Chapter 4 IN BEDFORD CASTLE.

A few weeks after William de Breauté, his face smarting and disfigured by a blow from a woman's hand, had ridden off from Bletsoe, his elder brother Fulke--"that disgrace to knighthood," as Ralph de Beauchamp had termed him--sat one morning in his wife's apartment in his castle of Bedford.

The lady's bower, as the private room of the chatelaine was called, was at Bedford pleasantly situated in the upper part of the great keep reared by Pain de Beauchamp. The interior arrangement of a Norman castle was usually as follows:--

The ground-floor, to which there was no entrance from without, was called the dungeon, and was used as a storehouse for the provisions which were necessary to enable the castle to stand a siege. Here, also, was the well, another necessity, and prisoners were also sometimes confined in the ground-floor, hence the application of the name to prisons in general. The greater part of the first floor was occupied by the large apartment called the hall. This was approached by steps outside the building, and was entered through a portal which was often highly ornamented. The great hall was common ground to all who had any right to enter the keep, but above it were the private rooms for the lord and his family, which were usually approached by a staircase built at one corner of the keep. The windows were very small: in the lower portion of the building were long narrow tunnels pierced through the thickness of the wall; but in the upper stories, where the walls were safe from attack by battering-rams or such engines, they were often splayed within at a wide angle. In the recess thus formed seats could be placed commanding a view through the narrow window, covered only by a wooden shutter, which could be hooked back when the weather permitted.

In such a nook, in her own private room, sat Margaret de Ripariis, the lady of Bedford Castle. The view from out of the open window was a pleasant one. Immediately at her feet was the strong wall surrounding the keep itself; its exact position can even now be determined, as we stand on the flat bowling-green which occupies the summit of the mound where the keep once stood. Beyond, the broad stream of the Ouse protected the castle along the whole of the southern front. Across the river, to the right, the Micklegate, or southern portion of the town, clustered round the two churches of St. Mary and St. Peter, Dunstable; and the view from the upper stories of the keep embraced the abbey of Elstow, with its great Norman church, some two miles further to the south, and was only bounded by the blue line of the Ampthill hills.

But charming as was the prospect, the Lady Margaret was not regarding it with any expression of satisfaction. In fact, her thoughts were quite otherwise occupied. A controversy was going on at that moment between herself and her lord and master, and she merely gazed out of the window in order to turn away her eyes from him, for they were full of tears. An unfortunate contrast to the scene within were the calm river and the bright spring sunshine without.

The Lady Margaret had barely reached middle age, but sorrow and care had worn weary lines on a face which, some twenty years before, must have been one of exceeding beauty. When a young girl, she had betrothed herself to William de Beauchamp, Ralph's uncle; but by an overstraining of that feudal law which allowed the king, or any other chief, the power to give his ward in marriage, she had been forced by King John into a distasteful match with Fulke de Breauté. It would have been possible, but difficult, for a strong-willed woman to resist the will and the command of a feudal superior. But in the case of an heiress, such as was Margaret de Ripariis, great pressure was exercised, and many women in those days had to yield against their will and inclination. Fulke de Breauté himself was at that time a young man in the height of favour with King John, who was then engaged in his desperate struggle with his barons, and who eventually rewarded his supporter with the governorship of Bedford, and the hand of the rich heiress.

But on the morning in question in this chapter the redoubtable Fulke was in a somewhat less defiant, and even in a penitent mood. Not, however, that he had as yet made any act of reparation for the terrible deed of pillage and murder committed on St. Vincent's Eve at St. Alban's, and which the ferocious knight had finally crowned by carrying off a crowd of men, women, and children to his stronghold at Bedford.

In those days freebooting barons pounced upon prisoners for the sake of ransom, much as the Greek brigands do now, and we may be sure that the burgesses of St. Alban's had to pay up pretty heavily ere their fellow-townsfolk were restored to them. The chronicler, however, does not relate the fate of these unfortunate creatures thus hurried off to Bedford, but what he does tell us is, that the conscience of Fulke, dead enough probably when that miscreant was awake, had been pricking him as he slept; and "conscience doth make cowards of us all."

