishop Palatine and the Border Warden and the monks of St. Radigund. But before all these men and next only to God, comes my most dread Lord Lovell of the Castle, and that if I do not serve him with all rights and dues, fire and sword will be my portion in this life or else the barren hillside and hell-flame in after time…"

The Lord Lovell said:

"Well, ye have learnt your lesson, the mass priest has taught you well."

Then the crafty bondsman, seeing that his lord's face was softened, and hoping, by means of his brother, still to escape his due payments, sighed and said:

"I would indeed, and before the saints, that I must give greater payments to my lord if there were none to other people. For there is no end to this payment of taxes and tithes. No sooner is my lord's bailiff gone than there come my Lord Warden's men seeking to take my horse for the King's wars in France – God curse that Lord Warden! And he gone, comes the Bishop Palatine's bailiff seeking payment for the milling of my corn at his mills on the Wear though the grists were all my own. Then comes the prior of St. Radigund's for a half tithe; then Sir John, the mass priest, for a whole. Then there are the market dues of Belford – for God His piteous sake, ah gentle lording, set us up here in Castle Lovell a market where we may sell toll free – we of the Castle. Now if I will sell some bolls of wheat and ship them to the Percies at King's Lynn, I must pay river dues at Sunderland according to the brass plate that is set in the Castle wall at Dunstanburgh. And if I pay that due it is claimed of me again a second time by the Admiral of the Yorkshire coast, saying that I should not have paid it the first, though God He knows what maketh the Admiral of Yorkshire in our rivers and seas. So with wood haulage to Glororem, and maltings to the King's Castle guard at Bamburgh, and a day's work of service here and two days in harvest there, God knows there is no end to a poor man's payments. But this I know…" and the peasant scowled deeply, "that my Lord of Northumberland may rue the day when he taxed us for the French wars. It is not that Lord Percy that shall live long."

The bondsman allowed himself these words against the Percy partly out of his great hatred, and partly because he knew his lord did not love this Earl of Northumberland for his treachery to King Richard upon Bosworth Field.

They were still halted at the edge of that plain that the lord might the better hear his bondsman. But the Young Lovell heard only parts of what the peasant said, for he was nearly lost in thought whilst the great white horse cropped the grass. At last the Young Lovell spoke.

"For what you say," he exclaimed, "as to the multiplicity of burdens there is some sense in it. And it might well be that I could buy some of these rights from the King, or the Prince Bishop, or others, as it chances. And, for a market, I am well minded to buy the right to hold one from the King. And so was my father minded before me. But you know very well that your gossip, Corbit Jock – like the tough rogues that ye all are – this Corbit Jock stood in the way of it. For the only piece of land I have that is fitting for a market lies under the wall of that my Castle on the way running through that my township of Castle Lovell. And amid most of that, as ye know, Corbit Jock has a mound of his holding. How his father got it I know not. But there, running into my Castle wall, is his mound, and on it a filthy barn leaning against my Castle wall, and before the barnekyn a heap of dung and a shed that might harbour five goats. The whole is not worth to him ninepence by the year, and it is far from his house and of no use to him. Yet, though I would well and willingly buy this of him, and my father would have bought it of his father that there we might have a market holden, ye know very well that this Corbit Jock will not sell and I have no power to take it from him. For, though I might get a broad letter from the King in his Council to take this mound by force, and to pay him full value, yet such a letter must cost me much gold, and it is doubtful if the King's writ, in such matters, runneth in these North parts. In the country of France, as I heard when I was there of the Sieur Berthin de Silly, such things are done every day by the King's letters. Nay, he was about then engaged in such a matter with a peasant, whom he dispossessed, but paid well and so has a fair market below his Castle of La Roche Gayon. And so it may well be in the South of this realm for aught I know. But here it is different, and I am not minded to have a hornet's nest of lawyers about my ears in order to give a market place – that should cost me dear enough when I bought the rights of my lord the King – to such rogues and cozeners as you and Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock and the widow of Martin Taylor. But, if ye will talk of the matter with Corbit Jock that he may sell his mound to me, I will promise you this, that you shall have your market. For I am your very good lord. And so no more of talk for this time."

He set his horse towards Belford, going decently by roundabout ways and paths from landmark to landmark that he might not trample down the long grass of which his bondsmen were making their hay all about him. Of late years, since his father had been too heavy to ride, the Young Lovell had considered much the matters of his lands, and he had done certain things, such as selling by the year to third parties of the rights to collect his dues, whether on malt, hens, salt, housing and of other things. And these new methods, of which mostly he had heard in the realms of France, Gascony and Provence, had worked well enough, for his incomings had been settled and the buyers of his rights had neither the power to steal his moneys nor so much to oppress the bondsmen as his own bailiffs had. So that, in one way and another, he could talk of these things to his bondsman whilst he thought of other matters. And one of these matters came into his head from that talk of the shed of Corbit Jock that leant against the very rock below his Castle wall.

From below the flags of the men-at-arms' kitchen, in the solid stone of the rocks, there ran a passage going finally through the earth not ten feet from the mound of Corbit Jock. The only persons that might know of this passage had been the dead lord and Young Lovell himself. The Decies might know of it, for the dead lord had prated of all things to his bastard. But it was odds that it would never come into the Decies' head, for he was a very drunken fellow and remembered most things too late.

Now if, under cover of night, the Young Lovell could introduce a dozen or twenty lusty fellows with picks and other instruments into Corbit Jock's barnekyn, in five hours or less they could dig a way into that tunnel where it went under the ground. Then it was but pushing up the flagstones of the kitchen and they would be terrifyingly and surprisingly within the Castle whilst all the men-at-arms could be drawn off from those parts with a feigned attack on the outer walls. Or, if by chance there were men in that passage and guarding it, they could put into it a great cask of gunpowder and so kill them all. It was a task much easier than my lord of Derby and Sir Walter Manny had, who tunnelled under the Castle of la Réole for eleven weeks when Agout de Baux held it and yet could not take that place which is in Languedoc, though he had with him three Earls, five hundred knights and two thousand archers. The young Lovell thought he would have his Castle more easily.

And as he rode through the fields, the thoughts of war driving out those of the lady with the crooked smile, the siege of that Castle grew clear to him and like a picture, red and blue and pink, at the edge, or the head of a missal. At first, hearing that the White Tower was held for him with its gold and cannons, he had thought that, going by sea into that place, which was like a citadel over against a walled city, such as he had seen at Boulogne and Carcassowne and other places, he would set the cannon to batter down the walls and so enter in with what many he could get together.

But then it had seemed to him that that was his own Castle and, if he beat down its walls, he must build it up again at his own pains and great cost – for the building of castles is no light work to a lord, however rich. Moreover, his sisters would certainly set his mother in whatsoever part of the Castle he began to batter – so that he must either kill his mother or leave off; for that was the nature of his good sisters.

And then he began to think of stratagems and devices by which he might, more readily and at less cost, come to his desires. And so he cast about for a cunning device by the means of which he might get possession of the great gate of that Castle. But at that time he thought of none.

So he rode an hour through the fields, diverting himself with that picture in his mind and with his bondsman stepping beside him. Then they came to a brook which was a bowshot from the frowning and high tower of Belford monastery. This was so new that the stones were still white and the scaffold poles and planks all about its crenellations. The Young Lovell stayed his horse by the streamside and spoke to his bondsman.

"Now this I will do," he said, "and you may set it privately about the countryside. For I know well, Hugh Raket, that it is you that are the masterful rogue in these affairs. Although in your story you have sought to make it appear that Barty of the Comb and others had a great share in devising a mutiny against that bailiff, yet it was you alone that stirred up the people. So let it be known to my men a fortnight hence, at nine at night they shall meet me at a certain place of which I will warn you later. And each man shall be armed as he is when he goes against the Scots. Then they shall come into my service for four or five days each, as if it were harvest time and they doing their services due to me. Then they shall sack a tower and have their sackings. And of the prisoners that they take in another place they shall have the ransoming, unless I prefer to hang those prisoners. In that case I will pay them what the ransoming would have been. And, for the men out of the sea, they shall be excused all rent-hens and services and heriots that they owe me. You – that is to say – have called them heriots, but rather they should be called deodanda. For a heriot is paid, the tenant being dead, by the tenant's heirs. But in this case it is the lord that is dead and what is paid is paid by the bondsmen as a fine or a forfeit, because they did not save the life of their lord."