De Breauté was suffering mentally from an uneasy night and a very ugly dream. He had seen, the chronicler relates--though how he came by such an intimate knowledge of the knight's dream does not transpire--he had seen a huge stone fall from the summit of the great central tower of St. Alban's Abbey--that tower built of the bricks of the Roman Verulam which we still see rising high above the city--and had felt it fall upon him and crush him to powder.

One cannot but think that Sir Fulke was paying the penalty for a too hearty indulgence in some indigestible dish at the supper-table the evening before. Be that how it may, however, he awoke with a great cry, and told the dream to Lady Margaret. The latter, as much alarmed as her husband, drew from him an account of his late raid, of which the presence of the captives had given her an inkling, and then urged him to go off forthwith to St. Alban's, and make reparation at the shrine of the saint.

With the morning light, however, Sir Fulke, himself again, demurred. He began to regret that he had told his wife all. The brief season of superstitious fear had passed away, and his usual condition of ferocity and self-will supervening, he was endeavouring, and not unsuccessfully, to master the better feeling that had arisen within him.

The Lady Margaret had, under the seemingly fortuitous circumstances of her husband's brief penitence, ventured to bring forward a matter she had at heart. It was now the season of Lent. In the famous Benedictine Nunnery of Elstow, close to Bedford, Martin de Pateshulle, Archdeacon of Northampton, and the uncle of Aliva, was holding a series of special devotional services for women, or what we should now call a retreat, which was attended by many of the ladies of the county. Margaret, sick at heart with her life at Bedford Castle, and weary of the blasphemies and the sacrilege of her husband, was most anxious to escape, if only for a time, into the seclusion of religious life.

The old chaplain of the castle, the pious and venerable priest, who had taught Ralph de Beauchamp his hic, h?c, hoc, had long since been gathered to his rest. Indeed, had he still been alive, he could scarcely have continued in his office under the new régime. So chaplain at this time there was none in Bedford Castle. He must, indeed, have been a strange priest who would have been acceptable to Fulke and his crew.

St. Paul's, the principal church in the town, had been despoiled by the sacrilegious baron, who had carried off the stones of which it was built to repair his stronghold, and it is not clear if the Augustinian canons who continued to serve it, though they had removed many years before to the priory erected for them at Newenham by Roisia de Beauchamp, would have found just then an altar to serve. Only on certain occasions would her brutal husband permit Margaret to attend to her religious duties at the chapel of St. Thomas-at-bridge, which stood at the foot of the bridge outside the castle gate. This morning, however, taking advantage of the fit of penitence which had seized him in the night, she was craving permission to go to the retreat at Elstow.

"I like not your running after these priests and their masses," remonstrated Sir Fulke. "We have gone many years with chapel unserved here. You know I have made of it a lumber-room; and we are none the worse for it, and," he added, with a grim chuckle, "perchance none the better."

"But, and did you allow me, I would go pray for you, while you yourself get you to the shrine of St. Alban, and make reparation to the holy servants of St. Benedict there, as you promised me last night, on your honour, you would do," pleaded the wife.

Sir Fulke winced at this allusion to his weakness and terror in the hours of darkness.

"Besides, you have often exhorted me to stand well for your sake with the knights and noble families round, and you know full well how many ladies are like to be at Elstow."

Sir Fulke paused awhile. It was perfectly true, as his wife had said, that he wanted to improve his social position in the neighbourhood, and though the superstitious fears arising from his fearful dream had now vanished, he was well aware that his last raid, with its accompanying murders, was more than any decent-minded men could put up with, even in those rough and cruel days. Therefore, as religious observances counted for much in the way of expiation of crime, he came to the conclusion that no harm would be done by a little vicarious repentance.

"Go, then," he said roughly. "But take care that if aught is said to you concerning this St. Alban's turmoil, you make out the best case you can for me. Say that the bailiff was burned by my men ere I got to the abbey gate, and that I knew naught of it till afterwards. You can add that some of my men-at-arms have been hanged for it, or aught else that occurs to you. Your woman-wit will tell you what to say."