The bondsman looked upon the face of his lord and marvelled what manner of man this was that, in the very conception of a martial scheme, could so hang upon the niceties of words. But the Young Lovell was a very sober, hardy and cunning lord. In all that he said he had his purpose. So that, before the peasant could speak and ask him for more particulars of that bargain, the young lord drew up Hamewarts' mouth from the water where he had drunk sufficiently and went on, lifting his hand in the sunlight.

"So that it is in the nature of deodand rather than of heriot. And how it works is in this wise – that, every tenant having to pay and suffer upon the death of his lord, so he works very carefully to keep his lord alive. So mark you well that, Hugh Raket. For, if I succeed in this enterprise, two out of three of you shall be excused all rent-hens and deodands due at the death of my father. But if I fail and die – and, full surely I will not live if I fail – ye must all of you pay double, rent-hens, deodands and all. For then shall my sisters be my lawful heiresses and you must pay to them firstly all that you owe upon my father's death and then all that you owe upon mine who am your rightful lord. So you will be in a very pitiful case if I die, and it will well repay you to fight well for me. Mark that very carefully and report it where you will. But, if you think rather to make favour with my sisters, you know very well it is not they that will go to the sweat and cost of getting leave of our lord the King to hold markets. No, but they will get them to Cullerford and Haltwhistle and strengthen these places, and the Castle will be thrown down, and the Scots will come in upon you and you will be in a very lamentable case."

He paused and looked earnestly upon his bondsman. And then he continued:

"So I have spoken what was in my mind very soberly and I think well. For this business of being a great lord is not merely the riding about in summer time and the sacking of castles. But I have to think what is good for me to do for my people. For your good is mine and I study how to bring it about. And that I learned of the Lord Berthin de Silly when I was in France. Now think well upon what I have said and give me your answer, yea or nay. For I know well that the others will be guided by you."

The bondsman looked upon the stream and upon the monastery whose wall, like a castle's, lay new and square in the sunlight.

"I take thought," he said, "not that I doubt the upshot, but that I may find words. For these matters are above my head that you have deigned to speak of. But of this, gentle lording, you may make sure that, at eight of the clock a fortnight hence, I will meet you at any place of which you shall send me the name. And there shall be with me sixty-eight or seventy stout men and well armed after our fashion."

He went on to try to say that this lording was a soldier so cunning and so great a knight that all the countryside said they would very gladly go a-riding or a-foot with bows, into Scotland or Heathenesse or the South, whatever his enterprise. But, since he was a better hand at grumbling at taxes than in praising his lord, he got little of it out. Nevertheless he made it plain that fighting men would be there on the appointed day, and so they parted – the lord riding across the stream to the monastery and the hind along it to Belford town.

II

The monk Francis was a small, dark, quiet man and not overlearned. He was rising thirty and he was always at work. The monastery of Belford was one given over rather to study and learning so that he, the active one, had always much upon his hands. But all such time as he could save from his duties he devoted to praying for the soul of the cousin he had slain by mischance, taking her for a deer and slaying her with an arrow, as she came to him amongst thick underwood to tell him that the Scots were marching southwards through the Debateable Lands.

That had been ten years before; nevertheless he had prayed that morning very reverently for his cousin's soul, walking up and down between the rows of haymakers and their cocks, in the sunshine; keeping one finger between the leaves of his book of prayers and yet marking diligently that none of the bondsmen slipped away into their own grass to use the scythe there. For it was marvellously fine weather, and such as had never in the memory of man been known in those parts for the heat of the sun and the dry clear nights. So that it was considered that the saints must be blessing that part. Nevertheless, these naughty bondsmen, owing some three, some five days' labour of themselves and their wives and children to the monastery, must needs always be seeking to slip away to their own lands and doing their scythe work there. This they would do, if no monk watched them, though by so doing they robbed the monastery and went in danger of excommunication. But those, as the learned Prior said, were evil days, so that it might almost be said, as was said aforetime of the accursed robber who came against the Abbey and Church of St. Trophime, that he proclaimed that a thousand florins would get him more soldiers than seven years of plenary absolution from the Pope at Avignon. As to whom, said the Prior, Froissart, the chronicler declared that men-at-arms do not live by pardons nor set much store thereby. And as much might be said of their bondsmen.

For it was to be said for this monastery of Belford that the monks set more store by a great chronicle that they were assisting the monk Oswald to write – all of them searching here and there – than by the work done by their bondsmen, the good estate of the lands of the monastery or even the saying of the offices. They set more store by learning than by aught else.

Their lands were administered by laymen, so that they were often robbed, and when the monk Francis had come amongst them their revenues had been scarcely an hundred pounds by the year, or very little more. And, even at the time of his coming, the monks had been against receiving him, for they said that here was a man, though of piety undoubted, who could not tell the chronicle of Giraldus Cambrensis from that of the monk Florence, or Asser from Vergil and Flaccus. But, in those days, the Prior had over-ridden them, pointing out that this novice was very wealthy; that their kitchen and dinner tables were in a sad state, that they had no longer money enough to pursue, upon a princely scale, the succouring of the poor that sat upon their benches, and that they could with the greater serenity pursue their studies and sleep after meat, if they had amongst them a knight who had proven himself diligent upon his own affairs and had increased his substance in the world. For, though they had butlers and cellarers amongst their number, yet the butler thought more of Brute than of his office and the cellarer was more minded to know where lay the bones of the British Kings than where were his keys. The ungodly came in and drank their wine in the cellar, yea, and carried away the mead in black-jacks.

These monks were portly, learned and somnolent, religious with a solid contempt for the unlearned – though they would upon occasion, being large men, line the walls and hew down attacking raiders with balks of timber, bars of iron and other weapons that drew no blood, those being, according to the canon, the proper arms for churchmen. These haughty monks accepted this Francis, who was known to the world as Sir Hugh Ridley, to be of their holy and learned brotherhood. But yet they regarded him as little more than a lay brother, though he wore the monk's frock, and they never voted for his advancement to any office such as sub-prior or the like.

Yet that day he had said two offices for them, had watched in the hay fields and was now coming in, at noontide to check accounts with the bailiff of the Priory about the great tower that was then in building. Seventeen monks there were and twenty lay brothers who were a lazy band. Thirty men-at-arms they had for their protection under the leadership of a knight, Sir Nicholas Ewelme, and they afforded shelter and victuals for 136 poor men, each of the seventeen monks being the patron of eight of them. These poor men sat in the sun on benches, each before their patron's room and should be served by him at meals. But this was nowadays, mostly done by the lay brothers, the learned monk laying one finger beneath a dish or vessel served to the poor men, so that it would not be said that the custom had died out.

The monk Francis, in his grey cloak came in by the little postern gate from the hayfields. He went to his rooms across the quadrangle; and he perceived how certain peasants in hoods of black cloth with belts of yellow leather were bringing in sacks and baskets. These sacks and baskets, as the monk Francis knew from the dress of those peasants, contained ammunition, small round balls of lead or, in the alternative, well-rounded stones from the beach. These peasants were workers in the lead mines upon the lands of the monastery and it was so they paid tribute with balls to shoot against the false Scots if they came a-raiding to Belford.

And, as he was going into his room, before his benchful of poor men that stretched their legs in the sun, it happened that one of the peasant's bags burst open and all the round, leaden balls ran out under the archway. Then there was a great bustle, the guards on duty and the guards that came out of the chambers in the arch starting to pick up the balls. And the monk Francis smiled to think how universal is the desire in men to help in picking up small, round objects that fall out of a sack. So that if the false Scots had been minded to take that place, they could have done it very well then, all the guards and peasants and others being on their hands and knees, huddled together and the gate open. And it seemed to the monk Francis that that would be a very good stratagem for the taking of a tower or the gateway of a strong place.

One of the poor men had been a man-at-arms at Castle Lovell, but was put out now and masterless. He came to the monk Francis as he went in at his door, and reported that it was said that the young Lord Lovell had been seen, having come out of captivity of the false Gilbert Elliott. The monk said he hoped well that that was so, for then all the men-at-arms from Castle Lovell that were there could go again to his service, and that he was a very good lording and his good friend in God.

He wished to cut the matter short for that time because he knew that there awaited him in his outer room John Harbottle an esquire, and the receiver of many domains of the Earl of Northumberland. This esquire was come with the accounts for the building of the great new tower that the Earl had given to the monastery. But the former men of the Lord Lovell crowded before the monk and after him into his outer room, all bringing tidings that the Young Lovell had been seen to ride through his township. And, to the number of thirty or so, they clamoured all at once, asking for his advice as to how they should find their lord and what to do when he was found.