"And then," exclaimed Lady Margaret, overlooking, in her thankfulness, the condition of lying imposed on the desired permission--"and then you will go yourself to St. Alban's, and--"

"Peace, woman!" interrupted the knight; "leave me to order my own doings. I will command your palfrey to be ready. Take one of your women with you, and I will order varlets to go attend you. I would not that the wife of De Breauté should go to Elstow with any fewer train than the other dames."

So saying, Sir Fulke strode from the room, leaving his wife setting about her preparations for departure with all alacrity.

De Breauté, rough and cruel as he was, had a great idea of keeping such state at Bedford as befitted a castle of such importance, and had no notion of letting it go down from the position which it had occupied in the time of the De Beauchamps. Indeed, from a military point of view, he had considerably strengthened it by adding to its defences with the material he had robbed from St. Paul's. Within, it was well garrisoned and provisioned, and held by a force of nearly one hundred men-at-arms, or trained soldiers, besides grooms, servants, and followers. Though deprived of the services of a chaplain, the Lady Margaret was allowed to have two or three waiting-women or attendants, who held more the position of companions than mere servants.

Accompanied by one of these, she found herself, an hour or two after her interview with her husband, riding on her palfrey towards Elstow Abbey.

Her companion was a young and pretty girl who, by her combined prudence and archness, managed to hold her own among the rough crew who garrisoned Bedford Castle, while her bright wit and merry laugh at times shed a brief ray of brightness on the gloomy life of her unfortunate mistress, whose loneliness was cheered by her faithful attachment.

Beatrice Mertoun might, had she been inclined, have chosen a husband for herself from her many admirers among De Breauté's chief retainers. But her affections were already fixed upon an officer in the royal army, one John de Standen, the king's miner, from the Forest of Dean. De Standen occupied an important post as director of the mining operations so necessary in a siege, though he did not hold the rank of a knight, and therefore could hardly be said to represent a modern officer of engineers.

As the two ladies, followed by their grooms, proceeded on the way, the Lady Margaret confided to Beatrice the story of her lord's dream, congratulating herself on its result being so far favourable as to allow her to pay this visit to the abbey.

"Now, by my halidom," quoth the maiden, as she listened to the account of the vision, her thoughts running rather on her lover than on this pious pilgrimage, "methinks to hurl down a stone like that were rather more like the work of Master John de Standen than of the holy Alban!"

"Tush, child! jest not of the blessed saints!" reproved the elder woman.

"I meant no harm, lady," retorted the incorrigible Beatrice. "I was ever taught that the holy Alban was a good soldier and true, like De Standen, but I never heard that he was at his best in the mining works of a siege!"

But her lady hardly caught her last remark. Her eye perceived the tall central tower of Elstow rising among the trees, and the sight suggested alarming thoughts to her harassed mind.

"Ah me!" she said, half to herself. "What if my lord in his madness should attack the holy abbey of Elstow and the reverend women there!"

"And lack-a-day, my lady," Beatrice went on, "men do say that the king will certes one day pull down Bedford Castle over Sir Fulke's head; and who could raze those stout walls without the aid of bold John and his men?"

But the elder lady continued to pursue her own train of thought concerning the abbey and the approaching retreat, so that the conversation ran on between the two in the following somewhat disjointed fashion, the venerable Archdeacon Martin de Pateshulle and the bold John de Standen being alternately the theme.

"He will draw us all up higher when we come within those walls."

"Nay, lady; methinks he will draw them down about our ears and ourselves with them."

"How meanest thou? I speak of the holy church and the reverend father."

"In good sooth, it looks strong and stout, the abbey church; and yet, were it a castle, methinks John could find his way beneath its walls."

"And how, Beatrice? To me it seems to figure the firmness of Holy Church, founded on the rock of the blessed apostle, the see of our lord his Holiness the Pope."

"Yet neither rock nor sea can withstand the skilful miner's advances; for John has ofttimes explained to me how he has dug his mines beneath the water of the deepest moat."

And so, running on at cross purposes, they rode through the abbey gateway, and entered the outer or guests' yard.