The monk Francis was very glad to think that the Young Lovell was come back, not only because he was his true friend but also because this rabble of disemployed men-at-arms was a burden to the monastery and he had it on his conscience that he let them bide there. For that he had done, so that they might serve his friend if he came back. That monastery was rather for the relief of poor men ruined by raiders, for travellers and for criminals seeking sanctuary. He would very gladly have had news of his friend whom he loved, and have settled the disposal of these sturdy, idle and hungry men. Yet, being a man of many affairs, he thought that the day could only be got through by doing all things in order, and behind all these ragged men in grey, he perceived the esquire, John Harbottle, a portly, bearded man in a rich cloak of purple, with a green square cap that had a jewel of gold. This John Harbottle appeared not greatly pleased at the clamour, for he also was a man of many affairs, being the Percy's receiver, and a very diligent one.

So, without many words, but quietly, the monk Francis drove out some of these fellows, and then, calling to a grizzled and dirty lay brother, he bade him drive out the rest and bar the door. And so he took John Harbottle by the sleeve of his purple coat and drew him through the doorway into his inner room and closed the door. Then there was peace.

This inner cell was a light room with no glass in the windows. Beside the bed head there was a shelf that had on it the water-bottle of the monk Francis, his plate, his cup, his napkin and the book of devotions in which he read during the dinner hour, his needles and bodkins, his leather book of threads and such things as he needed for the repair of his clothes. Beneath this shelf was a curtain, and this hid the spare garments of the monk, as the vestments in which he said the simpler offices, his spare breeches, stockings, braces, and belt. At the other side of the bed head was a large crucifix of painted wood, from which there hung Our Lord who was represented as crying out in a perpetual agony. Before the crucifix was a fald stool, that had across one corner, a great rosary of clumsy wooden beads, and upon it a skull whose top was polished and yellowed by this monk's hands. For he had it there the better to be reminded of what death is when he prayed for the soul of the cousin he had slain.

When he had killed that woman he had been possessed rather with the idea of what he could do for her poor unhanselled soul than with agonies of ecstasy. And so, with a strong will he prayed, year in, year out, for her sooner relief from the pains of purgatory, knowing God to be a just Man and prayer most efficacious.

So, having brought John Harbottle in, he sat himself down on his three-legged stool of wood before his double pulpit. This had in its side a round opening, and in the interior such books, papers, or parchments as the monk Francis had in immediate use. He was of a very orderly nature, rather like a soldier than a priest.

He reached into the inside of his pulpit for his parchment that he was to peruse with John Harbottle, and that esquire stood behind him leaning over his back. Then John Harbottle said:

"Meseems the Master of Lovell has come back?"

"That I hear," the monk Francis answered.

"I think there is heavy trouble in store for him," John Harbottle said.

"I think there is but little," the monk answered. John Harbottle meant that the Earl Percy, in the Border Warden's Court, had given judgment against the Young Lovell. The monk meant that the religious of that countryside were not best pleased with the Earl Percy; they considered that sorcery was a matter for the courts ecclesiastical. But each was a man of few words, and without any more, the monk Francis unfolded his parchment. They went to their accounts, John Harbottle standing behind the monk and checking each item as he read it:

"And in the like payment of money to the prior of the house of the Brethren of St. Cuthbert, within the parish of Belford, near the wood called Newlands, for this year, (as well for that part of the work of the new tower there as for the carriage of stone and other stuff by the contract, in gross) 100 shillings…" The Earl was giving the tower to the monks, they employing two contractors called Richard Chambers and John Richardson to build it for them and the Earl paying the accounts.

"Just!" John Harbottle said, and the monk read on —

"Carting four loads of lead, 24s. 6d.; bought eight loads of stone, 10d.; iron, with the workmanship of the same, for the doors and windows, 8s.; bought seven locks 4s. 2d., with keys; six latches 12d.; and snecks and other iron 4s. 2d…" So the monk read on, and the receiver nodded his head, saying, "Just."

Once he said —

"I wish I could have things so cheap for my lord."

"Then," the monk answered, "you must haggle as I do and in God His high service."